Fencing Master roared up the remaining slope, moving against gravity with glacial deliberation though their fans spun on overload power. Padova angled the car to the right where an instant before a pair of 3-cm bolts had grazed the crest, spraying fans of molten rock and organic material southward.
Huber swung his sight picture onto the opposite ridgeline. Deseau fired a heartbeat before the two wing gunners. Huber thumbed his trigger, sending a rope of cyan bolts into the humped shape of a Solace armored car. Its twin guns were mounted on top of the hull in an unmanned barbette. The muzzles already glowed white from firing before the Slammers gave them a target. They fired again, a quick SLAM/SLAM of bolts so fiercely powerful that the slope to Huber’s left erupted like a volcano under their released energy.
Padova had allowed for the fact the Solace car was traversing its weapons as it raked the hill. By lifting over the crest where bolts had just struck, Fencing Master survived when the gunner twitched his trigger reflexively instead of swinging back to where his target really was.
Huber’s burst struck the car’s bow slope, the first bolt or two splashing reflected radiance before the thin armor ruptured. The forward compartment bulged; then the fuel tanks on the underside of the hull exploded, sending fiery debris in all directions. The twin powerguns lifted toward the river, tumbling over and over.
The Salamanca Valley was shallow and a kilometer wide from crest to crest, but frequent floods had scoured all but scrub vegetation from its slopes. The foliage was almost maroon rather than the vivid green of the forests elsewhere in the lowlands.
The world to Huber’s left flashed white as Flame Farter took a direct hit. The high-intensity bolt vaporized the right side of the bow armor, swinging the car counterclockwise in reaction.
Flame Farter staggered forward, out of control though its running gear was still whole. Two figures rolled out of the fighting compartment as more bolts struck the vehicle broadside. The spray of molten iridium ignited the coarse shrubs in a ten-meter semi-circle below the destroyed vehicle.
Huber’s bolts merged with those from Deseau’s gun, raking the Solace car that had fired. Powergun ammunition detonated in an intense blue flash devoured the target.
The Slammers infantry had come over the crest and vanished downslope as planned. The brush grew three meters high; it would’ve seemed sparse from directly above, but its knitted branches provided good cover from eyes at the height of an armored car’s viewslits.
Huber shifted his sights onto another Solace vehicle. It exploded before he could squeeze the trigger. Flames and black, roiling smoke marked the opposite ridgeline, each the pyre of an armored car and most of its crew.
A car of the advance party near the river was still firing, its bolts gouging the hillside; the panicked gunner was shooting low. His bad aim had kept him from being an immediate threat—and therefore target—but now half a dozen tribarrels converged on the car. The rear hatch flew open. Three black-clad Solace Militiamen sprang out, throwing themselves into the brush to hide as their vehicle sank into a sea of fire behind them.
For a moment Huber thought they were going to survive, at least for now, but one of Messeman’s gunners switched to thermal imaging that let him see through the thin brush. The third man ran into the open after short bursts incinerated his companions; the single shot that decapitated him was bragging.
“Fox units withdraw!” Huber ordered. “All units withdraw at speed!”
It was war; those three desperate Militiamen were enemies who’d wanted to kill Huber and his troopers. But Huber’d still just as soon they’d been allowed to hide. . . .
Fencing Master shuddered as Padova cranked the nacelles forward. Once Fencing Master’d gotten over the crest, she’d let inertia and gravity take them downslope with the fans vertical, supplying lift but no thrust. It was time to get the hell out; in a firefight that meant backing so that the thicker bow armor and all three tribarrels continued to face the enemy.
Their skirts touched, a jar but not a disorienting crash. Padova got control again and Fencing Master began to slide backwards up the hill again.