Don’t stop now, baby, please, he thought.
It didn’t. The commander must have been waiting until he was closer to use the main gun again, and the automatic weapons were reasonably effective on the move. The weight rolled from overhead, like freedom from the grave. Jeffrey began to crawl frantically, then rose and ran two dozen paces.
The first explosion was muffled by the bulk of the tank. It seemed absurdly small beneath the huge bulk of the Land vehicle, but even on something weighing sixty tons the armor couldn’t be thick everywhere. The tank came to a lurching halt, although one machine-gun turret continued to fire for fifteen seconds. Then there was a second explosion, this one inside the tank. Steam jetted from the back deck, then a few seconds later from every opening and crack in the hull, squealing into the night like so many locomotive whistles. Jeffrey could feel his skin crawl slightly at the thought of what it must have been like inside, the sudden wash of superheated vapor flaying the crew alive.
That did not stop his pumping run. A low wall of crumbling stone and adobe showed ahead of him; he hurdled it and went to the ground with his face pressed to the dirt. Hot metal was in contact with ruptured shell casings and vaporized gasoline, and right about—
Whump. The fuel and ammunition went off together, and the Land panzer came apart along the lines where the sheets of cast and rolled armor were riveted together. Chunks plowed into the wall a few feet from him, showering powdered dirt and small stones with painful force. He raised his head cautiously; he could see nothing moving near the twisted wreckage of the tank, although the light from the burning remnants was bright enough to read by. The turret lay on its side a few yards distant; further out still were bodies that lay still. Mostly still.
“I hope none of them were mine,” he muttered. His voice sounded faint and faraway in his ringing ears. Louder: “Rally here! Rally here!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Those are their final orders?” Jeffrey asked.
“Oui. Unionvil is to be held at all costs. No troops may be diverted; instead we are to commit our strategic reserve. Chairman Deschambre assures me that the political consequences of losing the capital would be ‘disastrous,’ quote unquote. Minister of Public Education and Security Lebars tells me that they shall not pass.”
“Quote unquote,” Jeffrey supplied. “What strategic reserve, by the way?”
“The one we pissed away with that misbegotten offensive towards the Eboreaux last year and have never been able to replace,” Gerard said.
Jeffrey nodded. His eyes felt sandy from lack of sleep, and his ears rang from too many cups of strong black coffee, the taste sour on his tongue. Outside the tent light flickered and stuttered along the horizon; it might have been thunder and heat lightning, but it wasn’t. It was heavy artillery, firing all along the buckling front south and east of Unionvil. The traffic on the road outside was heavy, troops and supply wagons moving up to the front, wounded men coming back—some in ambulances, more hobbling along supporting each other, their bandages glistening in the light of the portable floods outside the HQ tents. A convoy of trucks came through, flatbeds crowded with reinforcements whose faces seemed pathetically young under their helmets. At least the mud wasn’t too bad, despite spring rains heavier than usual. They’d had three years to improve the roads around here, three years with the front running through what had been the outermost satellite villages of Unionvil. That didn’t look like being true much longer.
“Baaaaaa.”
Gerard’s head came up, trying to find the man who’d bleated like a sheep. It was fifty yards to the road, and dark.
“Baa. Baaaa. Baaaa.” More and more of the wounded along the sides of the road were bleating at the reinforcements, mocking the lambs going to the slaughter. Gerard walked to the door of the big tent.
“Captain Labushange. This is to stop.”
Whistles blew and feet pounded; there was always a company of Assault Guards and another of military police attached to the regional headquarters.