The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Broglie's powerguns detonated two of the incoming shells into bright flashes and smears of ugly smoke. The help was too little, too late: the other four firecracker rounds popped open at preset altitudes and strewed their deadly cargo widely over the Thunderbolt lines.

For the moments that the anti-personnel bomblets took to fall, nothing seemed to happen. Then white light like burning magnesium erupted over four square kilometers. Hair-fine lengths of glass shrapnel sawed in all directions. The coverage was thin, but the blasts carved apart anyone within a meter of an individual bomblet.

Lieutenant Carbury jumped for the hatch, aiming his right boot at the back of the tank commander's seat but using Des Grieux's shoulder as a step instead. "Remote that feed to my tanknow, Sergeant!"the lieutenant shouted as he pulled himself out of H271's cupola.

Des Grieux ignored Carbury and keyed his intercom.Flowers had better be wearing his commo helmet."Driver!" the veteran snarled. "Get your ass aboard!"

On Screen #3, another salvo of anti-personnel shells howled down onto the Thunderbolt Division's reeling battalions.

Powerguns snapped and blasted at a succession of targets on H271's right-hand screen. For the past several minutes, the real excitement, even for Des Grieux, was on the map display on the other side of the fighting compartment.

The Hashemites and their mercenary allies were getting their clocks cleaned.

The AI's interpretation of data from the battle area cross-hatched all the units of the Thunderbolt Division which were still on the plain. A few minutes of hammering with firecracker rounds had reduced the units by twenty percent of their strength from casualties—

And to something closer to zero combat efficiency because of their total collapse of morale. The battle wasn't over yet, but it was over forthosemen and women. They retreated northward in disorder, some of them on foot without even their personal weapons. Their only thought was to escape the killing zone of artillery and long-range sniping from the Slammers' powerguns.

Half of the Thunderbolt Division remained as an effective fighting force on the high ground to the east—the original left-flank battalions and the troops which had retreated to their protection under fire. Even those units were demoralized, but they would hold against anything except an all-out attack from the Slammers.