The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Lamartiere reduced the image and switched from seek to protect. When the map display came up, he expanded the region from the default—a ten-meter fringe surrounding Hoodoo—to include the whole area of Pamiers.

He touched auto. The civilians were under cover, deep in the mines, but an incoming round might shatter rock and bring down a traverse on huddled forms. One of them might have been his sister Celine.

Taking the yoke in both hands again, Lamartiere drove toward the eastern exit from the valley at a sedate pace. He didn't need to rush to get into position, and high speed on this terrain would waste precious ammunition when the AI responded to incoming artillery.

Because he concentrated on his driving, Lamartiere heard the whine of the cupola before he noticed motion on the gunnery screen. The tribarrel fired: three rounds, two, three more. Cyan and the dull red light of high explosive quivered on the gunnery screen.

Hoodoo's sensors and AI permitted her to sweep shells from the sky when they were still so far away that the explosions couldn't be seen by the naked eye. Given a vantage point and enough 2cm ammunition, this tank could defend the whole area from horizon to horizon.

The sticking point now was the ammunition.

The second salvo came over just before Hoodoo reached the mouth of the valley. The shells were fired out of the northwest, probably from guns in the government base at Ariege. The tribarrel hummed and crackled, rotating barrels between rounds so that the polished iridium bores had a chance to cool. The powergun bolts detonated the shells when they were barely over the horizon.

Driving with one hand, Lamartiere adjusted the gunnery screen. He hoped the gunners wouldn't waste any more of their expensive terminally guided rounds. They didn't have direct observation of the results since the drone had been knocked down, but observers with the mechanized battalion would tell them their fire was fruitless.

"I'm setting the gun only to respond to shells aimed at us from now on, Doctor," he explained to Clargue. He supposed he was trying to pass on the burden of the choice he'd just made. "We're down to seventy-seven rounds. If I keep covering the village, we'll use up all the ammunition and then we lose everything."

"Yes," Clargue said. He sounded cool; certainly not judgmental. "Rather like triage."

"Pardon?" Lamartiere said. "Triage?"

Driving Hoodoo with the electronics working was infinitely less wearing than the trip Lamartiere had made in the early hours of the morning, trying to pick his way over narrow, half-familiar roads in the dark. The screens showed the path as though in daylight, and the tank's microwave imaging ignored dust and the mist beginning to rise in low points where aquifers bled through the rocks.

"When there are many injured and limited medical facilities," Clargue explained, "you divide the casualties into three groups. You ignore the ones who aren't in immediate danger so you can concentrate on helping those who will survive only if they get immediate help. And you also ignore those who will probably die even if you try to help them."

He coughed to clear his throat. "It's a technique of setting priorities that was developed during wartime."

Hoodoo crested a rise and entered the floodplain of the Lystra River. Except in springtime, the Lystra ran in a narrow channel only a few hundred meters wide—though deep and fast-flowing. There was only one ford on the upper river, and the bridges that spanned it during peace had been blown early in the rebellion.

The ford was a dike of basalt intruding into the surrounding limestone, raising the channel and spreading it to nearly a kilometer in width. One of the bridges had been here. The abutments and two pillars still stood, but the tangle of dynamited girders had tumbled out of sight downstream last year when the snow melted.

Befayt's troops were hidden in fighting holes, covered with insulating blankets that dispersed their thermal signatures. They'd learned to be careful eight months before, when elements of the Slammers began accompanying government units who entered the mountains.

The guerrillas had been wary of the mercenaries' firepower. They'd quickly learned that the sensor suites of the vast iridium behemoths were even more of a threat.

Given a little time, Dr. Clargue could put those sensors in the hands of the rebels. Clargue—and Hoodoo—just had to survive this night.

Lamartiere found the spot he'd noticed on previous visits to Pamiers, a shallow draw that carried overflow from the channel during the spate. He took Hoodoo over the edge; gently, he thought, but bank broke away and the tank rushed to the bottom of gravel and coarse vegetation with a roar. A geyser of dust rose.