Free Overkill by Robert Buettner

know. Now, if you all don’t mind, would you continue with the work for which I pay each of you generously?” Cutler spun on his heel, and returned to the Sleeper.
    Kit stalked away, then stood, arms folded with her back to us, gazing out across the jungle beyond the Line.
    Zhondro stood beside me, the crowbar he had used to open the crate in one hand. We both stared at Kit.
    I said to Zhondro, “Contrary to what our fearless leader just said about our pay, she took this job for practically nothing. You think she took this job because she suspected Cutler was up to something like this?”
    He shrugged. “At home we say, ‘hold friends close, but enemies closer.”’
    “We say that, too.”
    By the next day, the fearless leader and the gunslinger had each decided to pretend they were friends, not enemies.
    Zhondro and I had expected to instruct Cutler and Kit in Tank 101 before we left Eden, but Cutler had accelerated our departure. So we did it out here.
    First, we taught each of them to drive. They say a child’s first two-wheeler is harder to learn than an Abrams. I wouldn’t know, because I’m still waiting for my first bike, but driving an Abrams is cake.
    The start sequence isn’t much more than a button push. The control yoke is a stubby handlebar. To turn left, turn the bar left. The left track slows relative to the right track. The more you turn the bar, the sharper the tank turns. Twist the right grip to go fast, twist back to go slow. You can’t confuse the brake and accelerator pedals, because there’s just a centered brake pedal wider than even the biggest GI’s boot.
    Cutler had originally insisted on the tank commander’s seat. VIPs always did. Unbuttoned, the TC rode standing on his chair, waist-high out of the hatch in his cupola, which was wind-in-theface fun. Also, topside the TC controlled the best toy on the tank, the .50 caliber machine gun. The .50 was enormous for a machine gun, more an ancient rapid-fire cannon. It was wicked fun to shoot, too, since the VIP didn’t have to break down and clean the weapon later.
    But Dead End didn’t even have a navigational satellite network for the Abrams’ Earth-oriented old computer to interface with. That meant that any map-and-compass help Kit needed, in which Cutler had zero expertise and less interest, fell to whoever sat in the Commander’s seat.
    Once Cutler realized we would run buttoned up most of the time, he opted for the gunner’s station. Down there he could fiddle with his Reader more privately while we rolled. But he could still play Great White Hunter, because the main gun could be aimed and fired from either the tank commander’s or gunner’s position.
    That left Kit to do the job normally done by the person who occupied her chair, the loader. The loader has an overhead hatch, and time to look around when the tank’s not shooting. So it seemed a perfect job for the only person who knew where we were going and what to watch out for.
    I stood down in the turret with Kit, facing the main gun ammunition, which was stored in the turret’s rear bustle. The rounds’ bases faced us, like racked wine bottles.
    I waved my spread palm across the rounds. “Some tanks this old loaded the main gun automatically. But autoloaders jam. And manual lets the Tank Commander select ammunition type.”
    “A slaughter smorgasbord. How nice for you.”
    I ignored her and laid my palm on the various sections of the ready rack. “Practice rounds here. Armor-piercing discarding sabot here. Cutler’s tranquilizers here.”
    She frowned. “Got any canister?”
    Canister was the clumsy grandparent of the modern flechette round. Either round shotgunned soft targets into hamburger, across a broad front. Like troops in the open. Or sleeping children. Hair rose on my neck.
    “Why?”
    “We might need to turn a woog stampede. Canister would do that.”
    “Oh.” I pointed down and right. “Canister’s down here. But listen sharp when I call for