“Major Mitchell?” Chan called. “What’s your status?”
“Oh, we’re stuck,” the SheVa commander said calmly. “We’re jammed between two bluffs, stuck in a ravine. There’s a company of Posleen on the ridge above us. We expect they’ll be attacking any time now. And there are, presumably, other landers around. They should be showing up just as soon as it goes from bad to worse.”
“Any chance of you getting out?”
“Oh, sure,” the major said sarcastically. “If we had an engineering team to blow up the cliffs.”
“Jesus! What was that?” Kitteket said. The concussion of something had echoed across the mountains.
“SheVa gun,” Major Ryan answered. “I’m pretty sure anyway; nothing else sounds quite the same. It think it’s down by Betty Creek. How in the hell did a SheVa gun get down by Betty Creek?”
The night had been a long series of tiny roads on knife-edge ridges. It would actually have been easier in a smaller vehicle than the Humvee; one of the old Army jeeps would have been perfect. But the Humvee was what they had. Often the team had had to unload and either rapidly widen the road, under the major’s expert direction, or even in some cases make temporary bridges across otherwise uncrossable gaps. At each obstacle the major had been right there, blowing up the rocks, cutting down the trees and filling in the holes; nobody could complain that he was a hands-off officer.
Now the engineers were past the worst of the ridges and on the downhill. And apparently driving back into the battle.
“I thought the SheVa blew up,” Kitteket said.
“I heard they were bringing in another one,” Ryan said in thought. “Let’s head towards Betty Creek,” he continued, scrolling up his map-board. “There’s a forest road that turns off to the left up ahead. Take it.”
“We’re headed for a SheVa,” the specialist said wonderingly. “In the middle of a battle.”
“Oh, by the time we get near it the battle will be over,” Ryan said. “One way or another.”
“Major!” Chan called. “You have two more landers coming over the hilclass="underline" a Lamprey and a C-Dec. From where you are pointed they’ll be at two o’clock and eleven!”
“Got it,” Mitchell said calmly as the first railgun rounds punched into the stranded SheVa. “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry, though; we’re about to be nibbled to death by Lilliputians.”
“Don’t worry about the dismounts, sir,” Chan answered with a grin that could be heard over the radio. “We’re coming in on their flank.”
“Look, it’s stuck!” Gamasal chuckled. “Easy meat!”
“Yes,” his coleader said. “But how do we kill it without having it blow up? This is a nice valley; I would like it more or less intact.”
“Hmm,” Gamasal said, waving to the oolt’os to cease fire. “That is a good question. Perhaps we should board it?”
“That is probably a good idea,” Lesenal said, pulling out his boma blade. “I prefer the blade anyway.”
“Mommy,” Reeves muttered. “They’re pulling out their swords.”
“This is a good thing,” Mitchell pointed out in a too calm voice. “That gives us a few moments more to maybe survive the landers.”
“There’s only two of them,” Pruitt said tightly. “I can do this.” He set the radar to max gain and pointed the gun at the two o’clock position. “Come to Poppa.”
“All Storms,” Captain Chan called as the company crested the ridge and began negotiating the narrow path downward. “Engage Posleen as they bear. When you’re shot out, try to get off the trail to let following units engage.”
She could see the SheVa out her left vision blocks and the first of the landers no more than a thousand meters away through her right vision blocks. It suddenly occurred to her that if the lander exploded, or if Pruitt missed a little low, say from the gun being knocked askew by their wreck, things were really going to suck.
And in just a few seconds she was going to have to fire the Storm. She knew intellectually which would be worse, but she’d never been killed before and she’d had to fire the Storm way too many times. Being caught in a nuclear explosion, as an alternative, had its positive aspects.
“Glenn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the gunner, peering through her sight for the first look at the Posleen dismounted company.
“I have to agree with you. I need a transfer; this job sucks.”
A moment later the tank rounded a corner and the Posleen company, spread out across the ridge and trotting downhill, came into view.
“Fire,” she said, slewing the gun onto the group of Posleen.
“Aaah,” said Glenn, grabbing the trigger and setting the MetalStorm to “Full.” “AAAH!”
The slope was lightly wooded, but that didn’t really matter; the penetrators tore the trees apart without being appreciably slowed. They also tore into the Posleen without being appreciably slowed.
And the true test of how bad the system was to use was that the Storms never even noticed the SheVa firing right over their heads.
“Target C-Dec! TWELVE HUNDRED METERS! TOO CLOSE!”
“FIRE!”
“TOO CLOSE!”
“IT’S KNIFE-FIGHTING RANGE! WE’RE BUN-BUN! FIRE THE DAMNED GUN!”
The round tracked straight and true into the top of the ship, actually punching out the back side before exploding.
The detonation was the equivalent of ten thousand tons of TNT, but both it and the flash of gaseous uranium and spalling would have been survivable by the C-Dec; the explosion wasn’t actually in contact and wasn’t at a particularly vital or vulnerable point. However, the compression wave was above the lander. And that drove it downward into the hard and unyielding ground. C-Decs were designed to survive much, but slamming into North Carolina mountains at over a hundred miles per hour was not one of them. Internal compartmentalization gave way throughout the ship. Not from the acceleration, but from the deceleration.
A ten pounds per square inch compression wave, strong enough to damage or destroy heavily constructed buildings, also washed across the MetalStorm tracks. But compared to the damage they took from firing their own weapons…
“What was that?” Glenn groaned.
“What was what?” Chan answered, pulling herself out of her fetal crouch.
“That last ‘bang,’ ” the gunner answered. “Did we break something?”
“I don’t know,” Chan said. “It wasn’t that bad, though. Brandon, get us out of here, we need to open up the way for the rest!”
“Ma’am, I would, but I can’t,” the driver answered. “Look at the road.”
Glenn straightened up and looked through her vision blocks then whistled. “Wow, did we do that?” The entire slope was covered in fallen trees. “Nah, we couldn’t have.”
“You sound disappointed,” Chang said scanning for Posleen. “I think the lander must have blown up.”
“And we survived?” Brandon called over the intercom.
“Either that or this is hell,” Chang said. “And I’m beginning to wonder.”
“TARGET LAMPREY SIXTEEN HUNDRED METERS!”
“This is hell, right?” Reeves shouted with his fingers in his ears; at this distance if the lander exploded there was no way they would survive. “Please tell me this is hell!”