As he walked around the back of the monstrous piece of machinery, a female soldier appeared out of a hatch over the treads and walked down them. After a brief moment’s inspection she saluted.
“Warrant Officer Sheila Indy,” she said. “Engineer for SheVa Nine.”
“Major William Ryan,” the engineer replied. “I’m a combat engineering specialist attached to Ninety-Third Corps. Right now I’m in charge of this motley crew. Until recently we were trying to make things hard for the Posleen.”
“And what are you doing now?” Indy asked.
“We’re looking for a ride; a rain of boulders seems to have destroyed our Humvee.”
The warrant officer laughed and looked at him with interest. “Did you say combat engineers, Major?”
“Yep,” he answered. “And it looks like you need some earth moved.”
“That we do,” the warrant said. “Could you come with me, sir?”
He popped the straps on his ruck and gestured at the mixed group of soldiers. “Rest; I think we’ll be working in the near future.”
He and Kitteket, who seemed to be acting as his shadow, followed the warrant officer around the SheVa to the front where a group of officers were wrangling over the situation. The SheVa was in a crack with both of the treads only partially on the ground — they were mostly supported by rock on both sides of the gully — and with a high mound of earth directly in front of the treads. It was this friable mixture of rock and loam, well mixed with the water from the stream, that was preventing the tank from getting a good grip. With a car the answer would be to pile branches under the treads. With a SheVa gun, that wouldn’t work.
Ryan didn’t approach the group of officers, but walked over in front of the gun, stooping to pick up the occasional bit of debris then stopping and pulling out his entrenching tool. He dug into the stream bank until he hit rock, then chopped at it until he had a sample; at that the sample was small. Last, he walked to the far side of the gun and got a good look at that side.
By the time he did approach the group they had stopped talking and were watching him.
He approached and, not knowing if he had date of rank on the major in the group, saluted. “Ryan, Army Corps of Engineers.”
“Mitchell, SheVa Corps.”
“If I may ask, who is the genius who jammed the shit out of this thing?” Ryan asked with a laugh. “Because it is, pardon the pun, caught in a crack.”
“My driver,” Mitchell said with a shrug. “Not his fault,” he added, gesturing at the lander in the valley. “We were a little busy at the time.”
“I noticed,” Ryan said with another grin. “And I’d guess it was your gunner that decided that Chestnut Mountain needed a swimming pool.”
“That would be him,” Mitchell said with a nod. “And while I was wishing for an engineer, I was really wishing for one that had a heavy engineering battalion behind him. As it is…”
“Oh, we can get you out,” Ryan said. “I’ve thought of three or four ways. I don’t think that the Meemies would like the best one though.”
“What would that be, Major?” Captain Chan asked. “Vickie Chan, I’m commander of the MetalStorms.”
“Well, I think we could more or less jam one of your guns under each tread and drive the SheVa out over them…”
“You were correct,” she said, “I don’t like it…”
“… The SheVa has an integral crane for doing some of its maintenance. I’ve used them before for engineering purposes and we can use it to decouple your guns first. Probably it wouldn’t cripple your system; the Abrams chassis is a remarkable piece of engineering.”
“I really don’t like that idea,” Chan said unhappily.
“Okay,” Ryan said. “At least one of you fired earlier, are any of you loaded? I assume your reload teams aren’t right behind you.”
“Both our reload teams are over by Dillsboro by now,” Major Mitchell said.
“Well then, the alternative is that we use one of the loaded systems to punch holes in the rockwall,” Ryan said. “Carefully. Then we load them with explosives and blow up the rock. That will open up a cavity for you to move out. We’ll do the same in front, blasting off this overburden; there’s solid rock under it almost at the level of your tracks. Getting out then is easy. We can blow out the walls further down, using the same techniques, to ensure you don’t get stuck again.”
“Hold on,” Indy said. “You want to set off explosives in rock that is in contact with our tracks?”
“There will be some impact waves,” Ryan said. “But nothing that will affect the tracks or the gun.”
“You want a MetalStorm to fire into rock that’s in contact with the SheVa?” Mitchell asked.
“They can fire on single shot,” Kitteket interjected. “We’re not suggesting that they open fire full out.”
“It will make a forty millimeter hole,” Ryan pointed out. “Admittedly one that’s quite hot and filled with uranium dust, but beggars can’t be choosers. We’ll then pack it and seal it and blow the rock down.”
“You do intend to blow up rock that is in contact with my tracks!” Indy said.
“Warrant, I’ve been blowing up everything in sight for the last five years,” Ryan said wearily. “I’ve blown up bridges and buildings and I don’t know how many sidings. I blew up the Lincoln Memorial. Don’t tell me I can’t blow in a little embankment without hurting your precious tracks.”
“But we’re not talking driving away in the next fifteen minutes,” Major Mitchell said. “Either way.”
“Fifteen, no,” Ryan replied. “For the assisted maneuvering method… forty minutes to an hour. For the other it will depend on whether we can find some secondary explosives. My men and I have a few hundred pounds of C-4, and that would do the job, but we will need it for other missions; I can’t in good conscience use it all to extract one stuck tank.”
“Not to blow my own horn,” Mitchell said. “But this is a very big and very expensive tank.”
“I know,” Ryan answered. “But there are a lot of bridges between here and Asheville.”
“I know,” Mitchell smiled thinly. “But I guarantee I can take them down faster than you can.”
Chan had been talking with Glenn and finally she shook her head.
“Okay,” she said. “I have an alternative. Worse or better I’m not sure. We can easily fit two or even three of our guns under the treads, especially if we use a little of your explosives to blow out some of the overburden in front.”
“That’s true,” Ryan said. “I didn’t think that you wanted to sacrifice all of your units.”
“The thing weighs seven thousand tons, admittedly,” Chang said. “But all of that won’t be on the tracks at first. And if it is, only for a little while. If we roll it up slow and roll it down slow, you’re right, they might just survive. And if they don’t…”
“We never have to fire one again,” Glenn said with a sigh. “Could you drive it fast? And maybe bounce it a little?”
Pruitt engaged the crane and started lifting the first MetalStorm away from its chassis as the first explosion sounded from the front of the SheVa. The crane was mounted on the upper deck of the gun, nearly two hundred feet over the tank at its feet, and the MetalStorm turret swayed back and forth wildly as it came out of its mounts. As Pruitt waited for the oscillation to subside, he keyed his throat mike.
“Hey, Warrant, you still got that welding set handy?” he asked thoughtfully.