Suilin bit another piece from the chalk-textured, vile-flavored ration bar.
“I’ll let you know,” he heard his voice say.
“Blue Two,” said Captain June Ranson, watching white light from Deathdealer quiver on the inner face of her gunshield, “this is Tootsie Six. You’re acting head of Blue Section. Six out.”
“Roger, Tootsie.”
Sergeant Wager’s nameless tank, now the first unit in Task Force Ranson, was picking its way through rubble and shell craters at the entrance to la Reole. It had been a new vehicle at the start of this ratfuck. Now it dragged lengths of barbed wire—and a fencepost—and its skirts were battered worse than those of Herman’s Whore.
The tank’s newbie driver swung wide to pull around a pile of bricks and roof tiles. Too wide. The wall opposite collapsed in a gout of brick dust driven by the tank’s fans. Uniformed Yokels, looking very young indeed, scurried out of the ruin, clutching a machinegun and boxes of ammunition.
Warmonger slid into the choking cloud. Filters clapped themselves over Ranson’s nose. Janacek swore. Ranson hoped Willens had switched to sonic imaging before the dust blinded him.
Dust enfolded her in a soft blur. Static charges kept her visor clear, but the air a millimeter beyond the plastic was as opaque as the silicon heart of a computer.
Sparrow was dead, vaporized; out of play. But his driver had survived, and she could transfer him to Blue Three. Take over from the inexperienced driver—or perhaps for Sergeant Wager, also inexperienced with panzers but an asset to the understrength crew of One-six.
Mix and match. What is your decision on this point, Candidate Ranson . . . ?
Something jogged her arm. She could see again.
The tracked landing vehicle had backed into a cross-street again, making way for the lead tank. The dust was far behind Warmonger. The third car in line was stirring it back to life.
A helmeted major in fatigues the color of mustard greens—a Yokel Marine—waved toward them with a swagger stick while he shouted into a hand communicator.
“Booster, match frequencies,” Ranson ordered.
She saw through the corners of her eyes that Stolley and Janacek were exchanging glances. How long had her eyes been staring blankly before Stolley’s touch brought her back to the physical universe?
“. . . onsider yourselves under my command as the ranking National officer in the sector!” the headphones ordered Ranson as her AI found the frequency on which the major was broadcasting. “Halt your vehicles now until I can provide ground guides and reform my defensive perimeter.”
“Local officer,” Ranson said, trusting her transmitter to overwhelm the hand-held unit even if the Yokel were still keying it, “this is Captain Ranson, Hammer’s Regiment. That’s a negative. We’re just passing through.”
The Yokel major was out of sight behind Warmonger. A ridiculous little man with creased trousers even now, and a coating of dust on his waxed boots and moustache.
A little man who’d held la Reole with a battalion of recruits against an attack much heavier than that which crumpled three thousand Yokels at Camp Progress. Maybe not so ridiculous after all. . . .
“Local officer,” Ranson continued, “I think you’ll find resistance this side has pretty well collapsed. We’ll finish off anything we find across the river. Slammers out.”
La Reole had been an attractive community of two- and three-story buildings of stuccoed brick. Lower floors were given over to shops and restaurants for bridge traffic. Shattered glass from display windows now jeweled the pavement, even where shellfire had spared the remainder of the structures.
The highway kinked into a roundabout decorated with a statue, now headless; and kinked again as it proceeded to the bridge approaches. The buildings on either side of the dogleg had been reduced to rubble. The Consie gunners hadn’t been able to get a clear shot at the bridge with their direct-fire weapons or to spot the shells their mortars and howitzers lobbed toward the span.
“No! No! No!” shouted the major, his voice buzzy and attenuated by interference from drive fans. “You’re needed here! I order you to stop—and anyway, you can’t cross the bridge, it’s too weak. Do you hear me! Halt!”