As the unmuffled exhaust rattled, several of the troops on the truck bed stuck their weapons in the air and opened fire. A jolt threw one of the Han soldiers backward. His backpack laser slashed a brilliant line across the truck's canvas awning.
The lieutenant in command of the troops leaned from the cab and shouted angrily at his men, but they were laughing too hard to take much notice. Somebody tossed an empty bottle over the side in enough of a forward direction that the officer disappeared back within the cab.
The awnings moldered to either side of the lon,blackened rent, but the treated fabric would not sustain a fire by itself.
The truck ground through the switchback, spewing gravel. Both forward axles were steerable. The vehicle was a solid piece of equipment, well designed and manufactured. The local forces in this contract were a cursed sight better equipped than most of those you saw. Mostly the off-planet mercenaries stood out from the indig troops like diamonds on a bed of mud.
Both sets of locals, these Han and their Hindi rivals . . . .
"Booster," Des Grieux muttered as he sat in the cupola of his tank. "Hindi combat vehicles, schematics. Slow crawl. Out."
He manually set his commo helmet to echo the artificial intelligence's feed onto the left side of the visor. Des Grieux's cold right eye continued to scan the line of the convoy and the terraces that they had passed farther down the valley.
A soldier tossed another empty bottle from the truck ahead. Because the truck was higher and the road had reversed direction at the switchback, the brown glazed ceramics hattered on the turret directly below Des Grieux.A line of heads turned from the truck's rail, shouting apologies and amused warnings to the soldier farther within the vehicle who'd thrown the bottle without looking first.
Des Grieux squeezed his tribarrel's grips, overriding its present Automatic Air Defense setting. He slid the holographic sight picture across the startled Han faces, which disappeared as the men flung themselves flat onto the truck bed.
Pesco shifted his four rear nacelles and pivoted the tank around its bow,following the switchback. They swung in behind the truck again. Des Grieux released the grips and let the tribarrel shift back to its normal search attitude: muzzles forward, at a 45° elevation.
