Huber fired a short burst over the opposite crest. He didn’t have a target at the moment, but his faceshield indicated a Solace armored car was driving up the reverse slope. He wanted the hostile driver to hesitate until the Slammers were back under cover.
There were vehicles advancing behind the whole length of the opposite ridge. At least fifty Solace armored cars were in line, and there were others forming behind to replace casualties. The Solace commander might not have a subtle grasp of tactics, but there was nothing to fault in his courage or that of his troops. And with odds of ten to one in favor of the Militia, they’d win a slugging match against eight surviving combat cars if Huber were dumb enough to try one.
Fencing Master snorted and scraped, reaching the ridgeline and then dropping with more enthusiasm than control onto the reverse slope. Huber checked his icons; all the cars had made it back except Three-zero, Flame Farter. He’d seen two men bail out. The driver was surely dead, but maybe the fourth crewman—
Reality returned, smothering hope like clouds covering the moon. The fourth crewman was dead also, dead when the follow-up bolts had vaporized the fighting compartment even if the initial hit hadn’t killed him. The survivors must’ve gone to ground with the infantry. For now that was a better choice than trying to scramble back over the crest while a lot of very angry Solace gunners were looking for targets.
Learoyd was unfastening his clamshell armor, moving awkwardly because his right arm didn’t seem to be working. Deseau turned to help. What in hell had happened to Learoyd?
But that was a problem for later; first Huber had to make sure there’d be a later. A storm of 3-cm bolts ripped from the other side of the river, blasting trees twenty meters above the concealed combat cars. The Solace commander had decided to take no chances whatever: his gunners started shooting before they could see the crest, let alone the Slammers below it.
“All Highball units,” Huber ordered. He’d have liked to transmit in clear so that the Militia commander might hear him, but that would be too obviously phony to risk. “Withdraw to the southwest along the plotted course. X-Ray elements lead, Fox elements follow as rear guard in present order. Six out!”
The forest was already burning fiercely. There were fires in the Salamanca Valley also, but the brush was green and the flood-swept slopes weren’t covered with leaf litter and humus to get a real blaze going in the next half hour. The smoke and sluggish flames would help conceal the infantry in ambush; or at least Huber prayed they would.
Crossing at an upstream ford wasn’t a real option now that the Solace forces knew the location of Task Force Huber. By the time the Slammers could grind seven kilometers through forest and rough terrain, the enemy would’ve flown in at least a platoon of infantry. The availability of aircars here on Plattner’s World meant that light forces could be shifted very quickly; light forces with buzzbombs and 2-cm powerguns were quite sufficient to turn a truckload of artillery ammunition into an explosion that’d clear everything in a half-klick radius.
The withdrawal would look real, though; a maneuver forced by desperation on Slammers who had to cross the river and who’d failed to shoot their way through at their first attempt. The Solace commander would certainly have sent a report and request for support back to his superiors, but he’d also be looking for revenge. The 1st Armored Cavalry would follow the retreating Slammers—cautiously, because the Militiamen had learned how dangerous the combat cars could be—in hopes of closing the door behind them when other Solace troops had blocked the way forward.
Of course for Huber’s plan to work, the Solace commander had to know what the Slammers appeared to be doing.
“All Highball units,” Huber said. “When enemy scouts appear, shoot to miss, I repeat, miss them. We want the wogs to know that we’ve cut and run. Six out.”
His helmet buzzed with a series of callsigns followed by “Roger.” The ball was in the Solace court. Huber could only hope his opposite number would act sooner rather than later; which was a pretty fair likelihood, given the way he’d responded to the initial exchange.