Everyone was keeping their distance from the Mark III, too, as soon as it loomed out of the huge dust-cloud. So much for stealth, she thought, with light-infantry instincts. The Glorious Way will be laughing fit to piss their pants when we try to catch them with this mother.
“Only thing is,” Martins went on, “we don’t need a Mark III to kick Glorio butt. We’ve been doing it for three years. Maybe they could send us some replacements, and a couple of Cheetah armored cars, like we used to have, or some air support, or decent supplies so we didn’t have to live off the local economy like a bunch of goddam feudal bandits. All of which wouldn’t have cost half as much as sending this hunk of tin down to roar around the boonies looking purty and scaring the goats.”
The rest of the convoy were keeping their distance as well. Her UATV was well ahead, willing to take point to keep out of the dust plume. The indig troops and the supplies were further back, willing to eat dust to keep away from the churning six-foot treads. Kernan’s rig was tail-end Charlie, just in case any of the indigs got ideas about dropping out of the convoy. Not that she’d mind the loss of the so-called government troops, but the supplies were another matter.
She looked down. The newbie was staring straight ahead in his recliner, two spots of color on his cheeks and his back rigid.
“Hell, kid,” she said. “I’m not mad at you. You look too young to be one of the shitheads who poured the whole country down a rathole.”
He relaxed fractionally. “Maybe things’ll get better with President Flemming,” he said unexpectedly. “He and Margrave are pretty smart guys.”
“And maybe I’m the Queen of Oz,” Martins said. This one still believes in politicians? she thought. God, they are robbing cradles.
Or possibly just being very selective. You got enough to eat in the Army, at least—even down here in San Gabriel, admittedly by application of ammunition rather than money. Maybe they were recruiting extremely trusting farmboy types so’s not to chance ~another mutiny like Houston.
Christ knew there were times when she’d felt like mutiny herself, if there had been anyone to mutiny against down here.
She put her eyes back on the surroundings. More thornbush; she clicked her faceplate down and touched the IR and sonic scan controls. Nothing but animal life out in the scrub, and not much of that. Certainly no large animals beyond the odd extremely wary peccary, not with the number of hungry men with guns who’d been wandering around here for the last decade or so.
“Why don’t you shut the hatch, ma’am?” Vinatelli said. “Because I like to see what’s going on,” Martins snapped. “This is bandido country.”
“You can see it all better from down here, El-T,” he urged.
Curious, she dropped down the rungs to the second padded seat in the interior of the hull. The hatch closed with a sigh of hydraulics, and the air cooled to a comfortable seventy-five, chilly on her wet skin. It smelled of neutral things, filtered air and almost-new synthetics, flavored by the gamy scent of one unwashed lieutenant of the 15th Mountain Division. Her body armor made the copilot’s seat a bit snug, but otherwise it was as comfortable as driving a late-model Eurocar on a good highway. Martins was in her late twenties, old enough to remember when such things were possible, even if rare.
“Smooth ride,” she said, looking around.
There were the expected armored conduits and readouts; also screens spaced in a horseshoe around the seats. They gave a three-sixty view around the machine; one of them was dialed to x5 magnification, and showed the lead UATV in close-up. Sergeant Jenkins was leaning on the grenade launcher, his eggplant-colored skin skimmed with red dust, his visor swivelling to either side. There was no dust on it; the electrostatic charge kept anything in finely divided particles off it.
“Maglev suspension,” Vinatelli said. “No direct contact between the road-wheel pivot axles and the hull. The computer uses a sonic sensor on the terrain ahead and compensates automatically. There’s a hydrogas backup system.”
He touched a control, and colored pips sprang out among the screens.
“This’s why we don’t have to have a turret,” he said. “The weapons turn, not the gunner—the sensors and computers integrate all the threats and funnel it down here.”
“How’d you keep track of it all?” she asked. “Hell of a thing, trying to chose between fifteen aiming points when it’s hitting the fan.”
“I don’t, anymore’n I have to drive,” Vinatelli pointed out.
It was then she noticed his hands weren’t on the controls. Her instinctive lunge of alarm ended a fraction of a second later, when her mind overrode it.
“This thing’s steering itself?” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Aren’t you, Markee?”
“Yes, Viniboy,” a voice said. Feminine, sweet and sultry.
Martins looked at him. He shrugged and spread his hands. “Hey, it’s a perfectly good voice. I spend a lot of time in here, you know?” He waved a hand at the controls. “Best AI in the business—software package just came in, and it’s a lot better than before. Voice recognition and tasking. All I have to do is tell it who to shoot and who to like.”
“I hope you’ve told it to like me, corporal,” she said flatly.
“Ah—Markee, register Martins, Lieutenant Bethany M, serial number—” he continued with the identification. “Lieutenant Martins is superior officer on site. Log and identify.”
Martins felt a brief flicker of light touch her eyes; retina prints. The machine would already have her voiceprint, fingerprints and ECG patterns.
“Acknowledged, Vini. Hello, Lieutenant Martins. I’m honored to be under your command for this mission. What are our mission parameters?”
“Getting home,” Martins said shortly. Talking ~machinery gave her the creeps.
“Acknowledged, Lieutenant Martins. I will help you get home.”
Vinatelli noticed her stiffen. From the tone of his voice, it was a familiar reaction. “It’s just a real good AI, El-Tee,” he said soothingly. “Expert program with parallel-processing learning circuits. It’s not like it was alive or anything, it just sort of imitates it.”
The machine spoke: “Don’t you love me any more, Vini?” The sweet husky voice was plaintive.
Vinatelli blushed again, this time to the roots of his hair. “I put that in, ma’am. You know, I spend—”
“—a lot of time alone in here,” Martins filled in.
“Hey, El-T,” the young noncom said, in a voice full of false cheerfulness. “You want a Coke?”
“You’ve got Coke in here?” she asked.
He turned in his seat, pushing up the crash framework, and opened a panel. “Yeah, I got regular, classic, diet, Pepsi and Jolt. Or maybe a ham sandwich?”
Fan-fucking-tastic, Martins thought. She looked again at the screen ahead of her; Jenkins was taking a swig out of his canteen, and spitting dust-colored water over the side of the UATV. Chickens struggled feebly in the net-covered baskets lashed to the rear decking. She felt a sudden nausea at the thought of being in here, in with the screens and the air-conditioning and fresh ham sandwiches. The thing could probably play you 3-D’ed ancient movies with porno inserts on one of the screens, too. Damned if I can see what it’s got to do with fighting.
“I’m bailing out of this popcan,” she said. “Unit push.” Her helmet clicked. “Jenkins, I’m transferring back to the UATV.”
She heard a Coke can pop and fizz as she slid out of the hatchway.
“What’s it like?” the big noncom said. He didn’t face around; they were coming up on the Remo bridge, and all three of the soldiers in the back of the UATV were keeping their eyes on station. So were the driver and those in the front.
“It’s a fucking cruise ship, Tops. Economy class, there’s no swimming pool.”
“Big mother,” Jenkins said; his position at the rear of the vehicle gave him a view of the one hundred and fifty tons of it. Even driving at thirty miles an hour they could feel it shaking the earth as it drove. “Surprised it doesn’t make bigger ruts.”
“Lot of track area,” Martins said. “Not much more surface pressure than a boot. Though God damn me if I know what we’re going to do with it. It isn’t exactly what you’d call suitable for running around forty-degree slopes and jungle.”
“Hey, El-Tee, neither am I,” Riverez said, from the other machine-gun.
“Shut up, Pineapple,” she said—the gunner was named for his abundant acne scars.
“Hell, we can run air-conditioners and VCRs off it,” Jenkins said. “Christmas tree lights. Dig a swimming pool. Maybe rig up a sauna.”
“Can it, Tops,” Martins said.
The road was running down into one of the steep valleys that broke the rolling surface of the plateau. There was a small stream at the bottom of it, and a concrete-and-iron bridge that might be nearly a century old. The air grew damper and slightly less hot as they went under the shelter of the few remaining big trees. There were a few patches of riverine jungle left in the interior of San Gabriel, but most—like this—had been cut over for mahogany and tropical cedar, and then the slopes farmed until the soil ran down into the streams. Really thick scrub had reclaimed the valley sides when the peasants gave up on their plots of coffee and cannabis. Although the latter was still cheap and abundant, one of the things that made life here possible at all.