“What are you fiddling with, sir?” McEvoy asked, looking up over the side of his hole.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Tommy said with an unseen grin. “I’ll show you when you get back.”
Stewart looked at the take from the scout that had just reached the top of Hogsback and frowned.
“Hey, boss, we’ve got zero additional fire support, right?” he asked, jokingly.
“Yep,” O’Neal replied. There was a pause as he was obviously checking the raw take as well. “Well, things are going to be interesting.”
“I’d say fifteen more minutes until they round the corner,” Stewart commented.
“That’s enough time and more,” O’Neal said with a quizzical tone.
“They’re not moving as fast as usual,” Stewart admitted, “but can you see what’s between the blocks?”
“Gaps,” O’Neal responded. “And look right on the edge of the picture,” he continued. There was another pause. “They’re spacing out their battalions.”
“So they hit in a solid stream?” Stewart mused. “I don’t like smart Posleen, boss, I don’t like them at all.”
“Well, they may be smart but they’re slower. Let’s use the time as well as we can.” He looked up to the mountains on either side and frowned. “And let’s hope they don’t figure out how to climb.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Green’s Gap, NC, United States of America, Sol III
0037 EDT Tuesday September 29, 2009 AD
Pruitt looked at the tree-covered mountains filling the main viewscreen and laughed. “Bun-Bun’s a rabbit, not a monkey!”
The repairs on the SheVa had been expedited with remarkable speed, since the SheVa brigade was already in place. By the time the gun got to them, Kilzer and Indy, between them, had worked up a full survey of the damage. After the welders and electricians were done, and some new antipersonnel defenses were installed, it was time to roll. This time with an escort of Abrams and Bradleys, spread out like Chihuahuas herding an elephant.
They had headed up Brushy Fork creek, the Bradleys, Abrams and six-wheel-drive trucks struggling with the torn path left by the SheVa; where the SheVa passed, the rougher parts were laid flat but the weight of the gun turned granite to dust a meter thick. It was, however, the SheVa path or nothing; the narrow dirt road would have been impassable to the tanks even without the damage the giant gun system was doing to it.
They had eventually made their way to their current stopping place, the shoulder of a ridge at the head of Brushy Fork about three thousand meters across a couple of narrow valleys from Green’s Gap. The smaller vehicles had arrayed themselves on other ridges, with a few of the tanks down in the gullies of the creek; there was room for only the SheVa on the hilltop.
The tank crews were up in their hatches looking at the route and shaking their heads in the cold. The sun was long gone, taking with it any warmth. The nearly vertical mountains glittered, frosty under the moon.
“Okay, I for one vote that we turn around,” LeBlanc’s voice crackled over the radio.
“O ye of little faith,” Kilzer said. He had a multicolored three-dimensional view of the terrain up on his display and now tapped a control to bring sections of it up on Pruitt’s targeting system. “Okay, Pruitt, load up a penetrator.”
Pruitt looked at the screen and shuddered. “You’re joking, right?”
“Nope,” Kilzer said, tapping his keyboard again and bringing up a set of fifteen target points on the mountainside. “Okay, it’s going to be an expensive road. But we’ll have a road. And I won’t have to go skiing with you.”
Pruitt looked over at the colonel, who had a pensive expression on his face. “Colonel?”
“Is this going to work, Kilzer?” the officer temporized. “The rounds aren’t that big…”
Kilzer’s laugh was deep and infectious. “Oh, Lord, that’s a good one, sir!” he chuckled. “You’ve obviously been in SheVa combat too long, sir. They’re TEN KILOTON rounds! That’s the equivalent of ten thousand tons of TNT, sir. Twenty million pounds of explosives!”
“Hmm…” After a moment Mitchell grinned and chuckled in return. “You’re right. My version of what is a ‘small’ explosion has gotten sort of skewed. Go on.”
“Each of them is going to vaporize a big chunk of North Carolina rock, sir,” the tech rep pointed out. “And the rock around it is going to settle in rubble. Fifteen shots, by my calculations, will reduce the ridgeline by only two hundred feet or so. But that two hundred feet is going to take out the steepest portions and lay down a ramp — a steep ramp, admittedly — on both sides.”
“Pruitt?” Mitchell said.
“I dunno, sir,” the gunner admitted. “I mean, one side of me says ‘hey, it’s Bun-Bun. No problemo.’ And then the rational side of me says ‘It’s a frigging mountain.’ ” He rubbed under his helmet for a moment then grinned. “What the hell, sir. If fifteen doesn’t do it… Hey, how many do we have in reserve?”
“There’s more coming from the Asheville reserves,” Mitchell said. “We’ll have two full loads of penetrator and six area denial after we shoot fifteen.”
“Colonel, this is your add-ons. What’s the situation?” Major Chan could not hear the conversation and thus was getting curious.
“We’re just discussing some engineering details,” Mitchell replied over the group net. “Okay, Pruitt. Do it.” He keyed his mike again and sighed. “Okay, everybody, stand by for big noise.”
Major LeBlanc had never seen a SheVa fire and she had to admit that even for someone who crewed Abrams tanks it was impressive. The sixteen-inch smoothbore belched fire with a blast of sound that was like the bellow of a giant. The round itself was, essentially, an enlarged version of the Abrams main anti-tank round, a depleted uranium dart. The main difference being that the SheVa round had a dollop of antimatter at its core.
But like the Abrams “silver bullet” rounds, and the teardrops of the ACS grav-guns, the depleted uranium penetrator and its tungsten stabilization fins left a streak of silver light behind. The light went directly into the shoulder of the right-hand mountain and vanished. There was a flash of light out of the hole, quickly extinguished, and a muted rumble through the ground.
“I hope the next one is a little more impressive,” one of the tank crews said. The shot might as well have been a pebble dropped in the ocean for all the mountains seemed to care.
Pruitt methodically fired all eight of his onboard rounds. Each of them disappeared virtually without a trace.
“We’re not making any impression that I can see, Kilzer,” Mitchell said.
“We will, sir,” the tech rep replied. But he looked a tad nervous.
Pruitt waited while the reload process went on. Each of the reload trucks, specially fitted HMETT vehicles, had to pull up to the back of the SheVa and load one round at a time. Then the rounds were transported up to the turret armory. It took quite some time and by the end of the exercise the tank crews had gotten out and were walking around, talking, joking and smoking. Some of them were lighting fires to heat up their rations.
“Colonel, you might want the crews in their vehicles,” Kilzer noted as Pruitt loaded the next round.
Feeling like a bit of a martinet, Mitchell passed the order on to LeBlanc who slowly collected her crews. Finally everyone was loaded back up and Mitchell gave Pruitt permission to fire.