The Tank Lords by David Drake Read Free Book Online

still an awkward addition to the clutter filling the blower's fighting compartment, was mounted on the front bulkhead next to Ranson's tribarrel. She switched it on and picked up her back-and-breast armor.
    "Janacek!" She ordered her right gunner over the pulsing thump- hiss of the tribarrels to either side of her. "Help me on!"
    The stocky, spike-haired crewman turned from the spade grips of his gun and took the weight of Ranson's ceramic armor. She shrugged into the clamshell and latched it down her right side.
    All six blowers in the guard detachment were beads of light in the multi-function display. Their fusion bottles were pressurized, though that didn't mean they had full crews.
    "Now your own!" she said, handing the compartment's other suit to Janacek.
    "Screw it!" the gunner snarled as he turned to his tribarrel.
    " Now , trooper!" Ranson shouted in his ear.
    Janacek swore and took the armor.
    Two bullets clanged against the underside of the splinter shield, a steel plate a meter above the coaming of the fighting compartment. One of the Consie rounds howled off across the encampment while the other disintegrated in red sparks that prickled all three of the Slammers.
    Stolley triggered a long burst, then a single round. " My trick, sucker!" he shouted.
    The air was queasy with the bolts' ionized tracks and the sullen, petrochemical stink of the empty cases.
    The blowers of the guard detachment were spaced more or less evenly around the 500-meter arc of the Slammers' area, because they were the only vehicles Ranson could depend on being combat ready. Two tanks were in Camp Progress for maintenance, and a third one—brand new—had been delivered here for shake-down before being sent on to a line company.
    All three of the panzers might be able to provide at least fire support. If they could, it'd make a lot of difference.
    Maybe the difference between life and death.
    Ranson poked the control to give her all units with live fusion powerplants in a half-kilometer area. She prayed she'd see three more lights in her display—
    Somebody who at least said he was Colonel Banyussuf, the camp commander, was bleating for help on the general channel. ". . . are overrunning headquarters! They're downstairs now!"  
    Likely enough, from the crossfire inside the berm at the other end of the camp. And Banyussuf's own bloody problem until Ranson had her lot sorted out.
    There were ten blips: she'd forgotten the self-propelled howitzer in because of a traversing problem. Somebody'd brought it up, too.
    Ranson switched on her own tribarrel. A blurred figure rose from where the two Consies Stolley'd killed were cooling in her visor's image. She ripped the new target with a stream of bolts that flung his arm and head in the air as his torso crumpled to the ground.
    They were Hammer's Slammers. They'd been brought to Prosperity to kick ass, and that's just what they were going to do.
     
     
Chapter Two
    Hans Wager, his unlatched clamshell flapping against his torso, lifted himself onto the back deck of his tank and reached for the turret handhold.
    He hated mortars, but the shriek of incoming didn't scare him as much as it should've. He was too worried about the bleeding cursed, huge whale of a tank he was suddenly in charge of in a firefight.
    And Wager was pissed: at Personnel for transferring him from combat cars to tanks when they promoted him to sergeant; at himself, for accepting the promotion if the transfer came with it; and at his driver, a stupid newbie named Holman who'd only driven trucks during her previous six months in the regiment.
    The tank was brand new. It didn't have a name. Wager'd been warned not to bother naming the vehicle, because as soon as they got the tank to D Company it'd be turned over to a senior crew while he and Holman were given some piece of knackered junk.
    Wager grabbed the hatch—just in time, because the tank bucked as that dickhead Holman lifted her on her fans instead of just building pressure