"Yeah, well," Wager said, touching the joystick cautiously so as not to startle the other vehicles. The turret mechanism whined restively; Screen Two's swatch of rolling farmland, centered around the orange pipper, shifted slightly across the panorama of the main screen.
"Look, when we get to the crossing point,if we do,get across that cursed bridge
"No, Sarge."
"
"Sarge,I'm sorry,"Holman said, "but if we do that,we bring it down for sure. And us. Sarge, look, I'm, you know, I'm not great on tanks. But I took a lotta trucks over piddly bridges, right? We'll take it slow and especially no braking or acceleration. That'll work if anything does. I promise. Okay?"
She sounded nervous, telling a veteran he was wrong.
She sounded like she curst well thought she was right, though.
Via, maybe she was. Holman didn't have any line experience . . . but that didn't mean she didn't have
"They say she's a real space cadet," Wager said aloud. "Her crew does. Cap'n Ranson, I mean."
"Because she's a woman," Holman said flatly.
"Because she flakes out!" Wager snapped. "Because she goes right off into dreamland in the middle a' talking."
He looked at the disk of sky speeding past his open hatch.It didn't seem perceptibly brighter, but he could no longer make out the stars speckling its sweep.
"At least," said Holman with a touch more emotion than her previous comment, "Captain Ranson isn't so much of a flake that she'd go ahead with the mission without her tanks."
"Yeah," said Sergeant Hans Wager in resignation. "Without us."
Camp Progress stank of death: the effects of fire on scores of materials; rotting garbage that had been ignored among greater needs; and the varied effluvia each type of shell and cartridge left when it went off.
There was also the stench of the wastes which men voided as they died.
It was a familiar combination to Chief Lavel, but some of the newbies in his work crew still looked queasy.
A Consie had died of his wounds beneath the tarp covering the shells off loaded from the self-propelled howitzer. It wasn't until the shells were needed that the body was found. The corpse's skin was as black as the cloth of the uniform which the gas-distended body stretched.
They'd get used to it. They'd better.
