The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The infantry moved toward the firebase through the stumps and brush in a skirmish line, but Melisant swung the car onto the road as soon as she reached the swale connecting the knolls. The track’d been cut with a bulldozer rather than properly graded, but the car’s air cushion smoothed the ride nicely. The deep ruts from wheeled vehicles were frozen now and had snow on their southern edges.

Royalists cheered from the top of the wall. The soldiers were male but there were scores of women and children in the compound as well, some of them waving garments.

Ruthven grimaced, thinking of what’d happen if the Lord’s Army overran the place. His job was to prevent that, but if the rebels were in the strength Intelligence thought they were …well, one platoon, even a bloody good platoon like E/1, wasn’t going to be able to do the job without help that the Royalists might not be able to provide.

The firebase entrance was a simple gap in the wall, but bulldozers had scraped a pile of trunks and dirt as a screen ten meters in front of it. Semi-trailers bringing in supplies would have a hard time with the angle, but Melisant should be able to guide the combat car through without trouble.

There were three strands of barbed wire in front of the wall. That gave negligible protection against assault, but maybe it’d hearten the defenders: placebo effects were real in more areas than medicine.

Ruthven grinned. It wasn’t much of a joke, but in a situation like this you took any chance for a laugh that you got.

Rennie parked his skimmer beside the entrance and hopped up the front of the wall like a baboon with a 2-cm gun; he stood facing inward. His troopers split to either side, four of them joining him on the main wall while the other two mounted the screen and looked back to cover the rest of the column.

“Melisant, ease off a bit,” Ruthven said over the intercom as he opened the roof hatch. “We don’t want to spook our allies, over.”

“You mean they’ll mess their pants, El-Tee?” Melisant said. “Yeah, we don’t want that. Out.”

The fan note didn’t change, but the driver let gravity slow the heavy vehicle as they started up the slope toward the entrance. Ruthven thumbed the lift button and a hydraulic jack raised his seat until his head and shoulders were above the hatch coaming. This way the Royalists could see him instead of watching forty tonnes of steel and iridium growl toward them impassively.

Ruthven tried to keep his face impassive as he eyed the barrier. It was a tangle of protruding roots and branches, no harder to climb than a ladder. Defenders firing over the top from the other side would have very little advantage over an attacking force. The common soldiers carried locally made automatic rifles, but the three blockhouses spaced around the wall mounted pulsed lasers; each weapon had its own fusion bottle.

The Lord’s Army wasn’t any better equipped, but the Prophet Isaiah certainly did a better job of building enthusiasm in his followers than King Jorge II did. Rumor had it that Jorge and his three mistresses had left Pontefract for a safer planet several months ago …and this time rumor was dead right. Ruthven’d heard that from a buddy on Colonel Hammer’s staff.

The command car eased through the S-bend at the base entrance. Melisant was squaring the corners, apparently to impress the locals. Ruthven looked down at them, trying to keep a friendly smile. They were impressed, all right, waving and cheering so loudly that sometimes he could hear them over the car’s howling fans.

Good Lord they’re young! he thought. It really was a war of children. Most of the Royalist soldiers were teenagers and so undernourished they looked barely pubescent, while the Lord’s Army recruited ten year olds at gunpoint from outlying villages.

It’d go on for as long as King Jorge managed to pay the Slammers and the Five Worlds Consortium shipped arms to the Prophet. A whole generation was dying in childhood.

History was a required subject at the Academy; Ruthven had done well in it. The realities of field service had provided color for those textual accounts of revolts, rebellions, and popular movements, however. That color was blood red.

He’d expected a vehicular circuit inside the wall, but the interior of the compound was sprinkled randomly with shanties and lean-tos except for the road from the gate to a clearing in the center. The four howitzers were emplaced evenly around the open area, each in a low sandbagged ring which again must’ve been built for its morale value.

“You want us up between the guns, El-Tee?” Melisant asked. “Looks like they dump the resupply there and the troops hoof it back to their billets, right? Over.”

“Roger that,” Ruthven said. “Break, Unit, we’ll form in the central clearing while I figure out what to do next. Six out.”