The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Gangbuster IIstruck the courtyard wall for the second time. The shock threw Des Grieux forward into his harness.Redoubled pain shrank objects momentarily to pinhead size in his vision, but he did not black out.

The tank's iridium hull armor smashed through the brickwork, but the impact stripped off the already-damaged skirts. Momentum droveGangbuster IIpartway into the market square. The vehicle halted there because half the plenum chamber was gone.

"—some firecracker rounds!"Des Grieux gasped to artillery control, demanding anti-personnel shells as his hands worked his joysticks.

Two of the 3cm pieces were undamaged. The crew of the gun nearest the ammunition blast was dead or writhing shrivelled on the pavement, but the gunners of the fourth piece were cranking down their twin muzzles to bear on the unexpected threat.

A bolt fromGangbuster II's main gun struck the shield just below the stubby barrels of the artillery-defense weapon. The gun seemed to suck in, then flash outward as a ball of sunbright vapor.

A loader had turned to run when she saw death pointing downGangbuster II's 20cm bore. Gaseous metal enveloped all of the Legion soldier but her outflung hand. When the glowing ball condensed and vanished, the hand remained like a wax dummy on a framework of carbonized sticks.

Des Grieux's tribarrel raked the Legion command group. The plating of the vehicles' boxy sides was thick enough to turn about half the 2cm bolts—but at this short range,onlyhalf.

Gangbuster II's main gun continued to rotate on target. One of the three vans already sparkled with electrical shorts, while another puffed black smoke from the holes the powergun had blown across its flank.

"Blue Leader to Blue Three," Captain Broglie cried across the crackling, all-band static of powergun discharges. "Abandon your vehicle immediately! Anti-tank rounds are incoming on your location!"

"Screw you, Broglie!" Des Grieux screamed as his main gun slammed a bolt into the central command track, the one that was bow-on with its thicker frontal armor towardGangbuster II's tribarrel. The 20cm bolt blew out the vehicle's back and sides with a piston of vaporized metal which had been the glacis plate a microsecond earlier.

The Legion tank destroyer entering the square from the west snapped a bolt from its 15cm powergun intoGangbuster II's turret. The tank rocked backward under the impact.