Gale sprawled, halfway out of the fighting compartment. A high-explosive round had struck him between the shoulder blades. It was a tribute to the trooper's ceramic body armor that one arm was still attached to what remained of his torso.
Suilin unslung his grenade launcher, aimed at the tank thirty meters away, and squeezed off. He couldn't hear his weapon fire, but the butt thumped satisfyingly on his shoulder. His eye followed the missile on its flat arc to the face of the tank's swivelling turret.
The grenades were dual purpose. Their cases were made of wire notched to fragment, but they were wrapped around a miniature shaped charge that could piece light armor.
Armor lighter than the frontal protection of a tank. The guerrilla flung his arms up and toppled, his chest clawed to ruins by shrapnel, but the turret face was only pitted.
The tank moved forward as it had to do, so that as the turret rotated, the long gun would clear the burning wreckage of the sister vehicle.
Cooter dragged his body upright. He was still on his knees. The big man gripped the hull to either side of his tribarrel, blocking Suilin from any chance of using that weapon.
No time anyway. The reporter's grenades burst on the turret, white sparks that gouged the armor but didn't penetrate, couldn't penetrate.
Two hits, three—not a hand's breadth apart, remarkable rapid-fire shooting as the turret swung.
Suilin thought he could hear again, but the bitter crack of his grenades was lost in the howl of an oncoming storm. The ground shook and made the blasted trees shiver.
The last round in Suilin's clip flashed against the armor as vainly as the four ahead of it. The cannon's 60mm bore gaped toward
Before the gun could fire, the great, gray bow of Blue Three rode downhill onto the rebel tank, scattering treeboles like matchwood.
The clang of impact seemed almost as loud to Dick Suilin as that of the shells ripping
A tread broke and writhed upward like a snake in its death throes. The hull warped, starting seams and rupturing the cooling system and fuel tanks in a gout of steam, then fire.
