The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

Nothing he couldn't work around, though. Therewasnothing Des Grieux couldn't work around, if his superiors just gave him the chance to do his job. "Anything new?" Kuykendall asked.

Des Grieux stood on his seat so that he could look out over the sandbags toward Hill 661."What'd you think?"he said.He switched the visual display on his helmet visor to infrared and cranked up the magnification.

The sniper had gone home. Nothing but ripples in the atmosphere and the cooler blue of trees transpiring water they sucked somehow from this Lord-blasted landscape.

Des Grieux climbed out of the hatch again. He shoved a sandbag off the top layer.The bastard would be back, and when he was . . .

He pushed away another sandbag.The bags were woven from a coarse synthetic that smelled like burning tar when it rubbed.

"We're not supposed to do that,"Kuykendall said from the cupola."A lucky shot could put the tribarrel out of action. That'd hurt us a lot worse than a hundred dead grunts does the Reps."

"They don't have a hundred powerguns," Des Grieux said without turning around. He pushed at the second-layer sandbag he'd uncovered but that layer was laid as headers. The bags to right and left resisted the friction on their long sides."Anyway,it's worth something to me to give a few of those cocky bastards their lunch."

Hawes'Susie Qripped the sky. Des Grieux dropped into a crouch, then rose again with a feeling of embarrassment. He knew that Kuykendall had seen him jump.

It wasn't flinching. IfWarrior's AAD sensed incoming from Hill 661, Des Grieux would either duck instantly—or have his head shot off by the tribarrel of his own tank. The fire-direction computer didn't care if there was a man in the way when it needed to do its job.

Des Grieux liked the computer's attitude.

He lifted and pushed, raising his triceps into stark ridges. Des Grieux was thin and from a distance looked frail. Close up, no one noticed anything but his eyes; and there was no weakness in them.

The sandbag slid away. The slot inWarrior's protection gave Des Grieux a keyhole through which to rake Hill 661 with his tribarrel. He got back into the turret. Kuykendall dropped out of the way without further comment.

"You know . . ." Des Grieux said as he viewed the enemy positions in the tribarrel's holographic sight.Warrior's sensors were several orders of magnitude better than those of the tankers' unaided helmets."The Reps aren't much better at this than these Federal pussies we gotta nursemaid."