The lead car jerked toward the open door. The driver, inexperienced or jumpy from the long wait, canted his nacelles too suddenly. The bow skirt dipped and scraped a shrieking line of sparks along the concrete floor until the car bounced over the threshold and into the open air.
The second car followed with greater care but the same lack of skill, rising nearly a hand’s-breadth above the ground. The skirts spilled air in a roar around their whole circuit. The car wallowed; when the driver nudged his controls forward Huber thought for a moment the vehicle was going to slide into the jamb of the sliding door.
“They’ve got newbie crews,” Tranter said scornfully. “Via, I could do better than that with my eyes closed!”
“I’ll settle for you keeping your eyes open and not attracting attention,” Huber said tightly. “Move out, Trooper.”
Fencing Master slid gracefully through the doorway and into the warm night. The skirts ticked once on the door track, but that wasn’t worth mentioning.
“Let’s keep him, El-Tee,” Deseau said with a chuckle. “He’s as good as Kolbe was, and a curst sight better than I ever thought of being as a driver.”
“Keep your mind on the present job, didn’t I tell you?” Huber snapped. “I don’t think any of us need to plan for a future much beyond tonight.”
Deseau laughed. Huber supposed that was as good a response as any.
Plattner’s World had seen moons, but none of them were big enough to provide useful illumination. The pole lights placed for security when these were warehouses threw bright pools at the front of each building, but that just made the night darker when Fencing Master moved between them. Huber locked down his faceshield and switched to light enhancement, though he knew he lost depth perception that way.
The rocket howitzer at the head of the column started to negotiate the gate to the compound, then stopped. The tank immediately following very nearly drove up its stern.
There was something wrong with the response of the hog’s drive fans, or at any rate the captain thought there was. He began arguing off-net with Repair’s Charge of Quarters, a senior sergeant who replied calmly, “Sir, you can bring it back and park it in the shop if you like, but I don’t have authority to roust a technician at this hour on a non-emergency problem.”
The CQ kept saying the same thing. So did the captain, though he varied the words a bit.
Huber listened for a moment to make sure that what was going on didn’t affect him, then switched to intercom. “They’ll get it sorted out in a bit,” he said to his crew. “The blowers are straight out of the shops and half the crews are newbies. Nothing to worry about.”
“Who’s worried?” Deseau said. He stretched at his central gun station, then turned and grinned at Huber.
They were all wearing body armor, even Tranter. The bulky ceramic clamshells crowded the fighting compartment even without the personal gear and extra ammo that’d pack the vehicle on a line deployment.
Learoyd could’ve been a statue placed at the right wing gun. He didn’t fidget with the weapon or with the sub-machine gun slung across his chest. Though his body was motionless, his helmet would be scanning the terrain and careting movement onto his lowered faceshield. If one of the highlights was a hostile pointing a weapon in the direction of Fencing Master—and anybody pointing a weapon at Fencing Master was hostile, in Learoyd’s opinion and Huber’s as well—his tribarrel would light the night with cyan destruction.
“Unit, we’re moving,” the captain announced in a disgruntled tone. As he spoke, the hog shifted forward again. Metal rang as the drivers of other vehicles in the column struggled to react to the sudden change from stasis to movement. Skirts were stuttering up and down on the roadway of stabilized earth. You get lulled into patterns in no time at all. . . .
Huber brought up a terrain display in the box welded to the pintle supporting his tribarrel. Fencing Master didn’t have the sensor and communications suite of a proper command car, but it did have an additional package that allowed the platoon leader to project displays instead of taking all his information through the visor of his commo helmet.