The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 Read Online Free PDF

noise flooded Margulies’ helmet, racket echoing from within the driver’s compartment. The cab was lightly armored but not sound-proofed. A moment later the Brigantian said, “All right, we’ll see, but I don’t want to put this sucker in the bog either.”
    The background noise shut off. It was as effective a close-transmission signal as more standard commo procedures would have been. Presumably the Brigantian notched his hand throttle forward, though change came very slowly for mechanical dinosaurs the size of the road trains.
    The leading combat cars pulled farther ahead and swung a little closer to their respective sides of the cleared strip. Margulies hadn’t bothered to give her own people orders. They knew what the situation was and had been dealing with it for the better part of a month now.
    There was new growth where Frisian tanks had blasted hundred-meter notches through the vegetation with their main guns. The flushes of new leaves were red and violet.
    There wasn’t enough silica in the soil to glaze when struck by powerguns, but steam from the high water content exploded main-gun impacts into craters that could swallow the jeep. During file ambush, one of the panzers had swept out into the forest, deliberately scraping its steel skirts across the dirt to uncover the guerrillas’ spider holes. The arcing scar was still barren save for speckles of low growth.
    Angel hung off the left front fender of the leading road train as the convoy squealed and rumbled into the long right-hand curve. He glanced at Margulies to remind her that this wasn’t the position he would choose for a plastic-bodied jeep, though whatever the lieutenant wanted . . .
    “Yeah, ease back, let them pass us, and we’ll cross to the right side between the second and third trucks,” Margulies agreed. She was holding her 2-cm shoulder weapon at high port. Now her index finger pushed the lever at the front of the trigger guard forward, off safe.
    She had a bad feeling about this spot. That was nothing new. She’d had a bad feeling about it every bloody time she crossed it.
    Angel eased the fan nacelles closer to vertical, raising clearance beneath the skirt to slow the jeep as ordered. He kept the power up. The wasted charge was a cheap price to pay for greater agility in a crisis. Margulies rose in her seat to get a better view back along the convoy.
    The lead road train’s quad automatic cannon was swung to starboard, aiming at the inside of the curve. That was fine, but the crew of the second vehicle was doing the same cursed thing instead of covering the left side of the route as each alternate crew should do.
    Margulies swore and took her left hand from the powergun’s forestock to key her helmet—as a command-detonated mine went off under the third segment of the leading road train.
    The charge buried beneath the gravel was huge, at least fifty kilos of high explosive. It lifted the segment, blew the track plates and several road wheels from the suspension, and dropped the 30-tonne mass on its right side.
    The blast stunned the gun crew atop the middle segment and flung several of them out of the tub. The jeep flipped like a tiddlywink.
    Margulies didn’t hear the explosion. The shockwave gripped like a fevered giant’s hand, crushing her in conditions of intense heat. She couldn’t see anything but white light. Both her shins broke against the dashboard as she and the jeep spun in different trajectories. There was no present pain, but she heard the bones go with tiny clicks like those of fingers on a data-entry keyboard.
    Margulies’ world reformed as she lay prone on soggy ground. She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d been unconscious. Her skin crawled, and all her senses were preternaturally sharp.
    Twenty meters away the leading road train was skewed across the gravel. The rear segment lay on its side, but the coupling still held. The segment had acted as an anchor, bringing the huge vehicle to a dead halt. The cab