The Tank Lords(67)

What the bloody Hell?

The major threw down his makeshift dust filter, rose to his full height, and began to shout and gesture toward the tank. The young Marines at the bunker beside Herman's Whore snapped to attention—eyes front, looking neither toward the tank nor their screaming officer.

Ortnahme could've piped the Yokel's words in through a commo circuit, scrubbed of all the ambient noise. Thing was, whatever the fellow was saying, it sure as hell wasn't anything Warrant Leader Henk Ortnahme wanted to hear.

"Simkins!" he said. "Can you get by these meatballs?"

"Ah . . . Without hitting the jeep?"

"Can you get bloody by, you dickhead?"

Herman's Whore shifted sideways like a beerstein on a slick, wet bar. The fan note built for a moment; then, using all his maintenance-bay skills, Simkins slid them past the jeep closer than a coat of paint.

The wheeled vehicle shrank back on its suspension as the sidedraft from the plenum chamber buffeted it, but metal didn't touch bloody metal!

That Yokel major was probably still pissed off. When the jeep bobbed in the windthrust, he fell sideways out of his seat. Let him file a bloody complaint with Colonel Hammer—in good time.

The left side of the tank tilted down, but that didn't bother the warrant leader near as much as the motion. It'd been bad watching the bridge sway when another vehicle was on it. The view on Ortnahme's screens hadn't made his stomach turn, though, as the reality bloody well did. Blood and martyrs, they were—

They were opening wide cracks in the asphalt surface as they passed over it. The tank's weight was stretching the underlying girders beyond their design limits.

The cracks spread forward, outrunning Herman's Whore in its sluggish progress toward the supporting pier in the center of the estuary.

And that bloody fool of a major had climbed back into his jeep. His driver had two wheels and most of the jeep's width on the narrow downstream sidewalk, using the span's tilt to advantage because it prevented the tank's sidedraft from flipping the lighter vehicle right through the damaged guardrail.

Those sum'bitch Yokels were trying to pull around the tank and block it on this shuddering nightmare of a bridge.

"Kid," Ortnahme began, "don't let 'em—"

He didn't have to finish the warning, because Simkins was already pouring the coal to his fans.

The water of the Santine Estuary was sluggish and black with tannin from vegetable matter that fed it on the forested hills of its drainage basin. Glutinous white bubbles streaked the surface, giving the current's direction and velocity. The treetrunks, crates, and other solid debris were more or less hidden by the fluid's dark opacity.

Ortnahme had a very good view of the water because of the way Herman's Whore tilted toward it.

They were approaching the central pier now while the span behind them flexed like the E-string of a bass guitar. The jeep, caught in the pulses and without the tank's weight to damp them, bounced all four wheels off the gaping roadway while the two Yokels clung for dear life.

Consie shells and the bolts from their one bunkered powergun had reduced the central towers to half their original height. The Yokels at the guardpost there were already climbing piles of rubble to be clear of the oncoming tank. Herman's Whore wasn't rocketing forward, but a tank head-on at twenty kph looks like Juggernaut on a joyride.

Their speed was four times what Ortnahme had planned, given the flimsy structure of the bridge. He just hadn't realized how bloody flimsy.

They had to go fast!

Ortnahme's helmet crackled with angry demands from the east bank. He switched the sound off at the console.

Tootsie Six could burn him a new one if she wanted, just as soon as Herman's Whore reached solid ground again. Until then, he didn't give a hoot in Hell what anybody but his driver had to say.

They reached the central pier in a puff of dust and clanging gravel, debris from the towers. Task Force Ranson's previous vehicles had rammed a track clear, but the kid was moving too fast to be nice about what his skirts scraped.

The Yokel jeep halted on the solid pier. The major shook his fist, but he didn't seem to be ordering his guards to try buzzbombs where verbal orders had failed.

Via, maybe they were going to make it after all. That newbie crew in Blue Three had crossed, hadn't—

A cable parted, whanging loud enough to be clearly audible. A second whang!, a third—

The bow of Herman's Whore was tilting upward. The intake howl of her fans proved that Simkins had both throttle banks slid wideflatopen.

It wasn't going to be enough.

The cables parting were the short loops every meter or so, attaching the main support cable to the bridge span. Each time one broke, the next ahead took the doubled strain of the tank's weight—and broke in turn. The asphalt roadway crumbled instantly, but the unsupported stringers beneath continued to hold for a second or two longer—until they stretched beyond steel's modulus of tension.