The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Huber looked up at branches whipping past against a dark sky. He grinned faintly. “Thank you, Rocker One-six,” he said. “Six out.”

He wondered how much farther Task Force Huber was going to get. Who knows? Maybe all the way.

And then what? Huber added to himself; but that was a problem for another day.

Huber awakened from a doze. He’d been hunched into the back corner of the fighting compartment, held upright by ammo boxes and a carton of rations. Fields of dark green soybeans rolled to either horizon beyond the iridium walls, punctuated by stretches of native vegetation.

According to the briefing cubes, Solace was several times as populous as all the Outer States put together. Those people were heavily concentrated in the center of the country around Bezant and Port Plattner, however, with the remainder of the country given over to the collective farms which produced food for the entire planet.

Huber frowned as he thought about the rations. He’d swallowed a tube of something a little after dawn as they negotiated the foothills of the Solace Highlands, but he’d had nothing since. He didn’t feel hungry but supposed he ought to eat something.

It was an effort to get anything down because he was so fatigued by the constant vibration. Besides, the poppers made food taste like it’d been scraped from the bottom of a latrine. That wasn’t much of a change from what ration tubes ordinarily tasted like, of course.

He jolted alert, suddenly aware of why he’d awakened. Padova’d been on duty with the C&C display while he rested. She was trained but she didn’t have the sixth sense for what wasn’t right that’d come with a year or two of combat operations.

“I’ve got the watch,” Huber said. He took the controller from Padova’s hand as he spoke, lurching upright. She jumped aside, startled and maybe a little snappish at the lack of ceremony. The reaction passed before it got to her tongue, which was just as well.

As Huber adjusted the display to make explicit what instinct already told him, he said, “Highball, we’re going to have to adjust course to the left by thirty degrees. There’s a monorail line eighteen klicks ahead, and if we continue as planned we’ll be spotted by a train headed southward. We’ll—”

He stopped because he’d caught the fine overtone to the sensor data, the descant he’d ignored for the moment while he focused on the electronic signature of a six-car train heading south at 120 kph. Task Force Huber could avoid observation from a train at ground level, but—

“Bloody Hell!” Huber snarled, interrupting himself. “This is going to take a moment, troopers. There’s aircars scouting for the train and they’ll spot us sure!”

“Six, this is Two-six,” Lieutenant Messeman said on the command channel. “I suggest it’s a troop train and the aircars are escorts. Over.”

“Roger,” said Huber, because it couldn’t be anything else once Messeman had stated the obvious. He shook his head angrily. He must still be waking up. He couldn’t afford to miss cues; he couldn’t, and the troopers who were his responsibility couldn’t afford him missing them either.

“Roger,” Huber repeated, but with a note of decision. There was nothing wrong with his tactical appreciation once he got his mind in gear. “Highball, we can’t avoid them so we’ll engage and keep moving. Fox will attack on a company front—”

That was a bit of an overstatement, given that the Fox elements under Huber’s command were two understrength platoons, but it’d do.

“—from point Echo Michael Four-two, Six-one. X-Ray elements continue in march order. Fox elements form to the right on Three-six in line abreast with five, I repeat five, meter intervals. Execute! Six out.”

Padova looked at him wonderingly. It was too bad Learoyd wasn’t on the right gun, but the newbie was going to have to get her feet wet some time. This was probably as safe a place to do it as any.

“Crew,” Huber said, switching his helmet to intercom. Foghorn was moving up on their right with the other cars of F-3 slanted farther back as they drove through the soybeans to their stations.

Lieutenant Messeman’s platoon would take longer to join from the middle and rear of the column, but it’d be in line by the time it needed to be. “Frenchie, set our guns to take out the scouts when we’re sure of getting them both.”

The aircars were keeping station to either side of the track, five hundred meters up and a kilometer ahead of the train. They were looking for trouble on the line rather than scouting more generally, but even so from their altitude they were bound to notice the Slammers’ vehicles.

Deseau keyed the command into the pad on his tribarrel’s receiver. Instead of executing immediately he said, “You don’t think it’ll warn them, El-Tee?”

“It’s a train,” Huber snapped. “They’re not going to turn around, they won’t even be able to slow down.”

Deseau grimaced and pushed execute. Fencing Master’s tribarrels slewed to the right and elevated under the control of the gunnery computer.