The Tank Lords(63)

The heavy anti-tank submunitions weren't aimed at this side of the river either. If the shell had been of ordinary construction, it would've impacted on a bunker somewhere far distant from the friendly tanks.

But the submunitions had seeker heads. As they spun lazily from the casing that bore them to the target area, sophisticated imaging systems fed data to their on-board computers.

A bunker would've done if no target higher in the computers' priorities offered.

A combat car would've done very well.

But if the imaging system located a tank, then it was with electronic glee that the computer deployed vanes to brake and guide the submunition toward that prime target.

Too little time.

Birdie Sparrow slammed the side of his fist into the buckle to disengage himself from the seat restraints. A fireball lighted the gunnery screen as Deathdealer's reprogrammed tribarrel detonated a larger target than the anti-personnel bomblets to which the law of averages had aimed it.

"Birdie, quick," DJ pleaded. His face was almost whole again.

Sparrow sank back onto his seat as the screen flared again. "No," he whispered. "No. Not out there."

DJ Bell smiled at his friend and extended a hand. "Welcome home, snake," he said.

There was a white flash.





Chapter Ten


"Watch it," warned Cooter, ducking beneath the level of his gunshield. Part of Dick Suilin's mind understood, but he continued to stand upright and stare.

The dawn sky was filthy with rags of black smoke, tiny moth-holes streaming back in the wind when bomblets exploded. That was nothing, and the crackle of two tank tribarrels still firing as the remaining anti-personnel cloud impacted on the far ridge was little more.

Deathdealer was devouring itself.

The submunition's location, as well as its attitude and range in respect to Deathdealer, were determined by a computer more sophisticated than anything indigenously built on Prosperity. The computer's last act was to trigger the explosion that shattered it in an orange fireball high above the tank.

The blast spewed out a projectile that rode the shockwave, molten with the energy that forged and compressed it. It struck Deathdealer at a ninety degree angle where the tank's armor was thinnest, over the rear turtleback covering the powerplant.

Hammer's anti-tank artillery rounds were designed to defeat the armor of the most powerful tanks in the human universe. This one performed exactly as intended, punching its self-forging fragment through the iridium armor and rupturing the integrity of the fusion bottle that powered the huge vehicle's systems.

Plasma vented skyward in a stream as intensely white as the heart of a star. It etched and ate away the edges of the hole without rupturing the unpierced portion of the armor. The internal bulkheads gave way.

Plasma jetted from the driver's hatch an instant before the cupola blew open. Stored ammunition flashed from underdeck compartments. It stained the blaze cyan and vaporized the joint between hull and skirts.

The glowing husk of what had been Deathdealer settled to the ground. Where the hull overlay portions of the skirt, the thick steel plates melted from the iridium armor's greater residual heat.

The entire event was over in three seconds. It would be days before the hull had cooled to the temperature of the surrounding air.

The thunderclap, air rushing to fill the partial vacuum of the plasma's track, rocked the thirty-tonne combat cars. Suilin's breastplate rapped the grips of his tribarrel.

Across the river, Consie positions danced in the light of hundreds of bomblets. They looked by contrast as harmless as rain on a field of poppies.

"All units," said Suilin's helmet. "Remount and move on. We've got a job to do. Six out."

Another combat car slid between Deathdealer and the figure of the tank's driver. He'd been running away from his doomed vehicle until the initial blast knocked him down. He rose to his feet slowly and climbed aboard the car whose bulk shielded him both from glowing metal and remembrance of what had just happened/almost happened.

Flamethrower rotated on its axis so that all three tribarrels could cover stretches of the bunker line the task force had just penetrated.

"We're the rear guard," Cooter said. "Watch for movement."

The lieutenant triggered a short burst at a figure who stumbled along the ridgeline—certainly harmless since he'd crawled from a shattered bunker; probably unaware even when the two cyan bolts cut him down.

Suilin thought he saw a target. He squinted. It was a tendril of smoke, not a person.

He wasn't sure he would have fired anyway.

Other cars were advancing toward the town, but it took some moments for the crews of the surviving tanks to reboard. One of the tanks jolted forward taking Deathdealer's former place at the head of the column.