The Tank Lords (22 page)

Nothing else was working out the way she wanted. Why should the tank's artificial intelligence have the right default?

"Tootsie Three, this is Six," she said aloud. "You got One-six sorted out, Cooter?"

It might be minutes before her own message went out, and the wait for Hammer's response would be at least that long again. The heavens had their own program. . . .

"Tootsie Six, roger," her second-in-command replied, panting slightly. "I gave Chalkin the blower. Mc—"

The transmitting circuit
zeep
ed, pulsing Ranson's message skyward in a tight packet which would bounce from the ionized track that a meteor had just streaked in the upper atmosphere.

Meteorites, invisible to human eyes during daytime, burned across the sky every few seconds. It was just a matter of waiting for the track which would give the signal the narrowest, least interceptible path to the desired recipient. . . .

"—Gwire bought it and Foran's not a lot better, but there's no damage to the car. Over."

"Tootsie Three, how are the mechanicals holding—"

The inward workings of the console beneath Screen Three gave a satisfied chuckle; its amber Stand-by light flashed green.

That quick
.

"Cooter," Ranson said, "forget—no—" she threw a toggle "—listen in."

Staring at the screen—though she knew the transmission would be voice only—she said, "Play burst."

Despite the nature of the transmission, the voice was as harshly clear as if the man speaking were stuffed into the turret with his task force commander. For intelligibility, the AI expanded the bytes of transmitted information with sound patterns from its database. If the actual voice wasn't on record, the AI created a synthesis that attempted to match sex, age, and even accent.

In this case, the voice of Colonel Alois Hammer was readily available for comparison with the burst transmission.

"Slammer Six to Tootsie Six," the Colonel rasped. "Absolute priority. You must not, I say again, must not, delay. I believe we can provide limited artillery support for you when you break through at la Reole. If that isn't sufficient, I'm ordering you to detach your tank element and proceed with your combat cars by the quickest route feasible to the accomplishment of your mission. I repeat, I order you to carry on with combat cars alone if you can't cross your tanks at la Reole. Over."

Over indeed.
 

"Send target overlay," June Ranson said aloud. Her index finger traced across the main screen the symbols of Consie positions facing la Reole. "Execute."

Artillery support? Had Hammer sent down a flying column including a hog or two, or was he expecting them to risk their lives—and mission—on Yokel tubes crewed by nervous draftees?
 

The transmitter squealed again.

She didn't like being inside a tank. The view was potentially better in every respect than what her eyes and helmet visor could provide from
Warmonger
's deck, but it was all a simulation. . . . "What do you think, Lieutenant Cooter?" Ranson said, as though she were testing him for promotion.

"Junebug," the lieutenant's worried voice replied, "let's run the gauntlet at la Reole, even with the bridge damaged. Trying t' bust what they got at Kohang without the panzers, that'll be our butts sure."

So, Lieutenant. . . . You'd commit your forces on a vague suggestion of artillery support—when you know that the enemy is in bunkers, with heavy weapons already targeted on the route your vehicles must take from the point you penetrate the encirclement?
 

Ranson slapped blindly to awaken herself, wincing with pleasure and a rush of warmth when her fingers rapped something hard. Her skin was flushed.

"Right," she said—aloud, alert. "Let's see what kind of artillery we're talking about."

She looked at the blank relay screen. "Tootsie Six to Hammer Six,"
No need for priority now.
"I and my XO judge the Blue Element to be necessary for the successful completion of our mission. Transmit details of proposed artillery support. Over."

Ranson rubbed her eyes. "Execute," she ordered the AI.

"Blue Two to Tootsie Six," her headset said.

She should've involved Ortnahme—and Sparrow, he was Blue Element Leader—in the planning. She had to think like a task force commander, not a grading officer. . . .
 

"Junebug, if the friendlies can lay some sorta surface covering on the bloody water," the warrant leader was saying, "agricultural film on a wood frame, that'd do, just enough to spread the effect, we can—"

"Negative, Blue Two," Ranson interrupted. "This is a river, not a pond. The current'd disrupt any covering they could cobble together, even if the Consies weren't shelling. I don't want you learning to swim. Over."

"Tootsie Six," grunted Ortnahme: twice her age and in a parallel—though non-command—pay grade. "That bloody bridge has major structural damage. I don't want to learn to dive bloody tanks from twenty meters in the air, neither. Blue Two out."

If you want it safe, Blue Two, you're in the wrong line of work tonight.
 

Chuckle; green light.

"Play burst."

"Slammer Six to Tootsie Six. There's an operable hog at Camp Progress with nineteen rounds in storage. Using extended-range boosters, it can cover la Reole. One of the transit-company staff is ex-artillery; he's putting together a crew. By the time you need some bunkers hit, the tube'll be ready to do it."

Zip
from the console, as the AI replaced the pause which the burst compression had edited out.

"Speed is absolutely essential. If you don't get to Kohang within the next six hours, we may as well all have stayed home. Over."

"Tootsie Six to Slammer Six," Ranson said with textbook precision. She could feel her soul merging with that of the nameless tank, viewing the world through its sensors and considering her data in an electronic balance. "Task Force Ranson will proceed in accordance with the situation as it develops. We will transmit further data if a fire mission is required. Tootsie Six, out. Execute."

She was the officer on-site. She would make the final decision. And if Colonel Hammer didn't like it, what was he going to do? Put her in command of a suicide mission?
 

"Tootsie Six," said her headset, "this is Blue Two. The hog's operable, all right. The trouble's in the turret-traversing mechanism, and that won't matter for a few rounds to a single point. But I dunno about the bloody crew. Over."

"Six, Three," Cooter's voice responded. "Chief Lavel's solid as they come. He'll handle the fire control, and the rest—that's just lift 'n carry, right? Getting the shells on the conveyor? Nothin' even a newbie with a room-temperature IQ's going t' screw up. Over."

She would make the final decision
.

"All Tootsie elements," June Ranson heard her voice ordering calmly. Her touch shrank the map's scale; then her index finger traced the course to la Reole on the screen.

"Transmit," she said. "We will proceed on the marked trace to Phase Line Piper—" fingertip stroking the crest across a shadowy valley from the Consie positions above the beleaguered town on the Santine Estuary "—and punch through enemy lines to the bridge after a short artillery preparation. Prepare to execute in five minutes. Tootsie Six out."

She used the seat as a step instead of raising herself to the hatch with its power lift. Clouds streaked the sky, but the earlier thin overcast was gone.

The Lord have mercy on our souls.
 

"Sarge," said Holman on the intercom, "why aren't we just crossing the river instead of fooling with a damaged bridge? When I was in trucks, we'd see the line companies go right around us while we was backed up for a bridge. Down, splash, up the far bank and gone."

Now that the task force had moved into open country, Holman was doing a pretty good job of keeping station. You couldn't take somebody straight out of a transport company and expect them to drive blind
and
over broken terrain—with no more than forty hours of air-cushion experience to begin with.

If your life depended on it, though, that was just what you did expect.

"Combat cars have that much lift," Wager explained bitterly. "
These
mothers don't. Via! but I wish I was back in cars."

He was down in the turret, trying to get some sort of empathy with his screens and controls before the next time he needed them. He was okay on mine-clearing, now; he had the right reflexes.

But the next time, Tootsie Six wouldn't be ordering him to lay a mine-clearance charge, it'd be some other cursed thing. It'd be the butt of Hans Wager and the whole cursed task force when he didn't know what the hell to do.

"Look, Holman," he said, because lift was something he
did
understand, lift and tribarrels laying fire on the other mother before he corrected his aim at you. "We're in ground effect. The fans pressurize the air in the plenum chamber underneath. The ground's the bottom of the pressure chamber, right? And that keeps us floating."

"Right, but—"

Holman swore. The column was paralleling the uphill side of a wooded fenceline. She'd attempted to correct their tank's tendency to drift downslope, but the inertia of 170 steel and iridium tonnes had caught up with her again. One quadrant of Wager's main screen exploded in a confetti of splintered trees and fence posts.

"Bleedin' motherin' martyrs!" snarled the intercom as Holman's commo helmet dutifully transmitted to the most-recently accessed recipient.

Friction from the demolished fence and vegetation pulled the tank farther out of its intended line, despite the driver's increasingly violent efforts to swing them away. When the cumulative over-corrections swung the huge pendulum
their
way, the tank lurched upslope and grounded its right skirt with a shock that rattled Wager's head against the breech of the main gun.

Bloody amateur!
 

Like Hans Wager, tank commander.

Blood and martyrs.

"S'okay, Holman," Wager said aloud, more or less meaning it. "Any one you walk away from."

He'd finally cleared the mines at Happy Days, hadn't he?

"Look, the lift," he went on. "Without something pretty solid underneath, these panzers drop. Sink like stones. But combat cars, the ones you been watchin', they've got enough power for their weight they can use thrust to keep 'em up, not just ground effect."

Wager wriggled the helmet. It'd gotten twisted a little on his brow when he bounced a moment ago. Their tank was now sedately tracking the car ahead, as though the mess behind them had been somebody else's problem.

"Only thing is," Wager continued, "a couple of the cars, they're running' short a fan or two themselves by now. Talkin' to the guys on One-one while we laagered. Stuff that never happens when you're futzing around a firebase, you get twenty kays out on a route march and
blooie
."

"We're all systems green," Holman said. "Ah, sarge? I think I'm gettin' the hang of it, you know? But the weight, it still throws me."

"Yeah, well," Wager said, touching the joystick cautiously so as not to startle the other vehicles. The turret mechanism whined restively; Screen Two's swatch of rolling farmland, centered around the orange pipper, shifted slightly across the panorama of the main screen.

"Look, when we get to the crossing point, if we do, get across that cursed bridge
fast
, right?" he added. "It's about ready to fall in the river, see, from shelling? So put'cher foot on the throttle 'n keep it there."

"No, sarge."

"
Huh?
"

"Sarge, I'm sorry," Holman said, "but if we do that, we bring it down for sure. And us. Sarge, look, I'm, you know, I'm not great on tanks. But I took a lotta trucks over piddly bridges, right? We'll take it slow and especially no braking or acceleration. That'll work if anything does. I promise. Okay?"

She sounded nervous, telling a veteran he was wrong.

She sounded like she curst well thought she was right, though.

Via, maybe she was. Holman didn't have any line experience . . . but that didn't mean she didn't have
any
experience. They needed everything they could get right now, her and him and everybody else in Task Force Ranson. . . .

"They say she's a real space cadet," Wager said aloud. "Her crew does. Cap'n Ranson, I mean."

"Because she's a woman," Holman said flatly.

"Because she flakes out!" Wager snapped. "Because she goes right off into dreamland in the middle a' talking."

He looked at the disk of sky speeding past his open hatch. It didn't seem perceptibly brighter, but he could no longer make out the stars speckling its sweep.

"At least," said Holman with a touch more emotion than her previous comment, "Captain Ranson isn't so much of a flake that she'd go ahead with the mission without her tanks."

"Yeah," said Sergeant Hans Wager in resignation. "Without us."

Camp Progress stank of death: the effects of fire on scores of materials; rotting garbage that had been ignored among greater needs; and the varied effluvia each type of shell and cartridge left when it went off.

There was also the stench of the wastes which men voided as they died.

It was a familiar combination to Chief Lavel, but some of the newbies in his work crew still looked queasy.

A Consie had died of his wounds beneath the tarp covering the shells off-loaded from the self-propelled howitzer. It wasn't until the shells were needed that the body was found. The corpse's skin was as black as the cloth of the uniform which the gas-distended body stretched.

They'd get used to it. They'd better.

Lavel massaged the stump of his right arm with his remaining hand as he watched eight men cautiously lift a 200mm shell, then lower it with a clank onto the gurney. They paused, panting.

"Go on," he said, "One more and you've got the load."

"Via!" said Riddle angrily. There were bright chafe lines on both of the balding man's wrists. "We can rest a bloody—"

"Riddle!" Lavel snapped. "If you want to be wired up again, just say the word. Any word!"