The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Via, no!” Margulies agreed. Overlays projected across the inner surface of the security lieutenant’s visor distorted her hard smile. “From what they’re saying through the bugs in the terminal building, they’re sure we’re smugglers who picked a bad time to land and try to undercut the Delos cartel. Yarnell figures to take care of us smugglers just as soon as she’s got Potosi secured.”

Matthew Coke’s mind flamed with blood and cyan light. He laughed. The sound made Pilar’s face go blank in an expression closely akin to fear.

The south column burst from scrub into bottom land planted with gage. The leading car boosted its speed to 60 kph, three times the rate at which it had picked its way through the heavy growth. The combat cars were capable of doubling that in open terrain, but the infantry wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

The gage crop was a month or so short of harvest. The reedy stems were a full meter tall, but the heads where the drug concentrated hadn’t taken on the orangish tinge of full ripeness.

At Captain Garmin’s orders, the cars spread from line-ahead formation to line abreast. As directed, Vierziger placed Cutting Edge on the left of the formation while the platoon leader took the right. There was an officer in position if the force had to displace suddenly toward either flank, and Coke was at the hinge of the attack.

“There’s shooting in town,” Margulies murmured, relaying data from the intelligence officer. “The Heliodorans ran into a couple dozen Astras who’d gone to ground and came out as the patrol arrived. The Astras just want to surrender to somebody, but the patrol leader’s calling for heavy backup.”

“I’d as soon,” Sten Moden said, “if there wasn’t fighting in Potosi. Civilians are bound to get hurt.”

“When we take the main force,” Coke said, “the rest—Heliodorans and syndicate both—the rest’ll die on the vine.”

Civilians weren’t his concern at the moment. His task was to defeat hostile troops….

The column blasted by a dozen farmers’ huts in fenced courtyards. Occasionally a shiver of movement indicated someone watching through the palings or from a shuttered window.

A squad of infantry dropped off to cover the community until the force was safely clear, but there was no real threat. A syndicate garrison might still occupy the loopholed stone building, but the flag was gone from the pole on the roof peak. Surviving gunmen didn’t want to be identified with either of the losing parties.

“If there’s ever to be peace on Cantilucca,” said Pilar Ortega with a harshness at variance with the soldiers’ professional calm, “it’ll come the way you’re bringing it. No other way.”

Coke’s eyes danced from the actual terrain to dots crawling across the combiner screen of his multifunction display. “Team One to Team elements,” he ordered. “Take preliminary attack positions with at least five meters of screening between you and the perimeter fence. Out.”

The south column was back in brush again, uncultivated country that was too dry to raise healthy gage. Vierziger slowed their car and pulled it off the general line of advance. The spaceport perimeter and all the structures within it were directly north of them but out of sight.

The local vegetation averaged three meters tall. A few trees rose half again as high before they flared out like golf tees. The trees had whippy, thin trunks, but their crowns were of straw-colored foliage which provided a complete visual screen. Someone in the spaceport tower could conceivably notice that the vegetation waved with the passage of the armored vehicles, but the chance of anybody being that alert was vanishingly slight.

Besides, the Frisians weren’t going to be waiting very long.

A squad of infantry dropped off its skimmers and wormed its individual way into the scrub. The infantry could get much closer to the start line than the combat cars without risk of being observed. The squad’s air-cushion gun jeep halted back with the cars.

The mortars were jeep-mounted also. By themselves they could keep up with the infantry easily, but the jeeps carried only two 4-round ammo chargers. The remainder of the ammunition supply rode in a wheeled caisson behind each jeep.

Pulling a trailer with an air-cushion vehicle wasn’t a great deal of fun on surfaced roads. Dragging wheels through brush and plowed fields, as this crew had been doing, was like trying to swim with a boat anchor. The company commander had wisely unloaded the pair of mortars as soon as she could.

“Charlie element in position,” Captain Garmin reported. His platoons had a shorter route than Coke’s, though there’d been a delay as many of the troops and cars crossed the road cautiously to reach their attack positions. “Charlie out.”