David Drake - The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The Sincanmo irregulars had gotten their first lesson. A siren on Chief Diabate's 8x8 armored car, halfway up the slope, wound slowly from a groan to a wail. Exhaust blatted through open pipes as the indigs leaped aboard their vehicles and started the engines.

The first salvo howled from the Thunderbolt Division's makeshift redoubt to the southeast. The shells burst with bright orange flashes in the empty plains, causing no casualties. The Sincanmos were either in the gullies well north of the impact area or still on the slope, where the height of the Knifeblade Escarpment provided a wall against shells on simple ballistic trajectories.

Indig vehicles grunted downslope as members of their crews threw themselves aboard.Another four-tube salvo of high explosives truck near where the previous rounds had landed. One shell simply dug itself into the hard soil without going off. Casing fragments rang against the side of a truck, but none of the vehicles slowed or swerved.

The camouflage film fluttered as indigs in the gullies packed their belongings. The trucks were both cargo haulers and weapons platforms for the battlegroups. When the Sincanmos expected action, they cached non-essentials—food, water, tents, and bedding—beside the vehicles, then tossed them aboard again when it was time to leave.

Another round streaked across the Escarpment from the southwest. The Sincanmos ignored the shell because it didn't come within a kilometer of the ground at any point in its trajectory.

Broglie's Legion had a single six-gun battery, very well equipped as to weapons (self-propelled 210mm rocket howitzers) and the selection of shells those hogs launched. The battery's first response to the new threat was a reconnaissance round which provided real-time images through a laser link to Battery Fire Control.

Had Des Grieux powered up H271, his tribarrel in Automatic Air Defense mode could have slapped the spy shell down as soon as it sailed over the Escarpment. It was no part of the veteran's plan to give the tank's presence away so soon, however.

At least thirty guns from the Thunderbolt Division opened fire according to target data passed them by the Legion's fire control. Spurts of black smoke with orange hearts leaped like poplars among the Sincanmo positions, shredding camouflage film that had not deceived the Legion's recce package.

A truck blew up. Men were screaming. Vehicles racing back from the slope to load cached necessities skidded uncertainly as their crews wondered whether or not to drive into the shellbursts ahead of them.

The Legion's howitzers ripped out a perfect Battery Three, three shells per gun launched within a total of ten seconds. They were firecracker rounds. The casings popped high in the air, loosing approximately 7,500 bomblets to drift down on the Sincanmo forces.

For the most part, the Sincanmo looters under Chief Diabate didn't know what hit them. A blanket of white fire fell over the vehicles which milled across the plain for fear of Thunderbolt shells. Thousands of bomblets exploded with a ripping sound that seemed to go on forever.

For those in the broad impact zone, it was forever. Smoke and dust lifted over the soil when the explosive light ceased. A dozen Sincanmo vehicles were ablaze; more crashed and ignited in the following seconds. Only a handful of trucks were under conscious control, though run-while-flat tires let many of the vehicles careen across the landscape with their crews flayed to the bone by glass-filament shrapnel.

Fuel and munitions exploded as the Thunderbolt Division continued to pound the gully positions.A pair of heavy caliber shells landed near H271, but they were overs—no cause for concern. The indigs dying all across the plain provided a perfect stalking horse for the tank in ambush.

Chief Diabate's armored car—the only vehicle in the Sincanmo force with real armor—had come through the barrage unscathed. It wallowed toward the eastern flank of the butte with its siren summoning survivors from the gullies to follow it to safety. Sincanmo 4x4s lurched through the remnants of the camouflage film, abandoning their cached supplies to the needs of the moment.

Sparks and rock fragments sprang up before and beside the armored car. Diabate's driver swerved, but not far enough: a second three-round burst punched through the car's thin armor. A yellow flash lifted the turret, but the vehicle continued to roll on inertia until a larger explosion blew the remainder of the car and crew into pieces no larger than a man's hand.

Leading elements of the Thunderbolt Division had reached the Notch. One of them was a fire-support vehicle, a burst-capable 90mm gun on a half-tracked chassis. The gun continued to fire, switching from solid shot to high explosive as it picked its targets among the fleeing Sincanmo trucks. Other mercenary vehicles, primarily armored personnel carriers with additional troops riding on their roofs, crawled through the Notch and descended the slope littered by the bodies of indigs locked in the embrace of death.

It was getting to be time. Des Grieux closed his main power switch.

H271's screens came alive and bathed the fighting compartment with their light. Des Grieux lifted his commo helmet, ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair, and lowered the helmet again. He took the twin joysticks of the gunnery controls in his hands.

"Booster,"Des Grieux said to the tank's artificial intelligence. "On Screen One, gimme vehicles on a four-kay by one strip aligned with the main gun."

The topographic map of the main battle area flicked out and returned as a narrow holographic slice centered on the Notch. The APCs and other vehicles already north of the Knifeblade Escarpment were sharp symbols that crawled down the holographic slope toward—unbeknownst to themselves—H271 waiting at the bottom of the display.

The symbols of vehicles on the other side of the sandstone wall were hollow, indicating the AI had to extrapolate from untrustworthy data. The electronics, pumps, and even ignition systems of Thunderbolt and Hashemite trucks had individual radio-frequency spectrum signatures which H271's sensor suite could read. Precise location and assignment was impossible at a four-kilometer range beyond an intervening mass of sandstone, however.

One vehicle was marked with orange precision: the Legion tank destroyer which had huffed itself to within five hundred meters of the Notch. The tank destroyer's tribarrel licked skyward frequently to keep shells from decimating the retreating forces. The lines of cyan fire, transposed onto the terrain map in the tank's data base, provided H271 with a precise location for the oncoming vehicle. The other two tank destroyers were at the very top of the display, where they acted as rear guard against the Slammers.

They would come in good time. As for the closest of the three—it would have been nice to take out the tank destroyer with the first bolt, the round that unmasked H271, but that wasn't necessary. Waiting for the Legion vehicle to rise into range would mean sparing some of the half-tracks that drove off the slope and disappeared into swales concealed from the tank.

Des Grieux didn't intend to spare anything that moved this night.

The gunnery screen shrank in scale as it incorporated both orange pippers, the solid dot that marked the tribarrels target—the leading APC, covered by the flowing robes of a score of Hashemites riding on top of it—and the main gun's hollow circle, centered at the turret/hill junction on the fire-support vehicle which still, from its vantage point in the Notch, covered the retreat.