Sergeant Nagano—Fox Three-one—was a few months junior in grade to Three-seven’s Sergeant Mullion, but Nagano’d been in F-3 when Huber took command a year ago while Mullion had been posted into the platoon only a few days before. Mullion might turn out to be a real crackerjack, and if so Huber would apologize to him at a suitable time. Right now there was enough else going wrong that Huber wasn’t about to trust his troopers to an unknown quantity besides.
Fencing Master wove between the trunks of massive trees. Learoyd slid the fingers of his left hand under his helmet to rub his scalp and forehead, but his right never left the grip of his tribarrel. He seemed to be back to normal now, or anyway what passed as normal for a trooper in the middle of a firefight.
Chatter filled the platoon push, but none of it came from Jellicoe and her crew. Huber tuned out the empty noise—anybody was likely to babble in the stress of a battle, no matter how well-trained and experienced they might be—and concentrated on what wasn’t there.
The icon for Three-three continued to pulse sullenly. Huber imported a remote image from Jellicoe’s gunsight to the corner of his faceshield. He got only a motionless view of treetops, but at least that was better than the black emptiness of an open channel.
“There’s Floosie!” Learoyd said. “El-Tee, they been hit from your side!”
Floosie was tilted against the west side of a huge tree, spun there by the first of the two rounds which’d hit her. The slug had struck the back of the fighting compartment and penetrated cleanly, angling slightly left to right and exiting above the driver’s hatch.
Floosie’d stalled at the impact. The second shot had slammed into the plenum chamber before the driver could restart his vehicle. That wasn’t his fault: the combined shock of the slug and collision with a three-meter thick treebole was more any anybody could’ve shrugged off instantly, even protected by the automatic restraint system of the driver’s compartment. The follow-up round had put paid to Floosie: there was a gaping hole in the skirts and at least half the fan nacelles would’ve been damaged or destroyed.
The tank had that knocked out the combat car was sited on the high ground a kilometer to the west. The hostile gunner had been lucky to get a sight line through the trees, but he’d been bloody good to react to the unexpected target and then to punch out a second round to finish the job. With so many shots ripping through the forest, one of them was bound to connect with something. . . .
“Padova, get us—” Huber said, but his driver was already slewing Fencing Master to the right, putting the tree and the bulk of the disabled car between them and the Solace gunner. The tank might’ve moved forward after it fired; but its commander just might have decided that he was better off where he was than he’d be if he came to close quarters with the Slammers’ tribarrels.
Deseau braced himself against the coaming beside Huber, cursing a blue streak. He’d grabbed Learoyd’s backup 1-cm sub-machine gun from its sling on a tie-down beside the right tribarrel. It wasn’t much of a weapon to threaten tanks with, but at least Deseau could point it toward the probable dangers.
Fencing Master slewed around the tree and grounded hard, its port quarter almost in contact with Floosie’s damaged bow skirt. The ragged exit hole was bigger than an access port.
Jellicoe’s driver climbed out of his hatch. He’d lost his helmet and his mouth hung open. A bitter haze of burned insulation lay over the fighting compartment, but as Fencing Master stopped, Huber saw a hand reach up to grip the coaming: Sergeant Jellicoe was still alive, if only just.
“Get aboard!” Huber screamed to the driver. As he spoke, he lifted his right foot to the top of Fencing Master’s armor and leaped into the disabled car. If anybody’d asked him a moment before, he’d have said he was so exhausted he had trouble just breathing. Deseau, continuing to curse, took over the left wing gun.