The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Sincanmos shouted in anger and surprise. Des Grieux strode away from the crowd, muttering commands through his commo helmet to the artificial intelligence in H271. The AI obediently projected a view of the terrain still closer to the base of the mesa onto the left side of Des Grieux's visor.

Flowers waited with his torso out of the driver's hatch."What's the word,Sarge?" he called as Des Grieux stepped around the back of a Sincanmo truck mounted with a cage launcher and a quartet of forty-kilo bombardment rockets.

"We're moving," Des Grieux said. He lifted himself to the deck of his tank. "There's a low spot twenty meters from the base of the butte. I'll give directions on your screen. Park us there."

He clambered up the turret side and thrust his legs through the hatch.

"Ah, Sarge?" Flowers called worriedly. His curved armor hid him from Des Grieux. "Should I take down the cammie film?"

Des Grieux switched to intercom. Screen #1 now showed the terrain in the immediate vicinity of H271. The site Des Grieux had picked was within two hundred meters of the tank's present location.

"It'll bloody come down when you bloody drive through it, won't it?" Des Grieux snarled. He slashed his finger across the topo map, marking the intended route with a glowing line that echoed on the driver's display. "Do it!"

The microns-thick camouflage film was strung,then jolted with high-frequency electricity which caused it to take an optical set in the pattern and colors of the ground underneath it. The film was polarized to pass light impinging on the upper surfaces but to block it from below. The covering was permeable to air as well, though it did impede ventilation somewhat.

H271's fans snorted at increased power, sucking the thin membrane against its stretchers. Sincanmo troops moved closer to their own vehicles, eyeing the 170-tonne tank with concern.

Flowers rotated H271 carefully in its own length, then drove slowly up the back slope of the gully. The nearest twenty-meter length of camouflage film bowed, then flew apart when the stresses exceeded its limits. Gritty soil puffed from beneath the tank's skirts.

"Clam Four, this is Clam Six," said Lieutenant Carbury over the 3d Platoon push. "What's going on there? Over."

Des Grieux closed the cupola hatch above him.This was going to be very tricky. Not placing the shot—he could do that at ten kays—but determining where the shot had tobeplaced.