Hell's Faire lota-4 Page 17

  “And what’s wrong with that, sir?” Mitchell asked.

  “She’s the one that carried the lead battalion this far. Or, rather, she’s the one that ended up carrying it this far,” the general said with a sigh. “I’ve got more colonels relieved than still in command and the ones that are in command… I’m going to end up relieving most of them.”

  “So she gets to carry the spear some more?” Mitchell said doubtfully. “It’s your division, General.”

  “It’s my division if I can get to the Gap in time,” the general corrected. “And I intend to do that. Not only to keep the division, but because that’s my mission. Now, how are we going to get there?”

  “As I said, sir,” Mitchell replied carefully. “After we assist your unit in clearing this valley, we’re going to have to go over the mountains.” He pointed to the west and shrugged. “That won’t be easy, but we’ll get it done. At that point, however, we’ll be out of contact for all practical purposes; the trail we leave won’t be traversable by most of your division. We’ll be especially cut off since we don’t have secure communications.”

  “As to that.” The general opened up the sample case and extracted a small folder. “This is your Communications and Electronics Operating Instructions for communicating with my units. Actually, it’s only good for communicating with the division headquarters. I’ll try to get you a CEOI for Glennis’ battalion before you go into action. But in the meantime use this to maintain commo.”

  “Sir,” the colonel said delicately. “We don’t know how far into our commo security the Posleen have dug…”

  Simosin smiled thinly and shook his head. “This isn’t ‘our’ commo security, by which I mean it’s not from Ground Forces. I’ve carried that around since shortly after Fredericksburg. An officer in General’s Horner’s staff wrote the code but I ran the program on my own computer, one never connected to a network.” He tapped the briefcase again and chuckled grimly. “Most people just thought I was crazy, but I always knew there would be a day that it would come in handy.”

  Mitchell looked at the sheets in his hand and shrugged. “So this is clean?”

  “As clean as human technology can make it,” the general replied. “I want you ready to move in forty-five minutes. I think it will take Captain LeBlanc a little longer than an hour to get ready, but not much. I’ll signal you when the time comes.”

  “We’ll be there,” Mitchell said.

  “Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” Pruitt said with a chuckle. “Once more unto the breach.”

  * * *

  Elgars raised her head at the racket of fire from the ridgeline. “Problems.”

  “No shit,” Mueller replied, breaking into a run. The fire was coming from well off the line to the cache. “Who is that?”

  “Cally,” Wendy said, trotting right behind him. “It has to be.”

  “That’s not where the children are, though,” Shari said, her face strained. They had crossed the open area around the former farmstead and were up into the fallen timber behind. In the two passages through the area, and with the help of Sunday’s team, they had partially cleared a path. But it was tortuous and slow going.

  “The big problem is that she’s way the fuck over there,” Mosovich said, gesturing to the west. “And that bomb is coming in any minute.”

  They reached the ridgeline and Mosovich tried to get some idea where the firing was coming from. But it had died down and in the hills with the echoes he could get no sure direction.

  “Shit. AID, get me Major O’Neal.” He looked at Elgars and shook his head. “We have to get that nuke stopped. Or at least slowed down.”

  * * *

  “No.”

  Mosovich stared at the AID for a moment in shock. “Sir, we’re talking about Cally.” He looked around the outer cache and shook his head. “We can find her and retrieve her in no more than an hour or so.”

  “Sergeant Major, have you taken a look at the operational situation on the eastern seaboard?” O’Neal asked.

  “No, sir, I haven’t,” Mosovich replied angrily. “But we’re talking about Rabun Gap.”

  “So am I, Sergeant Major. There’s now an incursion headed for Sylva. That has the division that is coming in to support us cut off. I don’t know how they got through the defenses up that way but with everything else going on I’m not surprised. There are incursions over the Blue Ridge in Virginia as well; Staunton is toast and so are the SheVas that were under construction around it. The Ten Thousand is getting pushed back into a pocket. We’re talking about a full-scale breakout in the Shenandoah. Horner should be using this nuke there, but he’s chosen to use it here. Care to consider why?”

  “Because if you can hold out for another few hours, the SheVa will get here,” Mosovich said, expanding his tactical map. “But not if it’s got heavy opposition.”

  “Bingo,” Mike replied. “If the SheVa can plug the gap, and it will do it by demolishing it and then parking if it has to, we can fly out to another hopeless battle. But we can’t do that if we don’t have this nuke, here and while we can still catch most of the Posleen before they deploy against the SheVa. Once it reaches Franklin it’s in range and it can scratch our backs all the way in. But we need this nuke, now, actually about an hour ago. So, no, I’m not going to stop it for another hour, or forty-five minutes, or even five minutes while you go look for one singular refugee civilian.”

  “Who is your daughter,” Mosovich said, coldly.

  “No shit Sherlock,” O’Neal replied, furiously. “I would very much like to care about what happens to my daughter, Sergeant Major, but I have a fucking world to save. And if that means that Cally dies, then Cally dies,” he finished.

  His reply had been cold and furious, but Mosovich heard the anguish buried in it and lowered his head into his hands. “Yes, sir.”

  “Get in the cache, Sergeant Major, close the door. Twenty minutes.”

  “He’s just writing her off?” Shari asked. “He can’t do that!”

  “He just did,” Mueller said, pushing the door closed.

  * * *

  “We can’t just sit out in this one, boss,” Stewart said.

  “I know,” O’Neal replied, looking around at the remnants of the battalion. “So we dig.” He bent down and started pulling dirt up out of the side of the mountain. “Bury the resupply then dig as far as you can, and fill it in behind you. What the hell, keep digging until the rounds hit.”

  In moments the entire battalion was busy burying itself in the earth.

  * * *

  “Billy, you have to take the Hiberzine,” Shari said softly.

  “I won’t!” the boy said, backing up to the cache wall. “I’m not going to do that again!”

  “Son, we all do,” Mosovich said reasonably. All of the other children, Wendy, Elgars and Mueller were already out, laid on mattresses across the spread-out remaining boxes. The biggest fear was that something would fall on them; if the walls of the cache failed nothing would save them anyway. And if anyone remained out of hibernation in the room the oxygen would quickly be used up; already Mosovich felt the air getting close and fetid. “There’s not enough air in here for us to stay awake.”

  “I’m not going to do it,” the boy said stubbornly, shaking his head.

  Shari’s face was strained and tired but just as determined. “Everyone’s going under this time, Billy. Even me.” She shifted to the side and spread her empty hands wide. “You just have to trust me. Somebody will come.”

  “I don’t want to,” Billy repeated, trying not to whine. “I can’t.”

  Mosovich waited until he was outside the boy’s peripheral vision and then struck like a viper, injecting him in the side of the neck. He caught him as he twisted and started to fall, laying him out carefully on the boxes.

  “Just us,” he said.

  “I guess so,” Shari said, lying down and taking Billy and Susie in her arms. “I don’t like this any more than he did,” she added, h
er face pinched.

  “Like any of us do,” Mosovich muttered, injecting her in the neck and watching as her face slackened. He replaced the disposable container in the injector then lay down next to Elgars, looking at the injector and then at his watch.

  “Oh, well, here goes nothing.”

  In another moment the cache was still.

  * * *

  “Well, Dr. Castanuelo, you’re sure this thing isn’t going to blow?”

  The control center for the experimental cannon looked like NASA. There were at least fifteen operators in the center, all of them busy monitoring various aspects of the gun. The weapon itself was mounted in a building the size of a large observatory placed at the edge of the UT campus and surrounded by fences keeping out the curious and suicidal. It had finally been loaded and now, with the ACS battalion resupplied, it was time to find out if Knoxville was going to disappear, or North Georgia.

  “Yes, sir,” the academic said. “Almost definitely.”

  “How reassuring,” President Carson said. “General, if you give us another hour we can have most of the region evacuated.”

  “In another hour one hundred thousand Posleen are going to pour through the Gap, Mr. Carson,” Horner replied. “Dr. Castanuelo, are you sure enough to push the firing button?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mickey replied.

  “Then do it.”

  Mickey flipped up the cover of the firing mechanism and sounded the preparatory warning. “Preparing to fire,” he announced over the intercom. He hit the controls to begin the liquid propellant cycling then turned the key activating system. Last he hovered his hand over the actual firing button. Then he screwed up his eyes and stabbed downward.

  Horner was amused to watch the reaction. He, himself, simply turned to the video cameras monitoring the event and watched it eyes open. He figured that if it was a screw-up, he’d never know it.

  * * *

  The gap they were crossing was not much larger than the SheVa was long so they ended up straddling the road, nearly three meters in the air.

  “This is not good for the frame,” Indy commented idly as the SheVa creaked and groaned its way from one hill to the next.

  “It’ll take it,” Kilzer replied. “We ran it through trials on things like this.”

  They all realized that they were just avoiding the thought of what they were about to do. The light of plasma and HVM fire could be seen sparkling all along the ridgeline and it was clear that, despite the fire of the MetalStorms and a hurricane of artillery, the Posleen were heavily massed on the other side of the slope. As soon as they crested the ridge, they would be the biggest target in sight.

  “Sir, I can’t get us hull down on this one,” Reeves said. “The slope’s wrong.”

  “Do what you can,” Mitchell replied.

  Reeves nodded his head and gunned the giant platform up the side of the ridge. As he did he could see the infantry pulling out of the defensive positions along the top. Some of them had trenches connecting them but mostly they were just foxholes and the defenders had to crawl out into fire to retreat. Some of them weren’t making it. And it was apparent that the Posleen were now firing from close range.

  “This is going to be tricky,” Mitchell muttered as the first MetalStorm opened up on the ridgeline. There was the usual storm of fire, but in this case most of it was clearing the ridgeline and dropping into the dead ground on the far side. “Crap, I was afraid of that.”

  Because of their height, the 40mm rounds had about a four-thousand-meter range. And they would arm within fifty meters. But the guns could only depress a few degrees below the horizon. Therefore the SheVa had a large zone around it in which the guns could not engage, depending on the MetalStorm and the angle at which the SheVa was at, that could range anywhere from five hundred to a thousand meters.

  The problem in taking the ridge was, therefore, two-fold. They would be a target to every Posleen in sight. But even worse, the ones that were close would have a free shot.

  “Colonel, this is Chan.” The MetalStorm commander had the toneless voice of the well trained who were in a very bad situation. “I can’t get the close ones and we can see them coming up the hill. The valley is… Look, sir, we’re talking Twenty-Third Psalm here. This is definitely the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kilzer muttered as the top of the SheVa crested the hill and the first plasma and HVM rounds began to ring on the armor. “Got it covered. For Bun-Bun is the baddest motherfucker in the valley.”

  “What?” Pruitt asked. For the first time he felt completely useless. His only job was managing the main gun, and there was nothing he could fire at in these circumstances.

  “Let them get in close,” the tech rep said. “I can’t do anything out at range, but in close we’re covered.”

  Finally the main gun, and the visual systems associated with it, crested the top of the hill and the view on the other side became apparent. And the comparative frenzy on the MetalStorm channels made sense.

  The artillery had shifted to create a curtain barrage all along the front. The sun had begun to set behind the mountains to the west and the purple flashes of variable-time artillery were a continuous ripple along the base of the ridge. But in the dying light the valley seemed to heave and ripple, as if covered in cockroaches. After a moment it was apparent that what it was covered in, from slope-edge to slope-edge, was Posleen. Thousands of them, tens, hundreds of thousands of them, all pressing forward to try to force their way over the ridges and through the Gap. And an increasing number of them were firing at the SheVa.

  As Mitchell watched another swath of destruction was cut by the MetalStorms. But as fast as the Posleen were cut down, the gaps were filled by the pressure from behind. And he could see the surviving centaurs picking up scraps of meat from their deceased fellows, and heavy weapons that had survived, and either storing them on their backs or passing them to the rear.

  “We’re not killing them, we’re just filling their larder,” he muttered.

  Another storm of fire came in and more of it was striking from the side, passing through the relatively light metal along the edge of the turret. Time to rethink and regroup.

  “Major Chan, maintain maximum sustainable fire on all targets in view,” he said. “Reeves, back us off the ridge. We need to get most of the hull and turret somewhere along here where the MetalStorms have an angle of direct fire but the rest of the gun is down.”

  “I’ll try,” the driver said, putting the tank in reverse with a glance at the map. “But I don’t see a good spot.”

  “Well, keep loo — ” Mitchell flinched as a massive boom echoed through the gun. “What the hell?”

  “Posties close!” Pruitt called as more bangs and booms echoed through the hull. “Left side front. A full company. I don’t know where they came from.”

  “Back us up, Reeve!”

  “Hang on, Colonel,” Kilzer said, touching a button. Another boom, much more massive than the first, shook the hull. “Problem solved.”

  “Holy shit!” Pruitt said, looking at the monitor. Mostly what could be seen was dust. But what was visible of the Posleen company looked like someone had pounded it with a giant meat mallet. “What in the hell was that?”

  “Claymore,” Kilzer replied. “There’s two on the front, two on the back and three on each side. It’s got six shots.”

  “Cool.”

  “That’s still not going to keep us alive down there,” Mitchell replied.

  “Sir, I’ve got an idea,” Reeves said, stopping the tank and spinning it in place.

  “Ouch,” Pruitt said with a laugh. “Did it hurt?”

  “Fuck you, Pru,” the driver, who was not noted for his intelligence, replied. He locked one track then threw the other into full drive, spinning up a roostertail of dirt and rocking the seven-thousand-ton gun sideways down the hill.

  “Ah, I know what you’re doing,” Kilzer said with a grin. “Watch it, though. You can get yourself
stuck as hell.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Mitchell said in a bemused voice. “What are you doing?”

  “He’s trying to dig in a fighting position,” Kilzer explained for the driver, who was repositioning the tank. “Dig out the upper side of the position by spinning the track in place.”

  And it appeared to be working. The friable stone of the hillside was shattering under the weight and power of the SheVa’s tracks and with each spin the upper side of the SheVa sank lower. After a moment Reeves spun the monstrous vehicle in place and moved some of the dirt over to create a wider spot, then went back to work.

  “Colonel, this is Chan,” the MetalStorm commander called. “We’ve got another group of leakers coming in along the eastern edge of the ridge. The infantry has reconsolidated on the far hill and is engaging them at long range, but they seem to be planning on closing with us. And they’re under my angle of fire.”

  “Let them close,” Mitchell replied. “Mr. Kilzer will be waiting for them.”

  “Yes, sir,” the major replied in a puzzled tone.

  “I’ll explain later,” Mitchell said. “How’s it looking from your angle?”

  “Smelly,” the major replied. “Glenn just threw up all over the compartment.”

  “How’s the angle of fire,” Mitchell replied with a grimace. Being on top of the SheVa when it went through these gyrations would not be fun.

  “Well if Reeves is looking for an excuse to stop putting us through this, I’ll give him one. We can see to fire and most of the turret is hull-down.”

  “Okay, Reeves, get a good position and hold it,” the colonel said. “Major Chan, concentrate fire on the zone from directly in front of us to the road. We want to keep them off of us but also open up a situation where the infantry can stage a breakout.” They still had monitors where they could see the valley and he shook his head. “Although I think that we might be being optimistic about that one.”