The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Pamiers had been shelled repeatedly since the start of the rebellion, and once a government column had taken out its frustration at recent sniping by burning every building in the village. Besides, a city resident like Lamartiere wouldn't have been impressed by the place on its best day.

The locals seemed happy, though. Children played shrilly on the steep hillside. They'd wanted to stay beside the tank, but that would have given away Hoodoo's location. Women chatted as they hung laundry or cooked on outdoor stoves. The flapping clothes made bright primary contrasts with the general coal-dust black of the landscape.

Hoodoo stood at the north side of a tailings pile, covered by a camouflage tarpaulin with the same thermal signature as bare ground. Lamartiere had heard reconnaissance aircraft twice this morning. If the government learned where Hoodoo was, they would come for her; but government troops only entered the mountains when they were in overwhelming force, and even that had a way of being risky.

"I'm not an engineer," Dr. Clargue muttered from the driver's compartment. "I'm a medical man. I should not be here!"

"You and I are what the rebellion has for a technical staff in Pamiers," Lamartiere said. He was in the turret and couldn't see the doctor. A narrow passage connected the two portions of the tank, but that was for emergency use only. "And we've got to figure out where the switches are. Without the guns and sensors, this is just scrap metal."

It was a good thing that Lamartiere needed to encourage Clargue: otherwise he'd have been screaming in frustration himself. Lamartiere had been in intimate contact with the mercenaries' armored vehicles for three months, learning every detail he could about them. It hadn't occurred to him that he'd need to know where the cut-off switches were, but without that information he might as well have waited to wave good-bye when the freighter lifted with Hoodoo tomorrow. At least that way Lamartiere would have his final pay packet to donate to the rebellion.

The fighting compartment darkened as Captain Befayt stuck her head in the cupola hatch. "How are you coming?" she asked. "Say, there really isn't much room in there, is there?"

"No," Lamartiere said, trying not to snarl. "And we don't even have the interior lights working, so while you're standing there I can't see anything inside."

Befayt commanded the company of guerrillas who provided security for Pamiers. She had a right to be concerned since the tank was a risk to the community for as long as it remained here.

Besides that, Lamartiere liked Befayt. Too often in rebel communities the fighters ate and drank well while the civilians, even the children, starved. In Pamiers all shared, and anybody who thought his gun made him special found he had the captain to answer to.

Having said that, Lamartiere really didn't need to have the heavy-set woman looking over his shoulder while everything was a frustrating mess.

"Here, I'll come down with you," Befayt said. She lowered her legs through the hatch, then paused for a moment. Her boots dribbled dirt and cinders down on Lamartiere. After laying her equipment belt on top of the turret to give her ample waist more clearance, she dropped the rest of the way into the compartment.

Maybe Lamartiere should have snarled, though people pretty much heard what they wanted to hear. Befayt wanted a look at this wonderful, war-winning piece of equipment.

Twelve hours earlier, Lamartiere too had believed the tank was all those things. Now he wasn't sure.

The trouble was that there were so many marvelous devices packed into Hoodoo's vast bulk that the breaker box Lamartiere was looking for was concealed like a grain of sand in the desert. If the electronics had been live, Dr. Clargue could have called up a schematic that would tell them where the switches were . . .

Befayt stood on the seat which Lamartiere had lowered to give himself more light within the fighting compartment. He and Clargue had handlights as well, but the focused beams distorted appearances by shutting off the ambiance beyond their edges.

Befayt peered around the turret in wonder. "Boy," she said with unintended irony, "I'm glad it's you guys figuring this stuff out instead of me. This the big gun?"

She patted what was indeed the breech of the main gun. Lamartiere had seen a 20cm weapon tested after armorers had replaced the tube. The target was a range of hills ten kilometers south of the firing point. The cyan bolt had blasted a cavity a dozen meters wide in solid rock.

"Yes," Lamartiere said shortly. "The round comes from the ready magazine in the turret ring, shifts to the transfer chamber—"

He slid back a spring-loaded door beside the breech. The interior was empty.

"—and then into the gun when the previous round's ejected. That way all but the one round's under heavy armor at all times."