The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

"Tootsie Six!" Hans Wager cried, "Can you clear us?"

"Sarge, I'm backing—" Holman said.

"All Tootsie units," said the voice of Captain Ranson. "Take 'em."

The muzzle flash was a bright yellow blaze against the dark camouflage. The tungsten-carbide shot rang like a struck cymbal on the turret of Wager's nameless tank.

"Willens," said June Ranson, converting the holographic map on her display into a reality more concrete than the stems of young trees around her, "steer one-twenty degrees. West element, conform to my movements."

"Why we doin' this?" Stolley shouted, grabbing the captain's left arm and tugging to turn her.

Off to the left, only slightly muffled by intervening vegetation, the flat cracks of high-velocity guns sounded from the crest of Sugar Knob.

Ranson slipped her arm from the wing gunner's grip. "Thirty seconds to contact," her voice said.

Warmonger's artificial intelligence had given her a vector marker. Her eyes were on it, waiting for the vertical red line to merge with a target in her gunsights.

Stolley cursed and put his hands back on the grips of his tribarrel.

The gunfire from Sugar Knob doubled in intensity.Warmongerand the two cars accompanying it were headed away from the knob on a slanting course. AsWarmongerswitched direction, the AI fed another target vector to each gunner's helmet.

A wrist-thick sapling flicked Ranson's tribarrel to the side. Her hands realigned the weapon with the vector. They acted by reflex, unaided by the higher centers of her brain which slid beads of light in a glowing three-dimensional gameboard.

Her solution to the Yokel attack had been as simple and risky as Task Force Ranson's lack of resources required. She was using Slammers' electronics and speed to accomplish what their present gunpower and armor could not.

So, Candidate Ranson. You've decided to divide your force before attacking a superior concentration. Rather like Colonel Custer's plan at the Little Big Horn, wouldn't you say?

But there was no choice. The Yokels would deploy along the ridge. Only by hitting them simultaneously from behind on both flanks could her combat cars roll up six or seven times their number of hostile tanks.

So, Candidate; you're confident that the opposing commander won't keep a reserve? If he does, it's your force—forces, I should say—that will be outflanked.

The Yokels hadn't held back a reserve . . . but the ten tanks lobbing shells over the knob from a kilometer to the rear wouldactas a reserve—if they weren't eliminated first.