The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Lamartiere drove over the wreckage of a truck that had been hit by an antitank missile. Lubricant and the synthetic rubber tires burned with low, smoky flames. Hoodoo's skirt plowed a path through the skeletal frame, whipping the blaze higher with the downdraft from the plenum chamber.

The main gun fired.

The tribarrel had so little effect inside the tank that Lamartiere was merely aware that Heth was shooting. The 20cm weapon's discharge rocked Hoodoo backward despite the inertia of her 170 tonnes. Air clapped to fill the vacuum which the jolt of plasma had burned through its heart. Lamartiere shouted in surprise.

The leading APC, by now nearly a kilometer distant, burst as though a volcano had erupted beneath it. The bolt transferred its megajoules of energy to the vehicle, vaporizing even the ceramic armor. A fireball forty meters in diameter bloomed where the APC had been; bits of solid matter sprayed out of it, none of them bigger than a man's thumbnail.

The gun cycled, ejecting the spent round into the fighting compartment. Heat and stinking fumes flooded Hoodoo's interior even though the ventilation fans switched to high speed. Lamartiere's eyes were watering and the back of his throat burned.

"Thought I'd wait till we were clear of the civilians," Sergeant Heth explained over the intercom in a conversational voice. "Sidescatter from the big gun can blister bare skin if you're anywhere nearby."

He fired the 20cm weapon again. This time the clang and the way the tank bucked weren't a surprise to Lamartiere, though his head wobbled back and forth in response to the hull's motion.

The second APC was making a skidding turn to avoid running through the flaming ruin that had exploded before it. The cyan bolt hit the vehicle at a slant, perfectly centered, and devoured it as completely as its fellow. The fire-ball dimmed to a ghost of its initial fury, but brush ignited by debris ignited hundreds of meters away.

The last Rallier vehicle fled at over 100 kph despite the broken terrain. It was drawing away because Hoodoo's mass took so long to accelerate despite the tank's higher top speed. Lamartiere concentrated on driving, avoiding knobs of rock too heavy to smash through and crevices that would spill air from the plenum chamber and ground Hoodoo shriekingly.

He heard the turret gimbal onto its target. A Rallier stood on the deck of the APC and jumped. The man hit the ground and bounced high, limbs fl ailing in rubbery curves. He'd broken every bone in his body and was obviously dead.

But then, so were his fellows.

The main gun slammed. The third APC vanished in a smear of fire across the desert floor. The sun was high enough to pale the flames, but the pall of black smoke drifted west with the breeze.

"Go back to the fort, kid," Heth ordered. "Stegner's heading there in our jeep."

The mercenary chuckled, then started coughing. The ozone and matrix residue from the main gun burned his throat also. "We planned that Steg'd set off some fireworks on the hills. While everybody was looking that way I'd hop into Hoodoo. The locals made a better job of fireworks than we ever thought of, didn't they? Bloody near did for me, I'll tell the world!"

Lamartiere braked the tank with the caution its mass demanded. Unlike the driver of a wheeled vehicle, he didn't have the friction of tires against the ground to slow him unless he dumped air from the plenum chamber and deliberately skidded the skirt.

There was no need now for haste. Lamartiere wasn't in a hurry to face what came next.

He opened his hatch, thinking the draft would clear fumes from the tanks interior faster than the filtered ventilation system. The hatch rolled shut again an instant later; Sergeant Heth had used the commander's override.

"Not just yet, kid," he said. "The guy in charge of this lot, de Laburat . . . Did you ever meet him?"

"Yes," Lamartiere said. "I'd sooner trust a weasel."

"Yeah, that's the guy," the mercenary said. "But he's a smart sonuvabitch. He saw the way things were going before any of his people did. He bailed out and ran into the rocks right away. I didn't have the ready magazines charged yet, so I couldn't do anything about it."

"You mean de Laburat got away?" Lamartiere said in horror.

The main gun fired. The unexpected CLANG/jerk! whipsawed Lamartiere's head again. Fumes seeped through the narrow passage from the fighting compartment, but both hatches opened before he had time to sneeze. The wind of Hoodoo's forward motion scoured Lamartiere's station.

This time the bolt had struck at the base of the cliff a hundred meters west of the shrine. Rock shattered in a blue-green flash.

The slope bulged, then slid downward with a roar. A plume of pulverized rock settled slowly, displaying an enormous cavity in the cliff. Below the crater was a pile of irregular blocks which in some cases were larger than a man. The mass was still shifting internally, giving it the look of organic life.