The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The Hindi CAP guns were useless except against armored vehicles—their solid projectiles had no area effect whatever. Against armor, they were neither quite as effective shot for shot, nor quite as quick-firing as the Slammers' 20cm guns.

They were effective enough, though, and there was a bloody swarm of them.

Broglie and his two overwatching companions hit half a dozen of the Hindi vehicles, destroying them instantly even though most of the cyan bolts struck the thickest part of the targets' frontal armor. Then the surviving Hindis got the range and volleyed their replies.

A shot hit the cupola above Broglie. Ammo burned in the feed tube ofHoney Girl's tribarrel. A blue-white finger poked skyward, momentarily dimming the rising sun. Des Grieux's display cross-hatchedDixie Dykeas well, indicating the north-flank tank had been damaged as Peres raked Hindi lines with both main gun and tribarrel. All three units jerked backward to turret-down positions as quickly as their drivers could cant their fans.

"Driver!" Des Grieux said asGangbuster II, its front skirts dragging sparks from the stone road surface,crossed the canal bridge."Turn us and we'll hit the bastards from behind. Booster, gimme a fucking city map!"

The cheap buildings of Morobad's canal district were ablaze. Some of the walls were plastered wattle-and-daub; other builders had hung painted sheetiron on scantlings of flimsy wood.Neither method could resist the two main-gunrounds Des Grieux snapped toward the town whenGangbuster IIstarted its rush. The bolts had the effect of flares dropped into a tinder box.

The tank drove into a curtain of flame at ninety kph. There was something in the way,a wrecked vehicle or the corner of a building.Gangbuster's skirts shunted it aside with no more commotion than the clang the automatic defense system made when it went off.

The tank's AI obediently replaced the topographic display on the left screen with a map of Morobad fromGangbuster II's data banks.The streets were narrow and twisting, even the thoroughfare leading west from the causeway.

Two hundred meters from the canal was a market square bordered by religious and governmental buildings. That would give Pesco room to turn. WhenGangbuster IIroared out of the city again and took the turretless Hindi tanks in the rear, it'd be all she wrote.