"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 13 - The Sharp End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

And flash ignited, just as it would normally have done when injected into the cylinders of the truck's
diesel engine. Bodies and body parts flew up in the mushrooming flame, but most of the Association
troops had already been killed by gunfire.

"You wanted to know what?" Coke shouted over the wail of the siren. He gestured to the screen which
glowed with the light of the scenes it displayed."That's what, General, and there's a lot more Association
units out there tonight than those."

An automatic cannon opened fire from a bunker on the perimeter of Fortress Auerstadt. The gunners
probably didn't have a real target. They were snooting at shadows or livestock.

That was the right response to the present circumstances. With the base fully alerted, any attack
Association troops made would be fragmentary instead of coordinated and overwhelming. In all
likelihood there would beno attack. At daybreak the National Army would be able to concentrate on
scattered companies of their opponents.

"Why that's . . ." the Marquis said, staring at the console display. "That's a massacre!"

Coke was surprised that his nominal superior had enough military knowledge to make that perfectly
accurate assessment of what was happening in Parcotch.

As soon as the shooting started, the combat cars' drivers fed full power to the lift fans. Howling like
banshees as the fans sucked in vast quantities of air to pressurize the plenum chambers, spraying water
and soupy mud in all directions from beneath their skirts, the 50-tonne behemoths accelerated toward
Parcotch Hamlet 3 from two directions.

While her wing gunners destroyed the rocket launcher, Sergeant Lennox had opened fire on the
community itself. Lennox didn't have a line of sight to the vehicles leaving the hamlet eastward fromThe
Facts of Life's starting position half a klick distant. Instead she shot up the buildings.

The structures had thatch walls and roofs of corrugated plastic sheeting, supported by wood or plastic
frames. All the construction materials were flammable at the temperature of copper plasma. Houses, the
school building, and the community center all burst into flame, spreading panic and confusing the enemy.

Everything moving this night was a foe and a target. The Frisians' only chance was to hit hard and keep
on hitting before the enemy forces could organize their superior numbers. In the morning, every corpse in
Hamlet 3 would be tagged as an Association soldier or an Association supporter. Like other forms of
history, after-action reports are written by the survivors.

Mother Lovebounced onto the Auerstadt Road from the dike which had concealed the vehicle in the
darkness. The gunners depressed their tribarrels, raking the troops who'd jumped into the fields to either
side of the causeway. A gout of steam flew up at each bolt, whether it hit a flooded paddy or
superheated the fluids within a soldier's body.
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The flames enveloping the hamlet rolled in redoubled fury, whipped byThe Facts of Life's powerful
drive fans. The combat car bellied through the blaze at a walking pace, firing continuously from all three