Redliners(12)

The tank fired a dozen explosive shells into the truck, which shuddered on its suspension. Tires and upholstery began to burn. Rounds that missed burst among vehicles parked in the field beyond.

Leinsdorf drew Farrell down in a crouch at the corner of the warehouse. He was waiting for the shooting to stop before they darted across the open space. The tankers couldn't see a moving figure through the enveloping rainbow curtain, but Leinsdorf didn't want his major to run into a random shell.

Though Farrell knew he might as well. His plan wasn't going to work. The crew of this tank had seen two of their sister vehicles blasted by the strikers' plasma cannon. They weren't going to risk lowering their shield for even an instant, and not even Art Farrell could blame the pilot of the extraction vessel for refusing to land on top of a Kalendru tank.

No member of C41 was going to survive the operation.

— 4 —

"C'mon, Meyer, get your ass in gear!" Santini screamed. He was wearing a sweatband and a fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut to fringes, the way he did when he worked out in the weight room on board ship.

Esther Meyer opened her eyes. Had she been drinking? Her head buzzed and the whole universe was a rainbow blur.

"Move it, Meyer!" shouted Sergeant Bloch, gesturing her forward with a sweep of his arm. "We got a tank to take out!"

The rainbow was sunlight distorted through the magnetic shielding of a tank. Santini and Bloch were dead, so dead that she'd be breathing bits of them if it weren't for the hard suit's filters.

The tank moved no faster than a blind man walking. A rigid-walled plenum chamber enclosed the air cushion which supported the massive vehicle. Air blasting beneath the skirt's lip skidded Meyer an inch along the concrete, but the tank was going to miss her.

A salvo of 4-pound rockets spat from somewhere the other side of the slagged-down freighter in which C41 had inserted. The warheads twinkled harmlessly on the bow slope. The tank's secondary armament chugged a dozen explosive shells in reply, sending distorted images across the shield's filmy surface.

It'd take a fair-sized meteor to damage a tank's frontal armor with mechanical effect. If strikers were using personal rockets, it meant they didn't have anything better.

We've got a tank to take out.

That was a job for Heavy Weapons, and it looked like the call was for Striker Esther Meyer. Bloch and Santini might be willing to trade. . . .

Meyer rolled into the gutted transformer pit. The plan of action formed in her mind as her muscles acted. The tank didn't shoot at her. She was probably just a shadow through the shimmering distortion.

Darkness, brightening in a microsecond to a quivering ambience like the sun viewed from under water. The circuitry had amplified the apparent view through Meyer's visor. The tank's skirts danced no more than a finger's breadth above the field's surface. Her helmet enhanced to normal viewing levels the light coming through that crack, though objects' edges were slightly fuzzy.

Wind like a tornado's shearing boundary layer pounded Meyer, shaking and bruising her despite her hard suit. Her helmet suppressed as much of the noise as possible, but the low-frequency harmonics made all her muscles quiver.

Air pressurized by four fans supported the vehicle's hundred-plus tons. The forty inch high walls of the plenum chamber held the air in a resilient bubble, spreading the vehicle's weight evenly over the ground. The tank could glide over surfaces in which wheels or treads would have bogged.

The weight didn't go away, though. Meyer's hard suit kept air pressure from crushing her, but the fans' output ducts buffeted her like water from a millrace. Against it, she fought her way from the transformer pit to where she could look up into one of the fans. She still had the pair of 4-pound rockets hanging from her belt.

On the tank's upper surface the inlets to the drive motors were screened and baffled. The output duct into the plenum chamber was angled for protection from mines, but there was only one coarse grating downstream of the nacelle. Scrabbling forward to keep up with the tank's slow advance, Meyer pulled a rocket from her belt and twisted the cap to arm it. She aimed it up the duct, trying to keep the nose straight against the roaring, bone-shaking gale. Strike Force warheads didn't have arming-distance delays: risk was the striker's responsibility.

Ignition and the bang of the warhead blowing apart the grate were lost in the thunder of the fans. Bits of casing cracked against Meyer's armor. She didn't know if any fragments had penetrated.

Meyer armed the second rocket. It was getting harder to fight the wind. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to aim the rocket even the short distance to the nacelle. Her brain responded to crushing fatigue by pulsing waves of color across her vision.

She fired. For an instant she thought the blue glare was another trick of her mind. Her visor muted the light instantaneously. The fan duct was a tube of arcing electricity and reflections as the nacelle destroyed itself. The solid column of air that had rammed Meyer as she squatted in the duct had ceased.