“They can’t have been here more than two days,” KC continued, a new hint of hope in his voice. “Maybe less.”
“Tranquility said the ones they saw seemed to know what they were doing,” Morgan pointed out.
“Maybe all the competent ones went somewhere else,” KC said. “Maybe we got the runts of the litter. If they really don’t know what they’re doing, it could be the Winter War all over again.”
“The what?” Morgan asked.
“The Winter War,” KC said, his voice slipping into what Pappy had heard the other miners privately refer to as his professor mode. “Back in 1939 the Soviets rolled into Finland with an eye toward creating a buffer zone in case Leningrad came under attack. They had the numbers and the guns, but they had no idea what they were doing. They didn’t know how to fight in snowy forests, their winter clothing was ridiculously inadequate, and their olive-drab tanks and khaki uniforms stuck out in the snow like marker paint.”
“They’d also lost most of their officer corps in Stalin’s 1937 purge,” Pappy murmured. Over a century later, the lessons and tactics of the Winter War were still part of the SAS curriculum.
“Don’t know about the Uey officers, but that’s the Uey forces, all right,” KC said. “Charging onto our turf with no idea what they’re doing.”
“Maybe,” Pappy said. “You do know the Finns lost that war, right?”
“But they held out for a hell of a long time,” KC countered. “I’m just saying we’re starting out with the same home-court advantage the Finns did. And it’ll be a hell of a lot harder for the Ueys to bring in more troops than it was for the Russians.”
“Maybe,” Pappy said, pitching his voice for caution. Enthusiasm and confidence were necessary. Overconfidence could get you killed. “Morgan, you got them yet?”
“The minesweepers, yes,” Morgan confirmed. “The tank should be visible any minute. You should probably get your bombs ready.”
“Right,” Pappy said. “One at a time. I’ll load mine first; KC, keep an eye on them. Give me a shout if they do anything.”
He dropped into a squat, feeling a small and slightly irrational sense of relief as he temporarily left the enemy’s line of fire—small, because he would eventually have to stand up again; irrational, because there were such things as mortars. A small hop took him to the rear of his foxhole and his catapult.
The device was hardly a work of art. Still, for all the hasty welds and obvious scrap-heap sourcing of some of the bracing gear, it seemed functional enough. Its grooved ramp was about a meter long, its launch angle adjustable with a hand crank, and was coated with solid lubricant that would send the projectile on its way unhindered. The driving force was provided by a tank of compressed nitrogen, which fed into an intermediate chamber for more precise gauging of launch speed and power, and had a dual nozzle that could also take one of Pappy’s spare oxy tanks in a pinch. A printout of launch angles, compression levels, and range had been attached to the back near the compression gauge where it could be quickly consulted. Pappy had seen better, but he’d also seen far worse.
It was the projectiles themselves that concerned him.
He picked up the canister. While it was about the same size and shape as an oxy tank, it was considerably heavier. Heavy enough that he probably would have strained his back if he tried lifting it in Earth gravity. The shell was one of the many ceramics that the Loonies used in building, encased in one of the fracture webs miners like KC used to break off and fragment particularly useful rock outcroppings. Inside, mixed with some kind of propellant, was compressed vacuum cement of the sort used to repair damaged domes, vehicle frames, and pretty much anything else that didn’t need to move.
Which, of course, was the whole point of using it here.
If it worked.
“Morgan, you worked with the people who put these things together, right?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “But a friend of mine did, and I saw her report.”
“And they tested everything, right?”
“They tested all the components,” she said. “But they couldn’t do a field test. There isn’t a vacuum chamber big enough.”
“You’re joking, right?” Pappy growled. “The whole damn Moon is a vacuum chamber.”
“Which the Ueys are watching like hawks.”
Pappy winced. “Of course they are,” he said. “Stupid of me.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll work,” Morgan assured him. “They worked fine in the simulations.”
“You want to know what we called simulations in the SAS?”
“Probably not.”
“More soldiers,” KC said. “Three—whoa. You seeing that?”
“I’m seeing it,” Pappy said grimly.
Three more soldiers had appeared around the ridge, walking abreast about twenty meters behind the minesweepers. Unlike those first two, though, this group had their MP5s up and ready in hand. Also unlike the first pair, they held clear plastic riot shields in front of them, rectangles about a meter wide and a meter and a half long.
“Uh-oh,” Morgan murmured.
“Agreed,” Pappy said. The key to their strategy was to blind the Ueys with paintball rounds into their faceplates and viewports. With those shields in hand, they could take a lot of paint before their vision was even slightly impaired.
“Don’t worry about it,” KC said. “We’ve got other fish to fry, like you Brits say.”
“We never say that.”
“Well, you should,” KC said. “Wait just a second . . . let ’em come around the ridge . . .”
And then, there it was, rolling around Waffle Ridge: the Uey tank.
At first glance it didn’t look like much. It was a Dunsland 400-series, rolling along on eight sets of sponge-rubber, independently axled tires. The body was about fifteen meters long and three high, with a submarine-style sail/conning tower rising from the main body a couple of meters behind the bow. The driver would be there, along with the observation and navigational gear.
Dunslands had been the workhorse vehicle early in Luna’s history, the first group of them shipping when there were only three domes instead of the current thirteen. But over the years, as the flaws in the design and operating systems had become apparent, they’d been phased out and replaced by vehicles of the Loonies’ own design. The few Dunslands still in service had mostly been converted to hauling ore in places where mass drivers weren’t practical.
A point that hadn’t been lost on KC. “Look at that,” he said scornfully. “We’re being attacked by museum pieces.”
“Probably all they had down there they could grab,” Pappy said. “They haven’t needed to make rovers for us since the Quatermass II debuted.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t just commandeer some of ours,” Morgan murmured.
“What, and have them delivered with sabotage and booby traps already in place?” Pappy shook his head. “They’re not that stupid.”
“At least they picked a wheeled rover instead of a tracked one,” KC said. “That could have been awkward. But you see up there on the sail? Those are the fish I was talking about.”
“I see them,” Pappy acknowledged. On both sides of the Dunsland’s sail the Ueys had welded one-man personnel cages, where watchful soldiers stood with Kord 9P150 light machine guns swivel-mounted on the front rims of their cages. Neither man carried a sidearm that he could see, but both had spare 150-round canisters secured to their utility webbing. Like the minesweepers and the shieldbearers, both were wearing torso vests.
But unlike the shieldbearers, their faceplates were presented nakedly to the sun and the harsh lunar environment.
And to the Loonies’ paintguns.
“So I’m thinking we go for those sail gunners first,” KC said. “Then the Dunsland’s viewports, then the minesweepers. How’s that sound?”
“Let’s do the minesweepers before the viewports,” Pappy said. “We don’t want the Dunsland stopping short just because the driver can’t see. By
that same token, Morgan, they might speed up when the shooting starts, so be ready.”
“Got it,” Morgan said. “Looks like they’re going to hug the Waffle.”
Pappy nodded. They would have seen the other side of the ridge on their approach, confirmed that no one was lurking there, and now they would hug this side of the low ridge to guard against any last-minute attacks along that flank. “Just bear in mind that they could suddenly go into a zigzag if their commander smells a rat.”
“I’ll be ready,” Morgan assured him.
“Are we done talking yet?” KC said. The earlier amusement was gone from his voice, leaving just the original stress behind. Maybe he’d taken a good look at those Kord 9P150 machine guns.
“Almost ready,” Pappy soothed. “Let’s let them get just a little closer. When I give the word, you take the minesweepers, I’ll take the machine gunners.”
“Got it.”
Moving slowly and carefully, Pappy set his paintgun’s barrel on the edge of the foxhole, leaning down so he could look through his scope. He’d made sure the team’s spacesuits were painted with the best lunar-rock camo Hadley’s artists and geologists could come up with, and their faceplates had been done up in a crosshatch that should provide similar protection without interfering too much with their vision.
But the guns themselves were too narrow for proper silhouette-breaking methods, and while they’d been painted to match the local whites and grays the result was far from perfect. Given time, Pappy could have worked up some kind of shroud to do the trick, but time had been of the essence. Additional refinements would have to wait for Round Two.
Assuming, of course, the citizens of Hadley Dome survived Round One. Right now, that was still up in the air.
The Dunsland and its escorts were moving closer. Pappy peered through his scope, lining up the crosshairs on the left-hand machine gunner, reminding himself firmly that he’d already pre-ranged the scope for exactly this distance. Lunar drop was considerably less than on Earth, and of course there was no windage to worry about. All of that made targeting much simpler.
But the Dunsland was two hundred meters away. At that distance, even a space-suit faceplate was a damn small target, not to mention the shot he was actually going for.
He took a quick moment to check his partners. To his left, KC was peering through his scope, his gloved finger resting on the trigger. To his right, Morgan was likewise watching the Ueys’ approach.
Unlike her companions, though, her hands were nowhere near her gun’s trigger. Instead, she was balancing a small relay box on her left palm, its protective cover open, her right forefinger resting on one of the two toggle switches inside.
It was the one piece of this plan that absolutely depended on a functioning radio, and Pappy sent up a quick prayer that the Ueys weren’t jamming all Loonie transmissions just for the hell of it.
He turned his attention back to his own scope. Almost time . . . almost . . .
Time. “Fire,” he said quietly. Holding his breath, he gently squeezed the trigger. There was a brief kick against his shoulder, hardly even noticeable through the heavy material and air pressure of his suit . . .
And a sudden blossom of red exploded across his view.
Not onto the machine gunner’s faceplate. Faceplates were the obvious target, and even an untrained miner like KC could hit that. Former SAS elites, on the other hand, should be held to higher standards.
And so Pappy watched in satisfaction as the thick red paint hit, congealed, and—hopefully—jammed the firing mechanism of the machine gunner’s Kord. The rest of the paint spattered harmlessly across the gunner’s torso.
“Got him!” KC crowed.
“Great,” Pappy said. The scope image abruptly blurred as the soldier swung his weapon around—“Now duck!”
Leaving his gun stretched out across the ground, Pappy bent his knees and dropped down out of sight. Just in time; a fraction of a second later the ground around his foxhole began exploding with dust and rock chips as the Ueys opened fire.
It was a curious sensation, watching the barrage take place without even a breath of an accompanying bang-bang-bang. His own shot hadn’t been so jarring, gut-level speaking—paintball guns were pretty quiet even on Earth, and it had been easy to get used to the loss of that small chuff up here. But Kords and MP5s were horrendously noisy things, and all the three-shot bursts popping soundlessly around him gave him the eerie sensation of suddenly having been struck deaf.
Which made Morgan’s sudden voice in his ear both jarring and a welcome relief. “Here they come,” she called. “Pappy? They’re almost there.”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Pappy said. Bracing himself, he eased carefully up again. The potshots were still coming, though the sheer ferocity of that initial response had faded as the Ueys apparently decided they were wasting ammo. It was a risk to show himself, but he needed to see this.
He made it back to viewing height without anyone putting a round through his helmet. Getting a grip on his gun, he refocused the scope on his earlier target.
One glance at the soldier fumbling with the Kord’s firing mechanism was all he needed to confirm that the paintball had at least temporarily put the weapon out of action. Smiling to himself, he lowered the scope to the tank’s front wheels.
The Dunsland had sped up, just as he’d warned it might, and was lumbering toward the innocent-looking crack in the ground where he and Morgan had set their trap. “Okay, get ready,” he said. He and Morgan had examined the undercarriages of every vehicle that fit the description of Tranquility’s observers, and he had no doubt that Morgan could do this without any help from him. But he’d been in enough high-pressure situations to know that having someone standing beside you, even figuratively, was an immense psychological help. The Dunsland rolled over the crack . . .
At Morgan’s electronic command, the crack erupted into a spray of compressed nitrogen and multiple coils of monofilament line. Even as the cloud of gas dissipated the tank rolled squarely into the floating loops, its motion tangling them around the wheels, the axles, and into every angle and nook of the driving motors.
And with an abruptness that would probably have been accompanied by an ear-wrenching screech if the vehicle had been on pavement on Earth, the Dunsland ground to a halt.
“We got it,” Morgan breathed, sounding immensely relieved and vaguely surprised. “It worked—”
She broke off as another volley of gunfire spattered silently around the foxholes. “Down,” Pappy ordered as he again ducked.
This time, though, a single salvo seemed to be all the Ueys were willing to spend. The bullets stopped flying; carefully, Pappy raised his head.
His hope, between the paintballs and the monofil coils, had been to stop the Uey advance. For the moment, at least, they’d succeeded. The two minesweepers were heading back toward the Dunsland, one of them leading the other by the hand. The rearmost turned his head slightly, and Pappy could see the bright red splotch from KC’s paintball neatly covering his faceplate. The machine gunner whose Kord Pappy had disabled was still trying to clear it, while his partner on the other side of the sail kept his weapon trained on the foxhole area. Even through the bulky suits there was a stiffness to their stances that showed their frustration and anger. The three shieldbearers had also retreated a few paces and were now standing shoulder to shoulder a few meters in front of the Dunsland, also facing their Loonie opponents. The Dunsland’s rear side hatch had swung open, and a half dozen more Ueys were climbing awkwardly out onto the surface. Like the shieldbearers, they carried MP5s at their sides; unlike those other troops, they were carrying tools instead of shields.
“Are those wire cutters?” KC asked.
“Yes,” Morgan confirmed. She did something with her scope, probably zooming in a bit more. “A couple of them have small torches, too.”
Pappy smiled tightly. For all the good that would do them. From the strength of the monofil the Ueys clearly assumed it was wire, a
nd were preparing their counter accordingly.
Only the stuff now wrapped tightly around their axles was probably too thin for standard wire cutters, and the synthetic material had a melting point that was almost certainly higher than that of the tank’s driving gear. Most Loonies had had experience with the stuff getting where it wasn’t wanted, and knew the only efficient way to deal with it was a specifically designed solvent.
But like most things about Luna and the Loonies, the people who ran United Earth didn’t have a clue about that.
“Looks like I’m up,” KC said briskly. “Pappy?”
“Go,” Pappy said. “But watch yourself—the man with the working machine gun looks seriously annoyed. Morgan? What’s his range?”
“One hundred eighty-three meters,” Morgan said.
“One-eighty-three, got it.” KC ducked out of sight.
The newcomers from the back of the tank were clustered around the front now, working no doubt industriously at the snarled axles. Pappy shifted his scope to the shieldbearers, still holding their ground in front of the tank, then at the machine gunners standing vigil above.
Should he try to lob in a few more paintballs while KC finished getting his bomb ready? There was no point in shooting at the shieldbearers—their shields were being held high enough to protect their faceplates. The repair crew, for the most part, had their backs to him, and were furthermore blocking any shot into the axle mechanism. He didn’t know if the paint would do anything to the heavier-duty gear there, but with the monofil in place there was no point in wasting ammo. Besides which, every shot he or the others took risked the Ueys zooming in on their exact locations.
But that remaining machine gunner was a tempting target, and well worth the risk of exposure. The soldier had his Kord leveled, which unfortunately put the firing mechanism out of Pappy’s reach, and in the man’s current semicrouch his shoulder and left arm were partially blocking his faceplate.
Still, most of the faceplate was visible. It was worth the risk, Pappy decided. Especially as it would provide some distraction until KC was ready—
“Bombs away!”
Battle Luna Page 3