The figure raised its gun. 2 blinked to 1 in Ranson’s visor, then vanished—
Because a dead man doesn’t have any threat level at all. Ranson’s burst converged with Janacek’s; the upper front of the barracks flew apart as the powerguns ignited it.
Willens slewed the car left. Somebody leaned out of a window of the same barracks and fired—missed even the combat car except for one bullet ricocheting from the dirt street to whang on the skirts.
Ranson killed the shooter, letting Warmonger’s forward motion walk the flashing cyan cores of her burst down the line of barracks windows. Janacek was raking the lower story, and as they came abreast of the building, the One-five blower to Warmonger’s right laid on a crossfire from two of its tribarrels.
A single bolt from the other car sizzled through gaps already blown in the structure and hit the barracks on the other side of the street. The cyan track missed Ranson by little enough that the earphones in her helmet screamed piercingly with harmonics from the energy release.
She noticed it the way she’d notice a reflection in a shop window. Everything around her seemed to be reflected or hidden behind sheets of thick glass. Nothing touched her. Her skin felt warm, the way it did when she was on the verge of going to sleep.
A tank’s main gun flashed beyond the berm. Ranson would’ve liked the weight of the panzers with her to push the Consies out, but their 20cm cannon were too destructive to use within a position crammed with friendly troops and their dependents. If things got hot enough that the combat cars needed a bail-out—
She’d give the orders she had to give and worry about the consequences later. But for now . . .
A group of armed men ran from a cross street into the next intersection. Some of them were still looking back over their shoulders when Warmonger’s three tribarrels lashed them with converging streams of fire.
Figures whirled and disintegrated individually for a moment before a bloom of white light—a satchel charge, a buzzbomb’s warhead; perhaps just a bandolier strung with grenades—enveloped the group. The shockwave slammed bodies and body fragments in every direction.
Ranson was sure they’d been wearing black uniforms. Pretty sure.
“—must help me!” whimpered the radio. “They have captured the lower floor of my headquarters!”
She hand-keyed the microphone and said, “Progress Command, this is Slammers’ Command. Help’s on the way, but be bloody sure your own people don’t shoot at us. Out.”
Or else, her mind added, but she didn’t want that threat on record. Anyway, even the Yokels were smart enough to know what happened when somebody shot at the Slammers. . . .
“Tootsie Six to Red elements,” Ranson heard herself ordering. “Keep moving even if you’re taking fire. Don’t let ’em get their balance or they’ll chop us.”
Her voice was echoing to her down corridors of glass.
Chapter Three
Callsign Charlie Three-zero hit halfway up the berm’s two-meter height. Holman had the beast still accelerating at the point of impact.
Even though Wager’d seen it coming and had tried to brace himself, the collision hurled his chest against the hatch coaming. His clamshell armor saved his ribs, but the shock drove all the breath from his body.
Air spilled from the tilted plenum chamber. The tank sagged backward like a horse spitted on a wall of pikes.
Hans Wager hoped that the smash hadn’t knocked his driver’s teeth out. He wanted to do that himself, as soon as things got quiet again.
“Holman,” he wheezed as he keyed his intercom circuit. He’d never wanted to command a tank. . . . “Use lift, not your bloody speed. You can’t—”
Dust exploded around Charlie Three-zero as if a bomb had gone off. Holman kept the blades’ angle of attack flat to build up fan speed before trying to raise the vehicle again. She wasn’t unskilled, exactly; she just wasn’t used to moving something with this much inertia.
“—just ram through the bloody berm!” Wager concluded; but as they backed, he got a good look at the chunk they’d gouged from the protective dirt wall and had to wonder. They bloody near had plowed their way through, at no cost worse than bending the front skirts.