Aiming consisted of squinting through a V-sight atop the tubes until the target was more or less aligned and then getting the hell out of the way while someone hit an electrical firing connection. The launchers were crewed and then sited atop other battlements.
"Battery C" was even worse.
Observing that the castle's plumbing seemed built for all eternity, Virunga had ordered sections of pipe to be cut into meter-and-a-half sections and wire-reinforced. He was making mortars. Very, very big mortars.
Micrometers, small inspection telescopes, bubble levels, gears, and knobs had been stolen from the various workshops that the POWs slave-labored for and had been cobbled together to make sights for the mortars.
Virunga discovered that the propellant used in the rifle rounds could be liquefied and cast without harm. He decided to use that powder, cast into round increments, to fire his mortar rounds. The rounds themselves were smaller sections of pipe built up again with wire to approximate the interior dimensions of the mortar tubes. They were handgrooved so the pipe would shrapnel on impact, but not deeply enough that the round would explode on firing.
Maybe.
The rounds were packed with more propellant. Nitric acid, alk, and mercury were gingerly mixed by self-taught POW chemists to make the horribly dangerous mercury fulminate that would be used to detonate the rounds on impact.
Maybe.
Virunga readied firing positions in the courtyard for the mortars, with high-stacked stone around them in case the bad guys had mortars of their own.
The tiny com units that had been brought to Heath by Sten and smuggled into Koldyeze by Chetwynd were the only modern items Virunga had. They linked the observers to the batteries. In spite of the risk—the observers were located anywhere the streets around Koldyeze could be seen from—there was no shortage of volunteers.
Thirty seconds after the first tank popped into open, Virunga opened fire.
"Battery A. Armor in the open. Acquire targets visually. Fire on individual control."
The gun commander of the first cannon had one of the recon tracks in his sights. He held his breath and yanked the firing lever. The cannon cracked and slammed back against the cable restraints. The commander stared down at the streets below. The round slammed into a wall about five meters from the recon track.
"Come on down a little bit and right a skosh," the commander advised the gunner. He was not, needless to say, a trained artillerybeing.
The third round ventilated the thinly armored recon track, and its crew bailed out.
Virunga smiled in pleasure.
His other three guns were also firing and hitting.
Down below, the three heavy tracks ground up the street toward the cathedral. One of them took a direct hit from a cannon, but the solid round ricocheted off the track's armor plating.
Sten peered through a battlement's machicolations and swore. He had hoped that somehow Virunga's cannon would have enough power to punch holes in the heavy tracks. The only thing that could stop them, he realized, was his deceased horses.
The tank clattered slowly up the cobblestones toward Koldyeze, infantry moving forward in its shelter. Then the track hit the grease. Its tracks spun uselessly on the cobblestones. The huge tank slid sideways and back down the hill, slamming into the first hulk.
And then the defenders of Koldyeze got lucky.
Not, of course, that luck was ever mentioned by either Sergeant Major Isby, observing for Battery C, or by the mortar crew. Isby, even though he was a supply specialist, had been given infantry training, which at one time had included artillery/mortar observation. He remembered his lessons quite well.
"Charlie Two," he broadcast. "This is Observer Six. Fire Mission. Azimuth 5250 down 30. Distance 3200. Tanks and infantry in the open. Will adjust."
The sights of the mortar were adjusted, and two still-brawny women, VIP hostages, fitted firing charges onto the mortar bomb and hoisted it up over the mortar's mouth, let go, and ducked away.
The mortar thudded. Sten saw the wobbling pipe climb high into the sky, then turn and drop downward. The first round hit the stalled track directly on top of its engine exhaust plates and exploded. The tank itself blew up, sending its turrets cartwheeling away into the infantry around it.
Once again, the way was blocked.
Isby and the mortar crew, of course, said that the first-round hit proved how good they were. They bragged accordingly. They did not think it worthy of note to mention that they hit nothing else for the rest of that day.
And then the infantry began its assault.
They came in cautiously, keeping to the cover of the tenements and rubble. But they still had to come into the open eventually.
Sten methodically sniped down an entire squad of grunts who were hiding behind what they thought was solid stone. Other marksbeings, now familiar with the projectile sporter weapons they were equipped with, decimated the infantry.
But the siege of Koldyeze was still being lost by the ex-prisoners.
Slowly the ring of Wichman's troops closed on Koldyeze. There was just too many of them.
The single chaingun that survived atop the second watch-tower was smashed by three accurate rounds from another heavy tank firing over the corpse of its brother. Tahn soldiers countersniped from positions on the roofs of tenements.
Sten saw a POW lying on the battlement not far from him slump, the top of her head suddenly missing.
"Dinnae y' hope, young Sten," Alex observed, "thae our wee Guardsmen aren't takin't long mess breaks?"
Sten hoped that very desperately.
Chief Warrant Officer Rinaldi Hernandes had wondered what would happen if he survived imprisonment long enough to get a weapon in his hands. Could he kill—even beings who had been responsible for his grandchild's death?
He could.
Somewhere Hernandes had found an enormous rifle—nearly as long as he was—that single-fired a round the size of the cheroots he missed desperately. It was an ancient rifle fitted with a museum-quality optical sight.
But it was a very effective antique.
Hernandes held his sights on the target—a Tahn in the gunner's seat of a gravsled. He breathed in deeply.
Then he let out half the breath and held. His finger pulled the forward trigger, then moved back to the set trigger. It touched the metal, and the rifle slammed him.
Kilgour had taken one look at Hernandes's weapon and dubbed it a "dinosaur gun."
"Because it'd kill a dinosaur," Sten straight-manned.
"Na, clot. Because it takit a dinosaur to fire the beast."
It damn near did. The rifle kicked—hard. Hernandes was pretty sure that his shoulder was if not broken at least cracked a lot.
But it was far worse on the arrival end.
The gunner in the gravsled had time enough to notice that he lacked a pelvis before he died.
Hernandes carefully scratched a mark on the stone next to him. That made twenty-seven.
He looked for another target.
Downslope, a Tahn sergeant spotted the movement, sighted, and touched a trigger.
The three-round burst blew Hernandes's abdomen apart.
The decimation went on.
Virunga reflexively ducked when the explosion went off, the blast echoing seemingly endlessly around the courtyard walls.
And then the screams started.
The first of the mortars had exploded. Thirty-one people were dead or maimed around the shattered metal. Medics scurried to help.
Virunga kept his expression untroubled. At least the blast walls had provided an unexpected side benefit and kept the damage moderate. But Virunga knew that the three remaining mortars would be shot on a duck-and-fire principle. Koldyeze, he estimated, could hold no more than another day, at best. And that night Wichman's forces mined the wall.