anything about Banyussuf's problems.
Trouble here meant there was big trouble everywhere on Prosperity. District Command wasn't going to send the armored brigade based on the coast near Kohang haring off into the sticks to relieve Banyussuf.
"Watch it," Willens, their driver, warned.
Warmonger slid into an intersection. A crowd of thirty or so women and children screamed and ran a step or two away from them, then screamed again and flattened as another car crossed at the next intersection east. Dependents of senior non-coms, looking for a place to hide. . . .
Ranson wouldn't have minded having a Yokel armored brigade for support, but it'd take too long to reach here. Her team could do the job by themselves.
"Two o'clock!" she warned. Movement on the second floor of a barracks, across the wide boulevard that acted as a parade square every morning for the Yokels.
The left corner of her visor flashed the tiny red numeral 2 . Her helmet's microprocessor had gathered all its sensor inputs and determined that the target was of Threat Level 2.
Cold meat under most circumstances, but in Camp Progress there were thousands of National Army personnel who looked the same as the Consies to scanners. With her visor on thermal, Ranson couldn't tell whether the figure wore black or a green-on-green mottled Yokel uni—
The figure raised its gun. 2 blinked to 1 in Ranson's visor, then vanished—
Because a dead man doesn't have any threat level at all. Ranson's burst converged with Janacek's; the upper front of the barracks flew apart as the powerguns ignited it.
Willens slewed the car left. Somebody leaned out of a window of the same barracks and fired—missed even the combat car except for one bullet ricocheting from the dirt street to whang on the skirts.
Ranson killed the shooter, letting Warmonger 's forward motion walk the flashing cyan cores of her burst down the line of barracks windows. Janacek was raking the lower story, and as they came abreast of the building, the One-five blower to Warmonger 's right laid on a crossfire from two of its tribarrels.
A single bolt from the other car sizzled through gaps already blown in the structure and hit the barracks on the other side of the street. The cyan track missed Ranson by little enough that the earphones in her helmet screamed piercingly with harmonics from the energy release.
She noticed it the way she'd notice a reflection in a shop window. Everything around her seemed to be reflected or hidden behind sheets of thick glass. Nothing touched her. Her skin felt warm, the way it did when she was on the verge of going to sleep.
A tank's main gun flashed beyond the berm. Ranson would've liked the weight of the panzers with her to push the Consies out, but their 20cm cannon were too destructive to use within a position crammed with friendly troops and their dependents. If things got hot enough that the combat cars needed a bail-out—
She'd give the orders she had to give and worry about the consequences later. But for now . . .
A group of armed men ran from a cross street into the next intersection. Some of them were still looking back over their shoulders when Warmonger 's three tribarrels lashed them with converging streams of fire.
Figures whirled and disintegrated individually for a moment before a bloom of white light—a satchel charge, a buzzbomb's warhead; perhaps just a bandolier strung with grenades—enveloped the group. The shockwave slammed bodies and body fragments in every direction.
Ranson was sure they'd been wearing black uniforms. Pretty sure.
"— must help me! " whimpered the radio. " They have captured the lower floor of my headquarters!"
She hand-keyed the microphone and said, "Progress Command, this is Slammers' Command. Help's on the way, but be bloody sure your own people don't shoot at us. Out."
Or else , her mind added, but she didn't want that threat on record. Anyway, even the Yokels were smart enough to know what happened when somebody
Trouble here meant there was big trouble everywhere on Prosperity. District Command wasn't going to send the armored brigade based on the coast near Kohang haring off into the sticks to relieve Banyussuf.
"Watch it," Willens, their driver, warned.
Warmonger slid into an intersection. A crowd of thirty or so women and children screamed and ran a step or two away from them, then screamed again and flattened as another car crossed at the next intersection east. Dependents of senior non-coms, looking for a place to hide. . . .
Ranson wouldn't have minded having a Yokel armored brigade for support, but it'd take too long to reach here. Her team could do the job by themselves.
"Two o'clock!" she warned. Movement on the second floor of a barracks, across the wide boulevard that acted as a parade square every morning for the Yokels.
The left corner of her visor flashed the tiny red numeral 2 . Her helmet's microprocessor had gathered all its sensor inputs and determined that the target was of Threat Level 2.
Cold meat under most circumstances, but in Camp Progress there were thousands of National Army personnel who looked the same as the Consies to scanners. With her visor on thermal, Ranson couldn't tell whether the figure wore black or a green-on-green mottled Yokel uni—
The figure raised its gun. 2 blinked to 1 in Ranson's visor, then vanished—
Because a dead man doesn't have any threat level at all. Ranson's burst converged with Janacek's; the upper front of the barracks flew apart as the powerguns ignited it.
Willens slewed the car left. Somebody leaned out of a window of the same barracks and fired—missed even the combat car except for one bullet ricocheting from the dirt street to whang on the skirts.
Ranson killed the shooter, letting Warmonger 's forward motion walk the flashing cyan cores of her burst down the line of barracks windows. Janacek was raking the lower story, and as they came abreast of the building, the One-five blower to Warmonger 's right laid on a crossfire from two of its tribarrels.
A single bolt from the other car sizzled through gaps already blown in the structure and hit the barracks on the other side of the street. The cyan track missed Ranson by little enough that the earphones in her helmet screamed piercingly with harmonics from the energy release.
She noticed it the way she'd notice a reflection in a shop window. Everything around her seemed to be reflected or hidden behind sheets of thick glass. Nothing touched her. Her skin felt warm, the way it did when she was on the verge of going to sleep.
A tank's main gun flashed beyond the berm. Ranson would've liked the weight of the panzers with her to push the Consies out, but their 20cm cannon were too destructive to use within a position crammed with friendly troops and their dependents. If things got hot enough that the combat cars needed a bail-out—
She'd give the orders she had to give and worry about the consequences later. But for now . . .
A group of armed men ran from a cross street into the next intersection. Some of them were still looking back over their shoulders when Warmonger 's three tribarrels lashed them with converging streams of fire.
Figures whirled and disintegrated individually for a moment before a bloom of white light—a satchel charge, a buzzbomb's warhead; perhaps just a bandolier strung with grenades—enveloped the group. The shockwave slammed bodies and body fragments in every direction.
Ranson was sure they'd been wearing black uniforms. Pretty sure.
"— must help me! " whimpered the radio. " They have captured the lower floor of my headquarters!"
She hand-keyed the microphone and said, "Progress Command, this is Slammers' Command. Help's on the way, but be bloody sure your own people don't shoot at us. Out."
Or else , her mind added, but she didn't want that threat on record. Anyway, even the Yokels were smart enough to know what happened when somebody
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