“Costunna, pull forward,” Huber ordered his own driver, a newbie who’d replaced the man whom a buzzbomb had decapitated. “Three-one, rush ’em!”
The Northern Star Farm was a network of corn fields crisscrossed by concrete-lined irrigation canals. In the center were more than twenty single-story buildings: barns, equipment sheds, and barracks for the work force. The layout was typical of the large agricultural complexes with which the nation of Solace produced food not only for her own citizens but for all the residents of Plattner’s World—when Solace wasn’t at war with the Outer States, at any rate.
Technically, only the United Cities were at war with Solace at the moment. Everybody knew that the other five Outer States were helping fund the cost of hiring Hammer’s Regiment, but Solace couldn’t afford not to look the other way.
The civilians had fled, driving off in wagons pulled by the farm’s tractors. The buildings and canals remained as a strongpoint where a battalion of Solace Militia and a company of off-planet mercenaries defended howitzers with the range to loft shells deep into the UC. Colonel Hammer had sent Task Force Sangrela, one platoon each of tanks, combat cars, and infantry, to eliminate the problem.
Fencing Master began to vibrate as Costunna brought up the speed of the eight powerful fans which pressurized the plenum chamber and lifted the combat car for frictionless passage over the ground. The thirty-tonne vehicle didn’t slide forward, however. “Go, Costunna!” Huber screamed. “Go! Go! G—”
Finally Fencing Master pulled up from the swale in which she’d sheltered during her approach to the target. Huber’s helmet careted movement all along the canal slanting across their front at thirty degrees to their course: Solace Militiamen rising to fire at Foghorn, which was already in plain sight.
If the two cars had broken cover together as Huber planned, Foghorn wouldn’t have looked like the lone target in a shooting gallery. Swearing desperately, he hosed the lip of the canal with his tribarrel. Deseau, Learoyd at Fencing Master’s right wing gun, and Foghorn’s three gunners fired also, but the other car sparkled like a short circuit as slugs struck her iridium armor.
In Huber’s holographic sight picture, dark-uniformed Militiamen turned with horrified looks as they tried to shift the heavy rocket guns they wore harnessed to their shoulders. They’d been so focused on Foghorn that the appearance of another combat car two hundred meters away took them completely by surprise.
Fencing Master’s forward motion and the angle of the canal helped Huber traverse the target simply by holding his thumbs on the tribarrel’s trigger. The 2-centimeter weapon’s barrel cluster rotated as it sent copper ions blasting at the speed of light down each iridium bore in turn. The bolts burned metal, shattered concrete in flares of glass and white-hot quicklime, and blew humans apart in gushes of steam. An arm spun thirty meters into the air, trailing smoke from its burning sleeve.
One of the D Company tanks on overwatch to the west fired its main gun twice, not toward the canal but into the interior of the farm where anti-armor weapons were showing themselves to engage the combat cars. An orange flash blew out the sidewalls of a barn; three seconds later, the shock of that enormous secondary explosion made water dance in the irrigation canals.
The surviving Militiamen ducked to cover. Foghorn had stalled for a moment, but she was bucking forward again now. Huber cleared the terrain mask from his faceshield to let his eyes and the helmet AI concentrate on nearby motion, his potential targets. He didn’t worry about the heavier weapons that might be locking in on Fencing Master from long range; that was the business of the tanks—and of the Gods, if you believed in them, which right at the moment Huber couldn’t even pretend to do.
A slug penetrated the plenum chamber on the right side of the bow, struck a nacelle inside—the fan howled momentarily, then died; blue sparks sprayed from a portside intake duct and the hair on Huber’s arm stood up—and punched out from the left rear in a flash of burning steel. Costunna screamed, “Port three’s out!”
The air was sharp with ozone. Huber’s nose filters kept the ions from searing his lungs, but the skin of his throat and wrists prickled.