There was an answering hammering which he took for a yes. But he knew that if he didn’t get them out, and fast, they were all going to cook.
“Hold on!” He keyed his radio and looked up at the crane. This had better work.
“Colonel Mitchell, Chan is trapped in her turret. I need Pruitt up here on the double. Have him bring some explosives, some Nomex strips, heat-resistant glue and detonators.”
The question was, of course, how solid a weld they were dealing with.
Pruitt watched from the crane control room as Kilzer laid the explosives around the rim of the hatch. He wasn’t sure what they were for. There was no way the blocks of C-4 were going to cut through the turret and even if they did it would just kill the crew inside.
Kilzer waved at him and keyed his radio.
“Apply pressure,” the civilian said, hooking the cable onto the hatch coaming. “Just pull up until you’ve got a good pressure on.”
Pruitt engaged the transmission and watched as the cables came taut, then applied a touch more motor until he could hear the resistance singing in the system.
“That’s as much as I can do,” he called.
“Hold that then,” Kilzer said, backing away from the turret. He walked to the base of the crane then tapped the remote detonator.
With a clang the C-4 flashed purple-orange and the hatch sprung open. The hook to the crane went flying upwards in a parabola and then back down as the engine whined in overdrive pulling it in.
Pruitt quickly disengaged the transmission then hurried out of the crane as the civilian pulled the crew out of the hatch and carried them across the top of the SheVa to a cooler spot.
“We need to get them below,” Kilzer said. Glenn, the major’s gunner, was already laid out on the cooler steel but it was obvious she needed some serious attention. She was nearly unconscious and her skin was dry as toast.
“There’s an aid station just under the crane,” Pruitt said then paused. “Of course, you know that, don’t you.”
“Yep,” Kilzer replied, dragging Chan across the steel. “It’s also shot full of holes. We need to get them transported back to the battalion aid station.” He turned around to go back and get the last crewman.
“No,” Chan whispered. “Just… find me an IV. I’ll transfer to one of the other turrets.”
“Pruitt,” Mitchell called. “Get your ass back down here; we are leaving.”
“Sir, we’ve got wounded up here!”
“Get them under control quick then, if we don’t move Bravo is going under.”
There was an elevator but that had been a pretty low repair priority and God only knew what damage it had taken in the last exchange. Just getting the crew down to the aid station, the unprotected aid station, was a two story trip.
Pruitt looked up as Kilzer came up dragging the last of the crew.
“Damn,” the gunner muttered, yanking the major into a fireman’s carry. “What we need about now is the cavalry to come riding to the rescue. But we are the cavalry.”
\parΓ Γ Γ
“Hammer it, Nichols,” Major LeBlanc snarled. She was out in front of most of the battalion but she could care less; if the rest of the unit didn’t draw the Posleen off them, Bravo was going away.
The mass of tanks and Bradleys rounded the hills that had sheltered them from view and finally saw the solid wall of plasma and HVM fire striking the hills. It was as if the air was on fire, linking the valley and the hilltop.
“Holy Christ!” she heard over the radio. “What in the hell are these guys?”
“Quiet,” she said. “Echelon left, forward by bounds, Charlie lead.”
“Charlie, open fire!”
“Alpha, echelon left!”
Glennis suddenly felt a cold fire in her stomach, a strange sensation she couldn’t quite place. It was almost sexual, almost orgasmic, and then she understood as the battalion opened out on the flats, the Abrams and Bradleys going to maximum speed on the outer flanks to present one almost continuous line. The maneuver was beautiful, almost flawless as the tanks, bellowing fire, descended on the flank of the Posleen force like an enraged metallic monster.
She had created this. She had planned it, she had planned how to sucker the Posleen into reacting to two separate flank attacks. And it was her battalion, her creation that would destroy this Posleen force, despite their superior weapons, despite their superior numbers.
Glennis grinned like a Celtic Goddess as the first rounds of white phosphorus from the battalion mortar platoon started to drop into the Posleen. The white phosphorus provided a smokescreen for the forces engaged on the hill. And the fact that it threw burning bits of impossible-to-put-out metal all over the Posleen was just a benefit.
This was what she had wrought.
This was command.
“Open fire.”
“Open fire,” Mitchell said, controlling the MetalStorm tracks directly. “Lay a curtain of fire in front of Bravo Company.”
He looked up as Pruitt slid into his gunner’s seat. “Major Chan?”
“Bad dehydration,” the specialist replied. “Same with the other two; Glenn started spasming on the way to the aid station. We’ve got IV’s running in all three of them and Kilzer is rolling Glenn into a water pack. Other than that there’s not much we can do until we can get them to a regular medical facility.”
“With heat injuries generally just rehydrating will work,” Mitchell said. “We’re moving back into position.”
“I noticed,” the gunner said, keying his targeting screen.
“When we clear the hill I want you to fire across the Posleen force,” Mitchell said. “As low an angle as you can manage.”
Pruitt kicked on a map screen and zoomed it out. Then he shook his head.
“No target, sir. What in Sam Hill am I shooting at?”
“Nothing,” the commander said with a faint grin. “Just remember, lowest angle you can manage.”
The fire was getting heavy, the night was bright with the streams of plasma flying through the air and the impact flashes of hypervelocity missiles, but Glennis stayed with her head out of the TC’s hatch, engaging with her Gatling gun and generally enjoying life. The battalion was cutting through the massed Posleen like a scythe to wheat, which was a fine difference from normal. Catch them enough off guard and they didn’t react any better than humans. It was all a matter of maintaining dominance.
She looked to either side and frowned. The other necessity was having enough firepower to maintain dominance. Some of the Posleen were leaking around to the sides, despite her having spread the tracks out as widely as she dared. And they were starting to fire back; as she looked an Abrams on the flank was lit with silver fire and ground to smoking halt. She was going to have to do something fast or the whole battalion would get flanked. Possibly on both sides.
“Charlie, open it out a bit more to the left,” she called. “Alpha, more echelon, battalion prepare to wheel right.”
That would leave them open to the leakers on the east but Bravo was laying down a good base of fire out there and sooner or later the SheVa…
As she thought it, a tongue of flame a hundred meters long lashed across her vision.
“Beautiful!” Pruitt shouted as the backwash from the penetrator threw the Posleen to the front into disarray; while there was no way to use the penetrator itself the blast from the massive cannon was a weapon in itself. The impact hammered the center section to their knees or spun them through the air and even those outside the center of the wash were shocked into momentary immobility.