The nameless tank swept past flaming heaps of food, bedding, and material. Ammunition burned in harmless corkscrews through the sky and an occasional ping on the armor.
More shells from Camp Progress howled overhead and detonated, six of them almost simultaneously this time. A curtain of white fire cloaked the siegelines as hundreds of anti-personnel bomblets combed crevices to lick Consie blood.
The leading vehicles, Deathdealer and two combat cars, had slowed deliberately to let the salvo land. Holman matched her tank's attitude to the slope and drew ahead with the inertia she'd built on the downgrade. She spun the nameless tank with unexpected delicacy around the shell crater gaping at the hillcrest.
The artillery had flung dozens of bodies and bodyparts out of eviscerated bunkers. Holman slowed to a crawl so that Wager could pick his targets on the reverse slope.
Men in black uniforms were climbing or crawling from trenches which shells had turned into abattoirs. Wager ignored them. His AI highlighted the firing slits of bunkers which the shells had spared.
Every time his pipper settled, his foot trod out another 20cm bolt.
Jets of plasma from powerguns traveled in a straight line and liberated all their energy on the first solid object they touched. Wager's bolts couldn't penetrate the earth the way armor-piercing projectiles did—but their cyan touch could shake apart hillsides in sprays of volcanic glass.
The interior of a bunker when a megajoule of plasma spurted through the opening was indescribable Hell.
Deathdealer pulled over the crest a hundred meters to the left of Wager's tank. Its main gun spat bolts at the pace of a woodpecker hammering. Sparrow's experience permitted him to fire in a smooth motion, again and again, without any pause greater than that of his turret rotating to bear on the next target.
La Reole sprawled half a kilometer away. The nearest buildings had been shattered by shellfire and the first flush of hand-to-hand fighting before the Consies retreated to lick their wounds and blast the Yokel garrison into submission.
Smoke lifted from a dozen points within the town. A saffron hint of dawn gaped on hundreds of holes in the tile roofs.
An amphibious landing vehicle pulled down from the protection of a courtyard in the town and opened fire with its machinegun. Consies emerging from a shell-ravaged bunker stumbled and fell. Wager remembered the Yokels had a Marine Training Unit here at la Reole. . . .
The tank's turret was thick with fumes. Wager breathed through filters, though he didn't remember them clamping down across his mouth and nose.
He stamped on the firing pedal. The gun wheezed instead of firing: he'd shot off the entire thirty-round basic load, and the tank had to cycle more main gun ammunition from storage deep in the hull.
There weren't any worthwhile targets anyway. Every slit that might have concealed a cannon or powergun was a glowing crater. Streaks of turf smoldered where bolts had ripped them.
Deathdealer was advancing again. The muzzle of its main gun glowed white.
"Sarge, should I . . . ?" Wager's intercom demanded.
"Go, go!" he snapped back. "And Via! be careful with the bridge!"
He hoped the Yokels would have sense enough not to shoot at them. For the moment, that seemed like the worst danger.
Three more shells from Camp Progress screamed overhead.
The howitzer still rocked with the sky-tearing echoes of its twelfth round. Chief Lavel was laughing. Only when he turned and met Craige's horrified eyes did he realize that he wasn't alone in the crew compartment.
Craige massaged her ears with her palms. "Ah," she said. "The guys wanta know, you know . . . are we dismissed now?"
Drives moaned as the gun mechanism filled its ready-use drum with the remaining shells in storage. Lavel put his palm against an armored side-panel to feel every nuance of the movement. It was like being reborn. . . .
"Not yet," he said. "When the last salvo's away, we'll police up the area."
The crew compartment was spacious enough to hold a full eight-man crew under armor when the howitzer was changing position. The 200mm shells and their rocket charges were heavy, and no amount of hardware could obviate the need for humans during some stages of the preparation process.
The actual firing sequence required only one man to pick the targets. The howitzer's AI and electromechanical drives did the rest.
It didn't even require a whole man. A ruin like Chief Lavel was sufficient.
He glanced at the panoramic screen mounted on the slanted armor above the gun mantlet. A light breeze had dissipated much of the smoke from the sustainer charges. They burned out in the first seven seconds after ignition. High in the heavens, streaking south were dense white trails where the ramjet boosters cut in.
The beryllium fuel was energetic—but its residues were intensely hygroscopic and left clouds thick enough to be tracked on radar.