The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

THE IMMOVABLE OBJECT

Hoodoo, the only one of the Slammers' gigantic tanks remaining on Ambiorix, hulked in the starlight beyond the barred window of the maintenance shed where the party was going on. Lamartiere looked at the gray bulk again, then tossed down the last of the drink he'd been nursing for an hour.

It wasn't quite time for him to act. Since Franciscus, the commander of the Company of Death, had sent the orders three days ago, Lamartiere had been worried sick over what he had to do. Now he just wished it was over, one way or the other.

Sergeant Heth tried to stand but toppled back onto a couch improvised from rolls of insulating foam. He was Hoodoo's commander and the ranking mercenary on Ambiorix since the remainder of Hammer's Regiment had lifted during the past three weeks. Even though the stubby, dark-skinned mercenary had drunk himself legless, his gaze was sharp as he searched the crowd of Local Service Personnel to focus on Lamartiere.

"Hey, Curly!" he called. It was a joke: Lamartiere's straight blond hair was so fine that he looked bald in a strong light. "I want you to know that you were a good LSP, and I'd say that even if you hadn't just fed me the best whiskey I ever had in my life!"

"Yeah, Denis," said L'Abbaye, another of the LSPs. "I didn't know your folks had money. What're you doing in a job like this, anyhow?"

"Because of my faith," Lamartiere said simply. His mouth was dry, but oddly enough the question steadied him. "I thought the best way I could serve God was by serving the mercenaries who came here to fight the Mosite rebels. These refreshments are also a way of serving God."

That was quite true. The Company of Death, the special operations commando of the Mosite rebellion, had recruited Lamartiere from the ranks of ordinary guerrillas and ordered him to take this job. He came from the planetary capital, Carcassone, rather than the western mountains where the Mosite faith—Mosite heresy, the Synod of the Established Church would have it—was centered. Lamartiere had his father's fair complexion. Perhaps in compensation his sister Celine was darker than most pure-blood Westerners, but they both had their mother's faith. Lamartiere's technical education from the Carcassone Lyceum made him an ideal recruit to the Local Service Personnel whom the mercenaries hired for cleaning and fetch-and-carry during depot maintenance of their great war machines.

Heth prodded Hoodoo's driver, Trooper Stegner, with a boot toe. "Hear that, Steg?" the sergeant said. "We're the Sword of God again. How many gods d'ye suppose we been the swords for, hey?"

"We ain't nobody's sword now," Stegner said, lying on his back on the floor with a block of wood for his pillow. His eyes were closed and the straw of an emergency water bottle projected into the corner of his mouth. "We been fired, cast into the outer darkness of space just because we want to be paid."

Before Stegner lay down on the concrete, he'd filled the water bottle with the whiskey Lamartiere brought to this farewell party for the two mercenaries. Though the trooper had seemed to be asleep, his Adam's apple moved at intervals as he sucked on the straw.

"You weren't fired, sir," said another of the LSPs. "You've won and can go home now."

Everyone in the shed except Lamartiere was drunk or almost drunk. For this operation, Franciscus had provided enough liquor to fill Hoodoo's heat exchanger. The money to buy it had come from folk on whom the yoke of war and the Synod lay heavy; but they paid the tax, just as they paid in blood—for their Mosite faith.

"Home?" muttered Stegner. "Where's that?"

"We won the battles we fought, son," Sergeant Heth said, turning to the LSP who'd spoken. "The Slammers generally do. That's why people hire us. But don't kid yourself that the war's over. That's not going to happen until either you give your rebels a piece of the government or you kill everybody in the Western District."

"But they're heretics!" Fourche blurted. "We aren't going to allow Ambiorix to be ruled by heretics!"

Heth belched loudly. He stared at his empty class. Lamartiere filled it from the bottle he held.

"Well, that leaves the second way, don't it?" Heth said. "I don't think we'd be able to handle the job, not kill all of them, even if you had the money to pay us. And not to be unkind, son, but your National Army sure can't do it, which is why you hired us in the first place."

"Cast into the darkness . . ." Stegner mumbled. He started to laugh, choked, and turned his head away from the bottle to vomit.

It was time. Lamartiere stood, wobbly with adrenalin rather than liquor, and said, "We're getting low on whiskey. I'll fetch more."

"I'll give you a hand," volunteered L'Abbaye. He was a friendly youth but all thumbs on any kind of mechanical task. Lamartiere thought with grim humor that if the secret police came looking for Mosites among the LSPs, L'Abbaye's clumsiness could easily be mistaken for systematic sabotage.

Lamartiere handed him the present bottle. There was just enough liquor to slosh in the bottom. "You hold this," he said. "I'll be right back."

Lamartiere stepped outside, feeling the night air bite like a plunge into cold water. He was shivering. He closed the shed's sturdy door, then threw the strap over the hasp and locked it down with the heavy padlock he'd brought for the purpose.

He trotted to the sloped gray bow of Hoodoo, a vast boulder cropping out of the spaceport's flat expanse. Lamartiere had the feeling that the tank was watching him. Even now when it was completely shut down.

The mercenaries had used the spaceport of Brione, the major city of Ambiorix' Western District, as their planetary logistics base during operations against the Mosites in the surrounding mountains. The seventeen tanks of H Company provided base security during the Slammers' withdrawal at the end of their contract.

The withdrawal had gone so smoothly that the government in Carcassone was probably congratulating itself on the savings it had made by ceasing to pay the enormously high wages of the foreign mercenaries. Over a period of three weeks starship after starship had lifted, carrying the Slammers' equipment and personnel to Beresford, 300 light-years distant, where the dictator of a continental state didn't choose to become part of the planetary democracy.

The last transport was supposed to carry H Company. As the tanks headed for the hold, Hoodoo's aft and starboard pairs of drive fans failed because of an electrical fault. This wasn't a serious problem or an uncommon one—vibration and grit meant wiring harnesses were almost as regular an item of resupply as ammunition. With the Regiment's tank transporters and dedicated maintenance personnel already off-planet, though, Major Harding—the logistics officer overseeing the withdrawal—had a problem.

Hoodoo's crew could repair the tank themselves as they'd done many times in the field, but the job might take anything up to a week. Harding had to decide whether to delay sixteen tanks whose punch was potentially crucial on Beresford, or to risk leaving Hoodoo behind alone to rejoin when Heth and Stegner got her running again.

For the moment Ambiorix seemed as quiet as if Bishop Moses had never had his revelation. Harding had chosen the second option and lifted with the remainder of H Company.

Hoodoo's crew spent the next thirteen hours tracing the fault through the on-board diagnostics, then six more hours pulling the damaged harness and reeving a new one through channels in armor thick enough to deflect all but the most powerful weapons known to man. Then and only then, they had slept.

It was four more days before the tramp freighter hired to carry Hoodoo to Beresford would be ready to lift, but Heth and Stegner could relax once they had the tank running again. Hoodoo's speed, armor, and weaponry meant there was nothing within twenty light-years of Ambiorix to equal her.

And she was about to enter the service of the Mosite Rebellion.

A boarding ladder pivoted from Hoodoo's hull, but Lamartiere walked up the smooth iridium bow slope instead like a real tanker. Local Service Personnel were taught to drive the Slammers' vehicles so that they could ferry them between maintenance and supply stations, freeing the troops for more specialized tasks.

Personal travel on Ambiorix, where roads were bad and often steep, was generally by air-cushion vehicle. A 170-tonne tank didn't handle like a 2-tonne van, but the principle was the same. Most of the LSPs were competent tank drivers, and Lamartiere flattered himself that he was pretty good—at least within the flat confines of the spaceport.

Lamartiere didn't need his stolen electronic key because the driver's hatch wasn't locked. He gripped the handle and slid the curved plate forward, feeling the counterweights move in greasy balance with the massive iridium forging.

He lowered himself into the compartment. The seat was raised for the driver to look out over the hatch coaming instead of viewing the world through the multifunction flat-plate displays that ringed his position.

Lamartiere took a deep breath and switched on Hoodoo's drive fans.

The whine of the powerful impellers coming up to speed told everyone within a kilometer that the tank was in operation, but only the crew and the LSPs with them realized something was wrong. Lamartiere had cut the landlines into the building when he'd gone out earlier "to fetch another bottle".

The maintenance building had barred windows and heavy doors to safeguard the equipment within. Even if those partying inside had been sober, they wouldn't have been able to break out in time to affect the result. No one on base could hear their shouts over the sound of the adjacent tank. They were the least of Lamartiere's problems.

None of Hoodoo's electronics were live, and that was a problem. Lamartiere realized what had happened as soon as he switched on: Heth and Stegner had disabled the systems while they were working on the wiring. They hadn't bothered to reconnect anything but the drive train to test it when they were done. There was probably a panel of circuit breakers in some easily accessible location, but Lamartiere didn't know where it was and he didn't have time to find it now in the dark.

He increased the bite of the fans so that instead of merely spinning they began to pump air into Hoodoo's plenum chamber. The skirts enclosing the chamber were steel, not a flexible material like that used for lighter air-cushion vehicles. These had to support the tank's enormous mass while at rest. They couldn't deform to seal the chamber against irregularities in the ground, but the output of the eight powerful fans driven by a fusion generator made up for the leakage.

Hoodoo shivered as the bubble of air in the plenum chamber reached the pressure required to lift 170 tonnes. The tank hopped twice, spilling air beneath the skirts, then steadied as the flow through the fans increased to match the leakage. She was now floating a finger's breadth above the ground.

Lamartiere moved the control yoke forward. The fan nacelles tilted within the plenum chamber to direct their thrust rearward instead of simply down. Hoodoo moved at a sedate pace, scarcely more than a fast walk, through the shops area toward the spaceport's main gate.

Lamartiere shook violently in relief. He released the control yoke for the moment: the tank's AI would hold their speed and heading, which was all that was required now.

Using both hands, Lamartiere fumbled in a bellows pocket of his coveralls and brought out a hand-held radio stolen from government stores. He keyed it on the set frequency and said, "Star, on the way. Out."

He switched off without waiting for a response. He couldn't hear anything over the intake howl, and it really didn't matter. Whether or not Franciscus and the rest of the outside team were in position, Denis Lamartiere couldn't back out now.

The spaceport perimeter was defended, but the mines, fences, and guard towers were no danger to a supertank. At the main gate, however, was a five-story citadel containing the tactical control center and a pair of 25cm powerguns on dual-purpose mountings. Those weapons could rend a starship in orbit and when raised could bear on every route out of the port. A bolt from one of them would vaporize even Hoodoo's thick iridium armor.

A spur from the four-lane Brione-Carcassone highway fed the spaceport. As Lamartiere drove slowly toward the gate, an air-cushion van and a fourteen-wheel semi turned onto the approach road from the other direction.

There was regular truck traffic to the port: a similar vehicle had just passed the checkpoint and was headed toward the warehouses. Guards at the gate waited for the oncoming semi, chatting and chewing wads of the harsh tobacco grown in Carcassone District.

Hoodoo's drive fans drew a fierce breeze past Lamartiere's face despite the tank's slow forward progress. He backed off the throttle even more. Without the tank's electronics Lamartiere had to keep his head out of the hatch to drive, so he couldn't afford to be too close when the semi reached the gate.

The small van pulled into the ditch beside the road and stopped. The semi accelerated past with the ponderous deliberation its weight made necessary.

Lamartiere watched as Hoodoo crawled forward, waiting for the driver to bail out. The truck continued to accelerate, but no one jumped from the cab. Had Franciscus decided to sacrifice himself, despite Lamartiere's loud refusal to be a part of a suicide mission?

It was too late to back out. If he met Franciscus in Hell, he could object then.

A machine gun on top of the citadel opened fire before any of the guards at the checkpoint appeared to understand what was happening. The gunner deserved full marks for reacting promptly, but his sparkling projectiles were aimed several meters high. A round flashed red when it cut one of the steel hoops supporting the trailer's canvas top, but none hit the cab. It was protected against small-arms anyway.

The driver was definitely going to stay with his vehicle. Lamartiere's stomach turned. Risk was one thing. No God Lamartiere worshipped demanded suicide of Her followers.

A siren called from the Port Operations Center in the center of the base. Half a dozen automatic rifles were firing from the roof and entranceway of the citadel. One of the guards at the checkpoint raked the truck from front to back as it swept past him. Most of his fellows had flung themselves down, though one stood in the guard kiosk and gabbled excitedly into the handset of the landline phone there.

The semi bounced over the shallow ditch—it was for drainage rather than protection—and wobbled across rough grass toward the citadel. The machine gun stopped firing because the target was too close for the gun to bear.

A guard leaned over the roof coping to aim a shoulder-launched antitank rocket but lost his balance in his haste. He bounced against the side of the building halfway down. From there to the ground he and the rocket launcher fell separately.

The semi bit the sloped glacis at the citadel's base.

Lamartiere lowered his seat, even though that meant he was driving blind. The disk of sky above Lamartiere flashed white. The pavement rippled, hitting the base of Hoodoo's skirts an instant before an airborne shockwave twisted the tank sideways. It pounded Lamartiere brutally despite his protected location. Hoodoo straightened under the control of its AI. Lamartiere raised his seat and rocked the control yoke forward with the fans spinning at maximum power. The tank accelerated with the slow certainty of a boulder falling from a cliff .

A pillar of smoke and debris was still rising when Lamartiere lifted his head above the hatch coaming. It was nearly a kilometer high before it topped out into a mushroom and began to rain back on the surroundings. The citadel was a faded dream within the column, a hint of vertical lines within the black corkscrew of destruction.

The semi had vanished utterly. The Mosite Rebellion had never lacked explosives and people to use them expertly. The mines of the Western District had provided most of Ambiorix' off-planet exports in the form of hard coal with trace elements that made it the perfect culture medium for anti-aging drugs produced in the Semiramis Cluster. Ten-year-olds in the mountain villages could set a charge of slurry that would bring down a cliff face—or a two-meter section of it, if that was their intent.

The 25cm guns were housed in pits surrounded by a berm and protective dome, invulnerable until they came into action, but the control system was in the citadel. Eight tonnes of slurry exploding against the glacis wouldn't destroy the structure, but neither the gunnery computers nor their operators would be in working order for at least the next several minutes.

Nothing remained of the checkpoint or the troops who'd been firing from the top of the building. One of the objects spinning out of the mushroom might have been a torso from which the blast had plucked head and limbs.

Hoodoo hit a steel pole with a clang, one of the uprights from the perimeter fencing. The blast had thrown it onto the roadway. Lamartiere ducked without thinking. The reflex saved him from decapitation when a coil of razor wire writhed up the bow slope and hooked under Hoodoo's main gun. A moment later the wire parted with a vicious twang at the end of its stretch, leaving a bright scar on the iridium.

The van that had guided the truck to its destruction now pulled out of the sheltering ditch. A figure hopped from the passenger side of the cab and ran into Hoodoo's path, arms windmilling. What fool was—

Crossed bandoliers flopped as the figure gestured; he carried a slung rifle in addition to the submachine gun in his right had. Colonel Franciscus was identifiable even at night because of his paraphernalia.

If Franciscus was here, who had been driving the truck of explosives? Though that didn't matter, not really, except to the driver's widow or mother.

When Lamartiere realized Franciscus wasn't going to get out of his way, he swore and sank the control yoke in his belly, switching the nacelles' alignment from full rearward to full forward. Even so he was going to overrun the man. Halting the inertia of a 170-tonne mass with thrust alone was no sudden business.

"Idiot!" Lamartiere screamed as he spilled pressure from the vents on top of the plenum chamber. "Idiot!"

Hoodoo skidded ten meters in a dazzle of red sparks ground from the skirts by the concrete roadway. The bow halted just short of Franciscus. The shriek of metal was as painful as the blast a moment before and seemed equally loud.

Franciscus, his clothes smoldering in a dozen places from sparks—perhaps a just God had care of events after all—climbed aboard clumsily, grabbing a headlight bracket with his free hand. He waved the other until Lamartiere grabbed his wrist to keep from being slapped in the face with the submachine gun.

"I'll man the guns!" Franciscus shouted over the roar of the fans. He started climbing upward, this time grasping the muzzle of the stubby 20cm main gun.

"They don't work!" Lamartiere said. The vents slapped closed. He raised the yoke to vertical for a moment, building pressure before he started accelerating again. The air was harsh and dry with lime burned from the concrete by friction. "You should have stayed with the van!"

Franciscus couldn't hear him. He would have ignored the comment anyway, as he seemed to ignore everything but his own will and direct orders from Father Renaud, the spiritual head of the Company of Death.

Lamartiere needed to concentrate on his driving.

The van sprinted off now that Franciscus had boarded the tank. It had been supposed to pick up the semi's driver; there was no longer any reason for its presence.

The van's relatively high power-to-weight ratio allowed it to accelerate faster than Hoodoo, but air resistance limited the lighter vehicle's top speed to under a hundred kph. With the correct surface and time to accelerate, Hoodoo could easily double that rate.

Neither vehicle outsped gunshots, but the tank could shrug them off. If the government forces were even half-awake, for the van to wait while Franciscus played games had been a very bad idea.

Franciscus was shouting something about the hatch. It might be locked, but Lamartiere suspected the colonel was just trying to open it in the wrong direction, pushing it back instead of pulling it open. There was nothing the driver could do until—

Shells rang off Hoodoo's rear hull. Rounds that missed sailed past, the tracers golden in the night air, and exploded in red pulses on the westbound lanes of the highway ahead.

If the tank's screens had been live, Lamartiere could have seen what was happening behind him without even turning his head. Now his choice was to ignore the pursuit or to swing the tank sideways so that he could see past the turret.

He twisted the yoke. The pursuers might have antitank missiles as well as automatic cannon, and even cannon could riddle the skirts and ground Hoodoo as surely as if they'd shot out her fan nacelles.

Two of the air-cushion vehicles that patrolled the perimeter fence had followed Hoodoo out of the spaceport. They had no armor to speak of, but they were fast and the guns in their small turrets had a range of several kilometers.

Because Hoodoo turned the next burst missed her, but red flashes ate across the back of the van. It flipped on edge and cartwheeled twice before the fuel cell ruptured. Lamartiere ducked as he drove through the fireball. He smelled flesh burning, but at least he couldn't hear the screams.

Franciscus must have opened the turret hatch because the flow past Lamartiere's chest and legs increased violently. The cross-draft cut off a moment later as Franciscus closed the cupola behind him.

Now that the colonel was clear, Lamartiere braked the tank at the end of the access road. Cannon shells crossed in front of him, then slapped both sides of the turret as the gunners adjusted. Hoodoo roared across the highway's eastbound lanes on inertia.

Lamartiere dumped pressure on the median, grounding in a gulp of yellow-gray soil far less spectacular than the sparks on the concrete. The tank pitched violently. Franciscus screamed in fury as he bounced around the fighting compartment, but Lamartiere had strapped in by habit.

He closed the vents and rotated Hoodoo clockwise. One of the patrol cars was trying to swing around their right side. It brushed the tank's bow and disintegrated as though it had hit a granite cuff. Building speed again, Lamartiere brought Hoodoo in line after the remaining government vehicle.

The minuscule bump might have been dirt, part of the patrol car, or the corpse of a government soldier. It made no difference after it passed beneath the tank's skirts.

They crossed the northern lanes of the highway, driving into the brush that grew on arid soil. If the car's driver had been thinking clearly, he'd have doubled back immediately and used his agility to escape. He'd panicked when he changed from hunter to hunted, though, and he tried to outrun the tank.

The gunner rotated his turret halfway, then gave it up as a bad job. A side door opened. The gunner jumped out, hit a thorn tree, and hung there impaled before Hoodoo's skirts ran him under.

The tank was pitching because of irregularities in the surface, but brush thick enough to slow the patrol car had no effect on 170 tonnes. The driver looked back over his shoulder an instant before Hoodoo crushed car and driver both. Lamartiere had only a glimpse of staring eyes and the teeth that framed the screaming mouth.

There were no more immediate enemies. Lamartiere angled Hoodoo's bow to the northwest. He should hit a road after a kilometer or so of brush busting. The mountains were within a hundred kilometers on this heading; Pamiers, his destination, was only another eighty kilometers beyond. He'd have Hoodoo under cover before government troops could mount a pursuit.

They'd won. He'd won.

In the fighting compartment behind Lamartiere, Franciscus swore in darkness. He was unable even to reopen the cupola hatch.

Pamiers had been shelled repeatedly since the start of the rebellion, and once a government column had taken out its frustration at recent sniping by burning every building in the village. Besides, a city resident like Lamartiere wouldn't have been impressed by the place on its best day.

The locals seemed happy, though. Children played shrilly on the steep hillside. They'd wanted to stay beside the tank, but that would have given away Hoodoo's location. Women chatted as they hung laundry or cooked on outdoor stoves. The flapping clothes made bright primary contrasts with the general coal-dust black of the landscape.

Hoodoo stood at the north side of a tailings pile, covered by a camouflage tarpaulin with the same thermal signature as bare ground. Lamartiere had heard reconnaissance aircraft twice this morning. If the government learned where Hoodoo was, they would come for her; but government troops only entered the mountains when they were in overwhelming force, and even that had a way of being risky.

"I'm not an engineer," Dr. Clargue muttered from the driver's compartment. "I'm a medical man. I should not be here!"

"You and I are what the rebellion has for a technical staff in Pamiers," Lamartiere said. He was in the turret and couldn't see the doctor. A narrow passage connected the two portions of the tank, but that was for emergency use only. "And we've got to figure out where the switches are. Without the guns and sensors, this is just scrap metal."

It was a good thing that Lamartiere needed to encourage Clargue: otherwise he'd have been screaming in frustration himself. Lamartiere had been in intimate contact with the mercenaries' armored vehicles for three months, learning every detail he could about them. It hadn't occurred to him that he'd need to know where the cut-off switches were, but without that information he might as well have waited to wave good-bye when the freighter lifted with Hoodoo tomorrow. At least that way Lamartiere would have his final pay packet to donate to the rebellion.

The fighting compartment darkened as Captain Befayt stuck her head in the cupola hatch. "How are you coming?" she asked. "Say, there really isn't much room in there, is there?"

"No," Lamartiere said, trying not to snarl. "And we don't even have the interior lights working, so while you're standing there I can't see anything inside."

Befayt commanded the company of guerrillas who provided security for Pamiers. She had a right to be concerned since the tank was a risk to the community for as long as it remained here.

Besides that, Lamartiere liked Befayt. Too often in rebel communities the fighters ate and drank well while the civilians, even the children, starved. In Pamiers all shared, and anybody who thought his gun made him special found he had the captain to answer to.

Having said that, Lamartiere really didn't need to have the heavy-set woman looking over his shoulder while everything was a frustrating mess.

"Here, I'll come down with you," Befayt said. She lowered her legs through the hatch, then paused for a moment. Her boots dribbled dirt and cinders down on Lamartiere. After laying her equipment belt on top of the turret to give her ample waist more clearance, she dropped the rest of the way into the compartment.

Maybe Lamartiere should have snarled, though people pretty much heard what they wanted to hear. Befayt wanted a look at this wonderful, war-winning piece of equipment.

Twelve hours earlier, Lamartiere too had believed the tank was all those things. Now he wasn't sure.

The trouble was that there were so many marvelous devices packed into Hoodoo's vast bulk that the breaker box Lamartiere was looking for was concealed like a grain of sand in the desert. If the electronics had been live, Dr. Clargue could have called up a schematic that would tell them where the switches were . . .

Befayt stood on the seat which Lamartiere had lowered to give himself more light within the fighting compartment. He and Clargue had handlights as well, but the focused beams distorted appearances by shutting off the ambiance beyond their edges.

Befayt peered around the turret in wonder. "Boy," she said with unintended irony, "I'm glad it's you guys figuring this stuff out instead of me. This the big gun?"

She patted what was indeed the breech of the main gun. Lamartiere had seen a 20cm weapon tested after armorers had replaced the tube. The target was a range of hills ten kilometers south of the firing point. The cyan bolt had blasted a cavity a dozen meters wide in solid rock.

"Yes," Lamartiere said shortly. "The round comes from the ready magazine in the turret ring, shifts to the transfer chamber—"

He slid back a spring-loaded door beside the breech. The interior was empty.

"—and then into the gun when the previous round's ejected. That way all but the one round's under heavy armor at all times."

"Amazing," Befayt said with a gratified smile. "Guess we'll be giving the Synod's dogs back some of what they been feeding us, right?"

"If we're given a chance to get the tank in working order, yes, we will!" Lamartiere said. To cover his outburst he immediately went on, "Say, Captain, I'd been meaning to ask you: Do you know where my sister Celine's gone? I thought she might be here to, you know, say hello when I arrived."

"She was until about a week ago," Befayt said, relaxing deliberately. The captain didn't want a pointless confrontation either. "Then she got a message and went back with the supply trucks to Goncourt. You might check with Franciscus when he comes back from there tonight."

"Yes, I'll do that," Lamartiere said. The only good thing about the past hours of failure were that Colonel Franciscus had gone on to Goncourt to confer with Father Renaud instead of staying to watch Lamartiere.

"Guess I'll get out of your way," Befayt said with a tight control that showed she knew she'd been unwelcome. She wasn't the sort to let that affect her unduly, but it wasn't something that anybody liked to feel. "Celine seemed chirpy as a cricket when I last saw her, though."

She braced her hands on the edges of the hatch.

"Here, let me raise the seat," said Lamartiere. He touched the button on the side of the cushion. It was hydraulic, not electrical, and worked off an accumulator driven directly by Number Four fan. "I know I shouldn't worry about her, but we're all each other has since—"

As the seat whined upward, Lamartiere saw the flat box attached to the base plate. It had a hinged cover.

"Clargue!" he shouted. "I found it! There's a breaker box on the bottom of the seat!"

He flipped the cover open. The seat had halted at midcolumn when Lamartiere took his finger off the control. Befayt, excited though uncertain about what was going on, squatted on the cushion and tried to look underneath without getting in the way.

Lamartiere aimed his handlight at the interior of the box. There was a triple row of circuit breakers. All of them were in the On position.

"Turn them one at a time!" Dr. Clargue said. "We don't want a surge to damage the equipment."

"They're already on, Doctor," Lamartiere said. He felt sandbagged. Were the electronics dead because of a fault, one the crew hadn't bothered to fix once they had Hoodoo mobile again? But Heth and Stegner wouldn't have relaxed until they had the tank's guns working, surely!

"Doctor!" Lamartiere said. "Check under your seat. Both crew members would have the cut-offs so they—"

"Yes, it's here!" said Clargue. "I've got it open . . ."

Lamartiere heard ventilation motors hum. The interior lights, flat and a deep yellow that didn't affect night vision, came on; then the 30cm gunnery screen above the breech of the main gun glowed.

Hoodoo rang with a violent explosion against the turret. Choking smoke swirled through the open hatch. The ventilation system switched to high speed.

Befayt jumped out of the hatch, moving quickly and without the awkwardness with which she'd entered. "What is happening?" Clargue shouted. The doctor's voice faded as he climbed out of the driver's compartment. "Are we attacked?"

Lamartiere tried to rotate the turret. It didn't move: that breaker was still off. He pulled himself into the open air. He couldn't do anything inside and he didn't choose to wait in the turret to be killed if that was what was going to happen.

The smoke was dissipating. The tarpaulin had been hurled up the tailings pile, but Lamartiere saw no other sign of damage. Dr. Clargue was coming around the front of the tank. Befayt stood on the back deck, staring in consternation at fresh scars on the side of the turret.

"My belt blew up," Befayt said. "May God cast me from Her if that's not what happened. My belt blew up."

The women and children who made up most of Pamiers' population were disappearing into the mouths of the mines that had sheltered them through previous attacks. The traverses weren't comfortable homes, but they were proof against anything the government could throw against them. Guerrillas had dived into fighting positions as quickly. Those in sight of their leader were looking toward her for direction.

"What?" said Clargue. "Did you have electrically primed explosives on your belt, Captain?"

"Well," said Befayt. "Sure, I—Oh, Mother God. You turned the radios on, didn't you?"

"Of course a tank like this has radios, you idiot!" the doctor screamed. His goatee wobbled. Clargue was a little man in his late sixties, unfailingly pleasant in all the encounters Lamartiere had had with him to this moment. "What did you mean bringing blasting caps here!"

"I . . ." Befayt said. She looked completely stupefied. Everyone in the district knew that a powerful radio signal generated enough current in the wires of an electrical blasting cap to detonate the primer. On reflection it was obvious that a tank would have radios; but Lamartiere hadn't thought of that, and neither had the guerrilla commander.

Clargue had scrambled back into the driver's compartment. "Doctor, I'm sorry!" Befayt called after him. "I'll warn the men. And I'll get the tarpaulin over you again."

She trotted toward the entrance of the mine which served as the village's command post. Her hand-held radio had been on the equipment belt.

Clargue reappeared. Lamartiere looked at him in dismay and said, "It was my fault. I should have warned her."

"No," said Clargue. "It was my fault for turning on the power without thinking of the radios. It's not only the blasting caps. We—I—sent out a signal that the government listening posts almost certainly picked up. They know where we are now. They'll be coming."

He shook his head with an expression of miserable frustration. Lamartiere remembered Clargue looking the same way six months before, when a child who'd stepped on a bomblet died despite anything the doctor could do.

"I'll apologize to Captain Befayt," Clargue said. "I was angry with myself, but I blamed her."

"First we need to get Hoodoo working," Lamartiere said. Befayt was leading a group of guerrillas toward them to re-erect the camouflage cover. "So that when the government troops arrive, we're ready for them."

The villagers came out in the evening when they heard the truck approaching from Goncourt. They bowed low in the honor due a holy man on seeing that Father Renaud rode beside Franciscus in the cab. There wasn't, Lamartiere thought, much warmth in their greetings.

Father Renaud was a slim, deeply ascetic man with a fringe of white hair and a placid expression. He was personally very gentle, a man who would let an insect drink its fill of his blood rather than needlessly crush one of God's creatures.

But there was no compromise in the father's attitude as to what was owed God. He had blessed a young mother before she walked into a government checkpoint with six kilos of explosive hidden beneath the infant in her backpack.

Most people in the mountains respected Father Renaud and his faith. A man who spent so much of his time with God wasn't entirely safe for ordinary folk to be around, however.

The driver pulled up beside Hoodoo to let out Renaud and the colonel, then circled back to the center of the village to distribute the few crates of supplies which the Council in Goncourt could spare to Pamiers. The gardens planted in the rubble of burned-out buildings here couldn't support the population. Without some supplement the refugees would move to Goncourt, adding to the health and safety problems of what remained of the Mosites' alternative seat of government.

Befayt and several of her aides had started for Hoodoo when they heard the fans of the oncoming truck. The captain knelt and accepted the blessing from Father Renaud, but she and Franciscus exchanged only the briefest nods of greeting. There was no love lost between the Company of Death and local guerrilla units. As for rank—an officer could call himself anything he pleased, but in the field it came down to who accepted his orders.

In Pamiers, only Lamartiere took orders from Colonel Franciscus. Little as Lamartiere liked the man, he knew that local groups like Befayt's could never defeat the central government, though they might keep the mountains ungovernable indefinitely now that the mercenaries had left. In Lamartiere's opinion, decades of hungry squalor like this would be worse even than haughty repression by the government and Synod.

Franciscus waited impatiently for Lamartiere to take the blessing, then snapped, "Have you fixed the tank yet? I've told the Council that we can move on Brione as soon as they've concentrated our forces, but that I have to be in charge. The tank is crucial, and I command it."

"We have all the electronic systems working," Dr. Clargue said in a voice as thin as a scalpel. "The guns are not in operation yet because the magazines seem to be empty."

Clargue wasn't a member of any military body, but he was a Mosite believer and had been an expert on Ambiorix' most advanced medical computer systems before he left Carcassone Central Hospital for hands-on care of the folk of his home village. His presence was the reason the Council had picked Pamiers as an initial destination for the stolen tank.

"What do you mean?" Franciscus said. He turned on Lamartiere with all the fury of a terrier facing a rat. "Didn't you bring ammunition? Did you think we were going to stand on the turret and throw rocks?"

Lamartiere was taller than Franciscus, but the colonel was an athlete who went through a long exercise regimen every morning and who gloried in hand-to-hand combat. He didn't need his trappings of guns, bombs, and knives to be dangerous. He was physically capable of beating Lamartiere to death at this moment, and he was very possibly willing to do so as well.

"Hoodoo has a full load of ammunition, both 2cm and 20cm," Lamartiere said quietly, forcing himself not to flinch as Franciscus stepped toe to toe with him. "I drove the ammo trailer to her myself and watched Sergeant Heth load her. But the rounds are in storage magazines in the floor of the hull. The ready magazines in the turret are empty."

"You must understand," Clargue said, breaking in with an expression that implied he didn't care whether Franciscus understood how to breathe, "that this tank is a very complex system. As yet I haven't found the command that will transfer ammunition between locations or even the command set it belongs to. It doesn't seem to be part of the gunnery complex, as I would have expected."

He shrugged. His frustration was as great as Lamartiere's, but the doctor was better at hiding it. "We're working through the range of possibilities. It will take time."

Clargue knew, as Lamartiere did, that there might be very little time because of the RF spike when Hoodoo's radios came on.

"Well look," said Befayt. She wore a new equipment belt, but this one didn't contain any of the electrically primed bombs that were a staple of the guerrillas' ambush techniques. "Why don't you move the disks by hand? I can supply the people if the weight's a problem."

"The storage magazines are sealed and locked," Lamartiere explained. This was something he knew about. "It takes a special fitting on the end of the ammo trailer to get into the tube. If there's dust on the rounds, they might explode when they're fired."

"We don't have time to be picky!" Franciscus said. He was a little off-balance around Clargue, perhaps because the doctor was so completely Franciscus' opposite in personality. "Blow open the magazines and load the turret by hand."

"No!" said Lamartiere and Clargue together.

"Like bloody Hell!" Befayt said, speaking directly to the colonel for the first time since he'd arrived. "I've looked at those fittings. Enough charge to blow one open and the best thing you're going to do is crush all the disks so they don't work. There's a better chance that you'll set one off and the whole lot gang fires. How does that help us, will you tell me, Mister Colonel?"

Franciscus looked as though he was going to hit her. Befayt's aides must have thought so too, because they backed slightly and leveled their weapons at the colonel: a pair of Ambiorix-made electromotive slug-throwers, and a 2cm powergun stolen or captured from the Slammers' stocks.

"Children," Father Renaud said with none of the sarcasm the word might have carried had it come from another mouth. "If we squabble among ourselves then we fail the Lord in Her time of need. There is no greater sin."

"Sorry, father," Befayt muttered. Franciscus gave her a sour look, then dipped his head to Renaud in a sign of contrition.

Renaud returned his attention to Clargue and Lamartiere. "Go on with your work," he said calmly. "Remember, have faith and She will provide."

Lamartiere bowed and turned to board the tank again. He mostly kept silent while Dr. Clargue methodically went over the software, but there was always the possibility that he would recognize something that the doctor had missed.

It hadn't happened yet, though. Working on the mercenaries' vehicles in depot didn't teach him anything about the way they operated in combat, and to ask questions on the subject would have compromised Lamartiere as surely waving a sign saying, I AM A MOSITE SPY!

The radio on Befayt's belt buzzed. She unhooked it and held it to her cheek, shielding the mouthpiece by reflex even in this company. When she lowered the unit, her face looked as though it had been hacked from stone.

"The government outposts at Twill, Lascade, and on Marcelline Ridge have just been reinforced," she said. "That's an anvil all around Pamiers. There's a mechanized battalion heading south out of the Ariege cantonment to be the hammer."

"It's because of my mistake," Dr. Clargue said in a stricken voice. "I shouldn't be involved in this. I'm not a man of war."

"Well, there's no problem," Franciscus said. "Just get the tank working and we'll wipe out this whole Synod battalion. The first battle will be in Pamiers instead of us having to go to them."

"I don't know how long I will need," Clargue said. "Finding the right command is like—"

He pointed to the sky. The sun had set and the first stars were appearing in the twilight.

"Like finding one star at random in all the heavens. How long is it before the enemy will attack?"

"It's forty klicks from Ariege," Befayt said uncomfortably. "I won't say they're going to have clear going, but after the way the villages on the route got ground up over the past five months I wouldn't expect a whole lot of resistance. Even though it's just government troops and not the mercenaries this time."

"Two hours," Lamartiere translated. "Less if they're willing to push very hard and abandon vehicles that break down."

"I can't guarantee success," Dr. Clargue said. His face wrinkled in misery. "I can't even expect success. There's no sign that I will ever find the right command."

"Well, then we have to move our tank to a new location," Franciscus said. He looked at Father Renaud, less for counsel than to indicate he wasn't attempting to give the priest orders. "Boukasset, I think? Even if they find us again, it'll take them days to mount an attack there. And even reinforced, none of those patrol posts can stop us."

He patted Hoodoo's iridium flank with a proprietary gesture that made Lamartiere momentarily furious. He knew it was stupid to give in to personal dislike in a crisis like this, but he also knew human beings were much more than cold intellects in a body.

Aloud Lamartiere said, "We can break through, I'm pretty sure. But the villagers can't escape, and the government troops won't leave without doing all the damage they can. I'm afraid they'll blow up the mine entrances this time."

Befayt grimaced. "Yeah," she said. "I figure that, too."

She nodded toward Hoodoo. "They're scared of this thing. If they don't have it to fight after all, well, they'll find some other way to work off their energy."

"I'll get back to work," Clargue said simply. He put his hand on the boarding ladder.

"And I'll put my people in place at the crossing," Befayt said. "I don't know that we can slow them up much, not a battalion, but they'll know they been in a fight before they get across the Lystra."

"Wait," said Lamartiere. He pointed to the guerrilla carrying the powergun. "Captain, you've got several soldiers with 2cm guns, don't you? Give me all their ammunition. I can hand-feed it into the tribarrel's ready magazine and use the tanks gunnery system to aim and fire."

The guerrilla looked shocked at the thought he should surrender the weapon that gave him status in any gathering of fighters. Befayt nodded to him and said, "Yeah, do what he says, Aghulan. You can keep the gun. Just give him the ammo."

She smiled bitterly and added, "I'd say you could have it for your tombstone, but I don't guess there'll be enough of any of us left to bury in a couple hours."

The aide was a man in his sixties. He looked at the hills and said, "Well, I said I never wanted to leave this valley. Guess I'll get my wish."

He spat on the coal-blackened ground.

"Right," said Franciscus. "I'll man the tank's gun."

"No," said Lamartiere before Clargue could step away from the ladder. "I need the doctor with me. He understands the parts of the systems that I'll need but don't know anything about."

Clargue looked at Lamartiere in surprise. Both of them knew that was a lie.

Franciscus glared at Lamartiere and rang the edge of his fist angrily on Hoodoo's skirt. "I should have infiltrated the base myself," he snarled, accepting the statement at face value. "Then we'd have somebody who knew what he was doing!"

Father Renaud looked at the colonel sharply. "Emmanuel," he said. "Glory will come to those who strive for the Lord, but neither glory nor martyrdom is an end in itself. Sometimes I fear that you forget that."

"Sorry, father," Franciscus muttered.

"And, Captain?" Lamartiere added as another idea struck him. The sky over the western hills was fully dark now. "Can your men make me up flash charges with about three meters of wire leads on each? As many as you can. And I'll need a clacker to set them off."

"Why?" Franciscus demanded. "What do you think you're going to do with them?"

If Franciscus hadn't spoken first, Befayt might have asked the same question. As it was, she gave the colonel a flat glare and said, "Yeah, I'll put a couple of the boys on it while the rest of us go wait at the crossing."

She looked at Renaud and added, "Father? I'd appreciate it if you'd bless us all before we go. It don't look like there'll be another chance."

There was a reconnaissance drone overhead. Darkness and altitude hid it, but the hum of its turbofan occasionally reached the ground.

"I'm going to button up," Lamartiere said over Hoodoo's intercom. He grimaced to hear himself deliberately using jargon to prove he was a real tanker. "I'm going to close the hatches, I mean," he added. "Make sure you're clear of yours."

He touched the switch on the compartment's sidepanel; both hatches slid closed with cushioned thumps. One thing Lamartiere had proved he wasn't, was a tanker. The damage Hoodoo's skirts had taken on the run from Brione suggested he wasn't much of a tank driver either, though he supposed he'd call himself adequate given haste and the condition of roads through the mountains.

"Denis, you know that I can't operate these weapons, don't you?" Dr. Clargue said. When the tank was sealed, the vehicle intercom was good enough for parties to hear one another even over the roar of the fans, though for greater flexibility on operations the mercenaries always wore commo helmets. Lamartiere had a momentary daydream of what he could do if he had all the equipment of Hammer's Regiment under his control.

He might not be able to do anything. Hardware was wonderful, but the training to use it was more wonderful still. He should have asked a few more questions when he worked for the mercenaries. He might have been exposed and shot, but at least the civilians of Pamiers would face less risk.

"I know that," Lamartiere said aloud. "We'll change places when we get to the crossing and I'll take over the gun. I just couldn't afford to have Franciscus in the turret. He doesn't know any more about the equipment than you do, and he wouldn't trade with me."

He started the fans, bringing the blades up to speed at a flat angle so that they didn't bite the air. The driver's compartment had two displays, one above the other. On default the lower screen was a 360-degree panorama with a keyboard overlay, while the upper one showed the view forward with system readouts overlying the right and left edges. By touching any gauge, Lamartiere could expand it to half the screen.

The fans and power system were within parameters. They shouldn't give any trouble on the three kilometers between here and the Lystra River.

The truck that had brought supplies was ferrying the last of the guerrillas to the defensive positions at the crossing. Befayt had allowed Franciscus to go with the first group. Tonight she wasn't about to turn away anyone with a gun and a willingness to die.

"You don't have to change places, you know," Clargue said. "Unless you want to, of course. You can control the weapons from your compartment by touching Star-Gee."

"What?" said Lamartiere, taking his hands off the control yoke. "I didn't know . . ."

He pressed *G on the keyboard. The display had no more give than the bulkhead, but the orange symbols of a gunnery screen replaced the center of the panorama. The crossed circle to the right of the display was a trigger.

"Oh . . ." Lamartiere whispered. For the first time he thought that the bluff he planned might actually work.

He checked the command bar on the left side of the display, chose seek, and raised the search area to ten degrees above the horizon. The tarpaulin covered the region selected, so for the moment neither the pipper on the screen nor the tribarrel in the cupola reacted.

"Hang on," he called to the doctor. "We're going to just move out a little ways."

Leaving the gunnery display set, Lamartiere adjusted fan angle with the right grip and slid Hoodoo onto clear ground. Dust and pebbles spun outward in the spray of air escaping beneath the edge of the plenum chamber.

Lamartiere let Hoodoo settle. The gunnery display appeared to scroll down past the pipper until vague motion quivered in the center of the crosshairs. In the turret Clargue exclaimed when the tribarrel also moved.

Lamartiere expanded his image. The target was a drone with long slender wings and a small engine mounted on a pylon above the fuselage. The default option was auto; Lamartiere switched to manual because he simply didn't have the ammunition to spare the burst a computer might think was necessary to make sure of the target. He tapped the trigger once.

In the closed-up tank, the 2cm weapon merely whacked as it sent a bolt of ionized copper skyward at light speed. The main display compensated automatically for the burst of intense light; unless set otherwise, the AI used enhancement and thermal imaging to keep the apparent illumination at 100 percent of local daylight.

There was a cyan flash on the gunnery display, though. The lightly built drone broke apart in a flurry of wing panels and a mist of vaporized fuel. There was no fireball. The drone had been operating at too high an altitude for atmospheric pressure to sustain combustion.

"It worked!" Clargue shouted. "You made it work!"

"Mother God!" Lamartiere said as he fumbled to modify the screen. He was shaking. After a moment's confusion he realized that of course Clargue had been able to echo the gunnery display on his own screens. "You understand this so much better than I do, Doctor."

"No," said Clargue. "And even if I did, you are a man of war, Denis. As I will never be."

Lamartiere reduced the image and switched from seek to protect. When the map display came up, he expanded the region from the default—a ten-meter fringe surrounding Hoodoo—to include the whole area of Pamiers.

He touched auto. The civilians were under cover, deep in the mines, but an incoming round might shatter rock and bring down a traverse on huddled forms. One of them might have been his sister Celine.

Taking the yoke in both hands again, Lamartiere drove toward the eastern exit from the valley at a sedate pace. He didn't need to rush to get into position, and high speed on this terrain would waste precious ammunition when the AI responded to incoming artillery.

Because he concentrated on his driving, Lamartiere heard the whine of the cupola before he noticed motion on the gunnery screen. The tribarrel fired: three rounds, two, three more. Cyan and the dull red light of high explosive quivered on the gunnery screen.

Hoodoo's sensors and AI permitted her to sweep shells from the sky when they were still so far away that the explosions couldn't be seen by the naked eye. Given a vantage point and enough 2cm ammunition, this tank could defend the whole area from horizon to horizon.

The sticking point now was the ammunition.

The second salvo came over just before Hoodoo reached the mouth of the valley. The shells were fired out of the northwest, probably from guns in the government base at Ariege. The tribarrel hummed and crackled, rotating barrels between rounds so that the polished iridium bores had a chance to cool. The powergun bolts detonated the shells when they were barely over the horizon.

Driving with one hand, Lamartiere adjusted the gunnery screen. He hoped the gunners wouldn't waste any more of their expensive terminally guided rounds. They didn't have direct observation of the results since the drone had been knocked down, but observers with the mechanized battalion would tell them their fire was fruitless.

"I'm setting the gun only to respond to shells aimed at us from now on, Doctor," he explained to Clargue. He supposed he was trying to pass on the burden of the choice he'd just made. "We're down to seventy-seven rounds. If I keep covering the village, we'll use up all the ammunition and then we lose everything."

"Yes," Clargue said. He sounded cool; certainly not judgmental. "Rather like triage."

"Pardon?" Lamartiere said. "Triage?"

Driving Hoodoo with the electronics working was infinitely less wearing than the trip Lamartiere had made in the early hours of the morning, trying to pick his way over narrow, half-familiar roads in the dark. The screens showed the path as though in daylight, and the tank's microwave imaging ignored dust and the mist beginning to rise in low points where aquifers bled through the rocks.

"When there are many injured and limited medical facilities," Clargue explained, "you divide the casualties into three groups. You ignore the ones who aren't in immediate danger so you can concentrate on helping those who will survive only if they get immediate help. And you also ignore those who will probably die even if you try to help them."

He coughed to clear his throat. "It's a technique of setting priorities that was developed during wartime."

Hoodoo crested a rise and entered the floodplain of the Lystra River. Except in springtime, the Lystra ran in a narrow channel only a few hundred meters wide—though deep and fast-flowing. There was only one ford on the upper river, and the bridges that spanned it during peace had been blown early in the rebellion.

The ford was a dike of basalt intruding into the surrounding limestone, raising the channel and spreading it to nearly a kilometer in width. One of the bridges had been here. The abutments and two pillars still stood, but the tangle of dynamited girders had tumbled out of sight downstream last year when the snow melted.

Befayt's troops were hidden in fighting holes, covered with insulating blankets that dispersed their thermal signatures. They'd learned to be careful eight months before, when elements of the Slammers began accompanying government units who entered the mountains.

The guerrillas had been wary of the mercenaries' firepower. They'd quickly learned that the sensor suites of the vast iridium behemoths were even more of a threat.

Given a little time, Dr. Clargue could put those sensors in the hands of the rebels. Clargue—and Hoodoo—just had to survive this night.

Lamartiere found the spot he'd noticed on previous visits to Pamiers, a shallow draw that carried overflow from the channel during the spate. He took Hoodoo over the edge; gently, he thought, but bank broke away and the tank rushed to the bottom of gravel and coarse vegetation with a roar. A geyser of dust rose.

Hoodoo's skirts dug into the ground, sealing the plenum chamber for an instant before the pressure rose enough to pop the tank up like a cork from a champagne bottle. The plume of debris followed the breeze upstream, settling and dissipating while the echoes of Lamartiere's ineptitude slowly faded.

"Befayt's people must think I'm an incompetent fool," Lamartiere muttered. "And they're right."

"What they think," Dr. Clargue replied with his usual dispassion, "is that the most powerful machine on Ambiorix is on their side. And they are indeed right."

Lamartiere revved his fans. He took Hoodoo slowly back up the slope until the cupola and its sensors peeked over crest to view the ford. Then he shut down again and studied the display.

"Doctor?" he said, wishing he could see Clargue's face as he spoke. "I'm going to try to bluff the Synod troops into thinking Hoodoo has her full armament. A 2cm round doesn't have anything like the power of the main gun, but it's no joke. I'm hoping if there's a big flash here, they'll think whatever hits them is from the 20cm gun."

"Ah," said Clargue, quick on the uptake as always. "So these little bombs Lieutenant Aghulan put in the compartment with me are to make the flashes. You want me to throw them out one at a time for you to detonate when you fire the tribarrel."

"That's right," said Lamartiere, "but you'll have to detonate them yourself when I call, 'Shoot'. Do you know how to use a clacker?"

"Of course I know how to use a clacker," Clargue said with frigid disdain. "I was born in Pamiers, was I not? But have you forgotten how to turn on the radios, Denis? The timing will be more accurate if you do both things yourself; and as for the remaining blasting caps, the transfer chamber for the big gun will provide a Faraday cage to shield them."

"Mother God," said Lamartiere in embarrassment. "Yes, Doctor, that's a much better idea. I'm very sorry."

He heard the cupola hatch open. "I've placed the first bomb," Clargue said mildly. "You have a great deal to think about, Denis. You are doing well."

I wish I were a million light-years away, Lamartiere thought as he concentrated on his displays. But he wasn't, and the rebellion would have to make do with him for want of better.

Hoodoo's sensors indicated the government battalion had halted on the reverse slope of the ridge north of the Lystra River. Their commander had the same problem as a hunter who thinks he's trapped a dangerous animal in a deep cave: the only way to be sure is to go straight in.

If the rebels were going to defend Pamiers, the ford was the obvious location. On the other hand they might well have drifted higher in the mountains, leaving behind booby traps and snipers instead of trying to stop a force they knew was unstoppable. That had generally been the case in the past when the government focused its strength.

Besides, months of battering by government units supported by mercenaries had virtually eliminated the Mosites' ability to mass large forces of their own.

But now there was a tank, a devouring superweapon, which the rebels might have in operating condition. All the battalion from Ariege knew for sure was that they had been ordered to assault Pamiers and eliminate the stolen tank at all cost.

Lamartiere grinned despite himself as he considered his enemy's options. The government troops knew one other thing: they, and not the brass in Carcassone, would be paying that cost.

He could have felt sorry for them if he hadn't remembered the villages Synod troops had "cleansed" after a nearby ambush. Of course, there'd been the garrisons of overrun government bases left with their genitals sewn into their mouths. In the name of God. . . .

An 8-wheeled "tank" accelerated over the crest and bounced down the road to the crossing at too high a speed. The driver was afraid of a rebel ambush, but nothing the Mosites could do would be worse than flipping the 30-tonne vehicle to tumble sideways into the river.

The hidden rebels didn't respond.

The tank slowed, spraying gravel from its locked wheels. It pulled off the road at the end of a switchback and settled into a hull-down position from which its long 10cm coil gun could cover the crossing.

Three more tanks came into sight one after another, following the first without the initial panicked haste. They all took overwatch positions on the forward slope. They weren't well shielded—one of them was in a clump of spiny shrubs that wouldn't stop small arms, let alone a 20cm bolt—but at least there was psychological benefit for the crews.

The government tanks had good frontal protection and powerful electromotive guns that could throw either HE or long-rod tungsten armor-piercers. Local technology couldn't carry the gun, the armor, and the banks of capacitors which powered the weapon, on an air-cushion chassis of reasonable size, though.

The Slammers' 30-tonne combat cars, like their tanks, had miniaturized fusion powerplants. The Government of Ambiorix would have had to import fusion units at many times the cost of the gun vehicles as completed with locally manufactured diesels. The 8-wheeled chassis was probably the best compromise between economics and the terrain.

With the tanks in position, the remainder of the battalion came over the hill and headed for the river. Thirty-odd air-cushion armored personnel carriers made up the bulk of the unit. Each APC mounted an automatic cannon in a small turret and could carry up to sixteen troops in addition to its own crew.

To Lamartiere's surprise there was an air-cushion jeep in the middle of the column. It pulled out of line almost at once and vanished behind an outcrop too slight to hide a vehicle of any size.

A lightly loaded air-cushion vehicle can sail across water because its weight is spread evenly over the whole surface beneath the plenum chamber. Government APCs carried too high a density of armor and payload for that. They sank, but where the bottom was as shallow and firm as it was here they could pogo across without flooding their fans. Even so, the Lystra was dangerously high. Only a crisis could induce a battalion to force the crossing now instead of waiting for the load of melting snow to recede for another week.

Rather than driving straight into the water as Lamartiere expected, the APCs formed three lines abreast well short of the bank. Their turret guns nervously searched the hills across the river, and troops pointed personal weapons from the open hatches in the vehicles' top decks.

Four more tanks closed the battalion's line of march. They drove past their fellows in overwatch positions to halt at the river's edge. A pair of crewmen got out of each vehicle and erected a breathing tube over the engine vents. While they worked, the third crew member closed the coil gun's muzzle with a tompion.

The crews got back in their waterproofed tanks and drove slowly into the river. The initial drop-off brought water foaming over the tops of the big wheels, but the slope lessened. The vehicles were nearly at the Lystra's midpoint before their turrets went completely under, leaving only the snorkel tubes and occasionally the raised muzzle of a coil gun to mark their progress.

The first rank of APCs bounded into the river with a roar and wall of spray like that at the base of a waterfall. They had waited so that their boisterous passage didn't swamp the tanks while the latter were still in deep water.

"Here we go," Lamartiere warned Clargue. He fed power to the fans and lifted Hoodoo several meters higher up the swale, exposing her turret and main gun to view of the government forces.

The tanks across the river fired before Hoodoo came to rest. Two shells landed ringing hammer blows against the turret and a third exploded just short, flinging half a tonne of dirt over the bow slope. If Lamartiere had been looking out of his hatch, the blasts would have decapitated him.

The government vehicles had fired HE, not armor-piercing shot. That meant they hadn't really expected to meet the Slammers' tank here. They must be terrified already . . .

Lamartiere laid the pipper on the gun mantle of the tank on the left. He was too busy to be frightened now.

Befayt's guerrillas and the APCs were firing wildly. Government automatic weapons stitched the night together with golden tracers. Rebel coil guns showed only puffs of fluorescent mist, the ionized vestiges of the projectiles' driving bands.

Lamartiere tapped his trigger while his left index finger clicked the radios on and off. Light more brilliant than the shell bursts lit Hoodoo's turret. Remnants of the copper leads bled blue-green across the flash of aluminized slurry. Simultaneously the tribarrel's bolt struck at the base of the target's electromotive gun, cratering the armor and stripping insulation from the tube's windings.

"Another charge!" Lamartiere screamed.

The guerrillas were concentrating on tank snorkels and the APCs which had entered the stream. A line of bullets tore out the side of an APC's skirts. The vehicle rolled over on its back, spilling soldiers through the open hatches. The weight of their gear sucked them down.

The government tanks fired again. The tank Lamartiere had damaged dissolved in a sizzling short circuit. The current meant to accelerate a kilo of tungsten to 4000 kph instead ate metal. Everything flammable in the interior ignited, including the flesh of the crew.

The other three rounds missed Hoodoo. The gunners had switched to AP, but in their haste they'd forgotten to correct for the much flatter trajectory of the high-velocity shot.

"Ready!" Clargue called. Lamartiere hit the second tank exactly where he'd nailed the first. A 2cm bolt couldn't penetrate the government tanks' frontal armor, but accurately used it put paid to their armament. This time, the hatches flew open and the crew bailed out as soon as the bolt hit.

The government command vehicles carried hoop antennas that set them apart from the ordinary APCs. A guerrilla hit one with a shoulder-launched buzzbomb. The shaped-charge warhead sent a line of white fire through the interior and triggered a secondary explosion that blew the turret off.

In his triumph the rebel forgot the obvious. He reloaded and rose again from the same location. At least a dozen automatic cannon chewed him to a fiery memory.

Lamartiere laid his pipper on the third target. He didn't have time to shoot: the crew was already abandoning their untouched vehicle.

The APCs of the first wave were mostly bogged in the Lystra, though one had managed to wallow back to dry land with riddled skirts. An air-cushion vehicle could move with a leaking plenum chamber, but the fans shed their blades if they tried to push water.

Three of the fording tanks were only ripples on the surface of the river. The fourth had started to climb the south bank. Its bow and turret were clear, but the engine compartment was still under water when rebels had shot the breathing tube away. The bodies of the three crewmen lay halfway out of their hatches.

Lamartiere settled his pipper on the last of the overwatching tanks. The government driver backed and turned sharply, trying to retreat the way he had come. Lamartiere hit the vehicle in the middle of the flank, blowing the thin armor into the capacitor compartment. This time the short circuit was progressive rather than instantaneous as with the first victim, but the tank's ultimate destruction was no less complete.

The surviving APCs roared up the north slope of the valley, going back the way they'd come. Some of them had reversed their turrets and were spraying cannon shells southward, but they no longer made a pretense of aiming. Several vehicles stood empty, though without magnification Lamartiere couldn't see any signs of damage.

There were a dozen brush fires on the south side of the river, and almost that many burning vehicles on the north. It had been a massacre.

Guerrillas sniped at soldiers who were still moving, but some of Befayt's people were already splashing into the water to gather loot from the nearest tank. There was a cable bridge slung underwater a kilometer upstream. Organized parties of guerrillas would cross to sweep the northern bank in a few hours.

The jeep Lamartiere had forgotten suddenly accelerated out of cover, heading uphill. Lamartiere slapped his pipper on it for magnification rather than in a real attempt to shoot.

The vehicle jinked left and vanished before he could have shot. He was almost sure from the brief glimpse that the two figures aboard were wearing Slammers' uniforms.

Lamartiere heard the tribarrel whine under the AI's guidance. It began firing short bursts: the artillery in Ariege was shelling again. The gunners hadn't had enough warning to support the crossing with the concentrations they must have prepared in case of rebel resistance.

"They could have crushed us, Doctor," Lamartiere said in wonder. "They could have gone right through except they panicked. We won because we frightened them, not because we beat them."

"In my proper profession," Clargue said, "a cure is a cure. I don't see a distinction between the psychological effect of a placebo and the biological effect of a real drug—so long as the beneficial effect occurs."

He paused before adding, "I find it difficult to view this destruction as beneficial, but I suppose it's better than the same thing happening to Pamiers."

The last of the surviving APCs had crossed the ridge to safety, leaving behind a pall of dust and the wreckage of their fellows. The tribarrel continued to fire. The gunners no longer had the site under observation, but they were making noise for much the same reason as savages beat drums when the sun vanishes in eclipse.

"I'm going back to Pamiers," Lamartiere said. He was extraordinarily tired. "There's some damage to the skirts—" rips from fragments of the shells that hit the turret in the first salvo "—that needs to be repaired. Then we have to get out of here."

Franciscus jumped onto the bow slope. Lamartiere hadn't seen him approaching; there'd been more on his mind than his immediate surroundings.

"We won!" the colonel shouted. "By God, the Council'll know who to give charge of the war to now! We won't stop in Brione, we'll take Carcassone!"

The cupola hatch was open because Dr. Clargue had been throwing the flash charges out of it. Franciscus climbed up and said, "I'll ride inside on the way back."

Lamartiere heard the hatch thump closed. Franciscus shouted in anger.

Lamartiere drove Hoodoo up and onto the road. Neither he nor the doctor spoke on the way back to Pamiers.

Lamartiere shut off the fans in the center of Pamiers. He opened his hatch.

Franciscus looked down at him. He wasn't wearing a shirt so the bomb-heavy bandoliers wobbled across the curly hair of his chest. He hadn't been around when Befayt provided the reminder about blasting caps and radios. Lamartiere didn't comment.

Despite the consciously heroic pose, the colonel looked vaguely unsure of himself. Being closed out of Hoodoo on the drive back had caused him to consider Lamartiere as something more than a pawn for the colonel to play. He asked, "Why didn't you put us under cover?"

"Because all it covers now," Lamartiere said as he got out, "is our sensors' ability to see any shells the Synod sends over. They know from the drone where we were hiding, so it's a fixed target for them. This way Hoodoo protects herself."

Of course there were only thirty-seven rounds left in the tribarrel's loading tube. Maybe Dr. Clargue would be able to find the transfer command in the respite he and Hoodoo—and Denis Lamartiere, for all Lamartiere felt a failure—had won. But the first order of business was to repair the tank and get out of here.

Lamartiere slid down the bow and walked toward the pit where Pelissier had his workshop. Civilians ran to the tank, some of them carrying lanterns. They cheered and waved yellow Mosite flags. Lamartiere tried to smile as he brushed his way through them.

A child handed him a garland of red windflowers. Lamartiere took it, but the streaming blooms made him think of blood in water. The Lystra's current would have carried the carnage kilometers downstream by now. . . .

Franciscus stood, using the tank as a podium. He began to tell the story of the battle in a loud, triumphant voice. Lamartiere didn't look back.

Pelissier had been only a teenager when he lost both legs in a mine accident. Since that time he'd served as Pamiers' machinist, living in an increasingly ornate house during peacetime and at the entrance of a disused mine since rebellion had destroyed the village.

Pelissier had a chair mounted on a four-wheeled tray. The seat raised and lowered, and there was an electric motor to drive him if required. For the most part, the cripple trundled himself around his immediate vicinity by hand. He never went far from his dwelling.

Pelissier and his old mother doffed their caps as Lamartiere approached. "So," the machinist said. "I congratulate you. But you have learned that no matter how powerful a machine may seem to be, it still can break. That is so?"

"I worked in the depot at Brione, Pelissier," Lamartiere said. "I never doubted that tanks break. Now I need you to weld patches over holes in the skirts so that I can get Hoodoo away from here. Otherwise she'll draw worse down on you."

Madame Pelissier spat. Her son looked past Lamartiere toward the ruined houses and said, "Worse? But no matter. Can I get within the chamber? The patches should be made from inside. That way pressure will hold them tighter."

"There's access ports in the skirts," Lamartiere said. He knew better than to suggest the cripple would be unable to use an opening made for a man with legs.

Pelissier nodded. "Bring your great machine up here, then, so that we don't have to move the welder through this wasteland."

He spun his tray back toward the entrance and his equipment. Over his shoulder he said, "I cannot fight them myself, Lamartiere. But to help you, that I can do."

Lamartiere walked back toward Hoodoo. He'd have to move the crowd away before he started the fans: pebbles slung under the skirts could put a child's eye out.

He still held the garland. He was staring at the flowers, wondering how he could decently rid himself of an object that made him feel queasy, when he realized that Father Renaud was standing in his path.

Lamartiere stopped and bowed. "I'm sorry, Father," he said. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"You have much on your mind," Renaud said. "I wouldn't bother you merely to offer praise."

The priest's lips quirked in a tiny smile. "Glory is in God's hands, not mine, but I have no doubt that She will mete out a full measure to you, Denis."

Renaud's face sobered into its usual waxlike placidity. "I know I'm thought to be hard," he continued. "Perhaps I am. But I feel the loss of every member of my flock, even those I know are seated with God in heaven. You have my sincere sympathy for the loss of your sister."

"Loss?" said Lamartiere. He wasn't sure what he'd just heard. "Celine is . . .?"

Father Renaud blinked. He looked honestly shocked for the first time in the year Lamartiere had known him. "You didn't know?" he said. "Oh, my poor child. Celine drove the truck into the gate so that you could escape from Brione. I think she did it as much for your sake as for God's, but God will receive her in Her arms nonetheless."

Lamartiere hung the garland around his neck. Some child had picked the flowers as the only gift she could offer the man she thought had saved her. It would please that child to see him wearing them.

"I see," Lamartiere said. He heard his voice catch, but his mind was detached, dispassionate. "Celine wasn't the sort to refuse when called to duty, Father. She would have sacrificed herself as quickly for faith alone as for me. As I would very willingly have sacrificed myself for her."

He bowed and stepped past Renaud.

"Denis?" Renaud called. "If there is anything I can offer. . . ?"

"Your faith needs Hoodoo in working order, Father," Lamartiere said without looking around. "I'm going to go take care of that now."

Hundreds of civilians crowded around the tank; the vast metal bulk dwarfed them. The superweapon, the machine that would win the war. . . .

"Let me through!" Lamartiere said. People stepped aside when they saw who was speaking. "I have to get the tank repaired immediately. Everyone get back to the tunnels!"

Franciscus stood on Hoodoo's turret. He called something; Lamartiere couldn't hear him over the crowd noise. The colonel was everything a military hero needed to be: trim, armed to the teeth, and willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his ends.

Dr. Clargue sat nearby on a man-sized lump of tailings, rubbing his temples. He looked as tired as Lamartiere felt.

Lamartiere climbed up Hoodoo's bow slope. "Doctor," he called. "Get everyone out of here. It's very dangerous to be here!"

"Lamartiere!" Franciscus said. "I want you to teach me how to operate the guns. We can start right now, while the repairs are being done."

"Yes, all right," said Lamartiere, slipping into the driver's compartment. He threw the switch closing the cupola hatch before Franciscus could get in.

"Sorry, wrong button," he called over the colonel's angry shout. "Just a moment. Let me start the fans and I'll open it."

He didn't want Franciscus inside Hoodoo's turret. Lamartiere still owed something to the rebellion; and Celine had, after all, sacrificed herself for the purpose of stealing the tank.

The civilians were drifting away, but some were still too close. Lamartiere revved the fans with the blades flat. They made a piercing whine as unpleasant as fingernails on a blackboard.

Children shrieked, holding their hands over their ears. They and their mothers scampered away. Clargue chivied them with a fierceness that suggested he guessed what was about to happen.

Franciscus shouted, "You idiot, what are you trying to do?"

Lamartiere looked up at the man on the turret. "Good-bye, Colonel," he said. "Give my love to Celine if you meet her."

He closed the driver's hatch over himself. He wasn't doing this for Celine, because Celine was already dead; but perhaps he was doing it so that Colonel Franciscus wouldn't create any more Celines.

Lamartiere switched on Hoodoo's radios. The simultaneous blast of the six bombs on Franciscus' bandoliers barely made the tank shudder.