“And?” Warhol had never managed to quite understand why civilians took so long to get to the point.
“All the data is consistent, they show a slight increase in power output as the vehicle passes through. That means when something goes through a portal, there’s a slight energy barrier and the engine has to increase output slightly to compensate for it. There is actually an energy cost in going through a portal and that is of immense significance.”
“Well that’s just great for you people.”
“It’s quite significant for you too.” Crosby spoke with acerbity. Why couldn’t military people have any patience? When they wanted information, they wanted it now and in words of one syllable. “Look at the figures for the ships going through the Hell-Bravo portal. The power output increase is tiny, so slight we can hardly measure it. But using Hell-Alpha, the power output on vehicles is significantly greater. I bet the crews noticed an engine surge as they went through but thought nothing of it. That’s what killed that U-2, going through the portal needed a tiny bit more power and the engine just couldn’t give it.”
“So?”
“Think about it. Hell-Bravo is at sea level both sides. Very little altitude differential, tiny barrier energy. Hell-Alpha has an altitude differential, there’s a slightly greater energy barrier. I bet if we had an enormous altitude difference, the barrier would be so great we couldn’t cross it. And that would mean we couldn’t use it to supply, for example, the International Space Station. Of course, I doubt if altitude is actually the constraint, there must be something else and altitude is just the physical manifestation…”
Crosby was interrupted by a wailing cacophony as the base sirens suddenly burst into life. Warhol looked around for a few seconds, then the realization dawned on him. “Crosby, move! The base is under attack.”
The scientist stood in the center of the room, looking around him, uncertain what to do. Warhol dived past him, towards one of the emergency cabinets that studded the walls around the conference room. It was the work of a second to punch in the four-number code and grab the M4A5 inside. His hands moved with the unerring precision of much training as he inserted the 20-round magazine and racked the mechanism. Then he opened a second cabinet and tossed the weapon inside to Crosby. “Get to the redoubt in the center of the base. We’ll deal with this. Whatever it is.”
Running down the corridor leading to the command center, Warhol noted that most of the other emergency cabinets had been opened and the contents taken. Installing them had seemed like a joke eighteen months earlier when this facility had been built, but now they seemed to be important enough. Just what was happening that could cause this level of alert?
“Warhol. Get some men together, make up a team and head for the perimeter.” The duty officer snapped the order out without looking around, his eyes glued on the screen in front of him.
Warhol saw the screen also and the sight made him stop dead. The display showed a monster, a huge one, that looked like a giant leopard. What was appalling was its head, or rather heads. The creature had seven of them, and ten horns. They weren’t quite heads though, it was more as if there were seven faces on the same giant, hideously distorted skull with the horns sticking out between them. Warhol couldn’t estimate the thing’s size, the display didn’t have a reference in shot that he could use to get an idea of scale but he guessed it was huge. It had to be to cause this level of chaos.
“What are you still doing here? Get down to the motor pool, there’ll be troops down there for you. Move.”
It took Warhol a few minutes to get to the motor pool and pick up the men there. Once again, the non-commissioned officers had saved the situation, they had already organized the motor pool staff into an emergency platoon and set it up in a defensive position. All he had to do was to take over and move them out towards the base perimeter. They even had the motor transport to hand, a selection of Humvees, trucks and a single experimental armored car equipped with a 57mm gun. He had no doubt that they would be needed, the barrage of gunfire from the south was a sure sign that this was no walk-over fight. Warhol did what every infantry officer had been expected to do since the invention of gunpowder, he drove to the sound of the guns.
Defense Perimeter, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“It’s taken out Domino’s Pizza!” The cry was almost drowned out by the roar of gunfire while the streams of tracer formed an almost-prefect cone centered on the great beast that towered over the trees.
“Who the hell cares. I preferred Cicis anyway.” It was, perhaps, a sign of the times that the Coca-Cola delivery truck was camouflaged and had a. 50 machine gun mounted above its cab. The delivery team had been caught up in the attack and were now doing their level best to make a worthwhile contribution to the volume of fire that was engulfing the Leopard Beast. The problem was, they hadn’t had much ammunition to start with and they were now running desperately low. So was everybody else.
They’d achieved their first objective though, the hastily-mounted defense had drawn the Leopard Beast away from the family accommodation to the south of the base and given the dependents there a chance to escape into Fayetteville. Stung by the hail of gunfire, the Leopard Beast had made its way around to the south-eastern flank of the base and tried to break through. Once again, it had been met by a barrage of gunfire and driven back. Despite the tens of thousands of rounds that had been fired in its direction, it was still alive and showed no signs of being any less lethal than when it had first appeared.
Still, the gunfire was achieving something else. The streams of tracer were serving as perfect target markers for the aircraft that were heading in. The Leopard Beast had been driven into an area that was largely unoccupied and that had opened up a whole new range of possibilities. One of them was already being brought into play, the thump of heavy mortars was quickly followed by the eruption of feathered white clouds around the Beast. It screamed as the white phosphorus burned its way into its skin.
“Keep marking that target!” One of the junior officers had the presence of mind to scream out the order in case any journalists were around. After all everybody knew the U.S. Army only used white phosphorus to lay smoke screens and mark targets, that was their story and they were sticking to it.
The Leopard Beast screamed again and leapt forward, crashing into a small fuel dump on the outskirts of the mobility testing area. The HEMTT trucks lines up outside crumpled under the bear paws that served it as feet. The trucks exploded in balls of fire as they were crushed and, once again, the Leopard Beast was driven back, away from the base. This time, as it fled east, away from the flames, it ran into streams of fire from Bradley armored vehicles that had been moved up to flank its position. The 25mm sabot rounds did more damage than the rifle-caliber rounds fired so far and, for the first time, the Leopard Beast was badly enough hurt to dilute it’s single-minded urge for destruction. Then, the Beast heard and saw a new threat.
The four A-45s had taken off a few minutes earlier, loaded with whatever the ground crews could find immediately available. There were more aircraft being bombed up back at the base and they would be carrying loads better suited to the battle being fought at Fort Bragg but time had been of the essence and it was better to get something over the battlefield now rather than wait for a perfect solution that might be too late. In any case, AH-64s were on their way in and the Beast would have to be distracted while the helicopters made their runs. Everybody remembered what had happened when unsupported helicopters had tried to fight harpies in the skies over Iraq. The Leopard Beast didn’t appear capable of flying but, when faced with a seven-faced beast more than 200 feet tall, nobody was going to take the chance. So, the A-45s started their bomb runs, aiming to distract the beast. Of course, if they hurt it in the process, the pilots wouldn’t mind in the slightest.