“Ah, where is the trigger?” Rob asked diffidently.
Jake’s laughter rang through the earphones and Worzer himself smiled for the first time. The sergeant reached out and rotated the gun. “See the grips?” he asked, pointing to the double handles at the back of the receiver. Rob nodded.
“OK,” Worzer continued, “you hold it there”—he demonstrated—”and to fire, you just press your thumbs against the trigger plate between ’em. Let up and it quits. Simple.”
“You can clear this field as quick as you can spin this little honey,” Leon said, patting the gun with affection. “The hicks out there”—his arm swept the woods and cultivated fields promiscuously—”got some rifles, they hunted before the trouble started, but no powerguns to mention. About all they do since we moved in is maybe pop a shot or two off, and hide in their holes.”
“They’ve got some underground stockpiles,” Worzer said, amplifying Leon’s words, “explosives, maybe some factories to make rifle ammo. But the colonel set up a recce net—spy satellites, you know—as part of the contract. Any funny movement day or night, a signal goes down to whoever’s patrolling there. A couple calls and we check out the area with ground sensors . . . anything funny then—vibration, hollows showing up on the echo sounder, magnetics—anything!—and bam! we call in the artillery.”
“Won’t take much of a jog on the way back,” Leon suggested, “and we can check out that report from last night.”
“Via, that was just a couple dogs,” Jake objected.
“OK, so we prove it was a couple dogs,” rumbled the gunner. “Or maybe the hicks got smart and they’re shielding their infra-red now. Been too damn long since anything popped in this sector.”
“Thing to remember, kid,” Worzer summed up, “is never get buzzed at this job. Stay cool, you’re fine. This car’s got more firepower’n everything hostile in fifty klicks. One call to the firebase brings in our arty, anything from smoke shells to a nuke. The rest of our section can be here in twenty minutes, or a tank platoon from the firebase in two hours. Just stay cool.”
Turning forward, the sergeant said, “OK, take her home Jake. We’ll try that movement report on the way.”
The combat car shuddered off the ground, the flirts shrieking. Rob eyed them, blushed, and turned back to his powergun, feeling conspicuous. He took the grips, liking the deliberate way the weapon swung. The safety button was glowing green, but he suddenly realized that he didn’t know the color code. Green for safe? Or green for ready? He extended his index finger to the switch.
“Whoa, careful, kid!” Leon warned. “You cut fifty civvies in half your first day and the colonel won’t like it one bit.”
Sheepishly, Rob drew back his finger. His ears burned, mercifully hidden beneath the helmet.
They slid over the dusty road in a flat, white cloud at about forty kph. It seemed shockingly fast to the recruit, but he realized that the car could probably move much faster were it not for the live cargo behind. Even as it was, the trailer bounced dangerously from side to side.
The road led through a gullied scattering of grain plots, generally fenced with withies rather than imported metal. Houses were relatively uncommon. Apparently each farmer plowed several separate locations rather than trying to work the rugged or less productive areas. Occasionally they passed a rough-garbed local at work. The scowls thrown up at the smoothly running war-car were hostile, but there was nothing more overt.
“OK,” Jake warned, “here’s where it gets interesting. Sure you still want this half-assed check while we got the trailer hitched?”
“It won’t be far,” Worzer answered. “Go ahead.” He turned to Rob, touching the recruit’s shoulder and pointing to the lighted map panel beside the forward gun. “Look, Jenne,” he said, keeping one eye on the countryside as Jake took the car off the road in a sweeping turn, “if you need to call in a location to the firebase, here’s the trick. The red dot”—it was in the center of the display and remained there although the map itself seemed to be flowing kitty-corner across the screen as the combat car moved—”that’s us. The black dot”—the veteran thumbed a small wheel beside the display and the map, red dot and all, shifted to the right on the panel, leaving a black dot in the center—”that’s your pointer. The computer feeds out the grid coordinates here”—his finger touched the window above the map display. Six digits, changing as the map moved under the centered black dot, winked brightly. “You just put the black dot on a bunker site, say, and read off the figures to Fire Central. The arty’ll do all the rest.”