The control center and living quarters were actually located underneath the behemoth and were the size of a small trailer. It wasn’t that it took a large crew; the system could actually be run by one person. It just made more sense that way. The designers looked at the physical requirements for the three-man crew and finally settled on a small, highly armored command center. But the monstrosity had so much power and space to spare that they added to the design until they had a small living quarters that would permit the crew to live independent of the surroundings.
The designers also included a rather interesting evac vehicle.
So when the crews of SheVas Forty-Two and Twenty-Three got the word that a lander was on the way, they dropped their cards, dropped their Gameboys and slid smoothly into action.
“This is Forty-Two, General,” said Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wagoner. Forty-Two was a brand new SheVa, the newest until there was a “Forty-Three.” And Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wagoner was a brand new SheVa commander. He had just been transferred, over his howling objections, from command of an armored battalion and was having trouble adjusting to being a tank commander, by any other word, again. But he was pretty sure he could remember how to crank a track, by God. “We’re on it.”
“Okay, boys, blow the camouflage; it’s time to lay some tube.”
Duncan felt a rumbling in the seat of his pants and configured his view to “swing” westward. The remains of West Rochester were shuddering as if the town had been hit by a minor but persistent earthquake and he could see boulders being kicked loose from the hill he was sitting on. When the viewpoint finally swung to the west it became obvious what had caused the effect.
Behind him, about four miles to the rear on the south side of the canal, an oddly shaped hill was shuddering apart. As the greenish foam fell away the enormous shape of a SheVa gun was revealed.
The thing was just ugly. There was no other word to describe it. The bastardized cannon required something like a crane cantilever to keep it from bending and the massive construction of the whole system didn’t permit anything on the order of beauty. Like a steam shovel for a giant open-pit mine or a deep ocean drilling platform, the only things prior to the SheVa to be built on its scale, it was pure function.
The scale of the guns was hard to grasp until you realized that the tiny ants running alongside weren’t even people, they were trucks.
He shook his head as the thing first waggled from side to side to warn all the little “crunchies” that it was preparing to maneuver and then accelerated up the side of a small moraine, smashing a factory to bits on the way.
“Fucking show-off,” Duncan muttered, turning back to the east.
“Forty-two,” called the commander of SheVa Twenty-Three, “be aware that we have two more lift emanations including a C-Dec.”
“Got that,” said Colonel Wagoner. His intent was to use the moraine as cover until they could get a good hull-down shot at the Lamprey. The problem with SheVa guns was that “hull-down” generally required something like a small river valley; the moraine was as good as he was going to get.
But when the other two lifted, they would be in a position to rake Forty-Two’s position from the north. The question was whether to engage them as they came in view or after the leading Lamprey.
“Sergeant Darden,” he called to the driver. “Swing us around to the south side of the moraine with the gun about forty degrees to the angle of the slope. We’ll take the current Lamprey as it bears then continue around the slope to engage the others.” He switched to the SheVa frequency and glanced at the battlefield schematic. “Twenty-Three, prepare to move out. As we engage the first Lamprey, engage the first of the trailers. The we’ll gang up on number three.”
“Got it, sir,” called the other gun. “Time to show these ACS pussies what ‘heavy metal’ really means.”
Duncan just sighed as the ground really started to shake. The secondary screen showed another hill — this one much less artistic; it had buildings sticking out of it — coming apart as the second SheVa went into action, its cantilevered gun pointing to the east.
It suddenly occurred to Duncan that the gun was not pointing particularly high in the sky. He looked at the gun, looked towards the probable target and had just enough time to say: “Oh, shit,” before the weapon fired.
The rounds for the SheVa guns used the equivalent of a battleship 16” gun “max charge.” The bullet, however, was a sabot round, a depleted uranium “arrow” surrounded by a thermoplastic “shoe.” The bullet, therefore, was very light compared to the standard 16” gun “round.” And instead of a rifled barrel, which permitted a round to stabilize in flight by spin, but also retarded the speed of the round, it was a smoothbore. The barrel was also extended to nearly three times the length of a standard sixteen-inch barrel, thus permitting more of the energy from the charge to be imparted to the bullet.
Since round speed is a function of energy imparted versus round weight and barrel drag, the round left the barrel at speeds normally obtainable only by spacecraft.
The plastic “shoe” fell off within half a mile and what was left was an eight-inch-thick, six-foot-long, pointed uranium bar with tungsten “fins” on the back. The fins stabilized its flight. And fly it did crossing the twenty kilometers to the target, trailing a line of silver fire, in just under two seconds. However, such speed and power do not come without some minor secondary effects.
Duncan dug plasteel fingers in the bedrock as the hurricane of wind hit. The sonic boom, which shattered windows and even walls in the hospital down the hill, was almost an afterthought to the wind. It was the wind, driven to tornado speed, which tore at buildings and people throughout Rochester, ripping off roofs, toppling walls, turning trucks on their sides and pitching troops around like bowling pins.
Whatever secondary effects the round might have had, its primary effect was even more spectacular. Simple kinetic impact would usually destroy a Lamprey or even a C-Dec — when the rounds did not explode they tended to punch all the way through the ships. But the designers of the SheVa guns weren’t satisfied with “usually.” So at the core of the SheVa round was a small charge of antimatter. Only the equivalent of a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon.
The effect of the round punching into the ship was obliterated by the rush of silver fire that gouted from every seam and port. For a moment the ship seemed like it would hang together, but then it just came apart in a blossom of fire that consumed the Posleen for a quarter of a mile around. Large pieces, the size of cars and trucks, flew out as far as the human battle lines and bits the size of a human head reached even to Duncan’s location.