The mineshaft was reconstructed during the Cold War as a true nuclear bomb shelter, with heavy steel replacing the original wooden supports. It was capable of withstanding a near strike by a nuclear weapon and had been stocked, and restocked as necessary over the years, for three years of almost completely autonomous survival.
Cally opened the inner door to the mineshaft and looked back. “Hurry up, Gramps!” she shouted.
“Done,” he called. “Coming…” and the world went white.
“SON OF A BITCH!” Pruitt shouted as all the viewscreens went black then flickered back on. “What in the hell?!”
The western valley of the Gap had a towering mushroom cloud over it and fires had started in every direction. The devastation area was wider than that from the SheVa explosion and there were no landers visible at all.
“Catastrophic kill!” Major Mitchell said. “Yeeeha! Get us the hell out of here, Schmoo!”
“What in the hell caused it, sir?” Pruitt asked as the shockwave hit. “Whoa big fella!”
“Posleen ships use antimatter as an energy source,” Indy said. “You probably managed to penetrate their fuel magazine. I’ve seen the schematics for them; they’re hard to hit and even harder to penetrate. Congratulations. But we’ve lost some systems from the EMP. Nothing major; most of our stuff is hardened and the EMP really wasn’t all that high.”
“A couple more of those and we won’t have to worry about any landers,” Pruitt said, patting his control panel. “Good Bun-Bun, good rabbit. EAT ANTIMATTER, Posleen-Boy!”
Orostan raised his crest to full height and screamed as the shockwave rocked his C-Dec. “WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!”
“There must have been two of them,” Cholosta’an said with a resigned flap of his own crest. “I’m glad we were landed.”
“ESSTUUUUUU!” the enraged oolt’ondai yelled.
“There was no report, Oolt’ondai,” the Kessentai snarled. “Nothing. It must have just moved into position! I don’t know why it waited until then to fire. It is fortunate that we were not all in flight.”
“Well, we’re all getting up now,” Orostan snarled. “All ships in the air! Find this damned gun and destroy it! Stay low except when you must cross the ridges, then look for it quickly and drop back down. Tenaral, forward! Find it, destroy it if you can, locate it and cripple it at the minimum. Go!”
“Any station this net, this is SheVa Nine,” Major Mitchell called. The frequency was designated for anti-lander units. There was damned little chance that anyone was monitoring it, but just in case there was another SheVa in range to fire he could use some help. “Any unit. This is SheVa Nine.”
Of course, with the loss of Fourteen, there were only forty other SheVas in existence and he was pretty sure he knew that the nearest was in Asheville, but it beat chewing on his fingernails.
“SheVa Nine, this is Whisky Three-Five,” a female voice replied. “Go ahead.”
“We are retreating up the Little Tennessee Valley,” Mitchell said as the gun rounded Hickory Knoll. Firing Point Two was on the shoulder of the Knoll, but they needed to get it between them and the Lampreys and C-Decs that were undoubtedly chasing them. It wasn’t the landers that he was worried about, though. “We are in engagement with an estimated forty landers of both types. SheVa Fourteen was engaged and destroyed by some sort of flying tank. I don’t have a thing onboard to engage them; we could use some cover fire if anyone has anything useful. What sort of unit am I talking to?”
“Uh, SheVa Nine, stand by over,” the voice replied.
He flipped through the codes that he had, but he didn’t have an AA unit listed for Whiskey Three Five. Since the landers could only be engaged, for all practical purposes, by SheVa guns, there weren’t many AA units of any stripe left; most AA personnel had been swallowed by the regular forces.
“SheVa Nine, this is Whiskey Three-Five actual,” a different, more assured female voice answered. “We’re a Screaming Meemie unit attached to Eastern Command, over. Our orders are to move forward and engage the Posleen forces in direct fire mode. What is your situation and location, over.”
“We’re at UTM 17 379318E 3956630N. Our situation is we are engaging an estimated forty landers of all shapes and descriptions. We’re okay with that, but there are some new flying tanks that are a pain in the butt. I think a Screaming Meemie unit is just what the doctor ordered, over.”
“Roger, SheVa Nine,” said the other voice. “I’m sending the situation up to Eastern; pending their override we’re changing our mission to SheVa support. Just do me one favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t blow the fuck up, okay?”
“Mrs. President, it is not a question of ‘will you’ release the nuclear weapons,” Horner said calmly. His calm wasn’t fooling anyone, though; he was smiling like a tiger. “It is simply a question of when you will release them. As Major O’Neal pointed out, you have a valid request from a Fleet officer; you are required by treaty to abide by that request.”
“That is arguable, General,” the National Security Advisor said. She was colocated with the President, but there were four others in the video conference, and each would be expected to find something to say. Valid or not. “We are required to fulfill any military request for which we have the materials to supply; however, nuclear weapons release are traditionally a political request, not a military one. Ergo, it is not necessarily a requirement for us to fulfill it.”
“And I have to question the validity,” the High Commander said. The former Fifth Army commander had been promoted to replace General Taylor and was still feeling the limits of his authority. Unquestionably, the Continental Army commander was his subordinate; on the other hand, the reason that most people felt that Horner hadn’t been promoted to High Commander was that no one dared remove him as CONARC. Fifth Army, on the other hand, for all practical purposes had ceased to exist so the former commander was flapping around at loose ends.
“Major O’Neal is requiring a cold LZ. Very well, let them land outside the Posleen area and assault down from Black Rock mountain. I mean, that’s how an air assault is supposed to go; you don’t land right on the objective for God’s sake!”
“And we have to consider the overall effects, Mrs. President,” the communications director cut in. “We have a redistricting battle going on nationwide; it’s probably not a good idea to give the appearance of panic. If it appears that you’re losing in the southeast, and it will if you authorize nuclear release, people will shift towards the other party… And, besides, they’re caught in the mountains; surely conventional forces can handle them there.”
“Right,” Horner snarled. “That’s it. First of all, it wasn’t a request, it was an order. And a valid one. You can try to parse that, but I guarantee you it falls under the letter of the treaty and the Darhel will well and truly cut your legs out from under you if you try to parse it any other way. That assumes that any of us are around to discuss it with them because if we don’t stop this incursion we are all going to be HORSE CHOW.
“Furthermore, Major O’Neal is perfectly correct. There is no way to take the Gap without the Posleen being cleared out. And the only system that conceivably could do it would be using ICBM fire from the upper Midwest.
“I’m so glad that your communications director, with her degree in law from Stanford, is such a military expert! Perhaps she can tell me how I’m supposed to stop the Posleen, who are using airmobile tactics and pouring a hundred thousand troops an hour through the Gap? I have one, repeat, ONE division available to contain them and it will have to cover multiple exits from the zone. Furthermore, they appear to be planning on running up and down the Line, opening up passes. I have no units, except for the occasional Four-F militiaman, to stop them from doing that! It’s not just Georgia that is having problems; we have over fifty thousand Posleen in the Shenandoah sitting on three half finished SheVas. Perhaps she could tell me what I’m supposed to do about that? If she cannot then I suggest that she SHUT THE HELL UP. This is not a political crisis, this is a NIGHTMARE! And the sooner that you all come to understand that this is not maybe losing a city or maybe losing a division, but MAYBE LOSING THE WAR the quicker we can get done.