The Tank Lords by David Drake

“In a few minutes we’ll head for Scepter Base,” Jonas said in a reasonable tone. “I’ll see if I can’t keep us off perimeter watch for tonight. What’s left of it.”

The sergeant obviously didn’t like the situation either, but his rank kept him from grumbling about orders. Ericssen would have probably acted the same as Jonas if their positions had been reversed. Mercenary soldiering had never been the easiest way to earn a living. People who didn’t know that when they signed on with the Slammers learned it quick enough thereafter.

Hula Girl’s intakes made the brush to either side wobble toward the vehicle. Gossamer fuzz as long as a man’s fingers hung from the branches. The tendrils sucked moisture from the air at night when the relative humidity rose, though the vegetation only flowered after a rain.

It might not rain here for years.

“If they’d left the satellites up to begin with,” Panchin said, “then one side or the other would’ve knocked them down when they thought that gave them an advantage. Maybe before an attack, when they had their people in position already. We’d still be out here.”

War is a costly business. Importing mercenaries and their specialist equipment from off-planet is devastatingly expensive, but at least in the short run it costs less than losing. Both sides on Sulewesi had hired a few of the best and most expensive troops in the human universe. Hammer’s Slammers were paid by the government, while the rebels had three comparable armored battalions from Brazil on Earth.

Four or five thousand soldiers, no matter how well equipped, weren’t enough to fight a war across the whole surface of a planet; locally-raised forces could only be trained as mechanized infantry because time was so short. To bridge the gap between the general mass and the highly-paid cutting edge, the government and rebels both used less-sophisticated mercenaries. The mid-range troops provided weapons and communications of a higher order than those produced on Sulewesi, but at a tenth the cost of outfits like the Slammers and the Brazilians.

A tenth as effective too, the Slammers thought; but a pipe gun throwing a chunk of lead was still enough to splash your brains across the deck of a tank if you happened to be in the wrong place. War didn’t stop being a dangerous business just because you were good at it.

Cortezar goosed the fans to take Hula Girl onto a ridge whose rocks had resisted the wind better than the light soil to either side. The skirts rubbed stones, clanking and throwing sparks. Ball-shaped vegetation flattened and shivered away from the gale that squirted under the plenum chamber.

Panchin held firmly onto the twin spade grips of his tribarrel as the deck slanted beneath his boots. “I don’t see why they had to split the Regiment up this way,” he said. “You can’t blame Captain Stenhuber sending us out alone when all he’s got to work with is seven combat cars and the G Company command vehicle.”

“Yeah,” Frosty agreed. “If we were all together we’d go through everything else on this planet like a spike through an eyeball.”

“You bet we would,” Jonas said in grim disapproval. “And while we were doing that, the rebels’d smash the rest of the government army, putting a platoon or two of Brazilian armor on point each time. The people who hired us want to win the war, not just one battle.”

“The odometer says this is half a kilometer, sarge,” Cortezar said with an edge in her voice. Reg Panchin felt alone, but really he was elbow to elbow with two fellow troopers. Cortezar sat by herself in the driver’s compartment, and she was a meter closer to the most likely direction for a first shot besides.

“Yeah, all right,” Jonas agreed. “I make Scepter Base forty-two degrees from here, but we’ll want to dodge—”

A hand flare popped against the heavens and drained back to the desert floor as a shower of silver droplets. Panchin wasn’t an expert at judging distances at night, but he didn’t imagine the signal could have been launched from more than half a kilometer away.

“Bloody hell,” said Ericssen. “We found them after all.”

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