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The ultralights went by overhead with an insectile drone, keeping an eye on the target and the countryside round about. Marian waited until a signal flare went up before waving the armored car forward. They crested the rise and halted.
Mmmm-hmmmm, she thought, as they halted in a vineyard whose gnarled branches rose up from the earth like arthritic black fingers. Yellow mustard flowers starred the grass between the vines.
Now for another bit of legal vandalism. Christ, but I hate this business.
The town lay in a valley that ran back up into the low mountains beyond; patches of woods thickened into outright forest not far north of it. An earth-fill dam held back a considerable lake north of the town, glinting blue with dead trees sticking out of the water in spots. There were about three or four thousand people living inside the walls, she thought. It was all rawly new, a gridwork of dusty streets and whitewashed adobe, save where tall brick smokestacks marked smelters and forges. This was a major center by Tartessian standards, their equivalent of Irondale, working the minerals of the mountains behind and forwarding the products to their capital.
"Major, I don't suppose…?"
"I'm afraid not, Commodore," Stavrand said regretfully. "See how the river runs? The flood'll go right past the town when we blow it. Of course, that'll cut off their water… mostly for waterpower, see how they ran the canal along the contour to preserve the head? Quite well done."
An ultralight went by overhead, then turned into the wind that blew out of the north and came in to land on the roadway. Offhand skill flared the wing up to shed speed, and it came to a rolling halt only ten yards from touchdown. The pilot vaulted out and came ru
Mmmmm-hmmmm, Alston remembered. Lekkansu-born. From one of the bands virtually a
"Ma'am, sir," she said, vaulting lightly up despite the heavy sheepskin flying suit and joining them on the deck of the turret. A glance at the map, and:
"Yeah, they've got fallback earthworks going up inside the gates, and they've just started putting up a berm to back the wall. Looks real crowded in there-lots of refugees, tents, and brushwood shelters in the streets and open spaces, ma'am."
"Thank you, Ensign Walters," Marian said.
"Ah, youth," Swindapa observed as the flyer bounded back to her little craft and vaulted one-handed into her seat; a couple of Marines swung it 'round into the wind.
Marian snorted. This from someone who occasionally turns cartwheels in the street just for the fun of it?
"Wait 'till you hit forty, 'dapa." She sca
Curtain-wall of mud brick on a mound, wet moat, field of lilies.
Those were metal-tipped punji-sticks, a nasty low-tech version of barbed wire. It would be expensive to assault, but it was designed to keep out hillbilly raiders with clubs and bronze-headed spears. Nothing like the massive works around Tartessos City or some of their forts elsewhere; Isketerol had had too much to do to put that sort of thing around every town. Absurdly, there were still ducks swimming about the ring-ditch, occasionally dipping their heads and leaving twitching tails in the air as they fed.
"Right, let's give them a demonstration," Marian said.
The siege guns and mortars were ready within minutes, crews swarming antlike around them. The rocket launchers took a little longer, but the two-wheeled mounts were light enough to be towed by bicycle and manhandled around. The operators loaded six long, fi
"Driver, take us in to a thousand yards," she said.
The diesel pig-grunted in a cloud of black coal-oil fumes, and
I the car rolled forward again. The works that had been easy to dismiss through the binoculars grew larger as they neared. A ca
Six-pounder, she estimated automatically-brass smoothbore. The light iron ball kicked up a plume of black dirt and dug a furrow through a cornfield not far to the left of the road.
Top the gate," she said quietly. "Then rake the parapet."
"Right, ma'am," the gu
She slitted her eyes. The violent flash still made her throw up a palm in reflex, and everyone coughed at the bitter burned-zinc fumes. The rocket took off with a sound like a cat the size of a mountain vomiting, and drew a spreading cone of gray smoke toward the gate. At its head was a red spark. That turned into a globe of fire as it struck the ironbound gates of the town, and a vast hollow whuddummmp echoed back. A second later the turret Gatling cut loose with a long braaaaaaapp.
Motors whined, turning the turret and driving the machine gun; it blasted out ten rounds a second as the barrels vanished in a whirling blur, a continuous knife of red flame cutting through the fogbank that surrounded the war-car. Through it Marian could see the mud-brick parapets of the tower and wall disintegrating into powdered clay.
As if the car firing had been a signal, which it was, the two siege guns fired. They had no need to approach the wall; from a mile behind her the heavy shells went overhead with a grumbling rumble that rose in pitch as they passed. They were aimed for the town's metalworks, and she caught a glimpse of columns of dark smoke and pulverized building rising like instant poplars.
The crews leaped into action, ru
Backblast scorched the hillside behind them in a sudden huge cloud that left crackling, blackened grass and crops behind it in a great wedge spreading out from the emplacement. Sixty trails of smoke and fire lifted from the katyushas in a rippling chorus of demon-screams-except for two that blew up not far from the launch tubes, and one that corkscrewed and landed uncomfortably close to the armored car, spattering its side with bits of metal and rock and dirt. Something rapped her helmet unpleasantly hard.
Memo to Leaton: "greatly improved reliability" doesn't mean "really reliable" yet, does it, now, Ron?
The rest slammed down on the wall to the left of the gate. It disappeared, in a boiling wall of rubble and dust and smoke that seemed to bear down on her like an avalanche. Enough of it reached them to set them coughing anew; Marian drank from her canteen and passed it to Swindapa, as the gu
"Let's put up the parsley and see what happens," Marian said as a stu
Swindapa bent one of the whip aerials down and fastened a wreath of olive to it, and a white pe