“When I get the bloody update from the task force, aren’t I?” Lavel snarled. He patted the console. “It’s thirty-three seconds to splash from here. We don’t fire the last five rounds till we see what still needs to be hit and where the bloody friendlies are!”
The console in front of Lavel began to click and whine. He had a voice link to the task force, but the electronically-sensed information, passed from one AI to another, was faster by an order of magnitude.
It was also less subject to distortion, even when, as now, it had to be transmitted over VHF radio.
Besides, the crews of Task Force Ranson had plenty to occupy them without spotting for the guns.
The new data swept all the previous highlights from the targeting overlay. Green splotches marked changes in relief caused by shell-bursts and secondary explosions. Denser pinheads of the same hue showed where bolts from the 20cm powerguns of tanks had glazed the terrain, sealing firing positions whether or not the bunkers themselves were destroyed.
No worthy targets remained on the west side of the Santine.
Lavel’s light pen touched a bunker on the near bank of the estuary anyway. It had been built to hold a heavy gun, though the AI was sure nothing was emplaced in it yet. That accomplished, Lavel checked the eastern arc of the siege lines.
The east side was lightly held, because most of the Consie forces across the Santine were concentrated on Kohang. The Marine unit in la Reole could probably have broken out—but in doing so, they would have had to surrender the town and the crucial crossing point. Somebody—somebody with more brains and courage than any of the Yokels at Camp Progress—had decided to hold instead of running.
Lavel had two high-explosive shells, one target solid, and a firecracker round remaining. He chose three east-side bunkers for the HE and the solid. The solid was intended to test the air-defense system of friendly units, but its hundred and eighty kilos weren’t going to do anybody it landed on any good. He set his firecracker round to detonate overhead ten seconds after the others splashed.
The console chittered, then glowed green.
Green for ready. Probably the last time Chief Lavel would ever see that message.
He sighed and slapped execute.
The door to the crew compartment was open. Craige wasn’t wearing a commo helmet, but she got her hands to her ears at the chunk! of the ignition charge expelling the first round from the tube.
The seven-second ROAR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R! of the sustainer motor shook the world.
The remaining four rounds blasted out at one-a-second intervals like beads on a rosary of thunder. Their backblasts shoved the howitzer down on its suspension and raised huge doughnuts of dust from the surrounding soil.
All done. The fire mission, and the last shred of meaning in Chief Lavel’s life.
There was still a green light on the ready-use indicator.
“Booster!” Lavel snapped. “Shell status!”
“One practice ready,” said the console in a feminine voice. “Zero rounds in storage.”
Lavel turned, rising from his seat with a face like a skull. “You!” he said to Craige. “How many rounds did you load this last time?”
“What?” said Craige. “How . . . ? Six, six like you told us. Isn’t that—”
“You stupid bastards!” Lavel screamed as his hand groped with the patch to Task Force Ranson, changing it from digital to voice. “Those last two shells were anti-tank rounds with seeker heads! You killed ’em all!”
All the displays of Herman’s Whore pulsed red with an Emergency Authenticator Signal. A voice Ortnahme didn’t recognize bellowed, “Task Force! Shoot down the friendly incoming! Tank Killer rounds! Ditch your tanks! Ditch!”
Ortnahme pushed the air defense selector. It was already uncaged. He’d been willing to take the chance of bumping it by accident so long as he knew it would be that many seconds quicker to activate when he might need it.
Like now.
“Simkins,” he said, surprised at his own calm, “cut your fans and ditch. Soonest!”
His calm wasn’t so surprising after all. There’d been emergencies before.
There’d been the time a jack began to sink—thin concrete over a bed of rubble had counterfeited a solid base. Thirty tonnes of combat car settling toward a technician. The technician was dead, absolutely, if he did anything except block the low side of the car with the fan nacelle he’d been preparing to fit.