Buntz fired his main gun when the pipper swung on—on anything, on any part of the APCs. His bolt hit the middle vehicle of the line; it swelled into a fiery bubble. The shockwave shoved the other vehicles away.
The high APC continued to hose Herod with plasma bolts, hammering the hull and blasting three fat holes in the skirts.That tribarrel was the only one to hit the tank, probably because its gunner was aiming to avoid friendly vehicles.
Herod's main gun cycled, purging and cooling the bore with a jet of liquid nitrogen. Buntz held his foot down on the trip, screaming with frustration because his gun didn't fire, couldn't fire. He understood the delay, but it was maddening nonetheless.
The upper half of the APC vanished in a roaring coruscation: the explosion of Herod's target had pushed it high enough that Hole Card could nail it. Cabell wouldn't have to pay for his drinks the next night he and Buntz were in a bar together.
Two blocks of Herod's Automatic Defense Array went off simultaneously, making the hull chime like a gong. Each block blasted out hundreds of tungsten barrels the size of a finger joint.They ripped through long grass and Brotherhood infantry, several of them already firing powerguns.
A soldier stepped around the bow of an APC,his buzzbomb raised to launch. A third block detonated, shredding him from neck to knees. Pellets punched ragged holes through the light armor of the vehicle behind him.
Herod's main gun fired—finally, Buntz' imagination told him, but he knew the loading cycle was complete in less than two seconds. The rearmost APC collapsed in on itself like a thin wax model in a bonfire. The bow fragment tilted toward the rainbow inferno where the middle of the vehicle had been,its tribarrel momentarily spurting a cyan track skyward.
Lahti'd been fighting to hold Herod on a curving course. Now she deliberately straightened the rearmost pair of fan nacelles, knowing that without their counteracting side-thrust momentum would swing the stern out. The gunner in the surviving APC slammed three bolts into Herod's turret at point-blank range; then the mass of the tank's starboard quarter swatted the light vehicle, crushing it and flinging the remains sideways like a can kicked by an armored boot.
Herod grounded hard, air screaming through the holes in her plenum chamber. "Get us outa here, Lahti!" Buntz ordered. "Go! Go! Go!"
Lahti was already tilting her fan nacelles to compensate for the damage. She poured on the coal again. Because they were still several meters above the floor of the swale, she was able to use gravity briefly to accelerate by sliding Herod toward the smoother terrain.
Buntz spun his cupola at maximum rate, knowing that scores of Brotherhood infantry remained somewhere in the grass behind them. A shower of buzzbombs could easily disable a tank. If Herod's luck was really bad, well . . . the only thing good about a fusion bottle rupturing was that the crew wouldn't know what hit them.
The driver of an APC was climbing out of his cab, about all that remained of the vehicle. Buntz didn't fire; he didn't even think of firing.
It could of been me. It could be me tomorrow.
Lahti maneuvered left, then right, following contours that'd go unremarked on a map but which were the difference between concealed and visible—between life and death—on this rolling terrain. When Herod was clear of the immediate knot of enemy soldiers, she slowed to give herself time to diagnose the damage to the plenum chamber.
Buntz checked his own readouts. Half the upper bank of sensors on the starboard side were out, not critical now but definitely a matter for replacement before the next operation.
The point-blank burst into the side of the turret was more serious. The bolts hadn't penetrated, but another hit in any of the cavities just might. Base maintenance would probably patch the damage for now, but Buntz wouldn't be a bit surprised if the turret was swapped out while the Regiment was in transit to the next contract deployment.
But not critical, not right at the moment . . . .
As Buntz took stock, a shell screamed up from the south. He hadn't heard Lieutenant Rennie call for another round, but it wasn't likely that a tank commander in the middle of a firefight would've.
Six or eight Brotherhood APCs remained undamaged, but this time their tribarrels didn't engage the incoming shell. It burst a hundred meters up,throwing out a flag of blue smoke. It was simply a reminder of the sleet of antipersonnel bomblets that could follow.
A mortar fired, its choonk! a startling sound to a veteran at this point in a battle. Have they gone off their nuts? Buntz thought. He set his tribarrel to air-defense mode just in case.
Lahti twitched Herod's course so that Herod didn't smash a stand of bushes with brilliant pink blooms. She liked flowers, Buntz recalled. Sparing the bushes didn't mean much in the long run, of course.
Buntz grinned. His mouth was dry and his lips were so dry they were cracking. In the long run, everybody's dead. Screw the long run.
The mortar bomb burst high above the tube that'd launched it. It was a white flare cluster.
"All personnel of the Flaming Sword Commando, cease fire!" an unfamiliar voice ordered on what was formally the Interunit Channel. Familiarly it was the Surrender Push. When a signal came in over that frequency, a red light pulsed on the receiving set of every mercenary in range. "This is Captain el-Khalid, ranking officer. Slammers personnel, the Flaming Sword Commando of the Holy Brotherhood surrenders on the usual terms. We request exchange and repatriation at the end of the conflict. Over."
"All Myrtle and Lamplight units!" Lieutenant Rennie called, also using the
Interunit Channel. "This is Myrtle Six. Cease fire, I repeat, cease fire. Captain el-Khalid, please direct your troops to proceed to high ground to await registration. Myrtle Six out."
"Top, can we pull into that firebase while they get things sorted out?" Lahti asked over the intercom. "I'll bet we got enough time to patch those holes. I don't want to crawl all the way back leaking air and scraping our skirts."