“Fox Three-six to Fox,” Huber said. “We’ll be executing in a minute or less. If there’s any questions, let’s hear them now, troopers. Three-six over.”
None of his vehicle commanders responded. He’d have been amazed if one had. Four green beads along the top of his faceshield indicated that the cars themselves were within field-service parameters. That could’ve meant they’d have been deadlined for maintenance on stand-down, but unless there’d been serious damage since the last halt Huber figured they’d all pass even rear-area inspection.
“Central to Sierra Six,” the command channel announced. “You’re clear to go. Out.”
“Sierra Six to Sierra,” said Captain Sangrela. “Execute, troopers!”
“Go, Tranter!” Huber shouted, thinking that the former technician was waiting for his direct superior to relay the force commander’s order.
Fencing Master was already moving. Tranter had fooled him by the skill with which he coaxed the nacelles into a smooth delivery of power, balancing acceleration against blade angle so perfectly that the speed of the eight fans didn’t drop below optimum. Fencing Master lifted from the clay and climbed the hillside as slickly as a raindrop slides down a windowpane.
They shot over the brow of the hill. Bright verticals on Huber’s faceshield framed the sector Fencing Master was responsible for, the left post on the western spur of the ancient cinder cone fifteen kilometers away.
To the right Foghorn blasted into view measurable seconds later, its bow skirts nearly a meter above the ground for the instant before gravity reasserted itself. That’ll rattle their back teeth, Huber thought, but he had more immediate problems of his own.
A cyan bolt split the smoke-streaked gloom, whirling helices of ash as it snapped toward the volcano. A gout of white-hot rock spurted from a cave mouth prepared as a firing position.
Two tanks were hanging back on overwatch while the infantry and the other six armored vehicles charged Fort Freedom at the best speed their fans could drive them. The second tank’s bolt lit a secondary explosion, munitions detonating at the ravening touch of a 20-cm powergun. Even at this range, the main guns were capable of destroying anything short of another tank.
Fencing Master’s path across the terrain was as smooth as a flowing river—not straight, but never diverging much from the line Tranter had chosen. The other cars and the two advancing tanks were plumes of ash streaking the sky to eastward; they were falling behind Fencing Master, though not by so much that Huber worried about it. Somebody had to lead the advance, after all, and he guessed that was what he was being paid for.
The tanks on overwatch, now well to the rear, continued firing, one and then the other. They could hit on the move, but they’d halted so that irregularities of terrain wouldn’t mask their fire at some instant it was critically needed. Even the best soldiers and best equipment in the universe—and most of Hammer’s troopers would say that meant the Slammers—couldn’t keep things from going wrong in battle, but good planning limited the number of opportunities Fate got to screw things up.
Floosie raked the volcano’s eastern margin with two tribarrels. The streams of 2-cm bolts interlaced like jets from a fountain—now crossing, now fanning apart. The impacts sparkled against the lava like dustmotes caught in a shaft of sunlight. At twelve kilometers’ range the tribarrels weren’t likely to be effective, but Jellicoe always claimed that keeping the other guy’s head down was the first rule of survival.
The platoon sergeant was a twenty-year veteran so she must know something, but Huber didn’t want to burn out his barrels now when in a matter of minutes he’d be at knife range with several thousand hostiles. There wasn’t a right way to do it. If suppressing fire was the rabbit’s foot Jellicoe used to get through hard times, Huber wasn’t going to order her to stop.
Not that he thought she’d obey him anyway.
A geyser of cyan light—powergun ammunition gang-firing—lit the side of the volcano. Blast-gouged rock gleamed white, fading toward red in the instant before the shattered slope caved in to hide it. The tanks were first hitting positions which Central believed were occupied, though they’d shortly hammer the locations where the Volunteers planned to move their guns after the first exchange of fire.
The bloody civilians didn’t understand that none of their guns would survive its first shot at the Slammers.
A calliope opened up, one of those dug so deep into the forward slope that Volunteer Command couldn’t retask it to air defense. Its dense volley of 30-mm bolts was probably aimed at Flame Farter, which’d already raced past the narrow window through which the calliope fired. The rounds instead came dangerously close to the infantry following. Calcium in the clay soil blazed white in the center of gouting ash; the skimmers maneuvered wildly to avoid the track of shots.
Two 20-cm bolts hit the firing slit in quick succession. The calliope might have been deep enough that neither tank had a direct line on the weapon itself, but the amount of energy the main guns liberated in the tunnel would be enough to cook the crew in a bath of gaseous rock. The hillside burped, then slumped as it rearranged itself.
Fort Freedom loomed above the plain five klicks ahead like a sullen monument. Where the eastern sun angled across ravines, shadows streaked the cinder cone. Speckles against the lava indicated a few Volunteers were firing their personal weapons. At this range the electromagnetic carbines were harmless; the slugs probably wouldn’t carry to the oncoming Slammers. Though the attempt showed bad fire discipline, it also meant that not all—not quite all—of the enemy were cowed by the sight of the iridium hammers about to fall on them.
The ground rose slightly into a ridge paralleling the base of the cone and changed from clay to a friable soil that must have been mostly volcanic ash. The forest here had been of tall trees spaced more widely than those of the stretch the task force had just traversed, but the firestorm had reduced them to much the same litter of ash and cinders.
The two tanks accompanying the combat cars halted on the ridge; the wake of debris they’d raised during their passage continued to roll outward under its own inertia. They immediately began punching Volunteer positions with their main guns. The panzers now far to the rear began to advance, accelerating as quickly as their mass allowed. They’d each shot off the twenty-round basic load in their ready magazines and couldn’t use their main guns until a fresh supply had cycled up from storage in their bellies.
Mercenary artillery in Solace might weigh in at any time. The tanks’ tribarrels were tasked to air defense. With the wide sight distances here, that should be a sufficient deterrent. If it wasn’t, well, Huber had more pressing concerns right now.
His faceshield careted movement at the top of the cinder cone: the Volunteers were shifting calliopes from air defense sites in the interior of the ancient volcano to notches cut in the rim from which they could bear on the advancing armored vehicles. Huber adjusted his sight picture onto the leftmost caret, enlarging the central portion around the pipper while the surrounding field remained one-to-one so that he wouldn’t be blindsided by an unglimpsed danger.
The gun crew had rolled their multi-barrel weapon into position and were depressing their eight muzzles at the mechanism’s maximum rate. Huber locked his tribarrel’s stabilizer on the glinting target and squeezed the trigger.
Huber’s AI blacked out the 2-cm bolts from the magnified image to save his retinas. Instead of a smooth Thump! Thump! Thump! as the tribarrel cycled at 500 rounds per minute, it stuttered Thump! and a moment later Thump! Thump! again. The stabilizer adjusted the weapon within broad parameters, but Fencing Master was jolting over broken terrain with a violence beyond what the servos were meant to control. The software simply interrupted the burst until the gun bore again on its assigned target.