The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The air cleared at street level.Gangbuster IIscraped the brick facade of a three-story tenement which started to collapse on them. At least a score of Hindi soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons. Bullets ricocheted from the sloped iridium armor, scything down the shooters and their fellows. Cells of the automatic defense system fired, louder and more lethal still.

Haze closed in momentarily, but a telltale in the fighting compartment informed Des Grieux that Pesco had already switched to sonic imaging instead of using the electro-optical spectrum to drive.Gangbuster IIswept into the market square, pulling whorls of smoke into the clear, sunlit air.

A six-tube battery of 170mm howitzers was set up in the square. Empty obturator disks and unneeded booster charges in white silk littered the cobblestones behind the weapons. The crews were desperately cranking their muzzles down to fire point-blank atGangbuster II.Hindi infantry cut loose with small arms from all windows facing the square and from the triple tile overhangs of the large temple behind the walled courtyard to the south.

As Des Grieux squeezed both firing tits,a hundred-kilogram shell hit the turret. The round was a thin-cased HE, what the crew happened to have up the spout when they got warning of the tank's approach. The red flash destroyed thirty percent ofGangbuster II's forward sensors and rocked the tank severely, but the hatches were sealed and the massive turret armor was never even threatened.

"Driv—" Des Grieux started to say as his hazy screens showed him Hindi gunners doubling up, flying apart, burning in puffs of vaporized steel as the powergun sights slid across the battery.

A legless Hindi battery captain jerked the lanyard of his last howitzer. The shell was a capped armor-piercing round. Even so, the round would not have penetratedGangbuster II's frontal armor if it had struck squarely. Instead, it hit Pesco's closed hatch edge-on and spalled the backing plate down through the driver's helmet and skull.

Pesco convulsed at the controls ofGangbuster II.The tank skidded across the square, swapping ends several times. The courtyard wall braked but did not stop the careening vehicle. Des Grieux shouted curses, but words had no effect on the tank or its dead driver.

Gangbuster IIslid bow-first into the stone-built temple. Blocks and tiles from the multiple roofs cascaded onto the tank and over the courtyard beyond.

AllGangbuster II's systems crashed at the massive overload.