“Well, bloody Hell, woman!” Captain Sangrela said. His jeep had pulled alongside Fencing Master and he was glaring up at Orichos. “If it’s a job for the police, get your bloody police on it, will you? You don’t expect us to idle here in the middle of the bloody street, do you? Or do you? Six over.”
“Captain Sangrela, I’m very sorry for the delay but we’re working on it,” Orichos said. Fencing Master continued to rumble on, twenty meters behind the screen of skimmer-mounted infantry. “We didn’t expect Grayle to react so quickly. Most of the crowd in the street are the Freedom Volunteers, the party’s militia, and there’s too many of them for the Gendarmery manpower we’ve got available at the moment. Over.”
She realizes she’s on a net, not the car’s intercom, and she’s following proper commo protocol, Huber noticed with a grin.
“Well, what use will waiting do, Captain?” Sangrela demanded. “Look, is there a back way around? Because if the idea was for the Regiment to make a show of force, having a bunch of yahoos stop us in our tracks is going to send a bloody wrong signal! What about us putting a few shots over their heads? Six over.”
Huber touched Orichos’ arm to silence her before she could answer. He said, “Six, this is Fox Three-six. Put me out front and the panzers right behind me. Get the infantry outa the way, back on the recovery vehicles’d be the best place—they can’t do any good without shooting and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. Three-six over.”
“You can handle this, Three-six?” Sangrela said. Captain Orichos was searching Huber’s face, her expression blankly concerned. “Because if you can, go with it. Six over.”
“I’ve got a driver who can handle it, sir,” Huber said. “Three-six out. Break—” cutting Captain Sangrela out of the circuit again “—Tranter, on a road surface like this, I’ll bet my left nut you can spray enough rock and grit off the bow to clear us a path and still keep us moving forward. What d’ye say?”
“I’d say you needn’t worry about disappointing your girlfriend, El-Tee,” Tranter replied cheerfully. He laughed. “Just watch our dust!”
The infantry ahead of Fencing Master turned and circled back, obeying Sangrela’s command on the C-1 unit push. Lieutenant Myers was on one of the skimmers; he looked at Huber as he slid past. Dinkybob closed up so that the gap between the tank and Fencing Master’s rear skirt was only about five meters. That’d probably be safe when both vehicles were moving at a slow walk—but if something did go wrong, the tank’d send Huber’s car cannoning forward like a billiard ball.
Huber could easily see the mob filling the street without raising his faceshield’s magnification. He didn’t want to do that: he needed all the peripheral vision he had and probably then some.
Aircars kept arriving at the back of the crowd, adding to the numbers already present. Many were big vehicles marked in red with the logo of a broken chain, capable of carrying twenty passengers. It looked to Huber as though they were ferrying people from outlying locations and going back empty for more.
Sergeant Deseau must’ve thought the same thing, because he leaned back from his tribarrel and shouted, “Hey El-Tee? I bet I could scatter those jokers right fast if I popped a couple of trucks while they was overhead.”
“That’s a big negative, Sergeant,” Huber said, hoping he sounded sufficiently disapproving. He’d been thinking the same thing himself, and Deseau probably knew him well enough to be sure of that.
Though that did raise another thought. The sky above Task Force Sangrela was full of aircars jockeying for position. So far as Huber could tell they were simply civilians who wanted to watch what was going on, but some might be members of Grayle’s militia with guns or grenades.
Besides, there was a fair chance that cars might collide and crash down on the column. The trees bordering the Axis constrained the aerial spectators into a relatively narrow channel, so they kept dropping lower to get a good view.
“Captain Orichos,” Huber said. “I understand you can’t deal with the mob on the ground, but can’t you Gendarmes do something about the idiots buzzing around overhead? ASAP.”