The Yokels' armor-piercing projectiles were only 43mm in diameter when they dropped their sabots at the gun's muzzle, but even here, a kilometer and a half away, they were travelling at 1800 meters per second. The shot that hit had smashed a dish-sized concavity from the face of Blue Three's armor.
"Holman!" Wager cried. "Open season! Get us hull-down again."
They grounded heavily. Wager thought of the strain the tank's huge weight must be putting on the skirts and wondered if they were going to take it. Still, Holman wasn't the first tank driver to get on-the-job training in a crisis.
Anyway, the skirts'd better take it.
Chin Peng Rise had been timbered within the past two years. None of the scrub that had regrown on its loose, rock-strewn soil was high enough to conceal Blue Three's skirts, but the rounded crest itself would protect the hull from guns firing from the wooded knob across the valley.
The thing was, Holman had to halt them in the right place: high enough to clear their main gun but still far enough down the backslope that the hull was in cover.
Shells boomed among the shacks of Kawana. The residents wouldn't 've had any idea that two armies were maneuvering around them until the artillery started to land.
Innocent victims weren't Hans Wager's first concern right now. Via, it was their planet, their war, wasn't it?
His war too.
A plume of friable soil spewed from beneath the skirts as Holman fed power to her fans. Wager felt Blue Three twist as she lifted.
"Holman!" he shouted. "Bring us up to firing level! They need us over—"
As Wager spoke the tank lifted—there'd been no downward motion, just the bow shifting. They climbed the 20° slope at a walking pace that brought a crisp view of Sugar Knob onto both the main and gunnery displays.
Shot and shells from Yokel cannon ripped the crest beside Blue Three, where the Slammers vehicle had lain hull-down before—and where they'd 've been now if Holman hadn't had sense enough to shift before she lifted them into sight again.
Wager could apologize later.
