Ortnahme pushed the Air Defense selector. It was already uncaged. He'd been willing to take the chance of bumping it by accident so long as he knew it would be that many seconds quicker to activate when he might need it.
Like now.
"Simkins," he said, surprised at his own calm, "cut your fans and ditch.
His calm wasn't so surprising after all. There'd been emergencies before.
There'd been the time a jack began to sink—thin concrete over a bed of rubble had counterfeited a solid base. Thirty tonnes of combat car settling toward a technician. The technician was dead, absolutely, if he did anything except block the low side of the car with the fan nacelle he'd been preparing to fit.
Ortnahme had said,"Kid,slide the fan under the skirt
And for the moment that the sturdy nacelle supported the car's weight, Warrant Leader Ortnahme had gripped Tech 2 Simkins by the ankle and jerked him out of the deathtrap.
The kid was all thumbs when it came to powertools, but he took orders for a treat.
Ortnahme's seat was raising him, not as fast as a younger, slimmer man could've jumped for the hatch without power assist—but Henk Ortnahme
He squeezed his torso out of the cupola hatch. The tribarrel was rotating on its Scarf ring, the muzzles lifting skyward in response to the air-defense program.
The powergun fired.Ortnahme couldn't help but flinch away.Swearing,bracing himself on the coaming, he tried to lever himself out of the hatch as half-melted plastic burned the back of his hands and clung to his shirt sleeves.
He stuck. His pistol holster was caught on the smoke grenades he'd slung from a wire where he could reach them easily when he was riding with the hatch open.
The northern sky went livid with cyan bolts and the white winking explosions they woke in the predawn haze.
The incoming shells had been cargo rounds. They had burst, spilling their sheaves of submunitions.
