Huber kept his attention on the C&C display, pretending to ignore the distortions that flying debris threw across the holographic imagery. The Solace headquarters group, twelve vehicles armed with only light weapons, left the slope. The second wave was mostly across the Salamanca, and the first was nearing—
The flicker of a plasma bolt through gaps in the blazing forest could’ve been overlooked, but the zzt! of RF interference through the commo helmet was familiar to any veteran. A moment later a column of burning hydrocarbon fuel mushroomed from the other side of the ridge, vividly orange and much brighter than the smoky red flames of the well-watered forest.
One of the Slammers infantry had fired his 2-cm weapon into an armored car, picking his spot. At point blank range the powerful bolt had burst the car’s fuel tank and turned the vehicle into a firebomb. Huber hoped the shooter hadn’t been caught in his own secondary explosion, but he had more important concerns just now.
“Fox elements, do not engage!” he shouted. “Hold in your attack positions! Do not—”
Though the combat cars weren’t back to their start positions, Huber was afraid that one or more of his vehicle commanders would react to the shooting across the crest by piling into it instantly. That was a good general response for any trooper in the Regiment, but right now timing would be the difference between survival and not.
“—cross the ridgeline!”
At least a hundred 3-cm powerguns fired at or over the quarter kilometer of hillcrest which was already scarred and glazed by previous bolts. The lighter crack! of infantry weapons was lost in the roar of cannons volleying at where the gunners thought the enemy must be. Another fuel tank detonated, lifting ten square meters of glass-cored aluminum armor with it; the magazine explosion a heartbeat later burned so vividly cyan that the light seemed to seep through solid rock.
Fencing Master reached its start position and rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise, putting its bow to the ridgeline and the enemy. Flames licked up behind and beside the car, but the trees close by had been burned and blasted into a bed of coals rather than towers that might topple.
The Solace cavalrymen were shouting over at least six channels. Huber’d set his C&C box to give him a graph of the number of Solace transmissions. He could’ve listened to them as well—most of the hostiles were too panicked to bother with encryption—but Huber already knew what they’d be saying: “Help!” and “Where?” and “You’re shooting at us, you idiots! Cease fire!”
Especially “Cease fire!” from the armored cars on the south slope who knew there was nobody on the ridge immediately above them. Therefore the shots that’d destroyed their fellows had to be bolts misaimed by the cars blazing away from across the river.
The storm of bolts fired at empty rock slowed, then ceased. Apart from anything else, the Solace cars must’ve exhausted their ready magazines and heated their guns dangerously hot by sustained fire. The squadron commander would be starting to reassert control; in a moment somebody would realize how the leading wave had been ambushed.
“Fox elements . . .” ordered Arne Huber as his hands settled on his tribarrel’s familiar grips. “Charge! Take ’em out, troopers!”
Fencing Master lifted with the ease of a balloon slipping its tether. By judicious adjustment of nacelle angles Padova kept the hull nearly horizontal despite the slope, so that all three tribarrels came over the ridge together.
Huber squeezed his trigger as his muzzles aligned with an armored car on the opposite ridgeline, its twin guns glowing white. Huber’s burst walked down the barbette and blew the glacis plate inward. Fire and black smoke burst from the car’s seams; the hull settled into the plenum chamber and began to burn.
Huber’s faceshield careted his next target, also an overwatching armored car, but before he could fire it blew up on the skewer of Learoyd’s gun. There’d been more Solace vehicles on the far ridge than there were tribarrels in Huber’s two understrength platoons, but the combat cars had destroyed both their primary and secondary targets without taking a single additional casualty. Some of the Solace cannon had burst in vivid rainbows even before Huber counterattacked; they’d been fired so fast and so often that the overheated bores finally gave way.