The Tank Lords (10 page)

Ozone and gases from the empty cases smothered the stink of Otski's arm.

For a moment, Consies balanced on top of the berm. A scything crossfire tumbled them as the tanks and combat cars raked their targets from both sides.

When nothing more moved, the vehicles shot at bodies in case some of the guerrillas were shamming. Twice Suilin managed to explode the grenades or ammunition that his targets carried.

Cooter had to pry the reporter's fingers from the tribarrel when Tootsie Six called a ceasefire.

"I've got authorization," said Dick Suilin, fumbling in the breast pocket of his fatigues. The "
Extend all courtesies
" card signed by his brother-in-law, Governor Samuel Kung, was there, along with his Press ID and his Military Status Papers.

Suilin's military status was Exempt-III. That meant he would see action only in the event of a call-up of all male citizens between the ages of sixteen and sixty.

He was having trouble getting the papers out because his fingers were still numb from the way they'd been squeezing the tribarrel's grips.

For that matter, the National Government might've proclaimed a general call-up overnight—if there
was
still a National Government.

"Buddy," snarled the senior non-com at the door of the communications center, "I can't help you. I don't care if you got authorization from God 'n his saints. I don't care if you
are
God 'n his saints!"

"I'm not that," the reporter said in a soft, raspy voice. Ozone and smoke had flayed his throat. "But I need to get through to Kohang—and it's your ass if I don't."

He flicked at his shirtfront. Some of what was stuck there came off.

Suilin's wrist and the back of his right hand were black where vaporized copper from the buzzbomb had recondensed. All the fine hairs were burned off, but the skin beneath hadn't blistered. His torso was badly bruised where the bullet-struck armor had punched into him.

The butt of the pistol he now carried in his belt prodded the bruise every time he moved.

"Well, I'm not God neither, buddy," the non-com said, his tone frustrated but suddenly less angry.

He waved toward his set-up and the two junior technicians struggling with earphones and throat mikes. "The land lines're down, the satellites're down, and there's jamming right across all the bands. If you think
you
can get something through, you just go ahead and try. But if you want my ass, you gotta stand in line."

The National side of Camp Progress had three commo centers. The main one was—had been—in the shielded basement of Headquarters. A few Consies were still holed up there after the rest of the fighting had died down. A Slammers' tank had managed to depress its main gun enough to finish the job.

The training detachment had a separate system, geared toward the needs of homesick draftees. It had survived, but Colonel Banyussuf—who'd also survived—had taken over the barracks in which it was housed as his temporary headquarters. Suilin hadn't bothered trying to get through the panicked crowd now surrounding the building.

The commo room of the permanent maintenance section at Camp Progress was installed in a three-meter metal transport container. It was unofficial—the result of scrounging over the years. Suilin hadn't ever tried to use it before; but in the current chaos, it was his only hope.

"What do you mean, the satellites are down?" he demanded.

He was too logy with reaction to be sure that what he'd heard the non-com say was as absurd as he thought it was. The microwave links were out? Not all of them, surely. . . .

"Out," the soldier repeated. "Gone. Blitzed. Out."

"Blood and martyrs," Suilin said.

The Consie guerrillas couldn't have taken down all the comsats. The Terran enclaves had to have become directly involved. That was a stunning escalation of the political situation—

And an escalation which was only conceivable as part of a planned deathblow to the National Government of Prosperity.

"I've
got
to call Kohang," said Dick Suilin, aloud but without reference to the other men nearby. All he could think of was his sister, in the hands of Consies determined to make an example of the governor's wife. "Suzi . . ."

"You can forget bloody Kohang," said one of the techs as he stripped off his headphones. He ran his fingers through his hair. The steel room was hot, despite the cool morning and the air conditioner throbbing on the roof. "It's been bloody overrun."

Suilin gripped the pistol in his belt. "What do you mean?" he snarled as he pushed past the soldier in the doorway.

"They said it was," the technician insisted. He looked as though he intended to get out of his chair, but the reporter was already looming over him.

"
Somebody
said it was," argued the other tech. "Look, we're still getting signals from Kohang, it's just the jamming chews the bugger outta it."

"There's fighting all the hell over the place," said the senior non-com, putting a gently restraining hand on Suilin's shoulder. " 'Cept maybe here. Look, buddy, nobody knows what the hell's going on anywhere just now."

"Maybe the mercs still got commo," the first tech said. "Yeah, I bet they do."

"Right," said the reporter. "Good thought."

He walked out of the transport container. He was thinking of what might be happening in Kohang.

He gripped his pistol very hard.

The chip recorder sitting on the cupola played a background of guitar music while a woman wailed in Tagalog, a language which Henk Ortnahme had never bothered to learn. The girls on Esperanza all spoke Spanish. And Dutch. And English. Enough of it.

The girls all spoke money, the same as everywhere in the universe he'd been since.

The warrant leader ran his multitool down the channel of the close-in defense system. The wire brush he'd fitted to the head whined in complaint, but it never quite stalled out.

It never quite got the channel clean, either. Pits in the steel were no particular problem—
Herman's Whore
wasn't being readied for a parade, after all. But crud in the holes for the bolts which both anchored the strips and passed the detonation signals . . . that was something else again.

Something blew up nearby with a hollow sound, like a grenade going off in a trash can. Ortnahme looked around quickly, but there didn't seem to be an immediate problem. Since dawn there'd been occasional shooting from the Yokel end of the camp, but there was no sign of living Consies around here.

Dead ones, sure. A dozen of 'em were lined up outside the TOC, being checked for identification and anything else of intelligence value. When that was done—done in a pretty cursory fashion, the warrant leader expected, since Hammer didn't have a proper intelligence officer here at Camp Progress—the bodies would be hauled beyond the berm, covered with diesel, and barbecued like the bloody pigs they were.

Last night had been a bloody near thing.

Ortnahme wasn't going to send out a tank whose close-in defenses were doubtful. Not after he'd had personal experience of what that meant in action.

He bore down harder. The motor protested; bits of the brush tickled the faceshield of his helmet. He'd decided to wear his commo helmet this morning instead of his usual shop visor, because—

Via, why not admit it? Because he'd really wished he'd had the helmet the night before. He couldn't change the past, couldn't have all his gear handy back
then
when he needed it; but he could sure as hell have it on him now for a security blanket.

There was a 1cm pistol in Ortnahme's hip pocket as well. He'd never seen the face of the Consie who'd chased him with the bomb, but today the bastard leered at Ortnahme from every shadow in the camp.

The singer moaned something exceptionally dismal. Ortnahme backed off his multitool, now that he had a sufficient section of channel cleared. He reached for a meter-long strip charge.

Simkins, who should've been buffing the channels while the warrant leader bolted in charges, had disappeared minutes after they'd parked
Herman's Whore
back in her old slot against the berm. The kid'd done a bloody good job during the firefight—but that didn't mean he'd stopped being a bloody maintenance tech. Ortnahme was going to burn him a new asshole as soon as—

"Mr. Ortnahme?" Simkins said. "Look what I got!"

The warrant leader turned, already shouting. "Simkins, where in the name of all that's holy have—"

He paused. "Via, Simkins," he said. "Where did you get that?"

Simkins was carrying a tribarrel, still in its packing crate.

"Tommy Dill at Logistics, sir," the technician answered brightly. "Ah, Mr. Ortnahme? It's off the books, you know. We set a little charge on the warehouse roof, so Tommy can claim a mortar shell combat-lossed the gun."

Just like that was the only question Ortnahme wanted to ask.

Though it was sure-hell
one
of 'em, that was God's truth.

"Kid," the warrant leader said calmly, more or less. "What in the bloody hell do you think you're gonna do with that gun?"

From the way Simkins straightened, "more or less" wasn't as close to "calmly" as Ortnahme had thought.

"Sir!" the technician said. "I'm gonna mount it on the bow. So I got something to shoot, ah . . . you know, the next time."

The kid glanced up at the blaring recorder. He was holding the tribarrel with no sign of how much the thing weighed. He wouldn't have been able to do that before Warrant Leader Ortnahme started running his balls off to teach him his job.

Ortnahme opened his mouth. He didn't know which part of the stupid idea to savage first.

Before he figured out what to say, Simkins volunteered, "Mister Ortnahme? I figured we'd use a section of engineer stake for a mount and weld it to the skirt. Ah, so we don't have to chance a weld on the iridium, you know?"

Like a bloody puppy, standin' there waggling his tail—and
how
in bloody hell had he got Sergeant Dill to agree to take a tribarrel off manifest?

"Kid," he said at last, "put that down and start buffing this channel for me, all right?"

"Yes, Mister Ortnahme."

The klaxon blurted, then cut off.

Ortnahme and every other Slammer in the compound froze. Nothing further happened. The Yokels must've been testing the system now that they'd moved it.

The bloody cursed fools.

"Sir," the technician said with his face bent over the buzz of his own multitool. "Can I put on some different music?"

"I like what I got on," Ortnahme grunted, spinning home first one, then the other of the bolts that locked the strip of explosive and steel pellets into its channel.

"Why, sir?" Simkins prodded unexpectedly. "The music, I mean?"

Ortnahme stared at his subordinate. Simkins continued to buff his way forward, as though cleaning the channel were the only thing on his mind.

"Because," Ortnahme said. He grimaced and flipped up the faceshield of his helmet. "Because that was the kinda stuff they played in the bars on Esperanza, my first landfall with the regiment. Because it reminds me of when I was young and stupid, kid. Like you."

He slid another of the strip charges from its insulated packing, then paused. "Look," he said, "this ain't our tank, Simkins."

"It's our tank till they send a crew to pick it up," the technician said over the whine of his brush. "It's our tank tonight, Mister Ortnahme."

The warrant leader sighed and fitted the strip into place. It bound slightly, but that was from the way the skirt had been torqued, not the job Simkins was doing on the channel.

"All right," Ortnahme said, "but we'll mount it solid so you swing the bow to aim it, all right? I don't want you screwing around with the grips when you oughta be holding the controls."

Simkins stopped what he was doing and turned. "
Thank
you, Mister Ortnahme!" he said, as though he'd just been offered the cherry of the most beautiful woman on the bloody planet.

"Yeah, sure," the warrant leader said with his face averted. "Believe me, you're gonna do the work while I sit on my butt 'n watch."

Ortnahme set a bolt, then a second. "Hey kid?" he said. "How the hell did you get Tommy to go along with this cop?"

"I told him it was you blasted the Consie with the satchel charge when Tommy opened his warehouse door."

Ortnahme blinked, "Huh?" he said. "Somebody did that? It sure wasn't me."

"Tommy's got a case of real French brandy for you, sir," the technician said. He turned and grinned. "And the tribarrel. Because I'm your driver, see? And he didn't want our asses swingin' in the breeze again like last night."

"Bloody hell," the warrant leader muttered. He placed another bolt and started to grin himself.

"We won't use engineer stakes," he said. "I know where there's a section of 10cm fuel-truck hose sheathing. We'll cut and bend that. . . ."

"Thank you, Mister Ortnahme."

"And I guess we could put a pin through the pivot," Ortnahme went on. "So you could unlock the curst thing if, you know, we got bogged down again."

"
Thank
you, Mister Ortnahme!"

Cursed little puppy. But a smart one.

Two blocks from the commo room, Dick Suilin passed the body of a man in loose black garments. The face of the corpse was twisted in a look of ugly surprise. An old scar trailed up his cheek and across an eyebrow, but there was no sign of the injury that had killed him here.

The Slammers' TOC was almost two kilometers away. Suilin was already so exhausted that his ears buzzed except when he tried to concentrate on something. He decided to head for the infantry-detachment motor pool and try to promote a ride to the north end of the camp.

It occurred to the reporter that he hadn't seen any vehicles moving in the camp since the combat cars reformed and howled back to their regular berths. As he formed the thought, a light truck drove past and stopped beside the body.

A lieutenant and two soldiers wearing gloves, all of them looking morose, got out. Before they could act, a group of screaming dependents, six women and at least as many children, swept around the end of one of the damage buildings. They pushed the soldiers away, then surrounded the corpse and began kicking it.