The Tank Lords(27)

Chapter Five


Speedin' Steve Riddle sat by Platt's cot in the medical tent, listening to machines pump air in and out of his buddy's lungs.

And thinking.

They sat on the lowered tailgate of Platt's truck, staring at the sky and giggling occasionally at the display. At first there'd been only the lesser moon edging one horizon while the other horizon was saffron with the sunset.

Lights, flames . . . streaks of tracers that painted letters in the sky for the drug-heightened awareness of the two men. Neither Platt nor Riddle could read the words, but they knew whatever was being spelled was excruciatingly funny. . . .

"Speed," called Lieutenant Cooter, "get your ass back to the blower and start running the prelim checklist. We're moving out tonight."

"Wha . . . ?" Riddle blurted, jerking his head up like an ostrich surprised at a waterhole. He was rapidly going bald. To make up for it, he'd grown a luxuriant moustache that fluffed when he spoke or exhaled.

"Don't give me any lip, you stupid bastard!" Cooter snapped, though Speed's response had been logy rather than argumentative. "If I didn't need you bad, you'd be findin' your own ticket back to whatever cesspit you call home."

"Hey, El-Tee!" Otski called, sitting up on his cot despite the gentle efforts of Shorty Rogers to keep him flat. "How they hangin', Cooter-baby?"

He waggled his stump.

"Come on, Otski," Rogers said. Shorty was Flamethrower's driver and probably the best medic in the guard detachment as well as being a crewmate of the wounded man. "Just take it easy or I'll have to raise your dosage, and then it won't feel so good. All right?"

The medicomp metered Platt's breathing, in and out.

"Hey, lookit," Otski burbled, fluttering his stump again though he permitted Shorty to lower him back to the cot.

An air injector spat briefly, but the gunner's voice continued for a moment. "Lookit it when I wave, Cooter. I'm gonna get a flag. Whole bunch flags, stick 'em in there 'n wave 'n wave. . . ."

"Shorty, you're gonna have to get back to the car too," Cooter said. "We'll turn 'em over to the Logistics staff until they can be lifted out to a permanent facility."

"Cop! None a' the Logistics people here'd know—"

Riddle thought:

The parts shed bulged around a puff of orange flame. The shockwave threw Riddle and Platt flat on the sloping tailgate; they struggled to sit up again. It was hilarious.

The Consie sapper rose from his crouch, silhouetted by the flaming shed he'd just bombed. He carried a machinepistol in a harness of looped rope, so that the weapon swung at waist height. His right hand snatched at the grip.

"Lookie, Speed!" Platt cackled. "He's just as bald as you are! Lookie!"

"Lookie!" Riddle called. He threw up his arms and fell backward with the effort.

The machinepistol crackled like the main truss of a house giving way. Its tracers were bright orange, lovely orange, as they drew spirals from the muzzle. One of them ricocheted around the interior of the truck box, dazzling Riddle with its howling beauty. He sat up again.

"Beauty!" he cried. Platt was thrashing on his back. Air bubbled through the holes in his chest.

The machinepistol pointed at Riddle. Nothing happened. The sapper cursed and slapped a magazine into the butt-well to replace the one that had ejected automatically when the previous burst emptied it.

The Consie's body flung itself sideways, wrapped in cyan light as a powergun from one of the combat cars raked him. The fresh magazine exploded. A few tracers zipped crazily out of the flashing yellow ball of detonating propellant.

"Beauty," Steve Riddle repeated as he fell backward.

Platt's chest wheezed.

"—a medicomp when it bit 'em on the ass!"

Air from the medicomp wheezed in and out of Platt's nostrils.

"Screw you!" called a supply tech with shrapnel wounds in his upper body.

"Then get 'em over to the Yokel side!" Cooter said. "They got facilities. Look, I'm not lookin' for an argument: we're movin' out at sunset, and none of my able-bodied crew are stayin' to bloody screw around here. All right?"

"Yeah, all right. One a the newbies had some training back home, he says." Rogers stood up and gave a pat to the sleeping Otski. "Hey, how long we gonna be out?"

"Don't bloody ask," Cooter grunted bitterly. "Denzil, where's your driver?"

The left wing gunner from Sergeant Wylde's blower turned his head—all the motion of which he was capable the way he was wrapped. "Strathclyde?" he said. His voice sounded all right. The medicomp kept his coverings flushed and cool with a bath of nutrient fluid. "Check over to One-one. He's got a buddy there."