Suilin slid down the last step and almost fell. His legs didn’t want to support him. They seemed all right after a few steps.
“The Consies ‘re asking for a cease fire,” Cooter announced as he and the reporter walked toward the entrance to the Governor’s Palace, the middle building of those closing the Compound on three sides. “Not just here. Their Central Command announced it.”
“From the Enclaves,” Suilin said, thinking aloud.
The soldiers at the entrance thirty meters away wore fatigues with the crossed-saber collar tabs of the Presidential Guard Force. They eyed the newcomers cautiously.
A buzzbomb had cratered the second floor of the Palace, directly above the entrance. Other than that, damage was limited to broken glass and bullet-pocks on the stone. The fighting hadn’t been serious around here after all.
Dick Suilin now knew what buildings looked like when somebody really meant business.
“Will they get it?” he said aloud. “The cease fire, I mean.”
Cooter shrugged. “I’m not a politician,” he said.
Now that the reporter had taken off his clamshell armor, the sling holding his grenade launcher was too long. He adjusted the length.
The pink-faced captain commanding the guards blinked.
Cooter looked at his companion. “I’m not sure you’ll need that in here,” he said mildly.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Dick Suilin replied without emotion. “Not any more.”
“The hole in the skirt,” said Warrant Leader Ortnahme in a judicious tone as he walked slowly toward Blue Three, “we can patch easy enough. . . .”
“Yessir,” said Tech 2 Simkins through tight lips.
When a Yokel tank blew up three meters from Simkins’ side of Daisy Belle, he’d been spattered with blazing diesel fuel. Bandages now covered the Sprayseal which replaced the skin of the technician’s left arm.
He wasn’t hurting, exactly; nobody carrying Simkins’ present load of analgesics in his veins could be said to be in pain. Still, the technician had to concentrate to keep his feet moving in the right order.
“The bloody rest of it, though . . .” Ortnahme murmured.
Hans Wager had managed to find a can of black paint and a brush somewhere. He was painting something on the tank’s bow skirts. His driver, a woman Ortnahme couldn’t put a bloody name to, watched with a drawn expression.
The pair of ’em looked like they’d sweated off five kilos in the last two days. Maybe they had.
The tungsten-carbide shot that holed the skirt must have been so close to the muzzle that its fins hadn’t had time to stabilize it. The shot was still yawing when it struck, so it’d punched a long oval in the steel instead of a neat round hole.
Ortnahme estimated the shot’s probable further course with his eyes and called, “Did ye lose a bloody fan when that hit you?”
Wager continued painting, attempting a precision which was far beyond his present ability.
The driver turned slowly toward the pair of maintenance personnel. She said, “Yeah, that’s right. Number 3 Port went out. That was okay, but the air spilling through the hole here—” nodding toward the gaping oval “—that was bad.”
She paused for memory before she added, “Can you fix it?”
“Sure,” the warrant leader said. “As soon as they ship in a spare.” He shook his head. “A whole bloody lotta spares.”
Simpkins nodded without speaking.
“What, ah . . . are you doing?” Ortnahme asked.
Wager turned at last. “We’re putting the name on our tank,” he croaked.
Wager’s vacant expression turned to utter malevolence. “She’s ours and we can call her anything we bloody please!” he shouted hoarsely. “They’re not takin’ her and givin’ us some clapped out old cow instead, d’ye hear? Not even the Old Man’s gonna take her away from us!”
The warrant leader looked at the tank that had only been a callsign until now.
The turret had taken at least a dozen direct hits, most of them from armor-piercing shot. Ortnahme wondered if any part of the sensor array had survived.
One round had blasted a cavity in the stubby barrel of the main gun. It hadn’t penetrated, but until the tube was replaced, firing the 20cm weapon would be as dangerous as juggling contact grenades.