The Tank Lords(9)

Death had waited; thirty seconds for that pair, years for other men. But Death didn't forget.

Birdie was safe. He was inside the heaviest piece of land-based armor in the human universe.

Three artillery rockets hit in the near distance. A fourth rumbled overhead, shaking Deathdealer and Birdie's vision of safety. Those were definitely big enough to hurt anything in their impact zone.

Even a tank.

The reflexes of five years' combat, including a year as platoon sergeant, took over. Birdie kept one eye on the panoramic main screen while his hands punched data out of his third display.

The other tanks in the encampment were powered up. The tribarrel couldn't override it without codes he didn't have. The third tank, an H Company repair job named Herman's Whore, didn't respond when he pinged it, and a remote hook-up indicated nobody was in the turret.

From his own command console, Birdie rotated the Whore's tribarrel to the south and slaved it to air defense. Until somebody overrode his command, the gun would engage any airborne targets her sensors offered her.

That left Birdie to get back to immediate business. An alarm pinged to warn him that a laser rangefinder painted Deathdealer's armor. The gunnery computer was already rotating the turret, while a pulsing red highlight arrowed the source: an anti-tank missile launcher twelve hundred meters away, protected only by night and distance.

Which meant unprotected.

Deathdealer's close-in defense system would detonate the missile at a distance with a sleet of barrel-shaped steel pellets, but the Consies needed to learn that you didn't target Colonel Hammer's tanks.

Birdie Sparrow thumbed the gunswitch, preparing to teach the Consies a main-gun lesson.



Henk Ortnahme, panting as he mounted the turret of Herman's Whore, didn't notice the cupola tribarrel was slewed until the bloody thing ripped out a bloody burst that almost blew his bloody head off.

The plasma discharge prickled his scalp and made the narrow fringe that was all the hair he had stand out like a ruff.

Ortnahme ducked blindly, banging his chin on the turret. He couldn't see a bloody thing except winking afterimages of the bolts, and he was too stunned to be angry.

The southern sky flashed and bled as one warhead detonated vainly and another missile's fuel painted the night instead of driving its payload down into the Slammers' positions. Sure, somebody'd slaved the cupola gun to air defense, and that was fine with Ortnahme.

Seeing as he'd managed to survive learning about it.

He mounted the cupola quickly and lowered himself into the turret, hoping the cursed gun wouldn't cut loose again just now. The hatch was a tight fit, but it didn't have sharp edges like the access port.

The port had torn Ortnahme's coveralls so he looked like he'd been wrestling a tiger. Then the bloody coverplate—warped by the mine that deadlined the tank to begin with—hadn't wanted to bolt back in place.

But Ortnahme was in the turret now, and Herman's Whore was ready to slide.

The radio was squawking on the command channel. Ortnahme'd left the hatch open, and between the racket of gunfire and incoming—most of that well to the south by now—the warrant leader couldn't hear what was being said. If he'd known he was in for a deal like this, he'd've brought the commo helmet stashed in his quarters against the chance that someday he'd get back out in the field. . . .

For now he rolled the volume control up to full and blasted himself with, "—DO YOU HAVE A CREW? O—"

Ortnahme dumped some of the volume.

"—ver."

"Roger, Tootsie Six," the warrant leader reported. "Herman's Whore is combat ready. Over."

He sat down, the first chance he'd had to do that since sun-up, and leaped to his feet again as the multitool he'd stowed in his cargo pocket clanged against the frame of the seat. Blood and martyrs!

Ortnahme was itching for a chance to shoot something, but he'd spent too long with the fan and the coverplate. There weren't any targets left on his displays, and he suspected that most of the bolts still hissing across the berm were fired by kids who didn't have the sense God gave a goose.

The Consies had hit in a rush, figuring to sweep over the encampment by sheer speed and numbers. You couldn't do that against the firepower the Slammers put out.

The rest of Camp Progress, though . . .

"Tootsie Six to all Red and Blue personnel," Junebug Ranson continued. "The Yokels report that bandits have penetrated their positions. Red units will form line abreast and sweep south through the encampments. Mobile Blue units—"

The three tanks. Ortnahme's tank, by the Lord's blood!

"—will cross the berm, form on the TOC, and sweep counterclockwise from that point to interdict bandit reinforcements. Deathdealer has command."

Sergeant Sparrow. Tall, dark, and as jumpy as a pithed frog. Usually Ortnahme got crewmen to help him when he pulled major maintenance on their vehicles, but he'd given Sparrow a wide berth. That boy was four-plus crazy.