His faceshield cleared except for the streams from Fencing Master’s three tribarrels and the smudge of reflection where they hammered together into the Nonesuch tank. Then the tank and the world vanished again.
The protective black curtain cleared seconds later as the shockwave reached the ridgeline. The roof of the tank’s fighting compartment toppled back toward the chassis which had been cleaned of its contents like a raccoon-licked clamshell. The tank’s gunner had chambered another round. 2-cm bolts glancing down the bore from Fencing Master had detonated it before the breech was fully locked.
Focused on his gunsight, Huber hadn’t heard the freight-train roar of 200-mm rockets passing low overhead, nor the plop plop plop of small charges ejecting sub-munitions from the carrier shells. The Nonesuch air defenses had been able to stop most of the incoming while it was simply them against the Hogs, but when the Slammers’ vehicles appeared on the ridgeline the Nonesuch tribarrels were switched to direct fire. There was nothing to stop salvos from the batteries surrounding Port Plattner.
Each shell’s twelve sub-munitions went off between twenty and forty meters above the ground, a yellow flash and a rag of smoke as the explosive charge forged a plate of uranium into a white-hot spike and drove it downward toward the Nonesuch vehicle its sensors had chosen. The Hogs were firing anti-tank shells, not firecracker rounds that barely scratched the paint of armored vehicles.
The self-forging fragments shattered the Nonesuch defenses already bruised by powerguns firing from the high ground surrounding the port. They punched through roof plating, relatively thin even on the tanks. Inside, the friction-heated uranium turned into balls of flame enveloping everything in the penetrated compartment. Hundreds of Nonesuch vehicles vanished into simultaneous blow-torch flames: fuel, flesh and munitions, all pulverized, all burning at the temperature of a star’s surface.
Two more salvos popped in the air and raged on the ground. The thunderclaps of detonations died away, though some of the burning vehicles screamed as they lit the night with jets of fire.
Huber’s gun had jammed, but nobody in 1st Squadron was shooting any more. There were cyan flickers on the pad’s northern perimeter, but that might have been guns continuing to fire as they melted into the vehicles on which they were mounted.
“Cease fire!” Colonel Hammer rasped. “All Slammers units, cease fire! Nonesuch representatives on the starships have offered their surrender. Cease fire, troopers, it’s over!”
Huber took his hands from the grips of his weapon. The barrel cluster continued to spin, a white blur that made the air throb as it threw off heat. Huber had a multi-tool in his belt pouch, but when he reached for it to clear the jam he realized that his fingers didn’t want to close properly.
Deseau’s tribarrel had jammed also. He held his backup 2-cm weapon, but he wasn’t shooting into the thousands of helpless human targets sprawling and staggering on the concrete below. The hell-strewn carnage was enough even for Frenchie.
Learoyd took off his commo helmet to rub his bald scalp with his left hand. The skin of his chin and throat below the faceshield’s protection was black where iridium vaporized from his gun bores had redeposited itself. He looked older than Huber had ever seen him before.
“Fox Three-six to Fox Three,” Huber said in a voice that caught at every syllable. “Good work, troopers. Nobody ever commanded a better unit than I did tonight.”
He swallowed and added the words that almost hadn’t gotten past his swollen throat. “Three-six out.”
Then, because his head throbbed and any constriction was an agony he couldn’t bear for the moment, Huber took off his helmet. He regretted the decision immediately with the first breath he took of the unfiltered atmosphere.
He turned and vomited over the side of the fighting compartment. No matter how often he encountered it, the smell of burned human flesh always turned Arne Huber’s stomach.
* * *
“Hey El-Tee!” said Deseau, standing with Padova on the plenum chamber to brace the replacement plate while Learoyd applied the cold weld. “That black-haired piece you met the first time the wogs threw in the towel? She’s coming to see you.”