"Look, Holman," he said, because lift was something he
"Right, but—"
Holman swore. The column was paralleling the uphill side of a wooded fenceline. She'd attempted to correct their tank's tendency to drift downslope, but the inertia of 170 steel and iridium tonnes had caught up with her again. One quadrant of Wager's main screen exploded in a confetti of splintered trees and fence posts.
"Bleedin' motherin' martyrs!"snarled the intercom as Holman's commo helmet dutifully transmitted to the most-recently accessed recipient.
Friction from the demolished fence and vegetation pulled the tank farther out of its intended line, despite the driver's increasingly violent efforts to swing them away. When the cumulative over-corrections swung the huge pendulum
Like Hans Wager, tank commander.
Blood and martyrs.
"S'okay, Holman," Wager said aloud, more or less meaning it. "Any one you walk away from."
He'd finally cleared the mines at Happy Days, hadn't he?
"Look, the lift," he went on. "Without something pretty solid underneath, these panzers drop. Sink like stones. But combat cars, the ones you been watchin', they've got enough power for their weight they can use thrust to keep 'em up, not just ground effect."
Wager wriggled the helmet. It'd gotten twisted a little on his brow when he bounced a moment ago. Their tank was now sedately tracking the car ahead, as though the mess behind them had been somebody else's problem.
"Only thing is,"Wager continued,"A couple of the cars,they're running shorta fan or two themselves by now. Talkin' to the guys on One-one while we laagered.
Stuff that never happens when you're futzing around a firebase, you get twenty kays out on a route march and
"We're all systems green,"Holman said."Ah, Sarge? I think I'm gettin' the hang of it, you know? But the weight, it still throws me."
