"I had some input in the planning, that's right," Broglie said tonelessly. "Do you understand the operation, Slick?"
"I understand that it makes a real pretty picture, Cap'n Broglie," Des Grieux replied. "Tomorrow we'll see how it looks on the ground, won't we?"
Outside the shelter, machine gun fire etched the sky in pointless response.
The Han armored personnel carrier was supposed to be amphibious, but it paused for almost thirty seconds on the first dike. The wheels of the front two axles spun in the air; those of the rear pair churned in a suspension of mud and water with the lubricating properties of motor oil.
A Hindi anti-tank gun ripped the APC with a 50mmosmium penetrator. Half of the carrier's rear-mounted engine blew through the roof of the tilted vehicle with a
The driver hopped out of the forward hatch and fell down on the dike. His legs continued to piston as though he were running instead of thrashing in mud. Side-hatches opened a fraction of a second later and a handful of unhurt infantrymen flopped clear as well.
Inertia kept the APC's front wheels rotating for some seconds.A rainbow slick of diesel fuel covered the rice paddy behind the vehicle. It did not ignite.
Des Grieux smiled like a shark from his overwatch position on the first terrace east of the floodplain. He traversed his main gun a half degree. The Hindi antitank gun was a towed piece with optical sights. It had no electronic signature to give it away, and
When the weapon fired, though—
Des Grieux stroked his foot-trip and converted the anti-tank gun into a ball of saturated cyan light.
Han vehicles hosed the landscape with their weapons. Bullets from APC turrets and the secondary armament of laser-vehicles flashed as bright explosions among the foliage growing on dikes and made the mud bubble.
High-powered lasers raised clouds of steam wherever their pale beams struck, but they were not very effective. The lasers were line-of-sight weapons like the Slammers' powerguns. The gunners could hit nothing but the next hedge over while the firing vehicles sheltered behind dikes themselves.
The entire Han advance stopped when the Hindis fired their first gun.
