A network of monorail tramways connected Solace’s collective farms with Bezant, the capital, from which giant dirigibles distributed food and manufactured goods to the Outer States. They brought back Moss, Pseudofistus thalopsis, which factories on Solace turned into Thalderol base and shipped off-planet for final processing.
In theory one might have thought that the huge profits from Thalderol meant that the inhabitants of Plattner’s World lived with one another in wealthy harmony. Mercenary soldiers, even Academy-trained officers like Arne Huber, learned about human nature in a practical school: the riches of Plattner’s World just meant people could hire better talent to fight for them. When Solace raised port dues by five percent and the buyers refused to pay more for Thalderol base, the Outer States had hired Hammer’s Slammers to reverse the increase.
“Fox Three-six, this is Charlie Six!” Captain Sangrela called abruptly. “The mercs have surrendered but the locals are planning to break out to the north in their aircars. Cut ’em off, will you? I don’t want a massacre, but I’m curst if I want to fight ’em again either! Six out.”
Sangrela was obviously using signals intelligence; it was probably forwarded to him as task force commander by Central, Slammers headquarters at Base Alpha far to the rear. The locals didn’t understand what they were up against, of course. The tanks on high ground to the south could track and vaporize even fast-moving aircars at a greater distance than the eye could see: there was no escape from a battlefield they overwatched.
But a volley of 20-cm bolts wasn’t a threat, it was a massacre just as Sangrela had said. The Slammers took prisoners wherever possible: that encouraged their opponents to do the same. Needlessly converting several hundred locals into steam and carbonized bone, on the other hand, was likely to have a bad result the next time a trooper got in over his head and wanted to surrender.
“Cancel that, Costunna!” Huber said, setting his faceshield left-handed to caret the electromagnetic signatures of aircar fans revving up. Two equipment sheds on the north side of the complex became a forest of red highlights as the AI obeyed. If they were as full of vehicles as the carets implied, there was a score of large aircars in each. “Get us around north of the buildings—but stay away from the canal, right? Goose it!”
The sheds were aligned east-west and had overhead doors the length of both long sides. As Huber spoke, all twelve of the north-side doors began to rise.
“Guns!” Huber shouted over the intercom to the men with him in the fighting compartment. “Aim low, don’t kill anybody you don’t have to! Costunna, get on it!”
Fencing Master finally started to accelerate. The car was five hundred meters from the west sidewall of the nearer shed, almost twice that from the far end of the other one. The tribarrels were effective at many times that distance, but it was beyond the range at which you could expect delicate shooting from a moving vehicle. It’d be what it’d be.
An aircar with room for twenty soldiers or two tonnes of cargo nosed out of the nearer shed. Huber laid his holographic sights on it, letting the aircar’s forward motion pull it through his rope of vividly cyan bolts. The plastic quarterpanel exploded in a red fireball, flipping the car onto its right side in the path of the identical vehicle pulling out of the adjacent bay. They collided, and the second car also overturned.
A third truck started from the near end of the shed and pitched nose-high as the driver tried to vault the line of powergun bolts. He didn’t have enough speed. The bow slammed back into the ground, breaking the vehicle’s frame and hurling passengers twenty meters from the wreck.
If Costunna had known his job better, he’d have slewed Fencing Master so that her bow pointed thirty degrees to starboard of her axis of movement. Because he didn’t—and Via! Sure he was a newbie but didn’t he know any cursed thing?—Huber stopped firing when Sgt Deseau’s gunshield masked his point of aim.
Deseau and Learoyd didn’t need help anyway. The gunners punched three-round bursts into each truck that showed its bow past the side of the sheds. Though the bolts couldn’t penetrate even an aircar’s light body, the energy they liberated vaporized the sheathing in blasts with the impact of falling anvils, slamming the targets in the opposite direction. Aircars skidded, bounced, and overturned. None of them got properly airborne.