The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

Des Grieux had a standard 2cm Slammers carbine clipped to the side of his seat. Over his head,Gangbuster's tribarrel pumped short bursts into the heavens in automatic air-defense mode. The sky, still a pale violet color in the west, was decorated with an appliquéé of shell tracks and the bolts of powerguns which detonated the incoming.

Both sides' artillery fired furiously. Neither party had any success in breaking through the webs of opposing defenses, but there was no question of takingGangbuster IIout of AAD. The infantry carbine and the tank's main gun were the only means of slaughter under Des Grieux's personal control.

"Blue Two,"Captain Broglie's voice ordered."On command, advance one dike. Remaining elements look sharp."

Blue Two,Dar es Salaam, was on the southern edge of the advance, half a kilometer fromGangbuster II.Broglie's command tank,Honey Girl, was a similar distance to starboard of Des Grieux; and Blue One, Peres, backstopped the Han right flank a full kilometer north ofGangbuster II.The causeway carrying the main road to Morobad was the axis of the Strike Force advance.

The dikes turned the floodplain into a series of ribbons, each about a hundred meters wide. By advancing one at a time from their overwatch positions behind the Black Banner Guards, maybe the Slammers' tanks could get the Han force moving again . . . .

Though if instead the four tanks burst straight ahead in a hell-for-leather dash, they'd open up the Hindi lines like so many bullets through a can of beans.

"Blue Two,go."

Medrassi's tank lurched forward at maximum acceleration. The driver—Des Grieux didn't know his name;hername, maybe—had backed thirty meters in the terraced paddy to give himself a run before they hit the dike.

Water and bright green rice shoots, hand-planted only days before, spewed to either side as the fans compressed a cushion of air dense enough to float 170 tonnes. For a moment,Dar es Salaam's track through the field was a barren expanse of wet clay; then muddy water slopped back to cover the sudden waste.

The tank didn't lift quite high enough to clear the dike, but the driver didn't intend to. The belly plates were the vehicle's thinnest armor. Hindi gunners, much less the Legion mercenaries, could penetrate even a Slammers' tank if it waved too much of its underside in the direction of the enemy.