Dick Suilin now knew what buildings looked like when somebody really meant business.
"Will they get it?" he said aloud. "The cease fire, I mean."
Cooter shrugged. "I'm not a politician," he said.
Now that the reporter had taken off his clamshell armor, the sling holding his grenade launcher was too long. He adjusted the length.
The pink-faced captain commanding the guards blinked.
Cooter looked at his companion. "I'm not sure you'll need that in here," he said mildly.
"I'm not sure of anything," Dick Suilin replied without emotion. "Not anymore."
* * *
"The hole in the skirt," said Warrant Leader Ortnahme in a judicious tone as he walked slowly toward Blue Three, "we can patch easy enough . . . ."
"Yes sir," said Tech 2 Simkins through tight lips.
When a Yokel tank blew up three meters from Simkins' side of
He wasn't hurting, exactly;nobody carrying Simkins' present load of analgesics in his veins could be said to be in pain. Still, the technician had to concentrate to keep his feet moving in the right order.
"The bloody rest of it, though . . ." Ortnahme murmured.
Hans Wager had managed to find a can of black paint and a brush somewhere. He was painting something on the tank's bow skirts. His driver, a woman Ortnahme couldn't put a bloody name to, watched with a drawn expression.
The pair of 'em looked like they'd sweated off five kilos in the last two days. Maybe they had.
The tungsten-carbide shot that holed the skirt must have been so close to the muzzle that its fins hadn't had time to stabilize it. The shot was still yawing when it struck, so it'd punched a long oval in the steel instead of a neat round hole.
Ortnahme estimated the shot's probable further course with his eyes and called, "Did ye lose a bloody fan when that hit you?"
Wager continued painting, attempting a precision which was far beyond his present ability.
The driver turned slowly toward the pair of maintenance personnel. She said, "Yeah, that's right. Number 3 Port went out. That was okay, but the air spilling through the hole here—" nodding toward the gaping oval "—that was bad."
She paused for memory before she added, "Can you fix it?"
"Sure,"the warrant leader said."As soon as they ship in a spare."He shook his head. "A whole bloody lotta spares."
Simpkins nodded without speaking.
"What, ah . . . are you doing?" Ortnahme asked.
