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Tensalarial flapped his crest again and snarled. It was like something in Posleen was hard coded; when you got one with the sense to do something besides lead an oolt and charge the guns, they also started getting . . . cautious. The smartest Posleen of all seemed to be Kenstain, which he preferred not to consider too closely.
"Our . . . mission is to stop this so the landers can destroy it," Tensalarial said in response, with a tooth snap that was audible over the communicator. "We will perform that mission."
"Then shoot the tracks," Allansiar snarled in reply. "Not the body: that is where the fuel and weapons are that blow up. There is nothing to blow up in the wheels!"
"Very well," the Kessentai replied after a moment. "We shall shoot the tracks on the next pass."
"Lining up," Allansiar said. "I'll even get lower for that."
"Let us go in one behind the other," Tensalarial commented. "That way the ones behind can gauge their firing on the basis of the leader. I shall lead."
"Why not?" Allansiar said with a grunt. "You're not going to hit anything anyway."
Tensalarial ignored the jibe and turned the tenaral towards the ground, lining up the manual aiming reticle on the slowly moving treads. The groups had had little opportunity to practice firing before the assault and they were learning by trial and error that the rounds did not go where the aiming reticle was pointed. The reticle was computer generated, but the system was not an actual auto-aiming device; it was simply a heads-up-display of where Goloswin thought the target was going to be. Since all Posleen aiming was done with advanced targeting systems—which Goloswin had never bothered to reverse engineer—the tenaral were begi
Stooping like a falcon, the Kessentai began dropping plasma rounds all over the landscape.
* * *
The target recognition system for the Meemies was sometimes a bit messed up and the radar integration system often malfunctioned. But the manual firing system was mostly taken from a standard M-1 Abrams design and worked rather well.
In this case a laser swept the sky until it got a return, estimated the range, found it to be functionally close to the one that Captain Chan had keyed in manually and began a series of calculations. It checked wind-speed, air temperature, humidity and whether the StormPack had been previously fired. Then it ran a rapid series of calculations and adjusted the aiming point appropriately. And the unknown programmer who had originally designed the system had heard of parallax.
For Captain Chan it was simplicity in itself. She pointed the red circles at the descending tenaral and waited until they flashed green. This took approximately half a second. Then she flipped the thumb selector from "safe" to "full," closed her eyes, clamped down on the firing lever and held on for dear life.
* * *
"Holy shit!" Pruitt called. He had flipped to a screen where he could watch the fu
"Nah," Major Mitchell said, flipping momentarily to the same screen. "That's what they always look like."
The tanks appeared to have exploded. The air above and to the side was nothing, but smoke, fire and smoking plastic shredding itself on the dense air. Somewhere in there, presumably, were people and functional vehicles, but it seemed impossible that they could have survived. After only a few seconds the firing stopped and the air started to clear, revealing the Meemies, apparently undamaged.
"Holy shit," Pruitt repeated. Then: "We got to get one of them, sir!"
* * *
Gle
The Abrams was never designed to mount the MetalStorm 105. The original Abrams tank was designed to fire a single 105mm ca
"Oh, gee, and miss all this fun?" Captain Chan said, rubbing her shoulder where it had banged into a stanchion.
"Clear sky, captain," the gu
Chan popped the commander's cupola and looked around. The air was still hazy with propellant gasses and the smoke from the thousands of bits of plastic littering the ground and the upper deck of the track. But there clearly were no tenaral in the sky. That didn't mean it was clear.
"All Meemies," she called, dropping back into the tank. "Back off the ridgeline!" She switched frequencies and called the SheVa. "Hey! Big Boy! You've got company south of Dillard."
* * *
"I hate humans," Orostan growled as the link from the tenaral went dead.
"So you have said," Cholosta'an pointed out.
"What were those things?" the oolt'ondai asked. "Esstu?"
"I'm still working on that," the Kessentai admitted. "There is reference to them in combat, but not against flying tenar; they are usually used for ground defense."
"Well, we will deal with them after the big gun," Orostan said with a flap of his crest. The oolt'ondai looked at his battlefield schematic and snarled. "Enough of this playing with them, bring us up so we can engage."
* * *
"Pruitt, two rounds," the commander reminded his gu
"That's all Bun-Bun needs," the gu
"Major," Indy called over the intercom. "I've got the turbines up to speed; I cut a few corners, but it looks like we're going to be okay. Anyway, we're up to full power."
"Great," Mitchell said. "Reeves, when Pruitt fires, back down the ridge. We've always moved next. This time, back down then wait for my word. We'll pull right back into position then head north of Franklin for resupply."
"Yes, sir," the driver said, checking as his telltales went back into the green. "We're up to full power."
"Okay, engage."
Reeves engaged the drive and threw the multiton tank up the 30-degree slope, leveling it out at the top.
"Oh . . . shit," Pruitt whispered; all the landers were up. In the distance he heard the whine of turbines as Reeves cranked the power until the SheVa vibrated with it.
"Target," Major Mitchell called. Reacting to a training deeper than instinct he had swiveled the gun and laid it on the lower portion of one of the two C-Decs in sight.
"TARGET," Pruitt confirmed. "C-Dec, nine klicks!"
"Confirmed," Mitchell said.
"ON THE WAY!" he called, slamming against his straps as Reeves threw the tank into reverse.
"Miss!" Mitchell called as the round tracked under the maneuvering C-Dec. "TARGET, ON THE WAY!"
The second round, fired from the commander's console, entered the ship on the lower quadrant just as the return fire from the ships erupted around the retreating SheVa. The giant tank still managed to slip away as the top of the hill erupted upward under the flailing of the guns. Despite the heavy fire, the detonation was evident and the fire cut down almost immediately as the hills to either side were lit in nuclear fire.
"NICE SHOT, SIR!" Pruitt caroled. One of the Lampreys was just visible over the ridge they were descending; it was out of control and just as they dropped out of sight it slammed into the side of High Knob. The explosion had easily been the largest so far. "EAT ANTIMATTER, YOU ALIEN FREAKS!"