The Tank Lords by David Drake Read Free Book Online Page A

in the plenum chamber. "Set—" Wager shouted. The lower edge of his body armor caught on the hatch coaming and jolted the rest of the order out as a wheeze.
    Curse this bloody machine that didn't have any bloody room for all its size!
    The berm around the Yokel portion of Camp Progress was four meters high—good protection against incoming, but you couldn't shoot over it. They'd put up guard towers every hundred meters inside the berm to cover their barbed wire and minefields.
    As Wager slid at last into his turret, he saw the nearest tower disintegrate in an orange flash that silhouetted the bodies of at least three Yokel soldiers.
    Holman had switched on the turret displays as soon as she boarded the tank, so Wager had access to all the data he could possibly want. Panoramic views in the optical, enhanced optical, passive thermal, active infra-red, laser, millimetric radar, or sonic spectra. Magnified views in all the above spectra.
    Three separate holographic screens, two of which could be split or quadded. Patching circuits that would display similar data fed from any other Slammer vehicle within about ten kays.
    Full readouts through any of the displays on the status of the tank's ammunition, its fans, its powerplant, and all aspects of its circuitry.
    Hans Wager didn't understand any of that cop. He'd only been assigned to this mother for eighteen hours.
    His commo helmet pinged. "This is Tootsie six," said the crisp voice of Captain Ranson from the guard detachment. "Report status. Over."
    Ranson didn't have a callsign for Wager's tank, so she was highlighting his blip on her multi-function display before sending.
    Wager didn't have a callsign either.
    "Roger, Tootsie six," he said. "Charlie Three-zero—" the C Company combat car he'd crewed for the past year as driver and wing gunner "—up and running. Over."
    Holman'd got her altitude more or less under control, but the tank now hunched and sidled like a dog unused to a leash. Maybe Wager ought to trade places with Holman. He figured from his combat car experience that he could drive this beast, so at least one of the seats'd be filled by somebody who knew his job.
    Wager reached for the seat lever and raised himself out of the cold electronic belly of the turret. He might not have learned to be a tank commander yet, but . . .
    The night was bright and welcoming. Muzzle flashes erupted from the slim trees fringing the stream 400 meters to Wager's front. Short bursts without tracers. He set his visor for persistent display—prob'ly a way to do that with the main screens, too, but who the cop cared?—to hold the aiming point in his vision while he aligned the sights of the cupola tribarrel with them.
    The first flash of another burst merged with the crackling impact of Wager's powergun. There wasn't a second shot from that Consie.
    Wager walked his fire down the course of the stream, shattering slender tree trunks and igniting what had been lush grass an instant before the ravening cyan bolts released their energy. The tank still wasn't steady, but Wager'd shot on the move before. He knew his job.
    A missile exploded, fuel and warhead together, gouging a chunk out of the creekbank where the tribarrel had found it before its crew could align it to fire.
    Hans Wager's job was to kill people.
     
    The helmeted Slammers' trooper—with twenty kilos of body armor plus a laden equipment belt gripped in his left arm—caught the handle near the top of the car's shield, put his right foot in the step cut into the flare of the plenum chamber skirt, and swung himself into the vehicle.
    Suilin's skin was still prickling from the hideous, sky-devouring flash/ crash! that had stunned him a moment before. He'd thought a bomb had gone off, but it was a tank shooting because it happened again. He'd pissed his pants, and that bothered him more than the way Fritzi was splashed across the front of his uniform.
    Suilin grabbed the handle the way the soldier had. The metal's buzzing