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Part 4:
Harasaw,
Jacobs Rest
Fed-Suns
Harasaw was burning. The cone shape of it was a ruddy glow on the darkening eastern horizon, matching the huge copper disk of the setting sun in the west. Even at this distance the firestorm gave a smoky taste to the wind, a hint of that sulfur-tinged darkness, the taste of death. The flicker and rumble of artillery was feint, no louder than the hiss of grain stalks against the steel flanks of the Blake armor hull-down on the low crest overlooking the village. Four dozen of them, squat massive shapes in mottled green-yellow camouflage paint with the mailed-fist symbol of the Blake's Own Guard, a Level IV sized unit, stenciled on their bows. Their engines thrummed, the roar of free-piston gas generators blending with the power-turbine's hum. Air quivered over the exhaust-baffles on their rear decks, and the whip-antennae swayed erratically in the breeze.
Blake take the heat, Adept Nyla Hornen thought, and rubbed a gloved hand over the wet skin of her neck. She glanced back over the rear of the command tank, through the narrow gap left by the hatch cover poised over her head like a mushroom steel-cap.
Behind them tracks stretched two kilometers south to the wood-line, where the unit had last paused. Wide parallel stripes where the treads had mushed wheat grain and stalk into the ground, arcs and circles across the rolling plain showing where the fighting vehicles had maneuvered. Ten minutes of combat, and the taste of it was still in her mouth, salt and iron and copper, acid in the stomach, ache in the muscles of neck and back, the trembling of limbs. Training helped, zen-breathing and muscle control, the simple knowledge that the job had to be done whatever the state of your emotions… and still, every time, you knew a little something was gone. A little of whatever it was that kept you functioning; while you waited for the armor to buckle under the brute impact of an antitank shell and send metal spallings flying like supersonic buzzsaws, for the millisecond flame of exploding ammunition, for the slower trickle of burning fuel as you hammered at a jammed hatch. You survived, and lost a little of yourself from within, and knew that one day if you kept coming the well would be dry…she knew this and yet she could not let it effect her.
The mercenary armor was scattered back there among the ruined corn, burning with the sullen flicker of diesel oil in circles of blackened straw, or frozen with only the narrow entry hole of a tungsten-carbide penetration arrow to show reason for immobility. The pakfront, borrowing a term she had picked in the command and staff school so long ago on Gibson, of the unbelievers antitank guns had been dug in along the crest of this….not really a ridge, more a gentle swelling.
The Adept shook her head; they were expecting to lie low as their armor pulled back past them to the village, then hit the Blake tanks as they pursued, no doubt. A good trick, but one she had met before; the unbelievers were like that, fine tacticians but a little inflexible. Artillery to suppress the antitank, then a slow advance to force their armor to engage at ranges where Blake APDS shot would punch through the unbelievers tanks the long way. Bodies lay hidden in the tall grain or draped around shattered armored personnel carriers; her infantry had hunted them down from the turrets and firing-ports of their armored personnel carriers. Two Blake Banesword III's remained; victims of shells fired point-blank through the thinner armor of flank and rear, the blanket-shrouded corpses of their crews showing victory could kill you as finally as defeat.
Moisture trickled out of the sodden lining of the communications helmet as Nyla turned from the wreckage to her rear and made a slow scan of the wheat field ahead. The thick armor of a Banesword soaked up heat like a sponge under direct sunlight. There was a lot of that in the heat of summer, and she would swear firing the main gun racked up another five degrees with every round. The ventilation fans continued their losing battle; the Belle had been buttoned up for more than ten hours, in the line for over a month with scant time for anything but essential maintenance. The inside of the tank was heavy with the smells: lubricant, burnt propellant and scorched metal, old sweat; an empty shell-casing off in one corner of the turret-basket was half full of urine with a couple of used menstrual pads floating in it… She ignored it, as she ignored the salt-itch of her unwashed uniform and the furry texture of her teeth and the ground-glass feeling under eyelids from too little sleep and too much exposure to abrasive fumes. The long hard feeling of being in combat.
It could always be worse, she mused, glancing down at the swivel-mounted map tray on the left arm of her reclining seat, past it into the white-painted gloom of the tank's interior. There was not much open space; the huge breech and recoil-mechanism of the main cannon cut the turret's interior nearly in half, flanked on either side by the coaxial pulse laser and grenade launcher. Dials, gauges/screens and armored conduits snaked over every surface; the gunner lay to the right of her weapon, nearly prone on a crash couch that raised her head just enough to meet the padded sights. Behind the gunner's head was the sliding armor plate door that blocked off the ammunition stored in the turret bustle, ready to the hand of the loader on his swivel-seat below.
Economy of space was the formal term; it took considerable training to move even in a stationary tank without bruising yourself, and there was barely enough open space to tape snapshots of her husband and children below the vision blocks of the commander's cupola. Still, better than the infantry…
Could be much worse; WE could be using that crused nerve gas again. Which would mean everybody into those damned cursed rubber monkey suits, and that would mean casualties from heat-exhaustion, even among Blake's Blessed Own. She rapped the heel of one hand against the pressure plate beneath the vision-blocks, and the hatch cover snapped upright with a sough of hydraulics. The lift-brace-step motion that left her standing on the turret deck with boots astride the hatch was nearly as unconscious as walking, after two years in the field. Wind blew into her face as she raised the field glasses, warm and dry, dusty and much, much cleaner than the air in the tank; the sodden fabric of her overalls turned cool as the moving air let sweat evaporate.
Still alive, she thought. On a fine summer's day, in the odd alien beauty of the twilight, like a world seen through amber honey and soft golden light; and it was good to feel the faint living quiver in the sixty-ton bulk beneath the soles of her feet.
Reliable old bitch, she thought affectionately. The Belle had carried her a long way since the landings on Jacobs' Rest. North from the Davenport landing zone, over the Don, west across the area the locals called Kevinite, through the murderous seesaw winter battles around Lwow. It was a long fight wherever the command staff thought the Blake's Own was needed… Eighteen months, a long lifetime for a tank, even counting weeks in the Level IV's repair-shops and a complete rebuild; there were scars and gouges on the sloped plates of the armor, two dozen victory-rings on the thermal cover of the long 120mm Gauss cannon, a Fed-Rat skull still wearing its helmet on a spike welded to the fume extractor.
The reverse slope to the village was gentle; this part of the Vistula valley was water-smoothed, sandy alluvial loam. Ripe wheat, a big field of it, fifty or sixty hectares, bordered by a row of poplars; more of those lining the country road or serving as field-boundaries beyond. The grain was overripe, gold turning brown in spots and the overburdened stalks falling in swales, and the field was scattered with wildflowers and thistles.
Damned waste, a corner of her mind noted. Lost if it isn't harvested soon. Three thousand meters to the north a white dirt road crossed the river, a single stone bridge with steel reinforced, that wound tree-bordered through the dry amber colored summer landscape, and the junction had spawned a straggling farm-town, the kind that had given them trouble before and would likely again as they fought to keep this damned world. Trees, unpaved streets lined with fences and gardens and whitewashed log homes, barns, a few brick structures around the flamboyantly painted stone church, snorting she knew that would be the last place anyone would be right now. Past it….heat haze and dust cut visibility, so did the long shadows of evening; woodlot, could be a manor house, hedges and gardens. Beyond were more fields, patches of forest, vanishing northward into the dusty horizon.
Hmmmm, question is, was that half-hard feint their idea of a rearguard, or is there more in the village?, Nyla pondered, this was a question she needed answers to. Orders were to consolidate once she met solid resistance. Then the Level III motorized infantry would pass through and establish a perimeter; the Level III soldiers were good enough at positional warfare, and the Level IVs were supposed to save themselves for shock and pursuit. It was a big war, too big to be won in a single rush; you got weaker as you advanced away from your bases, and the enemy stronger as they fell back on theirs. The mercenaries had been soundly beaten east of the Raizal, but they had withdrawn in good order, their mechanized forces screening the foot-infantry's retreat; von Mehr, the commander of AMC Group Center, was a master at luring an attacker to overextend and then catching him with a backhand stroke. It was time to halt, refit, and bring up supplies for the next leap and rest before the next round.
It never paid to underestimate the mercs tactically, either; they tended to fight by the book, but the one they used was excellent since they kept re-writing it, and there could be anything ahead. Nyla tapped a meditative thumb against her lower lip, and then returned attention to the hum and crackle of voices in her ears; habit strained it out, unless her call-sign came through. She keyed the intercom circuit:
"Call to Skyguy, Sparks (her comtech)," she said. A click, a warble, then the sound of an airplane engine.
"Check, Groundpound to Skyguy, that's negative on movement, over."
"Affirm'tive, Groundpound. Nary nothin' but dead cows an' that-there wrecked convoy I spotted earlier today, over."
And the convoy had been moving away from here, northwest toward the merc hedgehog around Chelmena, when the ground-strike aircraft caught them.
Worth it, she decided. Plaster the village with HE, cut in with a pincers movement, then halt. The low ground along the river would make a good stop zone. Damn, I wish I wasn't so tired, ran through her. Hard to make proper decisions when body and mind and soul together whined for rest; harder still when the lives of friends and comrades depended on it. No tremendous hurry, she reminded herself. The village looked deserted, no human movement at all, which meant everyone there had already gone to ground. She blinked again, fascinated for a moment by the quality of the light, the wash of a… faded gold? Bright, but aged somehow, as if the view had been worn down by the impression of too many eyes. Tired light.
Back to the work of the season, she thought. No point in getting too fancy, but just in case…hitting the send button on the microphone "Command circuit," she said. That would cut into the headphones of all her officers. "Orders mark." She flicked up the mapboard hanging from her waist, glanced at it, sideways at the turret less observation tank with its forest of antennae and episcopes; they would be in constant touch with the fire-support level-two. "Level II Alpha…" she began.
The village was thick with smoke, smoke from burning thatch and chemical mist from the 180mm mortars; high-explosive rounds were mixed in, shrapnel, cluster rounds full of miniature antipersonnel bombs that spread and bounced and exploded to mix their shards of notched steel wire into the lethal stew of the air. The ground quivered under the bombardment, shook from the hundreds of tons of tread-mounted metal moving through the lane ways, cast itself up as dust and fragments; the sounds of lesser weapons were a counterpoint, machine-gun chatter and the ripping-canvas sounds of grenade launchers spewing out their belts of 40mm bomblets.
The explosions were continuous overhead, seven rounds a second from the Flail Mk IVs automortars, 40 ton tracked vehicles with a heavy mortar on a hydraulic lift allowing for enough protection and still able to have good fire-support, four kilometers to the south. Their proximity fuses blew them at an even six meters above the ground, the rending crang of explosive and overpressure thumping like a drum against the sternum. Nyla kept her mouth open to spare her eardrums and ignored the occasional sandblast rattle of fragments against the armor of the Belle; the odds of something dangerous flicking through the narrow gap between the turret deck and the hatch cover over her head were too small to be worth the effort of worry. Besides, if you let yourself think of danger in a situation where it was everywhere and inescapable, you froze. And that was dangerous she noted with a sigh given how worn out she was feeling.
The Blake fighting vehicles ground down the street in line, tanks and personnel carriers alternating; a fairly wide street, mud mixed with cobbles—more mud than cobbles, and those disappeared under the treads with a tooth-grating shriek-like squeal of metal on stone. Nyla kept her eyes moving constantly, probing the dense gray-white mist for movement; anybody waiting with a buzzbomb was going to have to stay under cover until the last minute, or be scythed down by the mortar rounds; and at ground level, their visibility would be even worse than hers. The Belle had a round of wasp up the spout of the main gun, like a giant shotgun shell loaded with steel darts, but the twin-barrel small pulse laser in its servo-controlled armored pod beside her hatch was better for this work.
Flickers, adrenaline-hopping vision, presenting each glimpse as a separate freeze-frame. Roof collapsing inwards, sparks and floating burning straw. A crippled pig, shrilling loud enough to hear as a tread ground it into a waffle of meat and mud. A square of ground biting and spilling dirt off the board cover of a concealed foxhole, a man coming erect, blond hair and gray uniform and white-rimmed eyes stark against dirt-black face.
And the tube of a rocket-launcher over his shoulder. "Target, six o'clock, Infantry with buzzbombs," she rasped, her voice too hoarse to carry emotion. Her hand was twisting at the pistol-grips on the arms of her seat, and the twin-barrel pivoted whining above her head; she walked the burst toward him, the heavy 20mm slugs blasting fist-sized craters in the mud. Too slow, too slow, she was close enough to see his hand clenching on the release…..
CRACK.
The main gun fired, and sight vanished for a second in the flash. The whole weight of the tank rocked back on its suspension as the trunions and hydraulics transmitted the huge muzzle-horsepower of the cannon's recoil through mantel and hull. There was a whining buzz as the flechette rounds left the barrel, like their namesake wasp magnified a thousand times. The merc infantryman vanished, caught by sheer chance within the dispersal cone. Not ten meters from the muzzle, blast alone would have killed him; the long finned spikes left nothing but chewed stumps of legs falling in opposite directions, and hardly even a smear on the riddled wood behind him, a circle of thick log wall turned to a crumbling honeycomb by the passage of the darts.
The rocket had already been launched. Deflected, it caromed off the slope of the sow-snout mantlet that surrounded the tank's cannon, the long jet of flame and copper reduced to plasma gouging a crackling red trough along the side of the turret rather than spearing through the armor. The blue-white spike hung in afterimage before her eyes, blinking in front of the sullen red of the wounded metal.
That was a brave man, she thought. A brave man who had come within half a second of trading five Blakist lives for his own. Odd, fear really does feel like a cold draft as if death is hover'n near. A flush like fever on the face and shoulders and neck, tightness across the eyes, then cold along the upper spine. Deliberately, she suppressed the memory of burn victims, of calcinated bone showing through charred flesh, and equipment melted onto human skin, the burnt pork like smell. No practical thickness of steel could stop a square hit from a shaped-charge warhead.
"Nice," she said over the intercom, forcing an overtight rectum to relax.
"That there iron was just pointin' right," the gunner drawled.
"Load—" Nyla began.
"[crap] [crap]!" The voice came tinny through her earphones, override from Level II Alpha's commander back on the ridge. "There's somethin' still firin' from in theah, and whatevah it is, still goin' too fast over my head! Permission to return fire on the muzzle flash."
"—load APDS," she continued on the intercom circuit, and switched to broadcast. "Permission denied." That would be all they needed, a hail of armor-piercing shot at extreme range from their own guns. Below her came multiple chunk-clank sounds: she glanced down to see the round slide into the breech, a two-inch core of copper-tipped tungsten carbide, wrapped in the circular aluminum sabot. "Sparks, general override circuit. " She heard the radiotech's voice calling for attention, and spoke into the hissing silence.
"Groundpound talkin'. Support battery, cease fire." Silence, as the noise dropped below the level she could hear through ears ringing with blast and muffled by the headset. She looked to either side, at the burning log huts; down the empty curving road that lead to the straggling green along the river and the only substantial buildings in this shithole of a town. Mist curled, patchy as it caught the gathering evening wind, touched with gold in the long slanting rays of a northern-hemisphere twilight.
"Everyone in the village, back yourselves into some cover. Adept Aroche," she continued. Nyla had brought a Level II worth of mechanized infantry with her; four Tetrarchies, a little over a hundred troopers at full strength.
"Yo, ma'am?"
"Johnny, un-ass your beasts and scout the square. Look-see only, I think there's something big, mean an' clumsy there."
There was a series of muffled thungs as the powered rear ramps of the personnel carriers went down, and she could see helmets bobbing into the fog. Only six from the Hoplite behind the Belle, when there should have been eight; every unit in the Level III was under strength, casualties coming in faster than replacements… She reached down and flicked a cigarette out of the carton in the rack beside her seat, lit, drew the warm comfort into her lungs. There had been very little in the village by way of resistance, probably no time for the mercs commander to set it up. Whatever was firing at Alpha up on the ridge had been left behind, waiting for her to advance downslope, and had been unable to reorient enough to engage the Guard's tanks as they came in from each flank under cover of smoke.
A Jagdpanzer, again she was using terms learned at the war college, then, a limited-traverse antitank gun in the bow of a turretless tank. They were less flexible than a real tank but well suited to defensive action and much easier to manufacture, a quick cheap way to get a heavy well-protected gun onto the battlefield. This was probably one of the bigger ones, a waddling 70-ton underpowered monster mounting a modified anti-tank gun.
A typical unbelievers improvisation. She snorted smoke and patted the armor of the Belle lovingly; at least the Word Of Blake, Blessed Be His Name, had taken the time to get this design right.
"Johnny here," the infantry officer's voice replied.
"Yo." She snapped alert and flicked the cigarette out between hatch and turret. An infantry backpack radio, you could tell because the receiver let through more background noise than the shielded microphone of a CVC (combat vehicle crew) helmet.
"Got as close's Ah could. There was lookouts, we's went in and took 'em out quiet. Three big buildin's in a row, north side over from the church, look-so maybe brick warehouses; rooflines out off the view of the ridge we jumped off from. Holes in the walls, treadmarks comin' back to a common point from all three; whatever it is, it heavy. Big smeared place where the tracks meet."
"Good. Pull back now, meet me here."
Nyla pinched thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose, concentrating. An VNL-K70 modified for sure, the only merc vehicle with firepower and protection in the same class as a Banesword III, but limited by the lack of a rotating turret, painfully slow, even more painfully difficult to turn in tight quarters. The three buildings formed the base of a triangle, covered fire positions commanding the open country south of the village. By backing out to the triangle's apex the Jagdpanzer could switch quickly without having to do more than a quarter-turn; her respect for the probably deceased commander of the certainly defunct mercenary battalion increased. He had had the sense to use the VNL-K70C as a self-propelled antitank gun, rather than as a fighting vehicle, which its designers had intended it to be and which it most manifestly was not. If she had simply blasted through the first line of antitank guns up on the ridge and come straight down the hill, there would have been a very nasty surprise waiting.
Now, what would the VNL-K70C commander do? Run away, as Blake, again Bless His Name, said any rational army would, she thought wryly.
That was easier said than done, though, in something that could do maybe forty kph on a good level road; also, their back was to a soft-bottomed river. That was a problem Nyla Hornen could empathize with wholeheartedly; the Banesword III had range, it had speed, it had broad tracks and a good suspension that let it cover any ground firm enough to hold a footsoldier's boots, but the only bridges that could carry it safely were major rail links or the Word's own Combat-Engineer units. The VNL-K70C would be even more of a pain to move any distance, and across a soft-bottomed riverbed…There had been a lot of rivers to cross, coming west.
Better to catch him while Alpha back on the ridge kept his attention; that Jagdpanzer was nothing to meet head-on at point-blank range in one of these lane ways. She looked up again, whistling soundlessly between her teeth and wishing she had not thrown away the cigarette, wishing the Belle was not best placed, less than two hundred meters from the church. Not that anyone would doubt her courage if she sent someone else: a coward would not have achieved her rank; the Blakist had a firm unwritten tradition of seeing that such did not live long enough to breed and weaken the Order. The trouble was that they had an equally firm tradition of leading from the front…
The infantry Level I came trotting back up the lane way, keeping to the side beside the fence with his comtech at his heels; he bounced up onto the glacis plate of the Belle without breaking stride and vaulted to the turret with a hand on the cannon. Nyla popped the hatch to vertical and handed him a cigarette. "Don't suppose yo' could tell which of those three buildin's the Jagdpanzers in now?"
"Not without we send in a lochos'r two, or they move position, Nyla." He puffed meditatively. "Could try an' get a rocket gun team in close, likely to cost, though." A grin. "Prefer to let yo' turtles butt heads with it. Fuckin' nightmare, eh?"
"Isn't it always," she replied with a sour smile. Adept John Aroche was two years younger than her twenty-five, but he no longer looked like a young man. Not just the weathering and ground-in oily dirt and caked dust; there was something, a look about the eyes, a weariness that no amount of rest could ever completely erase. A familiar look; Seeing it in the mirror more than I like, lately.
By the Scared Word of Blake's Blessed Wisdom, were we ever that young? she thought briefly. The infantry officer lit another cigarette from his and handed it back to his radio-operator; the comtech followed him to the turret deck, a short dark-haired woman careful to keep the set within arm's reach of her commander.
"Ride me in, Johnny," Nyla said. "As near to the brick buildings as you can"—that would give her a chance to take the Jagdpanzer with a flank shot as it backed out—"and I'd like to be inconspicuous." Which was difficult if you knocked down houses. "But don't forget to dodge out when we get there."
He snorted laughter and rang the back of his hand against the turret. "Surely will," he said. "These movin' foxholes attract the eye."
She touched the microphone before her mouth. "Sparks, command circuit." A click. "Noise, everybody; rev the engines and move in place." Another click. "Sammie, yo' take the western approach to the square behind the buildings. McLean, yo're north, we'll all three go in together, that ways somebody should get a good flankin' shot."
"Groundpound to Alpha," Nyla whispered, and cursed herself for the tone; nobody was going to hear a voice over the racket. The Belle was only one house away from the green, a house whose caved-in thatch was still smoldering; the VNL-K70C would be there, under cover, still facing south for its inconclusive duel with the tanks of Alpha, hull-down on the ridge… Three Blakist tanks would advance into the square where they could pound the mercenaries vehicle cover or no; hers from the east, two more from north and west, any more and there would be too much chance of a shot going astray. Point-blank range, no place to be on the wrong end of a Banesword's 120mm Gauss rifle.
"He's in the center buildin'; commence firin', HE," she continued in a normal speaking tone. The Level II worth of tanks back on the ridge to the south opened up; she could hear the whirring crash of high-explosive shot bursting along the fringe of the village. Her teeth clenched; now she would have to move, out into the open… Almighty BLAKE!, but I don't want to do this, she thought. Not fear, so much as sheer weariness and distaste. The pictures of her children caught her eye, there down below the vision-blocks. both in their school tunics, Marie with her red-haired cuddle with a mask of sun-bred freckles across her face, Tommie tanned dark under his butter-yellow curls; she had promised them she would come back.
I'll have to kill every living thing between here and the center of the galaxy to do it, she thought grimly, took a long breath and spoke:
"Sammie, Mac! Now!"
The engine howled behind her, and she felt the tank lurch as the driver engaged the gearing, rocking her shoulders back against the padded rear surface of the hatch. The Belle accelerated smoothly, then slammed into the thick log wall, the bow rising as the tread-cleats bit and tried to climb the vertical surface. Her braced hands, which kept her from flinging forward as sixty tons of moving steel clawed at the wood, and it gave with a rending, crackling snap. The tank lurched again, rocking from side to side as the torsion bars of the suspension adjusted to the uneven surface. A brief glimpse of tables and beds vanishing beneath tumbled logs, and a shuddering whump as the surface caved in a few feet; a clash of gearing and the engine snarled again, a deeper sound under the turbine's whine.
The front wall burst out from the Belle's prow in a shower of fragments, and she ducked her head as a last surf of broken wood came tumbling and rattling up the glacis plate and over the turret. Splinters caught on the shoulders of her uniform. The tank pivoted left and south, the turret moving faster than the treads could turn the hull; to the north and west the other two Baneswords were grinding into the churned mud of the square. The muzzles of their cannon moved like the heads of blind serpents, hunting for prey. Nyla scanned the center building: that had to be it. Two stories of brick, square windows, a gaping hole where the main door had to have been. The roof had settled, sagging in the middle; but it was the entrance that mattered, there where the trackmarks emerged. Nothing, and—
An explosion. Not loud, a sharp cracking from the northern edge. Her head turned: the center tank of the trio had lost a track. It pivoted wildly, the intact loop of metal pushing it in a circle as the broken tread flopped to lie like a giant metal watchband on the mud, curling and settling as gravity and tension unlooped it.
"Shitfire, mines! McLean, bail out! Sammi, back under cover." [crap], [crap], they must've turned the Jagdpanzer around to face north; the donkeyfuckers out thought me! Nyla's mind ran through a brief litany of disgust as the Belle slammed to a too-swift halt, nosed down and rocked back. The engine bellowed, and the driver reversed along their own tracks with careful haste; it did not take a large charge to snap a tread, and a stationary tank was a deathtrap.
McLean's Jenniesue's Sweetheart stopped, and the hatches opened. "Coverin" fire," Nyla rasped. Two dozen automatic weapons opened up on the buildings across the square and the whole facade erupted in dust and chips and sparks, slugs punching holes through the brick and gnawing at the wall, like a time-lapse film of erosion at work. Then the infantry weapons, assault rifles and the white-fire streaks of rocket guns. From the ridge south of town came a multiple whirrrrrcrack as the reserve-Level II opened up with high-explosive shell, most falling well short. Then a shadow moved within the black openings of the building, a long horizontal shadow tipped with the bulky oblong of a double-baffle muzzle brake.
"Sue, can you take him?" Nyla asked, voice carefully controlled. Somebody else was trying; she could see the cannon of a Banesword moving, then the flare and crack.
"Mought." McLean's crew were crawling back into the shadow of their crippled vehicle, two of them dragging a third. "Tricky." The main gun moved in its gyro-controlled cradle, a feint humming whine as the mantlet moved, the breech riding up smoothly.
The Belle's commander slitted her eyes against the flash of the main gun. There was a metal-on-metal sparking from the darkness where the VNL-K70C waited, a high brief screech of steel deforming under the impact of tungsten traveling at thousands of feet per second.
Nyla opened her mouth to speak, but before the words passed her throat there was another crash; louder than the Blakist tank-cannon, less sharp, a lower-velocity weapon. But the mercs' antitank round was still moving fast enough when it struck the Jamiee's Sweetheart at the junction of turret and hull. The Blakist tank lurched, and the turret's massive twenty-ton weight flipped backward like a frying pan. Nyla watched with an angry foreknowledge as it dropped straight down on the two crewmen hauling the wounded driver. A leg was left sticking out from under the heavy steel, and it twitched half a dozen times with galvanic lifelessness.
"ALPHA!" she barked. "Target the center building an' knock it down, HE only. Everybody here in the village who's got a vantage, load APDS an' stay undah cover." The VNL-K70C would have to come out sometime, or be buried under rubble. Thick armor on the front, heavily sloped, good protection; too good, as long as it had cover. Out in the open… Just a stay of execution, unbeliever just a stay of execution, she thought grimly.
Acolyte Seena saluted as she came up to the Belle. Nyla had been leaning back against the scarred side-skirts of the tank, looking with sour satisfaction at the burning hulk of the mercenary Jagdpanzer; she came erect and returned the salute. Seena was like that, a long-service regular. Forty, old enough to have started her military service back before the schism that split Blake's Blessed Order in two; green eyes in a leather-tanned face, a close-cropped cap of grey-short shone black hair.
"Ten fatalities altogether since morning roll call, Adept," the NCO said, in a faintly sing-song accent. Srinagar region, Nyla remembered "Fifteen wounded seriously enough for evacuation. Three tanks and two APC's are write-offs…"
The Adept cursed. Seena shrugged.
"We took out better than two hundred of them," she added. "A complete armored battalion."
"The usual odds and sods?" Nyla asked.
"Mixed group, accordin' to the prisoners; bits and pieces from here and there." Nyla nodded; the battles that broke the AMC's Army Group Center east of the Vistula had left shattered units scattered over hundreds of kilometers, and far too many had made it back to the mercenaries lines through the Word's overstretched forces.
"Put in to hold us up whiles they pulled they infantry and armor back," Seena continued. "Oh, Adept, about those prisoners?"
Nyla paused, clenched the fingertips of her right glove between her teeth and stripped the thin leather off. The sun was still throwing implausible veils of salmon-pink to the west, and the breeze was cool on the wet skin of her hand. She removed the other glove, slapped them into a palm, looked at the enemy fighting-vehicle half-buried in the ruins of the building her guns had brought down on top of it. The saw-toothed welds had come apart along their seams, and the six-inch thickness of armor plate was twisted and ripped like sheet-wax. Melted fat had pooled under the shattered chassis, congealing now with a smell like rancid lard.
"How many?" she asked.
"'Bout fifty, mostly wounded hav' of which ain't gonna mak' it."
"Hmmmm." Nyla looked again at the wreck of the Jenniesue's Sweetheart. Then again… "They fought well, hereabouts. We'll have to keep two or three fo' the headhunters; yo' pick 'em. Give the rest a pill, do it quick." Militia slang for a bullet in the back of the neck, and utter mercy compared to the attentions of ROM's interrogators. She tucked the gloves into her belt, yawned, continued on addressing the Acolyte.
"HQ's word is to get out of the way, we're to freeze in place; the VIIth is movin' up into the line north of us, an' the mercenaries are still tryin' to break contact."
"We're goin' to let them?" The acolyte inquired
" 'Bout dams' time. Blake's Holy [crap] we's should've done bettah today; the troops are tired an' they need rest. Remembah, we've got to win the war, not just beat the mercs, a victory yo' destroys yo'self to get is a defeat. Anyways, that fo' high command to decide. Meantime, we set up a perimeter an' wait until they can spare transport to pull us back, minimal support till then. Prob'ly refit 'round Rublin, they've got the mag-rail/road net workin' that far west by now."
She yawned again, nodded toward the little stream that ran behind the churchyard half a kilometer north.
"Call TOE support, get the scissors forward." That was their bridging equipment, a hydraulic folding span on a tank chassis. "We'll laager on that-there clear spot just north of the river, less likely to be unpleasant surprises waitin'. Standard perimeter, no slackin' on the slit trenches."
She sighed as the troops moved to being digging in, going to be a long fight and she wanted to make it home, to see her children again, her husband and nothing was going to stop that.
_________________ Karagin-
Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier
[url] http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]
The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!
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