"Yes, sir!" the private said, engaging the treads. "One foam-covered, screwed up, disarmed SheVa, getting the hell out of Dodge."
"You want me to climb up on top of Bun-Bun while we're moving?" the gunner asked.
"Hopefully not," the major said, keying the mike to call the support units. "But if you do, think of it as Torg and Riff on another adventure." After a moment's thought he started looking for the frequencies for Fourteen's ammo trucks; if they survived this they were going to need more than eight reloads.
"But she looks more like Zoe, sir," the gunner said with a shrug, hitting the key to load the first round. "And is it just me, or does anyone else find it odd calling her 'Miss Indy'?"
"Pruitt, shut up and go help the warrant." He shook his head and checked his schematics again. The landers, now unopposed, were moving in a leisurely fashion to silence all resistance in the valley. "Just how much more screwed up is this day going to get?"
* * *
"Just how much more screwed up is this going to get?" Orostan asked, looking at the mushroom cloud rising over the Gap. "Pacalolstal, report!"
"I don't think Pacalostal is going to be reporting ever again, Oolt'ondai," Cholosta'an said. "I suspect that most of the tenaral are gone."
"Thrah nah toll!" Orostan cursed. "Demons of Sky and Fire, I hate humans!"
"Oh, this isn't too bad," Cholosta'an said philosophically. "We've only lost two ships, the Wall is down and most of the human soldiers are out of our way. This might actually speed things up."
"The tenaral were to be used against the metal threshkreen as well," Orostan snarled.
"We'll deal with them when we have to," Cholosta'an said with a flap of resignation.
"We shall indeed," Orostan said. "Very well; all ships proceed to the Gap. Time for phase two."
CHAPTER 25
Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III
1309 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad
Major Ryan pulled his fingers away from his ears and shook his head trying to clear the ringing. "I swear to God, one of these days I'll remember earplugs," he groaned.
"You okay, Major?" the specialist who shared the bunker with him asked.
"What?" Ryan yelled, standing up. The soldier sounded as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well.
"I asked if you were okay!" the specialist shouted, pulling earplugs out of her ears. "I'm, personally, a little shook up."
"Fine," Ryan shouted back. "Time to see if anything's left."
One corner of the bunker had crumpled, but the rest was intact and the doorway was only partially blocked. Crawling through, Ryan looked out on a scene of devastation.
The picturesque school on the top of the hill had been flattened down to stumps. The bricks of the school were scattered down the western slope of the hill along with various less identifiable bits. Ryan saw a few survivors crawling out of bunkers or, in one incredible case, simply sitting up in the wreckage. But for all practical purposes the corps headquarters was gone. He wasn't sure what might have happened to the three division headquarters, but from his perspective it didn't really matter. The corps was for all practical purposes bound to rout, the only question was what he, personally, should do about that.
He looked down at the specialist who, having crawled out of the bunker was now perched on it, looking around at the devastation with an expression of interest on her face.
"What's your specialty . . ." He glanced at the nametag which read "Kittekut" and raised his eyebrows. "Kitkay? Kitta . . . ?"
"You have a problem with my name, Major?" the specialist yelled back with a grin. "It's Native American. It's pronounced Kit-a-kutt. Not, and I want to be clear about this, not Kittycat."
"Okay," Ryan answered bemusedly. "What the hell, my sergeant at Occoquan was named Leon . . ."
"I'm a clerk typist, sir," the soldier replied loudly. "You know, all the antimatter in that thing must not have gone up. Otherwise this bunker would have collapsed like a tinfoil hut."
"That's not usually the sort of thing that a clerk typist knows," Ryan pointed out. The motorpool fence had been shredded by the expanding shockwave so he walked around the gate and through a gap.
"I read a lot of manuals."
"Uh, huh. I guess that's why you made for the bunker when they started pounding the SheVa?"
"You betcha," she answered with a grin. "I helped build these things, the hell if I was gonna let 'em go to waste!"
"Well, if we're not all going to go to waste we need to beat feet," Ryan commented, striding down the hill.
"Where are you . . . we going?" she asked. "And shouldn't we be . . . I dunno, organizing the defenders or something?"
"Nope," Ryan said. "In just about five minutes it's going to sink in with most of the support units that the Posleen are coming and nothing's gonna stop 'em. When that happens they're going to rout. And that means that all the roads will be jammed."
He pulled open the door of the first reasonably intact Humvee and tried to start it. After he reset a breaker it cranked up.
"What we're going to do is head for the nearest ammo depot," he continued. "Along the way we're going to pick up about four more bodies. And then we're going to head for the hills."
"Like I thought," she said, getting in the other side. "Running away."
"Nope," he grinned. "Hills where roads get steep. Because what we're going to pick up at the ammo depot is all the explosives that will fit in this thing. . . ."
* * *
Mueller walked out of his quarters and looked down the valley as the first concussion of the space-based weaponry echoed up the mountains. He couldn't see the SheVa gun from his angle, but he did see the signature of its firing and the track of the "silver bullet" heading down range. Nonetheless it was fairly obvious a major attack was underway and he stroked his chin for a moment thinking about what their mission should be. The recon groups were pretty useless in a heavy assault. But these Posleen were acting out of character already by using the landers to assault the Wall.
He stood there for a moment as other NCOs started to filter out of the barracks until he saw the flight of Posleen flying tanks.
"AID," he said, holding his wrist up where the device could observe them. "Do you see those?"
Most of the group had moved out of sight to the right, presumably attacking the artillery park. But one group could be seen sweeping up and down in singles, apparently assaulting something on the east side of the valley.
"I do, Sergeant Mueller. Be advised, the target of those weapons is SheVa Fourteen. Given their weaponry and the number of passes, it is likely that they are going to penetrate its containment system."
"Map the corps forward areas," he said, glancing at the hologram. "Map probable destruction zone of SheVa catastrophic kill."
The results were not good; if . . . when SheVa Fourteen went, it would gut the corps.
"Oh, shit," he muttered. "Get me Sergeant Major Mosovich . . . and you'd better make sure General Horner is aware of this."
* * *
Horner looked at his own hologram and shook his head. He had, indeed, been apprised of the situation in the Gap by a call from Eastern Headquarters, and he had to admit that it looked rather bad. He recalled one of his favorite maxims for a moment like this, coined by one of the few really effective British generals of World War II, to the effect that things are never quite as good or bad as first reports indicate. In that case what had just happened in the Gap was simply a disaster rather than the end of the war.