F-3 followed two hundred meters behind the first and second platoons on the left flank, a reserve not only for Fox Company but for the whole squadron. Despite satellite coverage and the Regiment’s sensor suites, there was always risk of an attack from some direction other than straight ahead. Huber’s cars stayed back to deal with it.
“Good to burn in our guns like that,” Deseau said as his cluster stopped rotating. “A few rounds to make sure the barrels’re seated and there’s no cracks in the castings.”
Cyan bolts streaked up from the northwest horizon, ending in yellow flashes made ragged by the smoke of the explosions. Despite the decoy missiles of the first salvos, the Nonesuch defenses—over eight hundred tribarrels on the APCs and tanks—were shooting down the firecracker rounds that followed. The Nonesuch command hadn’t been caught napping, more’s the pity. . . .
The lead combat cars began firing. Flashes and the sparkling detonations of sub-munitions bloomed on the other side of the high ground separating 1st Squadron from the port. At least one Nonesuch artillery battery was firing on the attackers, a much faster response than Huber had expected from planetary forces which probably had no experience of real warfare. The shells didn’t get through, but if the Nonesuch tankers were as good as their artillerymen this was going to be a very long night for the Slammers.
A long night, or a short one.
Much brighter cyan flashes lit the night: the tanks of Dog Company punched the ridgeline five klicks away with their main guns. Their thunder echoed across the fields.
Huber checked the C&C display, then said, “Fox Three, there was a Nonesuch infantry company picketed on the reverse slope. They moved into position and the panzers are taking care of them. Three-six out.”
One of the eight Nonesuch APCs opened fire before it had reached the crest. The bolts of its tribarrels streaked five hundred meters over the Slammers in a rising slant. When the APC advanced high enough that its gun might have been able to bear on the attackers, the tank which had been waiting for a target fired. A brilliant secondary explosion lifted skyward a divot of soil and wood-chips.
Moments later, a bum! bum! bum! directly overhead made Huber twist to look up. Cargo shells from Battery Alpha had opened at low altitude, sending fingers of smoke toward the ridgeline. Their thousands of anti-personnel bomblets hit to carpet the target with lingering white flashes, scouring the hasty positions of Nonesuch infantry who’d dismounted before their APCs tried to engage.
Dirty smoke hung over half a kilometer of the hilltop. Huber could penetrate it with thermal imaging, but there was nothing to see except bare rock and the pulped remnants of the trees and shrubs that had grown there moments before. The enemy troops and their equipment had vanished except for the continuing sizzle of a battery pack shorting through commo gear, forming a hotspot on the image.
“Nothing for us there,” Deseau said cheerfully. He patted his tribarrel’s receiver. “Well, we’ll have our chance yet tonight, I figure.”
“Fox Three, this is Fox Six,” Captain Gillig ordered. “Move up on the left flank of Fox One, keeping ten meter intervals between vehicles. We’ll take firing positions below the crest. Six out.”
Huber tensed as his faceshield flashed warnings. Chuckling, he relaxed. The squadron had torn through the fence separating the wheatfield from the pasture on the rougher terrain to the north. Wire flew up in springy coils around the vehicles, and the tug jerked the posts out of the ground in front of F-3. The motion was the same quick flicker men would make leaping to cover.
The northern sky quivered as with heat lightning. “Hoo-boy!” Deseau said. “Some a’ them firecracker rounds are landing where they ought to. I tell you, with a division of ’em down there, I don’t mind a bit a’ help from the cannon cockers.”
“We get paid the same if we get shot at or if we don’t, Frenchie,” Padova said. Her voice sounded artificially bright, but Fencing Master slid as if on rails to where it belonged on the left flank of the Squadron. “I’d just as soon get easy money.”