The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Screw you, buddy," Des Grieux said softly. He looked at the depot superintendent. "Okay, Mister Farrell, you get me a driver. That's your job. If you can't do that, then I'll drive and fight this mother both, if that's what it takes."

The three men on the ground began speaking to one another simultaneously in rasping, nervous voices. Des Grieux lowered himself through the cupola hatch.

H271's fighting compartment had the faintly medicinal odor of solvents still seeping from recently extruded plastics. Des Grieux touched control buttons, checking them for feel and placement. There were always production-line variations, even when two vehicles were ostensibly of the same model.

He heard the clunk of boot toes on the steps formed into H271's armor. Somebody was boarding the vehicle.

Des Grieux threw the main power switch. Gauges and displays hummed to life. There was a line of distortion across Screen #3, but it faded after ten seconds or so. A tinge of ozone suggested arcing somewhere, probably in a microswitch. It would either clear itself or fail completely in the next hundred hours.

A hundred hours was a lifetime for a tank on the same planet as Colonel Luke Broglie . . . .

A head shadowed the light of the open hatch. Des Grieux looked up, into the face of Trooper Flowers.

"Sarge?" Flowers said. "Ah, I'm gonna drive for you. If that's all right?"

"Yeah, that's fine," said Des Grieux without expression. He turned to his displays again.

"Only, I've just drove trucks before, y'see," Flowers added.

"I don't care if you rolled hoops," Des Grieux said. "Get in and let's get moving."

"Ah—I'll get my gear," said Flowers. "I off loaded when they said I was back in Logistics."

"Booster," said Des Grieux, keying H271's artificial intelligence. "Course data on Screen One."

He watched the left-hand screen. He wasn't sure that the depot had gotten around to loading the course information into the tank's memory, but the route and topography came up properly. Des Grieux thought there was a momentary hesitation in the AI's response, but that might have been his own impatience.

The deck clanked as Flowers jumped directly to the ground in his haste. The way things were going, the kid probably slipped 'n broke his neck . . . .

The course to Base Camp Two and H Company was a blue line curving across three hundred kilometers of arid terrain. No roads, but no problems either. Gullies cut by the rare cloudbursts could be skirted or crossed.