It'd been a routine sweep, G Company's combat cars had pushed down a ridge-line while the tanks of M Company's 3d Platoon held a blocking position to see what the cars flushed. One tank was deadlined with problems in its main-gun loading mechanism, and Lieutenant Hemmings had come down with the rolling crud, so Birdie Sparrow was in charge of the platoon's three remaining tanks.
Being short a tank didn't matter; G Company blew a couple of deserted bunkers, but they couldn't find any sign of Consies fresher than a month old. The combat cars laagered for the night on the ridge, while the tanks headed back for Firebase Red.
They were in line abreast. Birdie'd placed his own Deathdealer on the right flank, while DJ's Widowmaker howled along forty meters away in the center of the short line. They were riding over fields that'd been abandoned years before when the National Government cleared the area of civilians in an admission that they could no longer defend it from Conservative guerrillas slipping across the enclave borders.
All three tank commanders were head-and-shoulders out of their cupolas, enjoying the late afternoon sun.DJ turned and waved at Birdie,calling something that wasn't meant to be heard over the sound of the fans.
The motion sensor pinged a warning in Birdie's helmet, but it was too late by then.
Later—there was plenty of time later to figure out what had happened—they decided that the standoff mine had been set almost three years before. It'd been intended to hit the lightly armored vehicles the Yokels had been using in the region back then, so its high-sensitivity fuse detonated the charge 200 meters from the oncoming tanks.
Birdie's tanks didn't have—none of the Hammer's tanks had—its detection apparatus set to sweep that far ahead,because at that range the mine's self-forging projectile couldn't penetrate the armor even of a combat car. What the motion sensor had caught was the warhead shifting slightly to center on its target.
The mine was at the apex of an almost perfect isosceles triangle, with the two tanks forming the other corners. It rotated toward Widowmaker instead of Deathdealer.
Both tank commanders' minds were reacting to the dirty, yellow-white blast they saw in the corner of their eyes, but there hadn't been time for muscles to shift enough to wipe away DJ's grin when the projectile clanged against Widowmaker's sloping turret and glanced upward. It was a bolt of almost-molten copper, forged from a plate into a spearpoint by the explosive that drove it toward its target.
DJ wore ceramic body armor. It shattered as the projectile coursed through the trooper's chest and head.
As Birdie Sparrow hosed the countryside with both his tribarrel and main gun, trying to blast an enemy who'd been gone for years, all he could think was, Thank the Lord it was him and not me.
"Look, y' know it's gonna happen, Birdie," said DJ's ghost earnestly. "It don't mean nothin'."
His voice was normal, but his chest was a gaping cavity and his face had started to splash—the way Birdie'd seen it happen three months before; only slowly, very slowly.
DJ had a metal filling in one of his molars. It glittered as it spun out through his cheek.
"DJ, you gotta stop doin' this," Birdie whimpered. His body was shivering and he wanted to wake up.
"Yeah,well,you better get movin',snake,"DJ said with a shrug of his shoulders almost separated from what was left of his chest. The figure was fading from Birdie's consciousness. "It's starting again, y' know."
shoop
Birdie was out of his shelter and climbing the recessed steps to Deathdealer's turret before he knew for sure he was awake.He was wearing his boots—he hadn't taken them off for more than a few minutes at a time in three months—and his trousers.
Most troopers kept their body armor near their bunks. Birdie didn't bother with that stuff anymore.
Despite the ringing alarm bell, there were people still standing around in the middle of the company area; but that was their problem, not Birdie Sparrow's.
He was diving feet-first through the hatch when the first mortar shell went off, hurling a figure away from its blast.
The body looked like DJ Bell waving goodbye.
When the third mortar shell went off, June Ranson rolled into a crouch and sprinted toward her combat car. The Consies used 100mm automatic mortars that fired from a three-round clip. It was a bloody good weapon—a lot like the mortars in Hammer's infantry platoons, and much more effective than the locally made tube the National Army used.
The automatic mortar fired three shots fast, but the weight of a fresh clip stretched the gap between rounds three and four out longer than it would have been from a manually loaded weapon.
Of course, if the Consies had a pair of mortars targeted on Ranson's detachment area, she was right outa luck.
Guns were firing throughout the encampment now, and the Yokels had finally switched on their warning klaxon. A machine-gun sent a stream of bright-orange Consie tracers snapping through the air several meters above Ranson's head. One tracer hit a pebble in the earthen berm and ricocheted upward at a crazy angle.
A strip charge wheezed in the night,a nasty,intermittent sound like a cat throwing up. A drive rocket was uncoiling the charge through the wire and minefields on which the Yokels depended for protection.
The charge went off, hammering the ground and blasting a corridor through the defenses. It ignited the western sky with a momentary red flash like the sunset's afterthought.
Ranson caught the rear handhold of her combat car, Warmonger—Tootsie One-three—and swung herself into the fighting compartment. The fans were live, and both wing guns were firing.
Beside the vehicle were the scattered beginnings of an evening meaclass="underline" a catalytic cooker, open ration packets, and three bottles of local beer spilled to stain the dust. Warmonger's crew had been together for better than two years. They did everything as a team, so Ranson could be nearly certain her command vehicle would be up to speed in an emergency.
She was odd man out: apart from necessary business, the crewmen hadn't addressed a dozen words to her in the month and a half since she took over the detachment.
Ranson didn't much care. She'd seen too many people die herself to want to get to know any others closely.
Hot plastic empties ejecting from Stolley's left wing gun spattered over her. One of the half-molten disks clung to the hair on the back of her wrist for long enough to burn.
Ranson grabbed her helmet,slapped the visor down over her face,and thumbed it from optical to thermal so that she could see details again. That dickheaded Yokel reporter had picked a great time to blind her with his camera light . . . .