The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

The Slammers' 30-tonne combat cars, like their tanks, had miniaturized fusion powerplants. The Government of Ambiorix would have had to import fusion units at many times the cost of the gun vehicles as completed with locally manufactured diesels. The 8-wheeled chassis was probably the best compromise between economics and the terrain.

With the tanks in position, the remainder of the battalion came over the hill and headed for the river. Thirty-odd air-cushion armored personnel carriers made up the bulk of the unit. Each APC mounted an automatic cannon in a small turret and could carry up to sixteen troops in addition to its own crew.

To Lamartiere's surprise there was an air-cushion jeep in the middle of the column. It pulled out of line almost at once and vanished behind an outcrop too slight to hide a vehicle of any size.

A lightly loaded air-cushion vehicle can sail across water because its weight is spread evenly over the whole surface beneath the plenum chamber. Government APCs carried too high a density of armor and payload for that. They sank, but where the bottom was as shallow and firm as it was here they could pogo across without flooding their fans. Even so, the Lystra was dangerously high. Only a crisis could induce a battalion to force the crossing now instead of waiting for the load of melting snow to recede for another week.

Rather than driving straight into the water as Lamartiere expected, the APCs formed three lines abreast well short of the bank. Their turret guns nervously searched the hills across the river, and troops pointed personal weapons from the open hatches in the vehicles' top decks.

Four more tanks closed the battalion's line of march. They drove past their fellows in overwatch positions to halt at the river's edge. A pair of crewmen got out of each vehicle and erected a breathing tube over the engine vents. While they worked, the third crew member closed the coil gun's muzzle with a tompion.

The crews got back in their waterproofed tanks and drove slowly into the river. The initial drop-off brought water foaming over the tops of the big wheels, but the slope lessened. The vehicles were nearly at the Lystra's midpoint before their turrets went completely under, leaving only the snorkel tubes and occasionally the raised muzzle of a coil gun to mark their progress.

The first rank of APCs bounded into the river with a roar and wall of spray like that at the base of a waterfall. They had waited so that their boisterous passage didn't swamp the tanks while the latter were still in deep water.

"Here we go," Lamartiere warned Clargue. He fed power to the fans and lifted Hoodoo several meters higher up the swale, exposing her turret and main gun to view of the government forces.

The tanks across the river fired before Hoodoo came to rest. Two shells landed ringing hammer blows against the turret and a third exploded just short, flinging half a tonne of dirt over the bow slope. If Lamartiere had been looking out of his hatch, the blasts would have decapitated him.

The government vehicles had fired HE, not armor-piercing shot. That meant they hadn't really expected to meet the Slammers' tank here. They must be terrified already . . .

Lamartiere laid the pipper on the gun mantle of the tank on the left. He was too busy to be frightened now.

Befayt's guerrillas and the APCs were firing wildly. Government automatic weapons stitched the night together with golden tracers. Rebel coil guns showed only puffs of fluorescent mist, the ionized vestiges of the projectiles' driving bands.

Lamartiere tapped his trigger while his left index finger clicked the radios on and off. Light more brilliant than the shell bursts lit Hoodoo's turret. Remnants of the copper leads bled blue-green across the flash of aluminized slurry. Simultaneously the tribarrel's bolt struck at the base of the target's electromotive gun, cratering the armor and stripping insulation from the tube's windings.

"Another charge!" Lamartiere screamed.

The guerrillas were concentrating on tank snorkels and the APCs which had entered the stream. A line of bullets tore out the side of an APC's skirts. The vehicle rolled over on its back, spilling soldiers through the open hatches. The weight of their gear sucked them down.

The government tanks fired again. The tank Lamartiere had damaged dissolved in a sizzling short circuit. The current meant to accelerate a kilo of tungsten to 4000 kph instead ate metal. Everything flammable in the interior ignited, including the flesh of the crew.

The other three rounds missed Hoodoo. The gunners had switched to AP, but in their haste they'd forgotten to correct for the much flatter trajectory of the high-velocity shot.