Now that he was in the groove it was time to do what he had trained for almost his whole life. It was an odd moment, he wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
"Yes, sir," Indy said, sliding into her seat and buckling in. "I've taken off the lockout; the lidar should be able to rotate and the guns move."
"I hate this mechanical monstrosity," Pruitt bitched, coming up through the hatch and dogging it down. "We need a bigger engineering crew. Or Riff."
"Engineering?"
"Go," Indy said. "Everything's green."
"Driver?"
"Up," Reeves said. "We are ready to roll."
"Gunner?"
"Up," Pruitt said, sliding into his own chair and slapping on the straps. "Bun-Bun is in the green and ready to kick Posleen."
Mitchell rotated his shoulders and flipped his commander's screens live. "Blow the camo, and let's see what we're in for."
* * *
"Tulo'stenaloor, this defensive area is reduced and the humans are in flight," Orostan said. "The support companies have moved up and are gathering what thresh and weapons are salvageable from the pass."
This latter was another innovation. Usually individual Kessentai would have their forces scavenge as they moved. Tulo'stenaloor had put a stop to that; no matter how efficiently a unit did it, it tended to slow them down. Units moving through the Gap had to move steadily, not stop to loot. So special units under cosslain and Kenstain had been detailed to clean up the battlefield.
"The movement through the Pass is going well. We're going to move out to our secondary objectives."
"Agreed," Tulo'stenaloor said over the circuit. "It has gone very well."
"Losing most of the tenaral and two ships surely is not 'very well,' " Orostan protested.
Tulo'stenaloor flapped his crest in humor. "I always forget; you've never fought humans before. This was easy ; fear what is up the valley. The metal threshkreen will be here soon, of that I'm sure. And other humans will do things to torment you as you proceed. Ignore it; stick to the mission and don't get bogged down by resistance."
"I will keep that in mind," Orostan said, gesturing to his communications monitor to give the orders to move up valley. "Nonetheless, we shall prevail."
"Oh, yes," Tulo'stenaloor said. "We shall. Nothing can stop us now."
* * *
"I get six landers up, sir," Pruitt called. "Five Lampreys, one C-Dec. I don't know where the rest are." This would be his first "warshot." He had fired the fixed simulator at Roanoke, where the impact area was all of eastern Virginia. But he'd been told it was different with actual penetrators and in the SheVas; the mobile guns, for all their immense size, were much more susceptible to the shock of firing.
"Probably on the ground," Major Mitchell said, tapping his screen and highlighting the appropriate unit. "Hit this one and this one," he said, flipping them so they highlighted. "Then we get the hell out of Dodge."
"Yes, sir," Pruitt said, laying the gun on a C-Dec almost directly over the former Mountain City. He was nervous on several levels. They were about to make themselves a gigantic target and the death of SheVa Fourteen had been far too noticeable to think that they were invulnerable. And keeping them alive was going to be about hitting these damned maneuvering ships, not the easiest thing in the world. And then there was firing his first warshot. So, as he waited about a half a second until the C-Dec outlined in green his mouth was dry and his palms were sweating. But he was doing his drill and going to by God let them know that Bun-Bun had arrived. "TARGET!"
"Confirm!"
"ON THE WAAAAAAAAAY!" the gunner called and squeezed the trigger. The result felt like being inside a massive bell that had just been hit by a giant. The command center was heavily sound-proofed, but the result of firing wasn't so much "sound" as a vast presence that rang through their bodies, shook the massive structure of the tank like a house made of straw and vibrated every surface. It was the most overwhelming, frightening and invigorating feeling he had ever experienced; like he truly was controlling Shiva, the God of Destruction.
"Target!" Major Mitchell called as the lander stopped in midair and dropped like a stone; that was going to make a nice monument once it cooled in a few years. He laid his aiming reticle on the Lamprey over the western valley. "Second target!"
"TARGET!"
"Confirm!"
"ON THE WAAAY!"
* * *
Cally ducked into the tunnel and headed back. The tunnel was cut out of the heart of the mountain behind the O'Neal household. When the first Michael O'Neal had settled these hills, he had been just another fortune seeker in the gold rush. He quickly determined two things; that he could make more money selling moonshine to the other miners than by mining himself, and that having a bolt hole to escape from the revenue agents was a good thing.
Subsequent generations had taken the lessons of the first Michael O'Neal to heart and the bolt hole had, from time to time, been expanded, improved and restocked. The tunnel ran back to a mineshaft that was the center of the complex. Another tunnel ran back to the house, connected through the basement, and three other tunnels ran off to various exits; when Papa O'Neal had complained about no bolt hole he had been speaking from experience.
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!"