The War for Profit Series Omnibus by Gideon Fleisher

Author:Gideon Fleisher [Fleisher, Gideon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gideon Fleisher
Published: 2013-06-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Galen watched the maintenance bay doors slide open in front of him and stood high in the cupola of his Hercules command tank and put on his commo helmet and blew into the microphone and said, “You got me, driver? Gunner?”

“Roger,” said Private Parks, the driver.

“Check.” Corporal Slaughter, the gunner.

Galen keyed the comms switch on the side of his helmet. “All right, Spike. You ready?”

“Roger.”

“Three Charlie?”

“Roger. Charlie three six out.” Third platoon, the platoon leader. Lieutenant Hayes.

Galen said, “Guns?”

“Gun one one, roger,” First gun, first section.

“Gun two one, roger,” Second gun, first section.

The two modified Hercules chassis outfitted with particle cannons would bring up the rear. The crews were from the direct/indirect fire assault gun battery. They were accustomed to handling overloaded, underpowered, top heavy, awkward vehicles.

“We’re going to the pig farm. Follow me.” Galen released his external comms switch. “Move out, driver.”

The Pig Farm was an area of the test track that was kept a soupy, sloppy mess of slick mud for the purpose of training crews in the recovery of mired vehicles. Galen led the column of armored vehicles right into the middle of it, each one coming on line to his left to get stuck like chuck, high centered and their tracks spinning in the mud, flat hulls of the underbellies of the vehicles gripping the slop like a suction cup. Galen looked over the side and saw that the mud was level with the base of the turret of his tank.

He keyed his comms. “Okay. What you might wan to think about doing is turn on your ATCS and slowly turn the knob to the left. Then instruct your driver to pull ahead slowly. Your vehicle should rise in the front and then you can ease out. Travel across to the other side of this swamp and line up in column. I’ll go last.”

Galen pressed the knob and the green light came on. He then cranked the knob to the left and the front of the tank rose half a meter. Galen knew that turning on the ATCS made both the rear and front lifters operate at 75% capacity, reducing the vehicles’ weight by thirty tons, making it twenty six tons instead of fifty six. Turning the knob to the left brought the front lifter up to 100% and dropped the rear lifter to zero, allowing the back of the track to bite into the mud with greater pressure while lifting the nose of the tank out of the mud. But Galen kept that to himself. Let the troops think it was magic or sliding magnets under the hull or whatever. Just as long as they knew how to use it, that’s all that mattered.

The gun carriages left first, crossed the mud hole and lined up on the other side to be the rear of the column. Galen watched the four tanks of Three Charlie drive across with no problem. Spike took his tank across, and once he was parked at the head of the column, Galen let his driver move out.

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