The Tank Lords(32)

"Going to use one of the newbies in Riddle's place?" he asked.

Cooter shook his head violently, as much to clear it as for a gesture. "Put the last one I could trust on One-five for a driver," he said. "I'll be better off watching that side myself than trusting some hick who's still got both thumbs up his ass."

"Take me, Cooter," said Chief Lavel.

Cooter looked at his friend with a cold lack of passion. Chief was so tall that he also had to duck to clear the ceiling. His shoulders were massive. Lavel had been thin when he was a whole man, but the inertia of his years of injury gave him a grotesque pot belly.

"Please, Coot," he said. "You won't regret it."

"I need you here, Chief," Cooter said as he turned. "You take care of Riddle, you hear?"

"Coot?"

"Gotta go now," Cooter muttered as he took both steps to the exterior with one stretch of his long, powerful legs.

The armored vehicles were snorting, running up the speed of their fans again; and, as Cooter strode toward Flamethrower, a tank fired its main gun skyward.

* * *

There were too bloody many vehicles in too little space, and the bloody drivers had too much on their minds.

A combat car was drifting toward Herman's Whore. The lighter vehicle was already so close that Ortnahme had to crank down his display to read the number stenciled on its skirts. "Tootsie One-two!" he snarled. "You're fouling—"

The tank lurched. For an instant, Ortnahme thought Simkins was trying to back away from the oncoming car. That wouldn't work, because Herman's Whore had rotated in place and her skirts were firmly against the berm.

"—us, you dickheaded—"

The man in the fighting compartment of Tootsie One-two turned, his face a ball of blank wonder as he stared at the tank looming above him. He was probably gabbling to his driver over the intercom, but there was no longer time to avoid the collision. The skirts of both vehicles were thick steel, but the combined mass would start seams for sure.

"—fool! Watch your—"

The bow of Herman's Whore lifted slightly. Simkins had run up his fans and vectored them forward. The tank couldn't slide backward because of the berm, so its bow skirts blasted a shrieking hurricane of air into the combat car.

Tootsie One-two, Flamethrower, pitched as though it had just dropped into a gully. The trooper in the fighting compartment bounced off the coaming before he could brace himself on the grips of two of the tribarrels.

Why in blazes was there only one man in the back of Flamethrower when the task force was set to move out?

The combat car slid two meters under the thrust of the tank's fans before Shorty Rogers dumped his own ground effect and sparked to a halt on bits of gravel in the soil.

The figure in the fighting compartment stood up again and gave Herman's Whore an ironic salute. "Blue Two," said Ortnahme's helmet. "Sorry 'bout that."

"Tootsie One-two," the warrant leader responded. He felt expansive and relieved, now that he was sure they wouldn't be deadlined at the last instant by a stupid mistake. "No harm done. It's prob'ly my bloody fault for not seeing your nacelles were aligned right when we had time to screw with 'em."

Herman's Whore settled, a little abruptly. Their skirts gave the ground a tap that rattled Ortnahme's teeth and probably cut a centimeter-deep oval in the hard soil.

"Simkins—" the warrant leader began, the word tripping the helmet's artificial intelligence to intercom mode.

"Sir, I'm sorry," his driver was already blurting. "I let the sucker—"

"Blood 'n martyrs, Simkins," Ortnahme interrupted, "don't worry about that! Where dja learn that little maneuver, anyhow?"

"Huh?" said the helmet. "Sir, it was just, you know, the leverage off the berm . . . ?"

He sounded like he thought Ortnahme was gonna chew his head off. Which had happened maybe a little too often in the past . . . but bloody hell, you had t' break 'em in the start. . . .

"Sir?" Simkins added in a little voice.

"Yeah?"

"Sir, I really like tanks. D'ye suppose that—"

"Like bloody hell!" the warrant leader snapped. "Look, kid, you're more good to me and Colonel Hammer right where you bloody are!"

"Yessir."

Which, come t' think about it, was driving a panzer. Well, there'd be time t' worry about that later.

Or there wouldn't.

The turret interior had darkened as the sky did, because the main screen was set on direct optical. Ortnahme frowned, then set the unit for progressive enhancement, projecting images at 60% of average daylight ambiance.

The visual display brightened suddenly, though the edges of the snarling armored vehicles lacked a little of the definition they would have had in unaided sunlight. No matter what the sky did—sun, moons, or the Second Coming—the main screen would continue to display at this apparent light level until Ortnahme changed its orders.