"Well, what did ya bloody expect?" Gale snorted. "Come this far and settle down to rest 'n refit?"
Cooter turned to face the other two men. He looked very worn. "Also she told Central," he went on, "that we were getting messages from First of the Fourth Armored Brigade. They're ahead of us and they're requesting our positions so they can join up with us."
"Via," said Gale.
Dick Suilin blinked. "So we'll have a National armored battalion to support us in entering Kohang?" he said, puzzled at the mercenaries' attitude. "I didn't realize there were any friendly units this near the city."
"Via," Gale repeated. He scowled at the tribarrel, picking at the ejection port with a cracked fingernail. "How many bloody tanks in a Yokel battalion?"
In the frozen moment before anybody else spoke, Dick Suilin remembered the truck he'd ripped apart near the Padma, a National Army vehicle filled with troops in National Army uniforms.
"I said it was First of the Fourth," Cooter said. "I didn't say they were friendly."
Warmonger had settled into a reed-choked draw. The other vehicles were invisible, but June Ranson's display indicated that all of them were in place and awaiting her orders.
Steam rising from la Reole behind them was golden in the light of sunrise.
Janacek watched her expectantly; Stolley scanned the sky past the reed bracts with a scowl of displeasure. He knew there wasn't a prayer that he'd be able to hit any incoming with his tribarrel, but he was determined to try.
Blue Three was the only task force vehicle in the open, poised 300 meters to the east on what passed for high ground in this coastal terrain. Its cupola gun quivered in air defense mode.
Whether their sole remaining tank could provide sufficient defense depended on what came through the air at the task force while its leader held the vehicles grounded for a council of war.
Maybe nothing would come. Probably nothing would come.
"Booster," said Junebug Ranson. "Council display, all Tootsie units."
Her multi-function display hummed and clicked. Faces glowed in the thirty-centimeter cube, replacing the holographic map and location beads. She'd have done better to use the tank's big screens, but she couldn't risk leaving her command vehicle here.
They were within twenty kays of Kohang. Everything that had occurred since they left Camp Progress, the danger and the losses, was only a prelude to what would happen in the next few hours.
Faces—the entire fighting-compartment crews of the other four combat cars, and the tense, tightlipped visage of Wager in the turret of Blue Three—crowded the multi-function display.
For a moment, no one spoke; the crews were waiting for Ranson, and June Ranson's mind was extending into a universe of phosphor dots.
The image of Cooter's face brightened and swelled slightly to highlight it as the lieutenant said, "Junebug, we gotta figure these guys've gone over to the Consies. They left Camp Victory without orders, just before the general attack. Only question is, do we go around 'em or do we fight 'em?"
"We're tasked to get there, not to fight, ain't we?" said Tillman, blower captain of One-five. At the best of times, Tillman was a thin, sallow man. The past two days had sweated off weight he couldn't afford to lose.
"Look, just in case they are friendly . . ." said Chalkin. He looked sour, partly because he was crowded in the fighting compartment of One-six with Ortnahme and Simkins as well as the shot-up survivors of the car's original crew. "I wouldn't mind havin' fifty tanks alongside us when we hit Kohang, even if it's Yokels."
"Max of forty-four tanks," interjected Warrant Leader Ortnahme, looking at something off-screen low, probably his clenched knuckles. There were problems on One-six, Daisy Belle; not just the crowding, but a fat non-combatant with a lot of rank, dropped on a blower commanded by a mere Senior Trooper on transfer.
"There were forty-four at their bloody laager when the drone overflew 'em," Ortnahme continued, looking straight at the pick-up in the car's multi-function display. "Some'll be dead-lined, twenty percent given what passes fer Yokel maintenance."
His fingers rose into the tiny field-of-view, ticking off the third point: "Some more drop out on the route march to block us when they've fine'ly get the lead out. So, say thirty-five max, maybe thirty."
"And," said Cooter's voice in the enfolding electronic tendrils of June Ranson's mind, "there's no bloody way—"
"—that those bastards're friendly," Cooter snapped at the hologram display beside his tribarrel while Dick Suilin shivered on the ribbed plastic crates of ammunition lining the interior of the fighting compartment.