The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

You had to take chances in war; and anyway,Warrioroughta shrug off anything but a heavy-caliber armor-piercing round with no more than superficial damage.

Kuykendall switched her fans on and brought them up to speed fast with their blades cutting the airstream at minimum angle.Warriortrembled with what Des Grieux anthropomorphized as eagerness, transferring his own emotions to the mindless machine he commanded.

A Slammers' tank was a slope-sided iridium hull whose turret, smooth to avoid shot traps, held a 20cm powergun. The three-barreled automatic weapon in the cupola could operate independently or be locked to the same point of aim as the main gun. Eight intake ducts pierced the upper surface of the hull, feeding air down to drive fans in armored nacelles below.

At rest, the tanks sat on their steel skirts. When the vehicles were under way, they floated on a cushion of air pressurized by the fans.At full throttle,the power required to drive a tank was enormous, and the fusion bottle which provided that power filled the rear third of the hull.

The tanks were hideously expensive. Their electronics were so complex and sensitive that at least a small portion of every tank's suite was deadlined at any one time. The hulls and running gear were rugged, but the vehicles' own size and weight imposed stresses which required constant maintenance.

When they worked, and to the extent they worked, the Slammers' tanks were the most effective weapons in the human universe. AsWarriorwas about to prove to two divisions of Republican infantry . . . .

"Back her out!" Des Grieux ordered. If he'd thought about it, he would have sounded a general alarm because heknewthis was a major attack,but he had other things on his mind besides worrying about people he wasn't planning to kill.

"Booster," Des Grieux said, switching on the artificial intelligence which controlled the tank's systems. "Enemy activity, one kay, now!"

Warriorshuddered as Kuykendall increased the fan bite. Sandy soil mushroomed from the trench walls and upward as the hull lifted and air leaked beneathWarrior's skirts. Des Grieux's direct vision blurred in a gritty curtain, but the data his AI assembled from remote sensors was sharp and clear in the upper half of his helmet visor.