Padova tweaked her fan nacelles expertly, lifting Fencing Master over the crest on nearly an even keel. Below, zigzagging because their power-to-weight ratio didn’t allow them to climb the steeper reverse slope straight on, were three armored personnel carriers with a pair of anti-tank missiles on a cupola mounting an automatic cannon. Far to Fencing Master’s right was a larger vehicle with a long electrochemical cannon in its turret. Huber squeezed his trigger as his tribarrel settled on the nearer of the two APCs on his side.
The APC’s commander had his head out of the cupola hatch to conn his vehicle. He’d started to duck, but Huber’s first bolt decapitated him in a cyan flash. The rest of the burst splashed on the cupola, setting off an anti-tank missile in a gushing yellow low-order explosion.
Huber’d pulled the APC’s teeth by wrecking the turret. Without spending more rounds—Fencing Master would be through the Dragoons and gone before the infantry in the rear compartment could unass their vehicle and start shooting—he swung his gun toward the APC that he’d assigned both to himself and the car to the left, Sergeant Nagano’s Foghorn. Deseau and Learoyd were firing, and the forest echoed with the snarling thump of powerguns punctuated by the blast of the Dragoons’ weapons.
When Huber saw black exhaust puff from the far side of his target’s cupola, he knew he’d been too late to keep the gunner from loosing a missile. Though the cupola hadn’t rotated onto Fencing Master yet, as the missile came off the launch rails it made a hard angle toward the combat car on the thrust of its attitude jets.
“Via!” Huber screamed, knowing that now survival was in the hands of the Lord and Fencing Master’s Automatic Defense System. A segment of the ADS tripped, blasting a charge of osmium pellets from the explosive-filled groove where the car’s hull armor joined the plenum chamber skirts.
Fencing Master jumped and clanged. The pellets met the incoming missile, shoving it aside and tearing off pieces. The warhead didn’t detonate—a good thing, because this close it still would’ve been dangerous—but a shred of tailfin slashed Huber’s gunshield, leaving a bright scar across the oxidized surface.
Learoyd’s target, a forty-tonne guncarrier, went off like a huge bomb. The concussion spun Fencing Master like a top, slamming Huber against the side of the fighting compartment. Despite the helmet’s active shock cushioning, his vision shrank momentarily to a bright vertical line.
The guns of the Apex Dragoons used liquid propellant set off by a jolt of high current through tungsten wire. Besides adding electrical energy to the chemical charge, the method ignited the propellant instantly and maximized efficiency for any bore that could accept the pressures.
Learoyd’s burst had detonated the reservoir holding the charges for perhaps a hundred main-gun rounds. The explosion left a crater where the vehicle had been and a cloud of smoke mushrooming hundreds of meters in the air.
Fencing Master grounded twice, sucked down when the wave of low pressure followed the shock front. Padova fought her controls straight, then tried to steer the car back in the original direction; they’d spun more than a full turn counterclockwise and were now headed well to the left of the planned course.
The shockwave rocked the Dragoon APC up on its three starboard wheels. The vehicle didn’t spin because it was some distance farther from the blast and its tires provided more stability than the fluid coupling of pressurized air linking the combat car to the ground.
Huber’s eyesight cleared; his tribarrel already bore on the APC’s rear hull. He fired, working his burst forward while bolts from Deseau’s weapon crossed his. Their plasma shattered the light aluminum/ceramic sandwich armoring the APC’s side. The hatches blew open in geysers of black smoke which sucked in, then gushed as crimson flames.
Learoyd lay huddled on the floor of the fighting compartment. His left hand twitched, so at least he was alive. There was no time to worry about him now, not with all F-3 in danger.
Fencing Master drove between the two APCs, both oozing flames, and roared down the steep slope. Explosions thundered in the near distance. Huber glanced to his left as a ball of orange flame bubbled over the treetops. It had vanished some seconds before the ground rippled and the walls of the valley channeled a wave of dust and leaf litter past Fencing Master and on.
Huber pivoted his tribarrel to cover the rear. In shifting, he banged his right side on the coaming. The unexpected pain made him gasp. The blast had bruised him badly and maybe cracked some ribs.
Deseau took over the right wing gun. Learoyd had managed to get to his hands and knees, but it’d be a while before he was able to man his weapon again.
Or maybe it wouldn’t, come to think. Bert Learoyd had the tenacity of an earthworm, though perhaps coupled with an earthworm’s intellectual capacity.
Huber checked his C&C display. All six cars were still in action, though the icons for Foghorn and Farsi’s Fancy—car Three-seven in Jellicoe’s section—showed they were reporting battle damage.
Even the Slammers’ electronics couldn’t discriminate between the signatures of vehicles with some systems running though the crews were dead, and those which were fully functional. Apart from the occasional catastrophic explosion like that of Learoyd’s target, there was no way to be sure of how much of the hostile mechanized company remained dangerous. They’d taken a hammering, no mistake, but right now all Huber was concerned about was F-3’s survival. Thanks to Ander’s inaction, the Slammers had lost this battle before the first shot was fired.
The United Cities government had employed many small units of mercenaries instead of a few large formations, because no place on the planet except Port Plattner in Solace could land a starship big enough to hold a battalion and its equipment. Hammer’s Regiment was one of the largest units in UC pay, and some of the others were only platoons.
There would’ve been coordination problems even at best, but the real trouble arose because neither the UC nor any of the other Outer States had a military staff capable of planning and executing a war on the present scale. Colonel Hammer and his team at Base Alpha had taken over the duties because there was no one else to do it, but that caused further delays and confusion. Everything had to be relayed through UC officers who often didn’t understand the words they were parroting, and even so other mercenary captains dragged their feet on orders they knew were given by a peer.
Some UC units were incompetently led; that might well be the case with Ander’s Legion. Their communications systems varied radically; Central at Base Alpha could communicate with all of them, but many couldn’t talk to one another. And some mercenary captains, especially those who commanded only a company or platoon, were less concerned with winning wars than they were with protecting the soldiers who were their entire capital.
Those were staff problems, but they became the concern of line lieutenants like Arne Huber when they meant that his combat cars were left swinging in the breeze. Ander hadn’t gotten the word, or he hadn’t obeyed orders, or he was simply too bumbling to advance when he was supposed to.
There was an obvious risk of further Solace units following close behind the initial company of Dragoons, but despite that Huber had a bad feeling about continuing on his plotted course to the southeast. He’d already asked his AI to assess alternate routes, but before he got the answers the C&C display threw sensor data across the terrain in a red emergency mask. It was worse than he’d feared.
“Three-six to Fox Three,” Huber said in a tone from which previous crises had burned all emotion. “Hostile hovertanks have gotten around us to the south. Fox Three-three—” Sergeant Jellicoe in Floosie “—leads on the new course at nine-seven degrees true. Three-six out. Break—”