The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Franciscus couldn't hear him. He would have ignored the comment anyway, as he seemed to ignore everything but his own will and direct orders from Father Renaud, the spiritual head of the Company of Death.

Lamartiere needed to concentrate on his driving.

The van sprinted off now that Franciscus had boarded the tank. It had been supposed to pick up the semi's driver; there was no longer any reason for its presence.

The van's relatively high power-to-weight ratio allowed it to accelerate faster than Hoodoo, but air resistance limited the lighter vehicle's top speed to under a hundred kph. With the correct surface and time to accelerate, Hoodoo could easily double that rate.

Neither vehicle outsped gunshots, but the tank could shrug them off. If the government forces were even half-awake, for the van to wait while Franciscus played games had been a very bad idea.

Franciscus was shouting something about the hatch. It might be locked, but Lamartiere suspected the colonel was just trying to open it in the wrong direction, pushing it back instead of pulling it open. There was nothing the driver could do until—

Shells rang off Hoodoo's rear hull. Rounds that missed sailed past, the tracers golden in the night air, and exploded in red pulses on the westbound lanes of the highway ahead.

If the tank's screens had been live, Lamartiere could have seen what was happening behind him without even turning his head. Now his choice was to ignore the pursuit or to swing the tank sideways so that he could see past the turret.

He twisted the yoke. The pursuers might have antitank missiles as well as automatic cannon, and even cannon could riddle the skirts and ground Hoodoo as surely as if they'd shot out her fan nacelles.

Two of the air-cushion vehicles that patrolled the perimeter fence had followed Hoodoo out of the spaceport. They had no armor to speak of, but they were fast and the guns in their small turrets had a range of several kilometers.

Because Hoodoo turned the next burst missed her, but red flashes ate across the back of the van. It flipped on edge and cartwheeled twice before the fuel cell ruptured. Lamartiere ducked as he drove through the fireball. He smelled flesh burning, but at least he couldn't hear the screams.

Franciscus must have opened the turret hatch because the flow past Lamartiere's chest and legs increased violently. The cross-draft cut off a moment later as Franciscus closed the cupola behind him.

Now that the colonel was clear, Lamartiere braked the tank at the end of the access road. Cannon shells crossed in front of him, then slapped both sides of the turret as the gunners adjusted. Hoodoo roared across the highway's eastbound lanes on inertia.

Lamartiere dumped pressure on the median, grounding in a gulp of yellow-gray soil far less spectacular than the sparks on the concrete. The tank pitched violently. Franciscus screamed in fury as he bounced around the fighting compartment, but Lamartiere had strapped in by habit.

He closed the vents and rotated Hoodoo clockwise. One of the patrol cars was trying to swing around their right side. It brushed the tank's bow and disintegrated as though it had hit a granite cuff. Building speed again, Lamartiere brought Hoodoo in line after the remaining government vehicle.

The minuscule bump might have been dirt, part of the patrol car, or the corpse of a government soldier. It made no difference after it passed beneath the tank's skirts.

They crossed the northern lanes of the highway, driving into the brush that grew on arid soil. If the car's driver had been thinking clearly, he'd have doubled back immediately and used his agility to escape. He'd panicked when he changed from hunter to hunted, though, and he tried to outrun the tank.

The gunner rotated his turret halfway, then gave it up as a bad job. A side door opened. The gunner jumped out, hit a thorn tree, and hung there impaled before Hoodoo's skirts ran him under.

The tank was pitching because of irregularities in the surface, but brush thick enough to slow the patrol car had no effect on 170 tonnes. The driver looked back over his shoulder an instant before Hoodoo crushed car and driver both. Lamartiere had only a glimpse of staring eyes and the teeth that framed the screaming mouth.

There were no more immediate enemies. Lamartiere angled Hoodoo's bow to the northwest. He should hit a road after a kilometer or so of brush busting. The mountains were within a hundred kilometers on this heading; Pamiers, his destination, was only another eighty kilometers beyond. He'd have Hoodoo under cover before government troops could mount a pursuit.

They'd won. He'd won.

In the fighting compartment behind Lamartiere, Franciscus swore in darkness. He was unable even to reopen the cupola hatch.