He saw a flash from the hilltop and an instant later the ground erupted far off to his right. The dull heavy roar of the explosion reached him as the black cloud hurled tumbling chunks of earth high into the air.
Get past the firebases and engage Douglas’s mobile reserve. That was his mission. Leave the firebases isolated and concentrate your forces on his reserves. Smash them before they can organize a counterattack.
Two more artillery shells hit in front of them. The shock and noise hit simultaneously and the driver veered the truck hard to the left as debris pelted down on them. Alec saw a pair of smoking craters where the shells had hit; they looked raw and painful in the gentle earth.
More shellbursts, but falling further behind now. Then one struck close enough to knock one of the jeeps over. It rolled crazily, scattering broken pieces of men and machinery across the grass, and finally came to rest on its side. As the truck swept past it, the jeep burst into flames. No time to stop for the wounded. Not now.
A gently sloping ridge rose ahead of them. Alec knew this countryside by heart. If there was going to be trouble anywhere, it would be this ridge line. Douglas had been turning it into a natural defense line, adding man-made earthworks where the ridge itself flattened out, so that the line completely covered the flank of his base, twenty klicks from the innermost fences. Between the ridge line and those fences was nothing but flat open country.
They charged up the ridge, Alec hanging grimly to the rail of the laser mount, expecting land mines, more artillery fire, small arms fire from troops dug into trenches at the crest.
Nothing. The ridge was bare of defenders. The flat meadowlands stretched out ahead and Alec could see other units of trucks, jeeps and cavalry dashing across the grassland, too.
This is too easy, he told himself. Douglas couldn’t possibly be taken so easily.
But they plunged on, bouncing at breakneck speed down the ridge’s reverse slope and slewing out onto the flatland. Occasional shellbursts reminded them that the firebases were still active, but the artillery fire was desultory and did nothing to slow them. If anything, the drivers urged extra speed from their electric motors whenever a shell landed near them.
Tense with a mixture of exhilaration and fear, Alec clicked his radio dial for Jameson’s frequency. “Ron, where are you now?” he spoke into the helmet’s mike.
A heartbeat’s delay, then, “We’ve just crested an artificial ramp of earth, about twenty klicks from the edge of the main base area. Not much opposition yet. Lost a truck that fell into a shell crater and a squad of cavalry that took a direct hit. Everybody else is moving forward at top speed. No sign of any real resistance.”
“All right. Keep moving and stay alert.” He dialed the general frequency. “All unit commanders, report any delays or ground resistance other than artillery fire.”
No response at all. The radio buzzed to itself.
Alec said, “All unit commanders, sound off in order.”
“Sector one. No delays, no resistance.”
Jameson’s voice.
“Sector; two. No problems.”
“Sector three. Goin’ like hell, nobody in our way.”
“Sector four...”
Alec’s attention was pulled away by a tug on his sleeve. The gunner was leaning forward in his seat, gesturing to the rear of the speeding truck. A trio of squat, heavy-looking gray shapes was topping the ridge behind them. With the sector commanders still reporting, Alec turned and raised his binoculars.
They were ugly-looking tracked vehicles, painted dark green and brown. Long cylinders of gun barrels poked from slope-walled turrets. Tanks! Alec recalled seeing them on history tapes.
“Hey, this is sector three,” his earphones crackled. “We just picked up some kinda trucks or somethin’ following us.”
“All units,” Alec shouted, “report on the numbers and positions of enemy tanks. They’re rolling forts, heavily armored and carrying cannon and machine guns.”
As if in answer one of the three tanks in Alec’s rear belched flame and a shell whistled over his truck, exploding close enough to jar him.
That’s Douglas’ plan, Alec realized. He’s had the tanks all along, probably spotted them at the firebases last week. Now he’s got us caught between the tanks and his reserves.
Strangely, Alec felt almost relieved. Now his father’s hand was out in the open, where he could deal with it. Tanks without infantry support, he remembered from his teaching tapes, are vulnerable. Dangerous, but vulnerable. Inadvertently he glanced at the far horizon, in the direction toward which the truck was speeding. Douglas was up there, someplace. You think you can panic us with tanks, Alec said silently to his father. Maybe it will work for you, but we’ll see who the military expert is.
“Listen to me,” he said urgently into his lip mike. “Engage the tanks at the longest possible ranges with the lasers. Use the jeeps and cavalry to get behind them and destroy them at close range. The lasers should try to immobilize them. Go for their treads, their sensors. Stop them first, then destroy them close-up.”
The radio sizzled with confused reports of fighting and losses. Alec tried to sort them out as another shellburst lifted his truck entirely off its wheels and slammed him against the railing. Debris pelted him and stung. He tasted blood in his mouth.
Crouching down near the driver’s cab, he shouted, “Zig-zag, dammit! Keep them guessing.” He straightened and yelled to the gunner, “The treads, aim for their treads! Their armor’s too thick to get through.”
Then he realized that the gunner was hanging limply in his seat harness, head lolling, mouth agape and eyes staring sightlessly. Alec reached over and unfastened his harness. The gunner slid out of his seat, rolled over the edge of the mount platform and bounced onto the ground. Another shell rocked the speeding truck as Alec climbed into the seat, suddenly feeling as exposed as a patient stretched naked on a surgical table.
He swung the laser’s sighting mirrors around and tried to hold them on the nearest tank. Flicking the fire control to the shortest possible pulse, he rattled off a train of microsecond bursts. The ground near the tank smoked and sputtered but the tank itself rumbled forward unharmed. The truck lurched violently as he fired again.
Where the hell is everybody else?
Alec fired three more times as shellfire racked the truck. He heard shrapnel clanging against the truck’s sides, then caught a glance of another truck as they zipped past it. It was gutted, wheels splayed, front end smashed in.
One of the tanks was turning in a tight circle. Got its left tread! Alec rejoiced. A half-dozen mounted men were pulling up alongside it, unlimbering the rocket launchers and grenades they carried. He turned his attention to the second tank and saw, beyond it, that the third one was crawling with men clambering over it, like ants swarming over an invading scorpion. Crumpled bodies lay broken and smashed in the tank’s wake.
If we can knock off the tanks before Douglas’ reserves get here... Alec dialed the frequency for the second truck in his unit. “Get on the left side of that tank that’s still fighting. I’ll swing to the right. Spray him!”
They swung to the tank’s flanks. The gun turret swung toward Alec’s side and he fanned the laser beam to maximum width and sprayed the entire turret area. Blind the bastards, he raged to himself, hoping that the infrared energy would at least damage the periscopes poking from the turret. Then the tank bloomed into a roaring fireball. The other truck’s laser had found the engine ducts. The tank shuddered, then burst open like an overripe melon, its fuel and ammunition exploding inside it. The turret blew high into the air. With smoke and steam hissing from every joint and port in the heavy armor, the tank died like a dragon consumed by its own internal juices, hissing and rumbling as it disappeared in smoke.
It seemed like hours, but it actually took less than forty minutes to clean up the tank counterattack. Alec’s units helped each other as much as they could, but most of them had to fight their own battles, individual jousts of two or three tanks pitted against a handful of trucks and jeeps. The cavalry made the real difference. The horsemen scattered at the sight of the tanks, then while the armored behomeths were engaging the laser trucks and darting jeeps, the cavalry reformed in the rear and attacked with rocket missiles and grenades. Men leaped from horseback onto the tanks and stuffed grenades into the engine ducts or cracked the periscopes and rangefinders that sprouted vulnerably out from the armor. Blinded or immobile, the tanks became more deathtraps than weapons.
Douglas’ reserves arrived to join the battle before the last of the tanks were destroyed, but they were either on horseback or riding lightly armored trucks. And they were spread thin. The breadth of Alec’s attack had foiled Douglas’ defense plan before the battle began, though neither side realized this while the fighting raged.
As the battle eddied away from his sector, Alec ordered his truck back up to the top of the ridge that had masked the tanks’ advance. From this higher ground he could see much of the swirling, dust-clouded fight, and he had time to check his commanders by radio and direct their actions. The tanks were a good idea, he thought. If we had come in a massive single thrust they would have converged on us and clobbered us. But Alec’s broad, fluid advance offered no heavy concentrations of troops to center on, no massed targets for the tanks’ cannon.
As he watched the field peppered with burning pyres and saw his laser trucks slicing through Douglas’ lightly-armored reserves, Alec calmly spoke orders into his helmet microphone. Douglas’ men were beginning to retreat; in some places they seemed to be panicking blindly and racing away, especially where the laser trucks were burning everything they could reach.
