Страница 119 из 169
«Just in case, you might want to go through buttoned up, though,» he joked.
«Yea verily,» shouted Abrahamson. He waved to the civil engineers ma
«Okay, tell 'em the gates are moving back,» he yelled and switched to intercom. «Move us up to the entrance,» he said as he hit the switch to drop him into the belly of the beast.
* * *
As the gates rolled back they revealed an alien world. The artillery still falling in the bottom churned an indescribable stew of yellow Posleen corpses blended indiscriminately with the shattered brick of the former buildings. There was no living thing in sight. The hammer of the artillery combined with the fire of the infantry had done what practically never happened in battles: the combination had killed all of the enemy. Even in the most intense battles of World Wars I and II there had been a few survivors. Not here. The slaughter of the Posleen in Schockoe Bottom had been efficient, remorseless and complete.
«Pull forward slowly a hundred meters,» he said over the intercom. «Then stop and wait for the squadron to get on line.»
«Yea, though I ride through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil,» said Private First-Class Mills, the tank's gu
«For I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley,» laughed the colonel, ending the military version of the psalm.
«Amen,» whispered Private Hulm, the driver. The young private was as stu
The surface of Fourteenth Street was coated in a layer of slime and the rubbercoated tracks of the behemoth threw up a fine spray that looked like orange mud. With the exception of the occasional shattered carcasses of God King saucers, there were no obstacles. The occasional nearly intact Posleen corpse was ground beneath the treads of the tank without notice or comment. The seventy-ton armored juggernaut didn't even lurch.
PFC Mills swung the turret to the side. «Target. Moving saucer.»
The colonel checked his repeater display by reflex. The saucer was skewed to one side, crabbing to the north and out of the firesack. As soon as it left the overwhelming haze it would be a target for the snipers dotting the towers, but it also could be a threat.
«Confirmed,» said the colonel. «Engage co-ax.»
«Roger, co-ax,» responded the gu
The M-1E was a modification of the venerable Abrams main battle tank. Designed for fighting the Posleen, it had improved frontal armor and thermal damping to make it more survivable when hit by hypervelocity missiles and plasma ca
The Russians, their tank markets faced by overwhelming air threats, had modified their tanks to double as antiaircraft platforms. They had mounted a twenty-three millimeter ca
The Americans had looked at the idea and scoffed. Until the coming of the Galactics. The Posleen depended on mass assaults, but their weapons were also phenomenal. A conventional platform to combat them would have to be able to survive plasma and hypervelocity missiles but still be able to kill large numbers of troops. Rather than try to develop an entirely new platform, the army had taken the Russian idea and improved it.
On each side of the turret of the M-1E was a pod of four 25mm Bushmaster ca
The gu
The Bushmaster ca
«Target eliminated.»
* * *
The gu
The artillery had stopped as promised and Colonel Abrahamson decided to pop the hatch and look around. The alternative was staying inside, and the atmosphere couldn't be any worse outside.
It was. The stench of the Posleen increased five-fold as he raised himself out the hatch, but he controlled his desire to heave and looked around. The squadron was spreading out and he was happy that he had talked the colonel into the earlier reco
Now the unaccompanied tanks spread out into an extended V formation without a hitch, aligning on their pe
No, this was a straightforward heavy cavalry charge: Run out, lower lances, hit the barbarians and charge back through the gates. The barbarians always chased after you. But the general had better have everybody off the Mayo Bridge when they came back. Anybody in Walter Abrahamson's way was going to be paste.
The radio crackled. «Bravo troop, in position.»
«Charlie troop in position.»
«Alpha, rrready to rock-and-rolll.»
He smiled. The Alpha commander was a bit of a personality, but he knew his business. Abrahamson stopped noticing the stench as the moment came upon him. He looked through the haze towards the distant and unseen enemy and nodded his head. «Roger,» he said over the radio. «Move forward to phase-line Shenandoah. And may God defend the right.»