The Tank Lords(16)

He rose, pushing himself up with his arms. For a moment, his hands burned and there were icepicks in his neck and lower back.

Coolness spreading outward from his chest washed over the pain. There were colored tabs on the breast of the armor. Suilin had thought they were decorations, but the one Cooter had pulled was obviously releasing medication into Suilin's system.

Thank the Lord for that.

He picked up the grenade launcher and reloaded it. Shock, drugs, and the tiny bits of metal that winked when he moved his fingers made him clumsy, but he did it.

Like working against a deadline. Your editor didn't care why you hadn't filed on time; so you worked when you were hung over, when you had flu. . . .

When your father died before you had had time to clear things up with him. When your wife left you because you didn't care about her, only your cursed stories.

Dick Suilin raised his eyes and his ready weapon just as both the combat car and the immediate universe opened up with a breathtaking inferno of fire.

They'd reached the Headquarters of Camp Progress.

It was a three-story building at the southern end of the encampment. Nothing separated the pagoda-roofed structure from the berm except the camp's peripheral road. The berm here, like the hundred-meter square in front of the building, had been sodded and was manicured daily.

There were bodies sprawled on the grass. Suilin didn't have time to look at them, because lights flared in several ground-floor windows as Consies launched buzzbombs and ducked back.

The grenade launcher's dull report was lost in the blurred crackling of the three tribarrels, but the reporter knew he'd gotten his round away as fast as the veterans had theirs.

Unlike the rest of Camp Progress, the Headquarters building was a masonry structure. At least a dozen powerguns were raking the two lower floors. Though the stones spattered out pebbles and molten glass at every impact, the walls themselves held and continued to protect the Consies within them.

The grenade was a black dot against the window lighted by bolts from the powerguns. It sailed through the opening, detonated with a dirty flash, and flung a guerrilla's corpse momentarily into view.

The oncoming buzzbomb filled Suilin's forward vision. He saw it with impossible clarity, its bulbous head swelling on a thread of smoke that trailed back to the grenade-smashed room.

The close-in defense system went off, spewing miniature steel barrels into the path of the free-flight missile. They slashed through the warhead, destroying its integrity. When the buzzbomb hit the side of the combat car between the left and center gun positions, the fuze fired but the damaged booster charge did not.

The buzzbomb bounced from the armor with a bell sound, then skittered in tight circles around the grass until its rocket motor burned out.

Cooter's driver eased the vehicle forward, onto the lawn, at barely walking speed. The square was normally lighted after sunset, but all the poles had been shot away.

Dick Suilin had spent three days at or close to the Headquarters building while he gathered the bulk of his story. Clean-cut, professional members of the National Army, doing their jobs with quiet dedication—to contrast with ragged, brutal-looking mercenaries (many of whom were female!), who absorbed such a disproportionate share of the defense budget.

"Hey turtle!" Otski called. "Watch that—"

To either side of the grassed area were pairs of trailers, living quarters for Colonel Banyussuf and his favored staff. The one on the left end was assigned to Sergeant-Major Lee, the senior non-com at Camp Progress. Suilin was billeted with him. The door was swinging in the light breeze, and a dozen or so bulletholes dimpled the sidewall at waist height, but Suilin could at least hope he'd be able to recover his gear unharmed when this was over.

The car to their left fired a short burst at the trailer. The bolts blew the end apart, shattering the plywood panels and igniting the light metal sheathing. The reporter swore at the unnecessary destruction.

The air criss-crossed with machinegun bullets and the smoke trails of at least a dozen buzzbombs. All four of the silent trailers were nests of Consie gunners.

Suilin ducked below the car's armored side.

Bullets hit the iridium and rang louder than things that small could sound. The defense system, a different portion of the continuous strip, went off. The light reflected from the underside of the splinter shield was white and orange and cyan, and there was no room in the universe for more noise.

The reporter managed to raise himself, behind the muzzle of his grenade launcher, just in time to see Sergeant-Major Lee's trailer erupt in a violent explosion that showered the square with shrapnel and blew the trailer behind it off its slab foundation.

There was a glowing white spot on the armor of the combat car to Suilin's left. As he watched, the driver's hatch popped open and a man scrambled out. Another crewman rolled over the opposite sidewall of the fighting compartment.