Twenty
The next day, Dead End surprised us again. The planet lacked the weather satellites that even second-class worlds had taken for granted for a century, so Dead End’s storms arrived without warning and hung around until they left just as unexpectedly. They blew at hurricane force, dumped lakes of rain, and blasted down enough lightning to fry tank circuits.
Not that weather bothered the Abrams. It won the final, great, running tank battle of the twentieth century, on Earth, in rain and sandstorms. On the last day, at a place called Medina Ridge, the score was Abrams, one hundred eighty-six, other guys’ tanks, zero.
But it would have been pointless to trank Cutler’s grezzen, then be unable to pack it home because of the weather. So we hunkered down in Kit’s cave until the storm blew itself out.
That suited Zhondro and me. Armored vehicle preventive maintenance is not performed by the Tank Fairy. One in four subdivisions of any armored unit, whether ancient tracks or modern floaters, was a maintenance outfit. So, for this one tank, Zhondro, the maintenance ’bot and I were covering not only the tank crew’s normal work, but the jobs of easily a half dozen mechs.
The two of us knelt alongside the Abrams in the maintenance cavern inspecting the treads. Beyond the cavern’s plasteel doors, thunder rumbled like an armored column.
Zhondro rapped his knuckles on a rubber tread block. ‘‘This environment doesn’t abrade the mechanical components so badly as the desert.’’ He pointed a wrench at the turret. ‘‘Cutler is a better shot than his apparent miss yesterday suggested. Were I you, I would run the ballistics computer diagnostic.’’
I had, last night, but I didn’t care to tell him. I shook my head. ‘‘I’m too tired. The diagnostic takes two hours.’’
Zhondro stood, laid the wrench on the fender, and burbled something in Tassini.
I wrinkled my forehead at him.
He said, ‘‘It’s a proverb. The lazy man pays twice for his arrogance.’’
I shrugged. ‘‘Does it sound better in Tassini?’’
‘‘Most definitely. I recall one young man who didn’t speak Tassini. He nearly paid for his arrogance with his life.’’ He smiled as he left me, and walked back to the living quarters to say his morning prayers.
I called after him, ‘‘I recall, too.’’
The five tanks of Third Platoon had been blown down into the sand for three minutes when the lead element of the Tassini column showed itself in the magnified green of the night sight’s picture. Tiny dots floated along a dune crest, a thousand yards from us.
Platoon net crackled. ‘‘I got wobbleheads!’’
Another advantage the Tassini armor had over us was cavalry. While our armored units fought ‘‘pure,’’ without associated infantry, the Tassini had scouts, who rode web-footed, two-legged dinosaurids with floppy crests on their skulls.
‘‘Targets! One o’clock. One thousand yards. Engaging.’’
‘‘Don’t waste main gun rounds on the little fuckers.’’ Suarez.
‘‘Hold fire!’’ Even as I said it, the coaxial turret machine guns of two of my tanks rattled.
The range was so long for the coaxial machine guns that their tracers had started to burn out before the rounds arrived at their targets. Still, in the distance, sand spouted, one wobblehead and rider writhed, fell, and slid down the dune face. The others scampered to cover.
‘‘Hooyah!’’
‘‘Shut up, you fuckin’ idiots.’’ Suarez was right again.
I sighed. The rebel commander had exposed a low value target to learn more about our location and strength. Thanks to itchy trigger fingers that I had failed to control, he had succeeded.
Ten seconds later, thirty degrees left of the spot where the wobbleheads had disappeared, a half dozen Abramses popped up far enough above a ridge line that they could fire main gun rounds at us, then they scooted back out of sight before we could traverse our turrets and engage them. The range between them and us was a thousand yards, easy shooting for either tank’s gun.
Three of their rounds whistled high. The turret of a hull-down Kodiak isn’t much of a target. Two rounds burrowed harmlessly into the sand revetments in front of two of our tanks. One round struck the glacis, the thick prow, of Edwards’ disabled Kodiak, which hadn’t been able to blow down properly. The round sparked away into the night.
‘‘That rang our bell!’’ Edwards’ voice quavered. Taking a 120millimeter round on the nose was like sitting in a washtub sledgehammered by Godzilla. But a Kodiak’s next-generation armor enabled it to absorb an Abrams’ punches, at least head on.
I spoke to the platoon. ‘‘Load, load sabot. Guess at where they’re gonna pop up next. Pre-sight on a spot. Gunners fire as soon as you identify a target, before it can scoot.’’
The next pop up came thirty seconds later, another half dozen tanks, twenty degrees left of the first.
My gunner twitched our turret and fired without waiting for a fire command. He called, ‘‘On the way!’’ I watched the red tracer on the penetrator’s tail flash toward an Abrams that was already reversing after its shot.
Flash. Foom!
In its day, an Abrams’ forward turret armor could stop any direct-fire round on Earth. But this wasn’t its day, and it wasn’t on Earth. The Kodiak’s 145-millimeter smooth bore was the most powerful tank gun ever built.
Our round spit through the Abrams’ skin, liquefying itself and the armor it penetrated, then exploding molten metal rain into the tank’s interior. The crew probably never felt a thing, and a fireball erupted up into the night. The ammo in the Abrams’ bustle, isolated behind a blast door that couldn’t withstand the heat and overpressure our shot injected into the crew compartment, detonated. The thin steel ammunition compartment roof disintegrated like kitchen foil.
I kept the sight on the hulk as it burned. Not because I doubted the kill. All tankers share the nightmare of burning alive in the steel shroud that was supposed to protect us. So I hoped somebody, even somebody who had been trying to kill us, would make it out of that oven alive. Nobody did.
‘‘Tanks. Ten o’clock!’’
Our turret, and others, spun. More rounds sped downrange.
One minute later, nothing moved downrange but undulating, bright smudges in the thermal that marked five enemy tanks aflame.
Suarez screamed at the burning hulks, ‘‘Ha! You like our silver bullets, amigos?’’
Somebody else whooped.
I asked the platoon, ‘‘Damage?’’
‘‘We got nicked, sir. But we’re still good to go.’’ That was Pine.
Somebody in Arcuno’s tank said, ‘‘I think Muto broke his wrist, skipper.’’
Now I was the skipper. But I didn’t feel like it. I just felt sick. The turret stunk of burned propellant, sweat, and fear. The odds against us were still five to one, we weren’t going anywhere, and we would run out of silver bullets before the bad guys ran out of tanks.
In the cavern, Kit touched my shoulder. ‘‘The storm’s moving off. Tomorrow we can go deeper beyond the Line.’’
I cocked my head at the diminishing thunder, and kept it cocked as I looked around the cavern. We were alone for the first time since the grezz got away. ‘‘Why should we bother?’’
She wrinkled her forehead. ‘‘What do you mean?’’
‘‘You loaded a practice round when I called for a trank. Cutler didn’t miss. That pissant penetrator either glanced off that grezzen or just poked it like a sewing pin.’’
She stared at me, then looked away, then down at the cavern floor and scuffed it with her boot toe.
I waited. ‘‘Well?’’
‘‘It’s no different than your little charade with Cutler and the .50 caliber. Head space adjustment my ass.’’
It was my turn to stare. Then I shook my head. ‘‘No. What I did stopped a gratuitous slaughter that I didn’t sign up for. You agreed to help Cutler do exactly what he was trying to do, then sabotaged him. In fact, he was doing less than you agreed to. It turns out he doesn’t even want to kill the animal.’’
She pointed toward the living quarters, while she fixed me with the coldest stare I had ever seen. ‘‘Parker, that man can’tbe allowed to take a grezzen alive.’’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘‘Why not?’’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘‘I can’t tell you right now.’’
I wanted to believe her. And I didn’t like Cutler’s paranoid foolishness any better than I liked hers. But earning Cutler’s bonus was the only way I could buy a life. That meant we needed her as a guide. ‘‘If you screw this up for Cutler, he’ll just hire somebody else. Help him get his live grezzen. When the time comes, tell him whatever it is that’s bothering you. I’ll back you up.’’
She cocked her head, and fixed me with those blue eyes. ‘‘And if he won’t budge?’’
I took a deep breath. ‘‘If it comes to that, I’ll make him budge. Out here, he’s no tycoon. There are two of us and one of him.’’ I could stop short of crossing the mutiny bridge later, if I didn’t buy whatever she had to say. But first I had to get us to the bridge.
She asked, ‘‘What about Zhondro?’’
‘‘Zhondro will be fine with what I tell him. We know each other.’’
‘‘I gathered that. Though I don’t understand it.’’ She nodded. ‘‘Okay. I’ll play, for now.’’ She turned and walked away, then she turned back, and stared at me with the blue eyes again. ‘‘What you did, Parker? With the .50? You surprised me. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.’’
She turned again, and I swallowed. I had just hatched a conspiracy that could cost me my life, or save it, with a woman about whom I knew only that she wasn’t what she seemed to be.
But as I watched her walk away, all I could think about was the way she had looked the previous night, when she slipped into her bunk in her skivvies.
I didn’t get over it until first thing the next morning.