There were no signs of Consies shooting back, but a farm tractor had collapsed into a fuel fire that reminded Suilin of the bus after his bolts raked it.
Gale was lighting his quarter with short bursts. So far as the reporter could tell, the veteran's bolts were a matter of excitement rather than a response to real targets. Lieutenant Cooter gripped the armor with both hands and shouted so loudly into his helmet microphone that Suilin could hear the sounds though not the words.
Both veterans had a vision of duty.
Dick Suilin had his memories.
When the armored vehicles prickled with cyan bolts, they reentered the reporter's universe. It had been very easy for Suilin to believe that the three of them in the back of
Perhaps what most divorced Suilin from that which had been reality less than two days before was the buzzing roar of the fans. Their vibration seemed to jelly both his mind and his marrow.
Since the driver slid his throttles to the top of their range,
Task Force Ranson swung raggedly at an angle to the left. Each armored vehicle followed a separate track, though the general line was on or parallel to the paved highway.
Suilin had ridden the la Reole/Bunduran road a hundred times in the past. It was easy to follow the road's course now with his eyes, because of the fires lit by powerguns all along its course. The truckers' cafe and fuel point at the top of the ridge, three kilometers from la Reole, was a crown of flames.
Gale shot over the stern, and Cooter's weapon coughed bursts so short it appeared to be clearing its triple throats.
A dozen civilians huddled in the ditch on Suilin's side of the car. All but one of them were pressed face-down in the soft earth. Their hands were clasped over the back of their heads as if to force themselves still lower.
The exception lay on her back. A powergun had decapitated her.
