My screen blacked out the discharge, but even the multiple reflections that flashed through the turret hatch were blinding. There was a gout of burning stone. Torque had shattered the arched concrete roof when it lifted, but many of the reinforcing rods still held so that slabs danced together as they tumbled inward.
Riflemen had continued to fire while the tribarrel raked toward them. The 20 cm bolt silenced everything but its own echoes. Servants would have broken down the outside doors minutes before. The surviving soldiers followed them now, throwing away weapons unless they forgot them in their hands.
The screen to my left was a panorama through the vision blocks while the orange pips on the main screen provided the targeting array. Men, tank lords in khaki, jumped aboard the other tanks. Two of them ran toward me in the vehicle farthest from the gatehouse.
Only the west gable of the banquet hall had collapsed. The powergun had no penetration, so the roof panel of the palace’s outer side had been damaged only by stresses transmitted by the panel that took the bolt. Even on the courtyard side, the reinforced concrete still held its shape five meters from where the bolt struck, though fractured and askew.
The tiny figure of the Baron was running toward me from the entrance.
I couldn’t see him on the main screen because it was centered on the guns’ point of impact. I shouted in surprise, frightened back into slavery by that man even when shrunken to a doll in a panorama.
My left hand dialed the main screen down and across so that the center of the Baron’s broad chest was ringed with sighting pips. He raised his mob gun as he ran, and his mouth bellowed a curse or a challenge.
The Baron was not afraid of me or anything else. But he had been born to the options that power gives.
My foot stroked the firing pedal.
One of the mercenaries who had just leaped to the tank’s back deck gave a shout as the world became ozone and a cyan flash. Part of the servants’ quarters beneath the banquet hall caught fire around the three-meter cavity blasted by the gun.
The Baron’s disembodied right leg thrashed once on the ground. Other than that, he had vanished from the vision blocks.
Lieutenant Kiley came through the hatch, feet first but otherwise with as little ceremony as I had shown. He shoved me hard against the turret wall while he rocked the gun switch down to safe. The orange numeral blanked from the screen.
“In the Lord’s name, kid!” the big officer demanded while his left hand still pressed me back. “Who told you to do that?”
“Lieutenant,” said Lord Curran, leaning over the hatch opening but continuing to scan the courtyard. His pistol was in his hand, muzzle lifted, while air trembled away from the hot metal. “We’d best get a move on unless you figure t’ fight a reinforced battalion alone till the supports get here.”
“Well, get in and drive, curse you!” the lieutenant shouted. The words relaxed his body and he released me. “No, I don’t want to wait around here alone for the Lightning Division!”
“Lieutenant,” said the driver, unaffected by his superior’s anger, “we’re down a man. You ride your blower. Kid’ll be all right alone with me till we join up with the colonel and come back t’ kick ass.”
Lieutenant Kiley’s face became very still. “Yeah, get in and drive,” he said mildly, gripping the hatch coaming to lift himself out without bothering to use the power seat.
The driver vanished but his boots scuffed on the armor as he scurried for his own hatch. “Gimme your bloody key,” he shouted back.
Instead of replying at once, the lieutenant looked down at me. “Sorry I got a little shook, kid,” he said. “You did pretty good for a new recruit.” Then he muscled himself up and out into the night.
The drive fans of other tanks were already roaring when ours began to whine up to speed. The great vehicle shifted greasily around me, then began to turn slowly on its axis. Fourth in line, we maneuvered through the courtyard gate while the draft from our fans lifted flames out of the palace windows.