The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Shut up, Frenchie,” Huber snapped as he scrolled through the download. He was more irritated than he’d have been if a newbie like Padova had made the comment. Deseau should’ve known they didn’t have enough data to guess what was going on. Steuben might be in command of Base Alpha because his White Mice were defending it, but that didn’t mean the Colonel and Major Pritchard were casualties.

It didn’t mean they weren’t casualties, either.

“Right!” Huber muttered when he had the situation clear. At least it was clear enough that he knew staring at it longer wasn’t going to

change anything in a good way. “Red and Blue elements—”

F-2 and F-3 respectively, each with a squad of infantry in support.

“—will proceed to designated positions on the reverse slope—”

The download from Central set out the east side of the terminal building as the general objective for Highball’s action elements, but Central hadn’t known what strength Huber would have available for the attack. Huber’s C&C box had broken the assignment into individual targets. Losing two cars and six infantry was probably better than Operations had calculated, though under normal circumstances twenty percent was a horrendous casualty rate.

“—and hold there till two-two-three-seven hours, when—”

Battery Alpha opened fire, loosing thunder and the long crackling lightning of sustainer motors as the missiles streaked west so low that they barely cleared the ridgeline. The hogs rocked from the backblasts, slamming their skirts against the hard clay substrate.

“—we’ll cross the crest and attack our objectives at forty kph. White element under Sergeant Marano—”

The remaining two combat cars and eleven infantry—some of whom were walking wounded only if they didn’t have to walk very far.

“—remains here to provide security for the X-Ray element. Any questions? Over.”

“Let’s do it, El-Tee,” Sergeant Nagano said. He raised his gauntleted left hand from Foghorn, the thumb up.

“Roger that,” Huber said, after a ten-second pause to be sure that nobody had anything substantive to add. “Move out, troopers. Keep it slow till we’re in position, and nobody crosses the start line till it’s time. Six out.”

Fencing Master started forward, barely ambling. The other cars—particularly Messeman’s trio from the east arc of the circle—had farther to go to get into position. Padova wasn’t letting eagerness make her screw up.

The bone-shaking roar of the rocket howitzers paused on a long snarl as the last of the six rounds in the ready magazines streaked westward. Another battery took up the bombardment as Basingstoke’s hogs cycled missiles from their storage magazines in the rear hull into their turrets to resume firing.

The hogs were launching firecracker rounds, anti-personnel cargo shells designed to dump thousands of bomblets each. Powerguns from the port’s air defenses stabbed the sky for several seconds, bursting all the incoming rounds before they could open over the target. Then one got through.

Huber knew what it was like on the ground—and what it would’ve been like for Task Force Huber if the Firelords had gotten lucky with their less-sophisticated equivalents. When the bomblets swept over the defenses as a sea of white fire, shrapnel would kill the crews and disable gun mechanisms. Then the next round—and the next twenty rounds—would get through.

The cars aligned themselves to the right of Fencing Master at twenty-meter intervals. The eighteen infantrymen were twenty meters behind, their skimmers bobbling in the wake of the cars. They looked hopelessly vulnerable to Huber, but he knew from conversations that most infantrymen regarded combat cars as big targets, and tanks as bigger targets yet. They’d come in handy for clearing the terminal building, if they got that far.

Padova raised her speed to ten kph but didn’t accelerate further. Huber frowned with instinctive impatience, then understood. “Highball,” he said, “we’re timing—”

Padova was timing.

“—our approach so we’ll reach our attack positions at exactly the time to go over the crest. That way we’ll already have forward inertia instead of lifting from a halt. Six out, break.”

His frown deepened as he continued, “Trooper Padova, using initiative is fine, but don’t play games or you’ll be playing them in another unit. Tell me what you’re planning the next time, all right?”

“Sorry, sir,” the driver said, sounding like she meant it. “I wasn’t …sorry, it won’t happen again.”

The cars and skimmers passed to the south of the grain elevators and their clustered dwellings. Deseau looked back over his shoulder, his hand resting lightly on the butt of his 2-cm weapon. If a sniper or Solace artillery observer appeared among the buildings now, the forward tribarrel wouldn’t bear on it.

Huber smiled wryly. Frenchie was an optimistic man, in his way.