explained if it needed to be. The chief didn't know what Huber planned -- just that it wasn't something he ought to know more about. The detachment commander didn't know even that: he was in the self-propelled gun at the head of the column. The eight vehicles leaving for Base Alpha included two tanks, four combat cars, the detachment commander's hog, and a repair vehicle with a crane and a powered bed that could lift a combat car. The crews didn't know one another, and nobody would wonder or even notice that a fifth car had joined the procession.
The lead car jerked toward the open door. The driver, inexperienced or jumpy from the long wait, canted his nacelles too suddenly. The bow skirt dipped and scraped a shrieking line of sparks along the concrete floor until the car bounced over the threshold and into the open air.
The second car followed with greater care but the same lack of skill, rising nearly a hand's-breadth above the ground. The skirts spilled air in a roar around their whole circuit. The car wallowed; when the driver nudged his controls forward Huber thought for a moment the vehicle was going to slide into the jamb of the sliding door.
'They've got newbie crews,' Tranter said scornfully. 'Via, I could do better than that with my eyes closed!'
'I'll settle for you keeping your eyes open and not attracting attention,' Huber said tightly. 'Move out, Trooper.'
Fencing Master slid gracefully through the doorway and into the warm night. The skirts ticked once on the door track, but that wasn't worth mentioning.
'Let's keep him, El-Tee,' Deseau said with a chuckle. 'He's as good as Kolbe was, and a curst sight better than I ever thought of being as a driver.'
'Keep your mind on the present job, didn't I tell you?' Huber snapped. 'I don't think any of us need to plan for a future much beyond tonight.'
Deseau laughed. Huber supposed that was as good a response as any.
Plattner's World had two moons, but neither of them was big enough to provide useful illumination. The pole lights placed for security when these were warehouses threw bright pools at the front of each building, but that just made the night darker when Fencing Master moved between them. Huber locked down his faceshield and switched to light enhancement, though he knew he lost depth perception that way.
The rocket howitzer at the head of the column started to negotiate the gate to the compound, then stopped. The tank immediately following very nearly drove up its stern.
There was something wrong with the response of the hog's drive fans, or at any rate the captain thought there was. He began arguing off-net with Repair's Charge of Quarters, a senior sergeant who replied calmly, 'Sir, you can bring it back and park it in the shop if you like, but I don't have authority to roust a technician at this hour on a non-emergency problem.'
The CQ kept saying the same thing. So did the captain, though he varied the words a bit.
Huber listened for a moment to make sure that what was going on didn't affect him, then switched to intercom. 'They'll get it sorted out in a bit,' he said to his crew. 'The blowers are straight out of the shops and half the crews are newbies. Nothing to worry about.'
'Who's worried?' Deseau said. He stretched at his central gun station, then turned and grinned at Huber.
They were all wearing body armor, even Tranter. The bulky ceramic clamshells crowded the fighting compartment even without the personal gear and extra ammo that'd pack the vehicle on a line deployment.
Learoyd could've been a statue placed at the right wing gun. He didn't fidget with the weapon or with the sub-machine gun slung across his chest. Though his body was motionless, his helmet would be scanning the terrain and careting movement onto his lowered faceshield. If one of the highlights was a hostile pointing a weapon in the direction of Fencing Master -- and anybody pointing a weapon at Fencing Master was hostile, in Learoyd's opinion and Huber's as well -- his tribarrel would light the night with cyan destruction.
'Unit, we're moving,' the captain announced in a disgruntled tone. As he spoke, the hog shifted forward again. Metal rang as the drivers of other vehicles in the column struggled to react to the sudden change from stasis to movement. Skirts were stuttering up and down on the roadway of stabilized earth. You get lulled into patterns in no time at all... .
Huber brought up a terrain display in the box welded to the pintle supporting his tribarrel. Fencing Master didn't have the sensor and communications suite of a proper command car, but it did have an additional package that allowed the platoon leader to project displays instead of taking all his information through the visor of his commo helmet.
The column got moving in fits and starts; a combat car did run into the back of the tank preceding it. Huber's helmet damped the sound, but the whole fabric of Fencing Master shivered in sympathy to the impact of a thirty- tonne hammer hitting a hundred-and-seventy-tonne anvil.
'Via, that'll hold us up for the next three hours!' Sergeant Deseau snarled. 'We'll be lucky if we get away before bloody dawn!'
Huber thought the same. Instead the detachment commander just growled, 'Unit, hold your intervals,' as his vehicle proceeded down the road on the set course.
'Dumb bastard,' Deseau muttered. 'Dicked around all that time for nothing, and now he's going to put the hammer down and string the column out to make up the time he lost.'
That was close enough to Huber's appreciation of what was going on that he didn't bother telling the sergeant to shut up. He grinned beneath his faceshield. Under the circumstances, a lieutenant couldn't claim to have any authority over the enlisted men with him except what they chose to give him freely.
The tank got moving again smoothly; its driver at least knew how to handle his massive vehicle. Tanks weren't really clumsy, and given the right terrain and enough time they were hellaciously fast; but the inertia of so many tonnes of metal required the driver to plan her maneuvers a very long way ahead.
The collision hadn't sprung the skirts of the following combat car, so it was able to proceed also. Its driver kept a good hundred and fifty meters between his vehicle's dented bow slope and the tank's stern. The rest of the column trailed the three leaders out of Central Repair and into the nighted city beyond.
Tranter lifted Fencing Master's skirts with a greasy wobble, then set the car sliding forward. They passed the guard blower at the gate and turned left. Huber waved at the trooper in the fighting compartment; he -- or she -- waved back, more bored than not.
'Tranter, when we make the corner up ahead,' Huber ordered, 'cut your headlights and running lights. Can you drive using just your visor's enhancement?'
'Roger,' the driver said calmly. Behind them the guard vehicle was pulling back across the compound's gateway; ahead, the last of the cars in the detachment proper slid awkwardly around an elbow in the broad freight road leading west and eventually out of Benjamin.
Even here in the center of the administrative capital of the UC, there were more trees than houses. The locals built narrow structures three or four stories high, with parking for aircars either beneath the support pilings or on rooftop landing pads. Most of the windows were dark, but occasionally they lighted as armored vehicles howled slowly by on columns of air.
Even without lights, Fencing Master wasn't going to pass unnoticed in Senator Graciano's neighborhood of expensive residences. This'd have to be a quick in and out; or at least a quick in.
Tranter was keeping a rock-solid fifty meter interval between him and the stern of Red Eight. He seemed to judge what the driver ahead would do well before that fellow acted.
'Start opening the distance, Tranter,' Huber said, judging their position on the terrain display against the quivering running lights of Red Eight. 'We'll peel off to the right at the intersection half a kay west of our present position. As soon as Red Eight's out of sight, goose it hard. We've got eighteen hundred meters to cover, and I want to be there before they have time to react to the sound of our fans.'
'Roger,' Tranter said. He still didn't sound nervous; maybe he was concentrating on his driving.
And maybe the technician didn't really understand what was about to happen. Well, there were a lot of cases where intellectual understanding fell well short of emotional realities.
Fencing Master slowed almost imperceptibly; the fan note didn't change, but Tranter cocked the nacelles toward the vertical so that their thrust was spent more on lifting the car than driving it forward. Red Eight ahead had gained another fifty meters by the time its lights shifted angle, then glittered randomly through the trees of a grove that the road twisted behind.
'Here we go, Tranter,' Huber warned, though the driver obviously had everything under control. 'Easy right turn, then get on -- '
