There were twenty-five individual callsigns. The AI broke them down as three companies each consisting of three platoons—but no more than four tanks in any platoon (five would have been full strength). Some platoons were postulated from a single callsign.
Not all the Yokel tanks would be indulging in the loose chatter that laid them out for Task Force Ranson like a roast for the carving; but most of them would, most of them were surely identified. The red cross-hatching that overlay the relief map in the main field of the display was the AI’s best estimate thus far of the armored battalion’s dispositions.
Blue Three was the frame of the trap and the bait within it; but the five combat cars of west and east elements were the spring-loaded jaws that would snap the rat’s neck.
And this rat, Yokel or Consie, was lying. It was clear that the leading elements of 1st of the 4th were already deploying onto the southern slope of Sugar Knob, half a kilometer from the store and shanties of Kawana rather than the ten kays their commander claimed.
In the next few seconds, the commander of the armored battalion would decide whether he wanted to meet allied mercenaries—or light the fuse that would certainly detonate in a battle more destructive than any a citizen of Prosperity could imagine. He was being tested. . . .
The two sharp green beads of Lieutenant Cooter’s element settled into position.
She heard a whisper in the southern sky. Incoming.
“All right, Holman, move us hull-down,” Hans Wager ordered as his driver whined, “They’re shooting at us! They’re shooting at us!” over the Allied Common Channel and the scream of the incoming salvo wrote its own exclamation point in four crashing impacts on the valley below.
The nameless tank lifted, scraped, and hopped forward—up and out of its stand-by hide to a position so near the crest of Chin Peng Rise that the turret and sensor arrays had a clear sight across Kawana to the slumping mass of Sugar Knob beyond.
The hamlet had never been prepossessing. It was less so now that the ill-aimed Consie salvo had shaken down several shacks. Raider Camp Creek roiled with the muddy aftermath of the shell that had landed on it, and the footbridge paralleling the ford had collapsed into the turbid current.
Men and women in the sugarbush fields dropped their tools to run for their homes. The sandy rows in which the bushes were planted would’ve given better protection than the board walls of the shanties.
That much came to Wager’s eyes from the direct view of his main screen. Screen Three displayed the data his chuckling AI processed, a schematic vision of the terrain behind Sugar Knob and the unseen Yokel tanks showing themselves to Wager’s sensors.
A sidebar on the main screen noted an incoming second salvo, ten rounds but very ragged—even for Yokel artillery.
The Yokel vehicles were diesel-powered, so Wager’s tank couldn’t locate them precisely from sparkcoil emissions; but their diesels had injector motors whose RF output could be pin-pointed by the Slammers’ sensors.
Without the added shielding of Chin Peng Ridge to block Blue Three, the cross-hatched blur south of Sugar Knob on Screen Three began to coalesce into bright red beads: Yokel tanks, located to within a few meters.
Their disposition explained why the second salvo was so scattered. The Consies were using the 130mm howitzers on ten of their tanks to supplement regular artillery firing from the vicinity of Kohang.
For indirect fire, these tanks were concentrated in a tight arc along Upper Creek. They’d run their bows up on the north bank in order to get more elevation for their howitzers than their turret mechanisms would permit.
The tank shells scattered around Kawana, detonating with white flashes and the hollow whoomps characteristic of shape-charge anti-tank warheads. Sand spewed in great harmless fountains.
The store where the unpaved road forded the creek flung its walls sideways at a direct hit. Half a body arced into the water and sank.
“Six, this is Blue Three!” Wager shouted. “Am I clear to shoot?”
Then, though Ranson could see it herself as easily as Wager could if the crazy bitch saw anything, “Six, there’s ten tanks a kilometer south of the Knob, just off the road, but the rest of the bastards are moving onto the crest!”