By parking a grader over the concrete pit, one of Kawecki’s men effectively put a partial roof over the bunker and Hale could hear the steady ping, ping, ping of nearly spent projectiles hitting the machine as he brought his binoculars up and began a quick left-to-right scan of the battlefield in front of him.
The tanks were about a hundred feet apart and hull down behind piles of mine tailings. The mounds of dirt offered excellent cover as Chimeran missiles probed the area around them. Farther out, beyond the fall of mortar rounds, one of the Stalkers was out of action and on fire as three battle-scarred Lynxes harried the second machine. But killing the last Stalker wasn’t going to be easy. Each time one of the four-by-fours took a run at the Chimeran tank it was necessary to deal with dozens of Hybrids before they could get in close enough.
The fourth Lynx was little more than a burned-out carcass that lay farther out and marked the point where its battle had been fought ten minutes earlier. The vehicle’s driver or gunner, it was impossible to tell which, had taken cover behind the wreck and was firing his M5A2 carbine at the oncoming Goliath.
A futile gesture—but a brave one.
“This is Echo-Six,” Hale said into his lip mike. “Foxtrot-Six and Seven are too close together… Six will pull back, break north, and prepare to flank the Goliath. Seven will pull back, break south, and do the same thing. Execute. Over.”
He received two speedy acknowledgments as he turned to Kawecki. “Put all of the LAARKs toward the center of the line—but back far enough to move laterally. Once the Goliath is within range, I want them to fire, then run to a new location. They won’t be able to bring the bastard down, but they can keep it busy so the tanks can get into position.”
Kawecki nodded, said, “Yes, sir,” and hurried to put the word out.
With that accomplished, Hale instructed a nervous-looking Dentweiler to remain in the bunker while he set out to visit the defensive positions that Kawecki had established. His guide was a Sentinel named Jenkins. “Keep a sharp eye out, sir,” the soldier advised. “We killed a whole shitload of the bastards, but we didn’t get all of them, and there are plenty of places to hide around here.”
Hale checked to make sure the Bellock was ready to go before following Jenkins up out of the relative safety of the grease pit toward the admin building to the south. Pieces of rusty machinery, freestanding utility buildings, and a pile of scrap metal offered opportunities to take cover, and the men took full advantage as they dashed from spot to spot.
They hadn’t gone more than a few hundred feet, and were crouched behind a storage tank, when Auger fire slashed through the cylinder, missing Hale by a hair.
Jenkins returned fire from his Auger as Hale circled the tank, searching for the stinks which had to be on the other side. There were two Steelheads, both of whom swiveled toward him as he fired the Bellock. They staggered as a fusillade of explosive rounds went off around them and Jenkins attacked from behind.
Both went down hard, weapons skidding on concrete.
Hale was running low on ammo by that time, and he was on his way over to exchange the Bellock for an Auger Mark II when he saw another weapon lying on the ground a few feet away. The MP-47 Pulse Cannon must have been taken from a dead Sentinel, and Hale was pissed off as he picked the weapon up and followed Jenkins over to the admin building. The structure had taken multiple hits by then, and the south end was in flames as the soldiers in an office to the north end continued to fire a captured machine gun into the open area beyond. A wave of stinks went down as the heavy slugs swept them off their feet.
Hale made himself known to the sergeant in charge before turning his binoculars toward the battlefield where the second Stalker was burning brightly, and the surviving Lynx was on the run as the Goliath hurled missile after missile at it. The two-hundred-foot-tall battle mech was armed with Gatling-style guns, plus multiple missile launchers, and it was close enough for Hale to feel the earth tremble each time one of its feet hit the ground.
Then the newly repositioned tanks came up on the Chimeran machine from the north and south. They forced the colossus to swivel back and forth and divide its fire between two targets. Explosions could be seen and heard as the humans poured round after round into the construct, which still kept on coming.
Most of the captured mortars had been silenced by then, but the LAARK-equipped Sentinels were hard at work, and Hale could see flashes of light as their rockets struck the monster’s superstructure and articulated legs.
It wasn’t going to be enough, however. That became clear as the Goliath stepped over the command bunker and brought an enormous clawlike foot down on top of the maintenance building beyond. It went straight through the roof, and most of the structure collapsed. Then the battle mech took another gigantic step and fired at the Party Girl as she rose from the crater beyond.
Purvis had given himself the job of flying the last bird out, and he swore as a missile flew past the canopy, exploding against the west side of the pit wall.
Then with engines screaming, he made the switch to level flight and felt the VTOL lurch sickeningly as something hit her.
But she was tough, and the Goliath was already turning away as the Party Girl skimmed the ground.
Hale reached the admin building with Jenkins in tow. They dashed inside and metal rang under their combat boots as they raced up a set of interior stairs to what remained of the flat roof. The fire was still burning a hundred feet away, but the wind was blowing north to south, so they could see in spite of the billowing smoke.
There were two ways to bring a Goliath down. One was simply to batter it to pieces—which was a long and dangerous process. The other was to fire some sort of explosive down the exhaust ports located to the rear of the mech’s superstructure. And as they arrived at the west side of the roof, and the Goliath began to turn back toward the east, that was Hale’s intention. The MP-47 Pulse Cannon was on his shoulder by then, and he could see the glowing exhaust ports, but not for long as the colossus continued to turn.
Quickly, knowing that more of his men were going to die if he missed, Hale fired. There was only enough time to get two shots off, but both hit their marks and exploded within the mech. That wasn’t enough to kill the beast, but the Goliath was still taking fire from the man-portable rocket launchers, and one of its leg actuators was damaged. The combination forced it to pause, so that as the rim gave way under its enormous weight, it fell over backward. There was the equivalent of an earthquake as the construct disappeared from sight and landed in the crater. Then, heart in his throat, Hale ran for the stairs.
Once on the ground he summoned the remaining Lynx, which carried him toward the pit. He knew the Goliath was still operational because he could hear the insistent whine of its powerful servos and the clatter of metal on rocks. So he fully expected to see the machine’s lethal superstructure rear up at any moment.
But as the Lynx skidded to a stop at the edge of the pit, it was another sight that met his eyes. The Goliath was lying on its back and legs flailing as it struggled to right itself. That left its belly exposed, and Hale smiled grimly as he got out of the four-by-four and brought the Pulse Cannon to bear. The weapon jerked repeatedly as Hale fired his remaining rounds. All of them hit the target.
The result was a massive explosion with a pressure wave strong enough to knock Hale off his feet and send a fireball hundreds of feet up into the air. Flaming debris fell for what seemed like minutes, but was actually seconds, and kicked up gouts of mud-stained snow all around the bottom of the mine. “Nice one, sir,” the vehicle’s gunner said admiringly as he staggered to his feet. “That’ll teach the bastards!”