The other car spouted plumes of multi-colored smoke. Marking grenades had ignited inside the turret hatch, broiling the commander as he tried to climb past them. Ammunition cooked off in a flurry of sparks and red tracers.
WhileWarrior's main gun cycled its twenty-round ready magazine into part of the Republican reserves, Des Grieux aimed his tribarrel at specific targets to port. The tank's speed was seventy kph and still accelerating. When the bow slid over the slope's natural terracing, it spilled air from the plenum chamber. Each time,Warrior's 170 tonnes slammed onto the skirts with the inevitability of night following day.
Though the tribarrel was stabilized, the crew was not. The impacts jounced Des Grieux against his seat restraints and blurred his vision.
It didn't matter. Under these circumstances, Des Grieux scarcely needed the sights. Heknewwhen the pipper covered a clot of infantry or an armored car reversing violently to escape what the crew suddenly realized was a kill zone.
Two-cm bolts lacked the authority ofWarrior's main gun, but Des Grieux's short bursts cut with surgical precision. Men flew apart in cyan flashes. The thin steel hulls of armored cars blazed white for an instant before the fuel and ammunition inside caught fire as well.Secondary explosions lit the night as tribarrel bolts detonated cases of rocket and mortar warheads.
Warrior's drive fans howled triumphantly.
Behind the rampaging tank, Rep incoming flashed and thundered onto Hill 541 North. Only one tribarrel from the Federal encampment still engaged the shells.
Federal artillery continued to fire. A "friendly" round plunged down at a 70° angle and blew a ten-meter hole less than a tank's length ahead ofWarrior.Kuykendall fought her controls, but the tank's speed was too high to dodge the obstacle completely.Warriorlurched heavily and rammed some of the crater's lip back to bury the swirling vapors of high explosive.
A score of Rep infantry lay flat with their hands pressing down their helmets as if to drive themselves deeper into the gritty soil.Warriorplowed through them. The tank's skirt was now here more than a centimeter off the ground.The victims smeared unnoticed beneath the tank's weight.
Warriorboomed out of the swale and proceeded up the curving track toward Hill 504.
