La Reole sprawled half a kilometer away. The nearest buildings had been shattered by shellfire and the first flush of hand-to-hand fighting before the Consies retreated to lick their wounds and blast the Yokel garrison into submission.
Smoke lifted from a dozen points within the town. A saffron hint of dawn gaped on hundreds of holes in the tile roofs.
An amphibious landing vehicle pulled down from the protection of a courtyard in the town and opened fire with its machine gun. Consies emerging from a shell-ravaged bunker stumbled and fell. Wager remembered the Yokels had a Marine Training Unit here at la Reole . . . .
The tank's turret was thick with fumes.Wager breathed through filters,though he didn't remember them clamping down across his mouth and nose.
He stamped on the firing pedal. The gun wheezed instead of firing: he'd shot off the entire thirty-round basic load, and the tank had to cycle more main gun ammunition from storage deep in the hull.
There weren't any worthwhile targets anyway. Every slit that might have concealed a cannon or powergun was a glowing crater. Streaks of turf smoldered where bolts had ripped them.
"Sarge, should I . . .?" Wager's intercom demanded.
"Go, go!" he snapped back. "And Via! be careful with the bridge!"
He hoped the Yokels would have sense enough not to shoot at them. For the moment, that seemed like the worst danger.
Three more shells from Camp Progress screamed overhead.
The howitzer still rocked with the sky-tearing echoes of its twelfth round. Chief Lavel was laughing. Only when he turned and met Craige's horrified eyes did he realize that he wasn't alone in the crew compartment.
Craige massaged her ears with her palms."Ah,"she said."The guys wanta know, you know . . . are we dismissed now?"
Drives moaned as the gun mechanism filled its ready-use drum with the remaining shells in storage. Lavel put his palm against an armored side-panel to feel every nuance of the movement. It was like being reborn . . . .
"Not yet," he said. "When the last salvo's away, we'll police up the area."
The crew compartment was spacious enough to hold a full eight-man crew under armor when the howitzer was changing position. The 200mm shells and their rocket charges were heavy, and no amount of hardware could obviate the need for humans during some stages of the preparation process.
