The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

There was almost nil chance of a hand-aimed tribarrel doing any good if three tank units failed on air-defense mode. There was a bloody good chance that a human thumb would twitch at the wrong time and knock down a friendly drone whose IFF handshake had passed the tank computers, though . . . .

Deathdealerhad to be the leading panzer. Blue Three in the rear-guard slot wouldn't tear gaps the way it did in the middle of the line, but Wager's inexperience could be an even worse disaster there if the task force were hit from behind. Maybe if she putDeathdealer

's driver in the turret of Blue Three and moved an experienced driver from one of the cars to—

Command exercises. Arrange beads of light in a chosen order, then step back while the grading officer critiques your result.

"Tight-ass bitch

,"the intercom muttered.Hand-keyed,Janacek or Stolley,either one, or even Willens.

Veterans don't like to be called down by their new CO. But veterans screw up too, just like newbies . . . just like COs who drift in and out of an electronic non-world, where the graders snarl but don't shoot.

Ranson thought she heard the aircraft's engine over the howl ofWarmonger

's fans and the constant slap of branches against their hull. That was impossible.

"Six, it's friendly!" Sparrow called, echoing the relayed information that flashed on the display which in turn cross-checked the opinion of the combat car's own electronics. And they could all be wrong, but—

The aircraftwas

friendly. Its data dump started.

Maps and numerals scrolled across the display, elbowing one another aside as knowledge became chaos by its volume. Ranson was so focused on her attempt to sort the electronic garbage with a combat car's inadequate resources that she didn't notice the drone when it passed overhead a few seconds later.

The Slammers' reconnaissance drones were slow, loping along at less than a thousand kph instead of sailing around the globe at a satellite's ninety-minute rate. On the other hand, no satellite could survive in a situation where the enemy had powerguns and even the very basic fire-direction equipment needed to pick up a solid object against the vacant backdrop of interstellar space.

Stolley whispered inaudibly as the drone flicked past, barely visible against the slats of the trees. The aircraft had a long, narrow-chord wing mounted high so as not to interfere with the sensors in its belly.