Huber rubbed his face with both hands. The trouble was that these turkeys would be shooting back.
* * *
The combat cars were just below the crest of the reverse slope but still out of sight from across the river. The Solace sensors weren’t good enough to pin-point them, although the Slammers weren’t making any real effort to suppress their signatures. They couldn’t, not and balance on a twenty-degree slope.
Mercenaries wouldn’t’ve tried to use aircars to scout against the Slammers, but the Solace Militia hadn’t yet come to terms with what it meant when the other side had powerguns and sensors good enough to tell them exactly when you were going to come in sight. The Solace scout crossed the river three klicks upstream, then rose above the forested hills to see what Task Force Huber was doing.
Flame Farter’s forward tribarrel snarled out six shots, every one of them a hit. The scout disintegrated like sugar dropped into flashing cyan water. It didn’t explode in the air, but a fiery mushroom rose over the trees where the wreckage landed.
Frenchie muttered something, to himself or Learoyd. Solace gunners across the Salamanca opened fire, raking the ridgeline and the tops of the trees growing on the southern side. A pair of 3-cm bolts hit the thick trunk to Fencing Master’s immediate right, shearing it ten meters above the ground. The blasts showered flaming splinters which drew smoke trails behind them. The Solace vehicles mounted high-intensity weapons, slow-firing compared to the Slammers’ tribarrels but round for round far more powerful.
The upper three-quarters of the treebole toppled downslope and hit with a crash, igniting the undergrowth. Despite recent rains, there’d be a major forest fire on this side of the river shortly. That didn’t matter to Huber, because shortly he and his troopers would either be well north of here or dead.
Learoyd took one hand from his tribarrel’s grips and brushed burning debris from the other arm and shoulder. His face had no more expression than a Buddha’s.
“Fox elements . . .” said Huber, his eyes on the C&C display. Three Solace armored cars started down the slope toward the river, moving cautiously instead of trying to outrace the bolts that might come slashing toward them. A dozen similar vehicles were settled on the ridge behind them to overwatch. Their twin guns ripped and snarled, blasting only trees and rocky soil because the Slammers were still sheltered by the high ground.
All the troopers in the task force could watch the situation map on their helmet displays if they wanted to. Most of them wouldn’t, avoiding distractions that didn’t have much to do with their jobs. Knowing too much is a handicap when instant decisions mean life or death. Their AIs would pick targets for them and they’d hose those targets with their tribarrels; that’s all that would matter in the next minute and a half.
“The wogs ‘ve taken the bait,” Huber went on, speaking calmly and distinctly as he timed his words with the order to come. “We’ll go over in thirty, that’s three-zero, seconds. Six out.”
Huber shut down the C&C display and straightened behind his tribarrel. The simple choices made by Huber’s eye and trigger finger would be a relief after the sorts of imponderables he’d been balancing for way too long. . . .
A haze of dust and leaf litter swirled about Fencing Master and the other cars spaced along the forested slope. Their fans were spinning at high output, wasting their energy beneath their raised skirts. When the drivers tilted their nacelles forward, the cars would drop into ground effect and lurch into action on the thrust of those fans.
Infantrymen hunched on their skimmers in groups of three and four a little below the big vehicles. Their nose filters were down so that they could breathe despite the fan blast and the smoke from the scores of fires lit by the Solace powerguns. They must be miserably uncomfortable, but they were still better off than they’d be in the next few seconds. That was a risk that came with the uniform.
“Fox units, execute!” Huber shouted. “In and out, troopers! In and out!”