One-one and One-five had taken their flanking positions, echeloned slightly back from the lead tank. The remaining four blowers were spaced tank-car, tank-car, behind Warmonger like the tail of a broadly diamond-shaped kite.
Just as it ought to be . . . but the ratfuck at Happy Days had cost the task force a good hour.
“We couldn’t ‘ve avoided it,” Ranson said, “so we shot our way through.”
If she’d known, known, there was a company of Consies in Happy Days, she’d ‘ve bypassed the place by heading north cross-country and cutting east, then south, near Siu Mah. It’d ‘ve been a hundred kilometers out of their way, but—
“Look, bugger off,” said Janacek. “I’m fine. I’ll take another pill, right?”
“Any of the bypass routes might’ve got you in just as deep,” said Colonel Hammer, taking a chance that, because of the time lag, his satellited words were going to step on those of his junior officer. “It’s really dropped in the pot, Captain, all the hell over this country. But you don’t see any reason that you can’t carry out your mission?”
The question was so emotionless that concern stuck out in all directions like barbs from a burr. “Over.”
“Quit screw’n around, Checker,” Stolley demanded. “You got bits a jacket metal there. I get ’em out and there’s no sweat.”
Ranson touched the scale control of her display. The eight discrete dots shrank to a single one, at the top edge of a large-scale moving map that ended at Kohang.
Latches clicked. Janacek had opened his clamshell armor for his buddy’s inspection. A bullet had disintegrated on the shield of Janacek’s tribarrel during the run through Happy Days; bits of the projectile had sprayed the wing gunner.
Ranson felt herself slipping into the universe of the map, into a world of electronic simulation and holographic intersections that didn’t bleed when they dropped from the display.
That was the way to win battles: move your units around as if they were only units, counters on a game board. Do whatever was necessary to check your enemy, to smash him, to achieve your objective.
Commanders who thought about blood, officers who saw with their mind’s eye the troops they commanded screaming and crawling through muck with their intestines dangling behind them . . . those officers might be squeamish, they might be hesitant to give the orders needful for victory.
The commander of the guerrillas in this district understood that perfectly. Happy Days was a deathtrap for anybody trying to defend it against the Slammers. There was no line of retreat, and the vehicles’ powerguns were sure to blast the settlement into ash and vapor, along with every Consie in it.
The company or so of patriots who’d tried to hold Happy Days on behalf of the Conservative Action Movement almost certainly didn’t realize that; but the man or woman who gave them their orders from an office somewhere in the Terran Government enclaves on the North Coast did. The ambush had meant an hour’s delay for the relief operation, and that was well worth the price—on the North Coast.
Men and munitions were the cost of doing business. You needed both of them to win.
You needed to spit them both in the face of the enemy. They could be replaced after the victory.
Stolley’s hand-held medikit began to purr as it swallowed bits of metal that it had separated from the gunner’s skin and shoulder muscles. Janacek cursed mildly.
Colonel Hammer knew the rules also.
“Slammer Six,” June Ranson’s voice said, “we’re continuing. I don’t know of any . . . I mean, we’re not worse off than when we received the mission. Not really.”
She paused, her mouth miming words while her mind tried to determine what those words should be. Hammer didn’t interrupt. “We’ve got to cross the Padma River. Not a lotta choices about where. And we’ll have the Santine after that, that’ll be tricky. But we’ll know more after the Padma.”
Warmonger’s fans ruled the night, creating a cocoon of controlled sound in which the electronic dot calling itself Junebug Ranson was safe with all her other dots.
Her chestplate rapped the grips of the tribarrel. She’d started to doze off again.