The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The berth on the right side of the tank was empty. The combat car assigned there had bought it in the clearing operation. Buzzbombs. The close-in defense system hadn't worked or hadn't worked well enough, same difference. Albers said a couple of the crew were okay . . . .

Wager's field of view rolled across the Yokel area. The barracks nearest the Slammers were in good shape still; but by focusing down one of the streets and rolling the magnification throughx16

tox64, he could see that at least a dozen buildings in a row had burned.

A few bolts from a powergun and those frame structures went up like torches . . . .

The best protection you had in a combat car wasn't armor or even your speed: it was the volume of fire you put on the other bastard and anywhere the other bastard might be hiding.

Tough luck for the Yokels who'd been burned out.Tougher luck,much tougher, for the Consies who'd tried to engage Hammer's Slammers.

"For the driver," Albers said with a nod up toward Holman's intent face, "it's pretty much the same as a combat car."

"The weight's not the bloody same," Holman said.

"Sure,you gotta watch yer inertia,"the veteran driver agreed, "but you do the same things. You get used to it."

He looked back over at Wager. The right half-screen was now projecting a magnified slice of what appeared at one-to-one on the left.

On the opposite side of the encampment, a couple of the permanent maintenance staff worked beside another tank. The junior tech looked on while his boss, a swag-bellied warrant three, settled a length of pipe in the jig of a laser saw.

"Turret side, though," Albers went on, "you gotta be careful. About half what you know from cars, that's the wrong thing in the turret of a panzer."

"I don't like not having two more pair of eyes watchin' my back," Wager muttered as his visuals swam around the circumference of the motionless tank.

"The screens'll watch for you," Albers said gently.

He touched a key without pressing it. "You lock one of 'em onto alert at all times. The AI in here, it's like a thousand helmet systems all at once. It's faster, it catches more, it's better at throwing out the garbage that just looks like it's a bandit."

The hatches of the Tactical Operations Center, a command car without drive fans, were open, but from this angle Wager couldn't see inside. The backs of two Slammers, peering within from the rear ramp, proved there was a full house—a troop meeting going on. What you'd expect after a contact like last night's.