"Blue Three—" still no emotion in the voice "—if you like, for this operation I can replace you and your driver with more experienced—"
"Negative!"Wager snarled.He hand-keyed his helmet to break out of the council net. "Tootsie Six, that's a negative. We'll do our job. We understand. Out."
"Roger,Blue Three,"said the voice. "All Tootsie units, courses and phase lines are being downloaded into your AIs—now."
Wager's palms rubbed his thighs.
"Sarge?" whispered his intercom. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me, Holman," Wager said. "I think I just bought us both the farm."
Thirty or more guns aimed at them, and Blue Three wouldn't be able to reply until the combat cars had the data needed to target every one of the enemy tanks.
Yeah, he understood all right.
"D'ye got medics along?" the driver from Blue Three whined over the radio, a female voice in June Ranson's ears.
She sounded stunned and terrified, just as she was supposed to. The tank was the only vehicle of Task Force Ranson that would give a close-enough-to-correct reading to Yokel direction finders . . . .
"Via, we need medics. Via, we need help. This is ah, Tootsie Six, over."
A game, a test program for the officer commanding First of the 4th Armored. An electronic construct which was perfectly believable, like any good test program. The officer being tested would be judged on his reactions . . . .
"Booster," Ranson muttered. "Hostile Order of Battle."
She shouldn't have to speak. Electrons should flow from her nerve endings and race down the gold-foil channels of the artificial intelligence, then spring overhigh-frequency carrier waves to the sensorar ray of Blue Three.June Ranson should feel everything.
She should be the vehicles she commanded . . . .
"Tootsie Six,this is Delta three Mike fou rone," replied the voice that had been unfamiliar until it began whispering over the UHF Allied Common Channel an hour before,requesting Task Force Ranson's position. "We have doctors and medical supplies. We're ten kilometers from Kawana. We'll bring your medical help in half an hour, but you must stay where you are. Do you understand? Mike four one over."
The water of Upper Creek flared beneath
