“You wanna get off my back, Private?” he snarled.
The private rolled off to the side with an apology as a second member of the squad rolled into the ditch. However, right after that their Brad, which had just started to move again, ate an HVM.
Buckley shook his head to clear his ears and looked around. The tanks had apparently blown smoke and headed into the pass, but none of them had made it. There had been four. One was on fire, with its ammo cooking off, behind him in the median. The other three were scattered across the front, the closest to the objective less than a hundred meters from it. That one had suffered a catastrophic kill and the turret was fifty feet to the side, buried halfway into the moutainside.
There were two privates with him and that was it. He could hear somebody ahead and to the right firing at the Posleen in the Gap, but he couldn’t see who it was. For that matter, the only thing he could see was an overpass that was apparently shielding the Posleen from overhead fire. Oh, and a C-Dec. Which was just lifting off from the left of the intersection.
Joy.
“But I’m not in a suit!” he growled.
Besonora tapped the younger Kessentai on the shoulder as the oolt’poslenar staggered into the air. “Try to stay low; we must find and destroy that gun or all is lost.”
“I shall try, Oolt’ondai,” the Kessentai answered. “But I have flown very little.”
“Do the best you can.”
The oolt’ondai left the command deck and laboriously headed for the outer levels. He was not one of those who cursed the Alldn’t designed spiral gravity ramps that were the primary method of movement between areas; someday the Posleen would be able to modify and not just copy Alldn’t equipment. Until then, they had to make do with the way it was.
One of the items that would change, if he had his way, would be the fact that things were scattered through the ship apparently at random. Thus, the personnel quads were found almost anywhere throughout the vessel. In the case of the section holding the last “reaction” oolt, it was in the upper “west” quadrant, a silly place since they then had to go to the lower “north” to unload.
He greeted the Kessentai of the oolt and gave him his instructions. As soon as they landed he was to unload, pass around the oolt’poslenar and attack the gun to destroy its ability to fire, in other words, aim at the barrel.
Having done all that he could to prepare, he ordered the Kessentai to begin the laborious movement to the exit and started back to the command deck. As he did, alarms went off throughout the ship.
“Sir!” Pruitt said. “I’ve got anti-grav emanations.”
“Sir,” Kitteket interjected. “I just got word from one of the scouts; a C-Dec lifted off and is headed this way!”
“Where?” both Mitchell and Pruitt asked.
“He doesn’t know right now sir,” the specialist answered. “He says it’s staying low and he lost it in the hills. He’s up on Rocky Face and he said he just saw it for a second by Joe Mountain.”
“I don’t have a direction, sir,” Pruitt said. “I’m up on penetrators. And I’m more or less on vector,” he added, glancing at his map.
“Elevate the gun a bit,” Mitchell said. “Captain Chan, are you listening?”
“I’m here,” the MetalStorm commander replied.
“This may turn into a knife-fight,” Mitchell said. “How well are you chained down?”
“Not well enough to fire,” Captain Chan answered. “Even if we had power. Which we don’t. As for secondary effects… we’ll have to see.”
“Do you want to exit your turrets?” Mitchell asked.
“No,” the captain replied after a moment. “Better the devil you know.”
“Sir, emanations are strong,” Pruitt said. “I get the feeling they’re close.”
“The fire came from near here somewhere, Oolt’ondai,” the pilot said. He gently tapped the controls so the ship wouldn’t slam into the side of the mountain. “Should we unload the oolt?”
Besonora looked at the view from the outside; the side of the mountain was steep and covered in trees. To let them down would require backing up. However, the map showed an open area ahead; they could put them down there just as well.
“No, follow the road around this ridge and drop them here,” he said, showing the Kessentai the map. “In the bend of this creek which is marked ‘Scott.’ ”
CHAPTER 39
Near Balsam Gap, NC, United States, Sol III
1952 EDT Sunday September 27, 2009 ad
Despite the danger, Captain Chan had ordered all her tank commanders to stick their heads out of their hatches; when it came down to it mark-one eyeball was probably going to be faster than anything else. And each of them had been given an assigned sector to watch.
As luck would have it, the first person to spot the slow-moving C-Dec was Captain Chan. And when she saw where it was she cursed fluently.
“TARGET, C-DEC, TWO THIRTY, LEVEL, THREE HUNDRED METERS. All TCs! Close hatches!”
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Pruitt cursed, frantically slewing the gun down and around.
“Fire when you bear,” Major Mitchell said calmly.
“We’re under three hundred meters, sir,” Kitteket said.
“Understood,” the major replied. “That’s the breaks.”
“I understand, sir,” the specialist replied. “But you know that these rounds have a minimum arming distance, right?”
“Put it down! Put it down!” Besonora shouted.
“I am!” the pilot said. “But there’s no place flat.”
“Fuscirto uut to flat!” the oolt’ondai cursed. “Just get the oolt on the ground!”
“All guns, fire as you bear!”
Eleven “facets” of the twelve sided C-Decs had weaponry on them. Unlike the Lampreys, which only had one face with an anti-ship weapon, the command dodecahedrons sported a mix of heavy and “light” weapons.
In this case, the facet that was pointed right at Bun-Bun mounted quad plasma guns.
“This is gonna suuuck!” Reeves shouted, bending down and putting his fingers in his ears as the gun finally leveled on the C-Dec.
The first plasma round entered the gun system low, punching through a road-wheel and the compartment wall of the engine room. Plasma rounds transferred enormous amounts of energy, but like bullets that shatter when they hit a wall, they didn’t have a lot of “penetration.” In this case, the plasma vented into the engine room, raising the temperature notably, but otherwise doing no damage. The second round did much the same, hitting slightly to the side and taking out a section of track. The SheVa was now effectively immobilized, but maneuvering hadn’t been an issue anyway.