Trouble was, Ortnahme was a very competent and experienced mechanic. He'd dismantled the defense system before he started the rebuild. If he hadn't, he'd've risked killing himself and fifty other people if his pliers slipped and sent a current surge down the wrong circuit. He'd been going to reconnect the system in the morning, when the work was done . . . .
The intake roar of the fans resumed three Consie steps before the tank began moving, but finally Herman's Whore staggered forward again. They were a great pair for a race—the tank crippled, and the man bent over by the weight of the mine he carried. A novelty act for clowns . . . .
Down in the hull the commo was babbling something—orders, warnings; Simkins wondering what the cop his superior thought he was up to. Ortnahme didn't dare leave the cupola to answer—or call for help. As soon as they drew enough ahead of the Consie, he'd blast the bastard and then fix the access plate so they could move properly again.
The trouble with that plan was that Herman's Whore had started circling. The tank moved about as fast as the man on foot, but the Consie was cutting the chord of the arc and in a few seconds—
The warrant leader lifted himself from the hatch and let himself slide down the smooth curve of the turret. He fumbled in his cargo pocket. Going in this direction, his age and fat didn't matter . . . .
The Consie staggered forward, bent over his charge, in a triumph of will over exhaustion.He must have been blowing like a whale,but the sound wasn't audible over the suction of the tank's eight fans.
Ortnahme launched himself from the tank and crushed the guerrilla to the ground. Bones snapped, caught between the warrant leader's mass and the mine casing.
Ortnahme didn't take any chances.He hammered until the grip of the multitool thumped slimy dirt instead of the Consie's head.
Herman's Whore was circling back. Ortnahme tried to stand, then sat heavily. He waved his left arm.
By the time Simkins pulled up beside him, the warrant leader would be ready to get up and weld that cursed access cover in place.
Until then, he'd figured he'd just sit and catch his breath.
Terrain is one thing on a contour map, where a dip of three meters in a hundred is dead flat, and another thing on the ground, where it's enough difference to hide an object the size of a tank.
Which is just what it seemed to have done to call sign Tootsie Four, the maintenance section's vehicle, so far as Hans Wager could tell from his own cupola.
It wasn't Holman's fault.
What with the late start, they'd had to drive like a bat outa Hell to get into position. It would've taken the Lord and all his martyrs to save 'em if they'd stumbled into the Consies while Wager was barely able to hang on, much less shoot.
But since they caught up, she'd been keeping Charlie Three-zero about 300 meters outboard of Sparrow's blower, just like orders. Only thing was, there was supposed to be another tank between them.
Sparrow was covering a double arc, with his tribarrel swung left and his main gun offset to the right. It was the main gun that fired, kicking a scoop load of fused earth skyward in fiery sparkles.
Wager didn't see what the platoon leader'd shot at, but three figures jumped to their feet near the point of impact. Wager tumbled them to the ground again as blazing corpses with a burst from his tribarrel.
They were doing okay. Wager was doing okay. His facial muscles were locked in a tight rictus, and he took his fingers momentarily from the tribarrel's grips to massage the numbness out of them.
His driver was doing all right too,now that it was just a matter of moving ahead at moderate speed. Deathdealer was travelling at about twenty kph, and Holman had been holding Charlie Three-zero to the same speed since they caught up with the rest of the platoon.
Because Sparrow's tank was on the inside of the pivot, it was slowly drawing ahead of them. Wager felt the hull vibration change as Holman fiddled with her
power and tilt controls, but the tank's inertia took much longer to adjust.
The fan note built into a shriek.
Wager scanned the night, wishing he had the eyes of two wing gunners to help the way he would on a combat car. Having the main gun was all well and good, but he figured the firepower of another pair of tribarrels—
Via! What did Holman think they were doing? Running a race?
—would more than make up for a twenty centimeter punch in this kind of war.
"Holman!" he snarled into his intercom. "Slow us bloody—"
Charlie Three-zero's mass had absorbed all the power inputs and was now rocketing through the night at twice her previous speed. Way too fast in the dark for anything but paved roads. Rocks clanged on the skirts as the tank crested a knoll—
And plunged down the other side, almost as steep as the berm they'd crashed off minutes before.
"—down!"
The ravine was full of Consies,jumping aside or flattening as Charlie Three-zero hurtled toward them under no more control than a 170-tonne roundshot.
Wager's bruised body knew exactly how the impact would feel, but reflex kept that from affecting anything he did. Charlie Three-zero hit, bounced. Wager's left hand flipped the protective cage away from the control on the tribarrel's mount—the same place it was on a combat car. He rammed the miniature joystick straight in, firing the entire close-in defense system in a single white flash from the top of the skirts.
Guerrillas flew apart in shreds.
The door of a bunker gaped open in the opposite side of the gully. Holman had been trying to raise Charlie Three-zero's bow to slow their forward motion. As the tank hopped forward, the bow did lift enough for the skirts to scrape the rise instead of slamming into it the way they had when trying to get out of Camp Progress.
"Bring us—" Wager ordered as he rotated his tribarrel to bear on the Consies behind them, some squirming in their death throes but others rising again to point weapons.
—around, he meant to say, but Holman reversed her fans and sucked the tank squarely down where she'd just hit. The unexpected impact rammed Wager's spine against his seat. His tribarrel was aimed upward.
"You dickheaded fool!" he screamed over the intercom as he lowered his weapon and the tank started to lift in place.
A Consie threw a grenade. It bounced off the hull and exploded in the air. Wager felt the hot flick of shrapnel beneath the cheekpiece of his helmet, but the grenadier himself flopped backward with most of his chest gone.
The tribarrel splattered the air, then walked its long burst across several of the guerrillas still moving.