“Costunna!” Huber screamed. He leaned forward, trying to see the man, but the driver’s hatch was closed. “Via, man! Cut right! Get us up out of here!”
Foghorn was stalled, unable to climb up from the canal. Her fans and skirts had taken a serious hammering while she advanced alone toward the Solace position. Fencing Master was nowhere near that badly damaged, but Costunna seemed unwilling or emotionally unable to turn back toward the guns that’d targeted him before.
And until he did, neither of the cars in Huber’s section could support the infantry at the moment they needed it most. The tribarrels were unable to shoot through the haze surrounding Fencing Master; the water droplets would absorb the bolts as surely as a brick wall or a meter of armor plate could do.
Captain Sangrela was bellowing furious orders over the command channel, but Huber didn’t need to be told there was a problem. He opened his mouth to shout at Costunna again because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Before he got the words out, Deseau snarled over the intercom, “Costunna, get us the fuck outa this ditch or I’ll stick my gun up your ass before I pull the trigger!”
Maybe it was the threat, maybe it was realizing that the car’s bumping was its skirts hitting the bodies of Militiamen before smearing them into the concrete. Whatever the reason, Costunna twisted his yoke convulsively. Fencing Master lurched from the canal, her plenum chamber shrieking over the concrete coping.
Three white flares burst over the central complex, a signal that the surviving mercenaries wanted to surrender. They were probably broadcasting on one of the general purpose frequencies as well, but you couldn’t trust radio in a battle. Powerguns and drive fans both kicked out seas of RF trash, so even commands could be lost or distorted in the middle of a battle. A moment after the flares went up, four soldiers in mottled battledress came out of a smoldering barn with their hands in the air.
“Fox Three elements cease fire!” Huber ordered. He didn’t raise the muzzles of his tribarrel, but he took his hands off the grips. If some trooper got trigger happy now with those easy targets, it’d be the difference between peaceful surrender and a last-ditch defense that meant a lot more Slammers’ casualties before it was over. “Stop shooting now! Three-six out.”
Captain Sangrela was shouting much the same thing over the common task force push also, and Huber figured Lieutenant Mitzi Trogon echoed the words to her four D Company tanks. A powergun snapped a single shot into the bright sky: an infantryman trying to put his weapon on safe while he steered his tiny skimmer had managed to shoot instead.
No serious harm done: the rest of the mercenary company emerged from dugouts and the concrete buildings. They’d been armed with crew-served lasers, bulky weapons but effective even against tanks when they were close enough. Rather than bull straight in, Captain Sangrela had used F-3’s combat cars to draw the lasers into sight where the tanks could vaporize them from a safe three kilometers away. Arne Huber understood the logic and he trusted the skill of Mitzi’s gunners about as far as he trusted anybody, but he’d known who was going to catch it if something went wrong.
“Costunna, pull around to the tramhead,” he ordered, frowning. The main thing that’d gone wrong this time had been with Fencing Master’s driver, and that was Arne Huber’s responsibility.
Most of the single continent of Plattner’s World was accessible only by aircar or dirigible. The trees covering the coastal lowlands were parasitized by “Moss,” a fungus which in turn was the source of an anti-aging drug. The forests were therefore more valuable than almost anything that would have replaced them on other planets, highways and railroads included.
The exception was Solace, the state comprising the central highlands. There the soil supported Terran grains and produce, but native trees which grew in the drier climate were stunted and free of the Moss. Solace had become the granary of Plattner’s World, and its bedrock supported the only starport on the planet which could accept the largest interstellar freighters.