"Tootsie Six,"said her headset,"this is Blue Two. The hog's operable,all right. The trouble's in the turret-traversing mechanism, and that won't matter for a few rounds to a single point. But I dunno about the bloody crew. Over."
"Six,Three,"Cooter's voice responded."Chief Lavel's solidas they come.He'll handle the fire control, and the rest—that's just lift 'n carry, right? Getting the shells on the conveyor? Nothin' even a newbie with a room-temperature IQ's going t' screw up. Over."
"All Tootsie elements," June Ranson heard her voice ordering calmly. Her touch shrank the map's scale; then her index finger traced the course to la Reole on the screen.
"Transmit," she said. "We will proceed on the marked trace to Phase Line Piper—" fingertip stroking the crest across a shadowy valley from the Consie positions above the beleaguered town on the Santine Estuary "—and punch through enemy lines to the bridge after a short artillery preparation. Prepare to execute in five minutes. Tootsie Six out."
She used the seat as a step instead of raising herself to the hatch with its power lift. Clouds streaked the sky, but the earlier thin overcast was gone.
"Sarge," said Holman on the intercom, "why aren't we just crossing the river instead of fooling with a damaged bridge? When I was in trucks, we'd see the line companies go right around us while we was backed up for a bridge. Down, splash, up the far bank, and gone."
Now that the task force had moved into open country, Holman was doing a prettygood jobof keeping station.You couldn't take somebody straight out of a transport company and expect them to drive blind
If your life depended on it, though, that was just what you did expect.
"Combat cars have that much lift," Wager explained bitterly. "
He was down in the turret, trying to get some sort of empathy with his screens and controls before the next time he needed them.He was okay on mine-clearing, now; he had the right reflexes.
But the next time,Tootsie Six wouldn't be ordering him to lay a mine-clearance charge, it'd be some other cursed thing. It'd be the butt of Hans Wager and the whole cursed task force when he didn't know what the hell to do.
