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Mitchell checked the cross-linked information and then nodded. "Load."
There was a series of thunks as the SheVa switched out the anti-lander round that was "up the spout" and loaded the explosive round.
"UP."
"Kittekut, send the nuke warning."
CHAPTER 38
Near Balsam Gap, NC, United States, Sol III
1937 EDT Sunday September 27, 2009 ad
Sergeant Buckley had come to the conclusion that there were worse things than being in a suit.
After being electrocuted he had awakened in the hospital in the middle of the Posleen attack. Getting out, finding clothes, weapons and transportation had been interesting. Then, he had barely started on his long journey when a SheVa round had terminated a Posleen Lamprey less than two thousand meters away.
The good news was that the lander didn't explode.
The bad news was that it fell in a sewage retention pond.
The next thing Buckley knew, the contents of the pond had been scattered over a wide, and in the future extremely fertile, area. An area that included the Humvee he was, with the occasional twitch, driving.
He had survived, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. And, unfortunately, the next Lamprey that was hit blew up rather spectacularly.
He had come to lying in the Little Te
Technically he was probably still a patient, but he didn't make any fuss about being handed a rifle. They'd even given him a "squad." All eight of the soldiers were clerks with an infantry military operational skill rating. The way that worked was that after going through training to be infantry, some desk jockey would grab them to push papers instead of carry a rifle. So the guys had been trained to be infantry, but only one of them had ever spent any time in the line.
He, and the one specialist with some line experience, made sure that all the clerks knew how to load and fire their weapons. Then he found some rations and they sat around waiting for somebody to get their thumb out of their butts. Hurry up and wait was all well and good, but the Posleen weren't all that far back; if whoever was in charge of this cluster-fuck—it looked like a captain which was just crazy, there must have been a brigade's worth of gear and perso
Then the rumor got around that the main exit had been cut off. He managed to get his guys to help quell the near riot that erupted, but it turned out it wasn't just a rumor this time; the Posleen really had cut off their escape route.
Then they got the word that most of the perso
The next thing he knew he and his squad were in the back of a Bradley headed up the road to the pass the Posleen had taken.
Now, he wasn't a coward by any stretch of the imagination. But he'd gotten a look at the map and taking that pass with the pitiful little force they had was just suicide.
They finally had a real meeting, where the lieutenant who was in charge of the Brads called all the squad leaders together and told them the plan, such as it was. The SheVa gun, probably the same one that had killed the Lamprey that blasted him into the drink, was going to fire a nuke into the pass. Then they would charge into the pass and clean up the survivors.
"It'll be easy," the lieutenant concluded. "All the Posties will be toasties from the nuke. We just have to secure it until the brigade on the other side makes it up the road."
Sarge Buckley had been beating around the Army since before the Posleen had been heard of and he knew when somebody was lying. "The check is in the mail" is nothing compared to "the trucks are on the drop zone." But the worst military cliché of them all had to be "the artillery is going to pound them flat then we'll just go in and paint the lines."
Buckley looked up as the radio in the track began to honk.
"NUKE WARNING. NUKE WARNING. TARGET COORDINATES: UTM 17 311384E 392292N. 100 K-T. THIRTY SECONDS!"
Life just got worse.
"FIFTEEN SECONDS. TEN . . ."
They were all go
* * *
Pruitt inhaled, then: "Initiate."
The area effect weapons had similarities to the anti-lander penetrators and differences. Since the gun remained a smooth-bore and the round therefore had to be fin-stabilized, they were discarding sabot. But they were thicker in cross section than the penetrators and flew at a lower velocity. Last, but not least, since they were not penetrators, they were made out of simple carbon steel. Since the metal they were made out of was going to be distributed as a fine dust, better to have it composed of materials the human body could metabolize.
The round flew out of the tube in a river of fire, dropped its sabots and headed for Balsam Gap.
* * *
The weapon detonated seventy-three hundred and twenty feet above sea level, two thousand feet above and just about one thousand feet to the northeast of the pass. They say that close only counts in hand grenades and hydrogen bombs, but in this case close didn't quite count. The fireball swooped down over the Posleen defenses, devouring the trees to either side and gouging out the sharp walls of the pass, especially on the eastern side. However, on the northern side of the pass, the expanding fireball was partially blocked and deflected by the shoulder of Balsam Mountain.
The Blue Ridge Parkway crossed over U.S. 23 at Balsam Gap. The overpass was heavily constructed and many of the Posleen defenses had been built underneath it for additional overhead cover from the expected artillery fire. While the antimatter warhead was very strong, it had been placed as a "perso
Furthermore, Posleen under the bridge were shielded from the thermal pulse and at least some of the radiation release. The result was that although the majority of the oolt'ondai had been swept away in the atomic fireball, a small, but very angry remnant survived.
* * *
Sergeant Buckley hefted his rifle as the Bradley gu
Which meant that actually getting them to fight was up to him. He never asked for this, but the stripes on his shoulder meant he had the responsibility. And he was going to, by God, discharge it.
He looked out the small porthole by him and considered the map. They were probably less than three hundred meters from the objective; he had a hard time telling from the terrain because everything had been so churned up by the nuke strike. But he was pretty sure they were just about on the straightaway for the gap.
He pulled out a magazine and waved it to get everyone's attention then inserted it in the magazine well. Riding with magazines in meant that some idiot was bound to lock and load. If somebody locked and loaded, they were bound to have an accidental discharge. To prevent that, before loading he had had them take out their magazines and clear their weapons. That way while they were waiting around and bored somebody wouldn't accidentally fire on full auto; he'd cleaned up a Brad where that happened and it wasn't pretty. Now they reversed the procedure, slipping in the magazines and pulling back their charging levers. In the dim light he had each of them show him that the weapons were on safe, then looked outside just as the Brad next to them ate a plasma bolt.