The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The roofs slanted down toward the interior; Militiamen with automatic weapons had been using the inner slopes as firing positions. The shellbursts trailed tendrils up, then downward. From a distance they had a glowing white beauty, but Huber knew what a rain of blazing phosphorous did where it landed. Bits continued burning all the way through a human body unless somebody picked them out of the flesh one at a time.

Solace troops leaped to their feet, desperate to escape the shower of death. The other two-car section of Huber’s platoon, Floosie and Flame Farter under Platoon Sergeant Jellicoe, were waiting to the south of the complex for those targets to appear. Their tribarrels lashed the Militiamen, killing most and completely breaking the survivors’ will to resist.

“Costunna, get us across the canal!” Huber ordered. He didn’t feel the instant response he’d expected—the driver should’ve been tense on his throttles, ready to angle the car down this side of the channel and up the other with his fans on emergency power—so he added in a snarl, “Move it, man! Move it now!”

The tanks were firing methodically, punching holes in the sides of buildings with each 20-cm bolt from their main guns. Walls blew up and inward at every cyan impact, leaving openings more than a meter in diameter. The tanks weren’t trying to destroy the structures— a pile of broken concrete made a better nest for enemy snipers than a standing building—but they were providing entrances for infantry assault.

The infantry, twenty-seven troopers under Captain Sangrela himself—the task force commander wasn’t going to hang back when his own people were at the sharp end—were belly-down on their one-man skimmers, making the final rush toward the complex from the south. A heavy laser lifted above the wall of a cow byre to the southeast and started to track them. Two D Company tanks on overwatch had been waiting for it. The laser vanished in a cyan crossfire before it could rake the infantry line.

Costunna shoved his control yoke forward. Fencing Master scraped and sparked her skirts over the lip of the canal, then down into the watercourse, spraying water in a fog to either side. Instead of building speed and quickly angling up the opposite wall, the driver continued to roar along the main channel.

“Costunna!” Huber screamed. He leaned forward, trying to see the man, but the driver’s hatch was closed. “Via, man! Cut right! Get us up out of here!”

Foghorn was stalled, unable to climb up from the canal. Her fans and skirts had taken a serious hammering while she advanced alone toward the Solace position. Fencing Master was nowhere near that badly damaged, but Costunna seemed unwilling or emotionally unable to turn back toward the guns that’d targeted him before.

And until he did, neither of the cars in Huber’s section could support the infantry at the moment they needed it most. The tribarrels were unable to shoot through the haze surrounding Fencing Master; the water droplets would absorb the bolts as surely as a brick wall or a meter of armor plate could do.

Captain Sangrela was bellowing furious orders over the command channel, but Huber didn’t need to be told there was a problem. He opened his mouth to shout at Costunna again because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Before he got the words out, Deseau snarled over the intercom, “Costunna, get us the fuck outa this ditch or I’ll stick my gun up your ass before I pull the trigger!”

Maybe it was the threat, maybe it was realizing that the car’s bumping was its skirts hitting the bodies of Militiamen before smearing them into the concrete. Whatever the reason, Costunna twisted his yoke convulsively. Fencing Master lurched from the canal, her plenum chamber shrieking over the concrete coping.

Three white flares burst over the central complex, a signal that the surviving mercenaries wanted to surrender. They were probably broadcasting on one of the general-purpose frequencies as well, but you couldn’t trust radio in a battle. Powerguns and drive fans both kicked out seas of RF trash, so even commands could be lost or distorted in the middle of a battle. A moment after the flares went up, four soldiers in mottled battledress came out of a smoldering barn with their hands in the air.

“Fox Three elements cease fire!” Huber ordered. He didn’t raise the muzzles of his tribarrel, but he took his hands off the grips. If some trooper got trigger happy now with those easy targets, it’d be the difference between peaceful surrender and a last-ditch defense that meant a lot more Slammers’ casualties before it was over. “Stop shooting now! Three-six out.”

Captain Sangrela was shouting much the same thing over the common task force push also, and Huber figured Lieutenant Mitzi Trogon echoed the words to her four D Company tanks. A power-gun snapped a single shot into the bright sky: an infantryman trying to put his weapon on safe while he steered his tiny skimmer had managed to shoot instead.