Twenty-one
In the gray dawn we rolled across the Line like a wagon train in a Trueborn western. We towed the floater laden with gear to deal with a presumably passive grezzen, fuel, the Sleeper, spares, and the maintenance ’bot. I didn’t like that the floater reduced the Abrams’ mobility to that of a fifteen hundred horsepower oxcart. But there were no convenience stores beyond the Line, and we were going far enough for long enough that, if we broke down, walking back would be no option.
Rover ’bots were programmed to rove no farther than eight hundred yards out beyond the Line. Once we got more than eight hundred yards out, they would provide no warning, much less kill any grezzen we might encounter, until and unless we returned to their protective umbrella. I had lobbied to take along a couple of Rovers as early-warning outriders, in spite of the ban I had heard Eden Outfitters impose on Kit. But Cutler vetoed my suggestion. And, in fact, it made no sense to take along something programmed to automatically kill the very animal we were trying to take alive.
So we kept the machine guns loaded. The main gun, too. With a real bullet, this time. I checked.
We had even loaded up handheld anti tank tubes. Even the Legion, which was even less concerned than Eden Outfitters about protecting its valued employees, hadn’t forced us legionnaires to go into battle equipped with HATTs. HATTs were junk against tanks, inaccurate beyond even twenty-five yards, prone to dud, and therefore every arms merchant’s loss leader.
Which was probably why Eden Outfitters had cases of them, which it shipped out to its Line Section stations. Kit assured us that, while a HATT wouldn’t drop a grezzen, it was a dandy noisemaker to scare off anything else we might encounter.
The first obstacle we encountered was a broad river imaginatively named Broad River. Kit charted our course so that we could cross the river at the point where it tumbled over a thirty-foothigh rock bench that she called Broad Falls. She said that we had to ford there because the river was too deep elsewhere. Also, elsewhere the river was infested with things that Kit said were big enough and mean enough to drag even an Abrams under like a crocodile poaching a wallaby.
I didn’t want to die like a poached wallaby, whatever it was, so I was glad to learn that the river rose and fell in multi-day cycles with the rains. So great was the fluctuation that the falls could be driven across on the dry rock bench if we were patient.
Patience and Cutler were strangers, and an Abrams can ford a stream four feet deep. So we blew across the falls’ half-mile-long lip while the river still covered it, rooster tailing spray like a speedboat.
Four hours beyond Broad Falls, the ground shook so hard that we felt it even through the Abrams’ tracks.
Kit halted us, while woogs stampeded around us like a dusty tsunami. They thundered past us, so thick that every few seconds little, dog-sized, blue-skinned creatures would skitter up and across our prow, then down the other side. Kit said they were symbiotes, who lived scurrying around, protected within the herd from medium-sized predators, living on parasites they nipped off the woog’s bellies.
Rather than wait for the herd to pass, Cutler insisted that we disperse the rabble with a whiff of grapeshot. Kit loaded, and Cutler fired, a canister round that left a dozen woogs, and even a handful of the harmless little blue things, dead but parted the herd.
Before we could resume progress, a lone bull woog stumbled across our path. He had a corkscrew rack as wide as a four seat electric is long. Kit said the bull had probably fallen behind its herd because it was so old that it was blind. It would be striper
kill within a day. Reasonable, indeed humane, to let Cutler shoot it with the .50, right?
Guess again. Cutler was no woodsman, but he was a quick study. He remembered the trophies he had ruined on the first day, so he poured rounds into the old animal’s hind quarters.
Then Cutler held fire, and let the beast bleat and writhe, dragging its ruined two legs behind it with its remaining four, while it bled to death.
At Cutler’s insistence, we idled along behind the suffering bull for six minutes. Finally, Kit, topside in the loader’s hatch, swore under her breath, unslung her Barrett, and aimed at the suffering animal. If she hadn’t, I would have.
Before she fired, a crested mature male striper thundered out of the brush. Presumably attracted by the woog’s agony, the striper bowled the wounded woog over like a runaway mag rail and finished it.
We set Cutler up on the turret in seated firing position, gave him a HATT to use on the feeding striper, then retreated below to await a dud or a miss. HATTs were supposed to be recoilless, but in fact kicked hard enough to bruise most shooters. I suppose a part of me hoped the HATT would blow up in Cutler’s face.
Amazingly, the blunderbuss took the monster down. Its shaped-charge warhead carved a survivable-looking entry wound, but an exit wound that I could have duck-walked into without bumping my head on a rib. The striper enjoyed his last meal, and never knew what hit him. Cutler got a black eye where the HATT’s sight got driven back against his eye socket, which made my day. A good time was had by all.
Except for Zhondro and me, and the maintenance ’bot, who had to spend two hours uncoupling the floater from the Abrams, severing and cryoing the two animals’ unspoiled trophy heads, and tying them down to the floater’s decking.
We left the carcasses for Mother Nature to police up, but I made sure that we packed up and carried out all the rest of our trash. A legionnaire is a guest on the worlds he serves. It said so right in my oath. When I told Kit that, she rolled her eyes and said that was the only way in which I resembled a ‘‘Boy Scout.’’ I couldn’t tell whether it was an insult or a compliment.
Then Zhondro and I sat, legs dangling over the floater’s deck. We let the warm, clockwork-regular afternoon rain sluice blood off our hands and forearms, while we scrubbed at them.
Kit manned the Commander’s .50, watching for unwanted visitors, wearing an earpiece that connected to a handheld sensor, which was supposed to duplicate a Rover ’bot’s grezzen detection capabilities.
I realized that Cutler had used the woog’s struggles as bait to attract a bigger trophy.
I shook my head. These animals were capable of crushing Cutler like a bug. But given his intellect, cunning, and firepower, it had scarcely been a fair fight. The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all. And the more we practice, the nastier we get.
Foom. Foom. Foom.
Three Kodiak main gun blasts echoed through the Tassin night.
Barroom!
One Kodiak shot found an enemy crawler, and detonated its ammunition.
Suarez reported. ‘‘We picked one off in the wadi, skipper. Hardly seems like a fair fight.’’
The last thing a good commander wants is a fair fight. I had deployed Suarez’ tank to cover the wadi that wound past our left flank. Suarez was a drug pusher from Mousetrap who joined the Legion to duck jail. But he was my best tank commander, not to mention the closest thing to a trustworthy friend I had made in the Legion. The twenty-foot-deep dry streambed, in places just one tank wide, offered the Tassini a covered, concealed avenue to approach us, then pass around behind us. It was our worst weakness, but that made it our best bait.
Any enemy tank that moved up that wadi toward our line would, for a few seconds, be channelized, exposed, and unable to maneuver. A sitting duck to be mercilessly slaughtered. And the wreck might clog that avenue of covered approach for the duration of the fight.
Maybe deploying Suarez like that made me good. But the Tassini commander was good, too. He knew that his tanks outnumbered ours, but he also knew that we outgunned his tanks, one-on-one. We could rotate our turrets to fire our guns in any hour-designated direction on the clock, but we couldn’t shoot in all directions at once.
Therefore, fighting his way up that wadi offered him the chance to envelop us, to make an unfair fight for his side. Far better than throwing his superior numbers at our strength, head-on. The enemy would, as Suarez put it, try to hold us by the nose while he shot us in the ass.
I asked Suarez, ‘‘Did the wreck block the wadi? Can they get around it?’’
‘‘Prob’ly. I know at least a couple got through, already. But they gonna have to slow down, now. We gonna get some for you, Jazen.’’
Ten minutes later the rumble of traded tank gunnery on our flank slowed. The wadi scrap heap had grown by three additional Tassini tanks unwise enough to test the gunnery skills of Suarez’ crew.
Foom. A Kodiak round.
There was no responsive explosion from the wadi. Smoke boiled across the thermal’s view plate punctuated by intermittent crackles, as the flaming tanks that Suarez had already destroyed cooked off machine gun rounds.
Suarez said in my ear. ‘‘Ready rack empty, skipper.’’ Like the Abrams before it, the Kodiak carried additional main gun ammunition in an outboard locker in the sponson above the impeller skirt, but transferring ammunition to the turret ready rack during combat required the crew to expose themselves. In this case it didn’t matter. There hadn’t been time to transfer the ammunition into the turrets’ ready racks before we blew down. Sand now buried all of our outboard lockers. Suarez was out of silver bullets.
I told him, ‘‘Set the scuttle timer and bail. The smoke from the wadi will cover you.’’
‘‘But—’’
Without a usable main gun, immobile, with his position known, Suarez’ tank was no longer fightable against opposing tanks. At the moment, the wind direction was blowing smoke, thrown by Suarez’ burning victim tanks, between the Tassini and us. The Tassini had thermal sights, too, but every bit of cover helped. Now Suarez’ tank was the sitting duck, not the Tassini tanks in the wadi. The enemy commander would concentrate on making that reversal of fortune permanent.
‘‘But nothing. Don’t sit there until they open your can. Arcuno, prepare to take Suarez’ crew aboard. Suarez, move out!’’
One minute later I saw Suarez’ turret hatches pop, and he, his gunner and loader spilled out and stumbled through calf-deep sand, detached commo wires dangling from their helmets, stubby personal carbines in hand.
Our nearest tank, Arcuno’s, lit the night with covering sprays of green tracer from its coaxial and cupola machine guns. Machine gun rounds wouldn’t faze a main battle tank, but would at least discourage the enemy from popping out of his own hatches to take target practice on our guys with his topside machine guns.
I eyed my ’puter, counting down seconds. The abandoned Kodiak’s thermite scuttle charge should burn it into scrap, useless to the enemy. If the charge malfunctioned, then, as soon as the crew got clear, I’d have to expend a main gun round to destroy one of our own.
Before Suarez’ tank could self-incinerate, a Tassini tank popped up over a dune at seven o’clock behind us. So some of their tanks had made it around to our rear already.
Foom.
The Tassini tank sent an avenging round toward the tank that had killed four of its buddies.
My gunner was already spinning our turret to engage the tank behind us when the Abrams’ round struck Suarez’ tank. The round was a golden beebe. It burrowed into the sand revetting the abandoned Kodiak’s flank, then found the main gun ammunition in the outboard sponson locker. The explosion blinked my thermal plate black for a heartbeat, while the flash lit the cupola prism windows around me.
Suarez’ crew had gotten twenty-five yards away from their tank when the round blew it apart. When my thermal cleared, I saw nothing but sand and a scatter of flaming wreckage. My heart sank.
Then one man struggled to his feet, followed by another. The second lifted a third, and laid him in a fireman’s carry across the first man’s back. Silhouetted against the flames of the burning tank, the man carrying the wounded soldier staggered toward the shelter of Arcuno’s tank.
The third man paused, knelt to pick up his carbine, then chased after the other two. The carbine appeared to be wrapped in cloth that flapped in the wind, and he held it in front of him, two-handed, like the ring-bearer at a wedding.
The wrapped carbine seemed to have something dangling from its muzzle. I upped magnification on it.
My head snapped back from the view plate and I sucked in a breath. The cloth was a uniform sleeve, bearing three chevrons. The dangling objects were the fingers of a hand. It was no carbine. It was Suarez’ arm, severed at the shoulder.
‘‘Tanks! Four o’clock. Eight hundred yards. Engaging.’’
Another voice. ‘‘Tanks! Nine o’clock. Engaging.’’
My tank rocked. My gunner fired at the tank that had just destroyed Suarez’ tank, without waiting on my fire command. He said, ‘‘On the way.’’
Clang.
The ejected, spent shell casing hit the turret floor, and rolled, clattering, among others already there. Our Driver, who would have been useless, and possibly trapped, in his compartment up front, bent down in the well of the turret and policed up the casings.
Boom.
The tank we had targeted, the one that had blown off Suarez’ arm, exploded.
For the next four minutes I lurched left, then right, as our turret spun, we identified targets, engaged, then moved on to others. Outside, muzzle blasts and exploding tanks lightning-flashed through the cupola prism windows. The blasts and explosions rumbled in a constant, rolling thunderclap that drowned the chatter and screams that fed into my ear from Platoon Net.
The Autoloader pistoned rounds from the ready rack into the main gun breech, across the turret with force that could amputate a carelessly extended limb. Red cabin light glowed off acidic smoke that overloaded the turret ventilators. Sweat stung my eyes and blurred my view through the gunsights. Strobing crimson fog made my gunner’s and driver’s movements jerk like the spastic struggles of hanged men. If hell is a theme park to amuse the devil, tankon-tank battles are the bumper cars of the damned.
Then a silence so loud that it rang filled our turret.
My driver stood calf-deep in spent brass so hot that his uniform trousers smoldered. ‘‘Ready rack empty, skipper.’’ The autoloader paused, dumb and useless.
My gunner continued to slew the turret, trying to keep its thicker, frontal armor presented to the enemy that surrounded us.
Beyond us, the thunderclaps and the flashes ebbed, as our enemy’s guns were silenced by our fire, while ours went mute. I hoped the silence was for want of ammunition, not for want of live crews. I felt for my mike with numb fingers, swiveled it in front of my lips. ‘‘Report!’’
Edwards’ tank didn’t respond. I could see it aflame in the distance.
Arcuno said, ‘‘We’re still here, skipper. We picked up Suarez’ crew, but he—’’
I nodded at the air. ‘‘I saw.’’ Modern battlefield first aid could preserve life through everything from hypothermia to third degree burns. And if life could be preserved until a GI got back to hospital, the surgeons could even regrow an arm. But not on a man who had bled to death in the field.
Two more Kodiak hulls burned beyond Edwards’.
I stared down at my hands. They shook. And they would forever be covered in the blood that coursed from Suarez’ severed arm, and the blood of all the others who had died because I was not a skipper, but just a man.
In that instant, the world slowed. Something struck our hull, a single hammer tap. But it was no hammer, it was the cone of an incoming shaped-charge anti-tank round, crumpling as it hit. I knew in that nanosecond that the round had found our sponson ammunition locker, just as another round had found the locker on Suarez’ tank. I thought, ‘‘Uh-oh.’’
Then I seemed to be floating.
Blam-blam-blam.
Kit, topside on the Abrams’ turret, one hand on the smoking .50, one hand cupped to her mouth, shouted at Zhondro and me. ‘‘Get in here! I got a grezz inbound!’’
Cutler was already safely inside the tank, presumably burrowed into the gunner’s well. Waiting.
I clambered up the tank’s front fender toward the commander’s hatch, slipped on the wet steel, and skinned a knee so badly that it bled. I wondered whether a grezz was attracted to the smell of human blood, and if so, from how far away.
And then I realized why Cutler, who normally made for the comfort of the Sleeper at every opportunity, was waiting in the gunner’s well with an itchy trigger finger.
He had not only used the carcasses of the animals he had slaughtered as grezzen chum, he had dangled Zhondro and me as live bait. As I dropped down into the Commander’s hatch, and pulled it closed against the rain, I muttered, ‘‘Cutler, you bastard.’’
I looked around the turret. Kit peered intently through the loader’s movable periscope, hands on its grips like a U-boat commander in a Trueborn war holo. Below me, Cutler hunched forward, hands on the gunner’s yoke, face pressed against his sight. Zhondro had scrambled forward, and was levering his seat into driving position. But, as I had the night before, I felt like someone was listening to me breathe. I peered into my screen. Dead ahead, obscured by the rain, something moved.