‘Good shooting, Oliver,’ Charles commented as an afterthought as he went back to watching the events unfold outside via the driver’s camera.
‘Anyone else get the feeling the cats just aren’t trying? I mean, okay, we’ve lost a tank, but resistance so far has been pitiful,’ said Oliver.
‘I know what you mean,’ Charles replied casually, ‘like a cat playing with a mouse. I’d expected us to have to fight for every inch of the way.’
‘Maybe they’re just trying to buy time!’ This was from Gloria.
‘But how much time do they need?’ Charles asked. Because he had positioned himself to see the monitors clearly, he found he had to move his head to look round them so he could see Gloria. ‘We’ve given them thirty hours already.’
‘Maybe they’re just uncoordinated,’ Oliver offered. ‘They’re only cats, after all.’
Once the wounded had been recovered from the battlefield, Charles gave his next order. ‘Okay, order the troops at the far end of the cul-de-sac to move in and destroy the car bomb. Tell them not to get too close. I don’t want any of them going up with it. Use rockets.’
Michael relayed the orders and then tried to watch the action via the satellite uplink. It gave a better overall view, but it wasn’t as clear a picture as that which one of the cameras gave. It seemed that everyone in the tank wanted to watch as the threat of the car bomb was removed. Everyone wanted to be ready for the anticipated bang! The car was soon being bombarded by many laser weapons, as well as a rocket or two. These troops hadn’t seen action yet today, and it seemed they all wanted a piece of the target. Then there was the explosion. After all the feeling of buildup, the actual bang was a bit of an anticlimax. Far from threatening to demolish any of the neighboring buildings or even leaving a crater in the middle of the street as the previous car bombs had, this explosion wasn’t even powerful enough to jolt the car more than a few inches from its original position.
‘It was a lure all the time,’ Gloria commented, the astonishment plain on her face.
‘Just enough explosives on board to show up on the scanner.’ Michael seemed just as surprised. ‘You have to hand it to them. I might have set it to be a full charge anyway, but maybe they didn’t have the stuff after the last car bomb attack.’
‘Maybe,’ Charles replied, unimpressed. He felt as if he was being toyed with, and he didn’t like it. ‘Or maybe they realized that if the bomb went off prematurely it would’ve taken a lot of them with it. Not that they don’t seem willing to sacrifice themselves.’
Charles waited while the image of the soldiers examining the wreckage of the bomb played out on the main screen, and then he added, ‘Okay, let’s go. Order the soldiers back to their respective trucks and tell them to get back into their rightful positions in the convoy. Once they are ready, order the advance.’
As Charles’ orders were being carried out and the two troop transports returned to their rightful place in the convoy, Tank Two, having finally caught up with the main convoy, made its way to the front. There was a bit of squeaking from the damaged wheel whenever the tank tried to maneuver, which it had to do to let the Med Unit and the troop transport past. When the convoy was underway again, it was Tank Two that led the way.
‘Do they have anything to report?’ Charles asked Michael as the convoy lurched into life.
‘Only that they think we made one hell of a mess of the road,’ Michael replied. He pointed at the way ahead.
The convoy continued on to Upminster. It was twelve minutes past eight as they passed the borders of the town. Upminster was one of the landmarks for the journey to Sou’nd because of the rail station there. The station was still part of the London Underground system and was linked by an overground rail network via Romford to Liverpool Street in London. It had also once been part of another rail network that had actually gone all the way through to Sou’nd and beyond. This had always been a very short line, though, and when the cats took over Sou’nd, causing the station to be closed down, the rest of the line just collapsed into obsolescence.
From here they could follow the route the old rail line had followed and get almost into the heart of Sou’nd without having to disrupt traffic too much on the way. Indeed, if they followed the rail lines, the cats might even lose track of the route they were taking because nothing from here on had to be specially closed down for their use. There would be one or two places where they would have to leave the tracks because the land that the rail lines had occupied had since been built on by housing estates or roads, but in most cases the rail had been left intact in the hope that one day, possibly when the threat of cats in Sou’nd was ended, it could be replaced and reopened.
They moved along the remains of the rail lines at a quick and steady pace; it wouldn’t be long now before they’d reach their goal. In most cases the rail itself had been removed, probably salvaged for the metal, but the imprint of the sleepers and a few signs of rust still remained. At an average speed of seventy miles an hour, they passed through the remains of the rail stations at West Horndon, Laindon, Basildon and Pitsea in no more than half an hour. Basildon rail station had been turned into a rail museum, whereas all that was left of the one at Laindon was half a broken sign and some rubble that had once been part of a platform.
The next station that had been on this line was Benfleet; however, the station had been built right in the center of the town rather than on the edge as in most cases, and the space had long since been reclaimed by the town. This meant that before they actually reached Benfleet itself the convoy would have to take to the streets again. This in itself wasn’t a problem; the streets of Benfleet were too close to Sou’nd for many people to live here comfortably, so the streets were rarely crowded with traffic as they had been back in the town’s heyday. Indeed, the whole town had the feeling that it had been redesigned as if it was part of a frontier town. There was even a high, thick wall facing across the fields towards the east. The walls wouldn’t stand against a quick blast from one of Charles’ tanks had he the intent to destroy it, but it had obviously been built more for psychological reasons than for practical ones. For one thing, there was a hole wherever a road passed through big enough for anything that might want to travel along that road, and there were no gates that could be closed to shut out the danger if it should loom up on the town. Secondly, and possibly most telling, the wall only protected the east side of the town. Any invaders would have no trouble just going round it if they had the need. And thirdly, not the whole town of Benfleet was behind the wall; the town was contiguous with the next town, Leigh, and many of the more eastern parts of Benfleet were actually on the wrong side of the wall.
Benfleet wasn’t on the front line with the cats of Sou’nd by a long way. There were still several miles to go before the convoy entered Sou’nd, but Benfleet was like a nexus between Sou’nd and London. If the cats were able to get out of Sou’nd, then they were almost certain to come this way on their trek towards London. Chances were, there was already a decently sized cat population in the town, and as they got closer to Sou’nd that ratio of human to cat would tip further and further in favor of the cats.
The wall was a problem. It was a logical place for the cats to arrange another ambush, and Charles was well aware of this fact. ‘Slow the convoy to forty and tell Tank Two to keep on its toes; I’m expecting the cats to make an appearance as soon as they pass through the wall.’
Then they were at the wall and Tank Two was passing through it without incident. Michael swiveled in his seat to face his commander a moment later. ‘Tank Two reports they have gotten through safely. They say there are a couple of buildings just beyond the wall, but only a couple of humans, and they are waving at us. It seems there’s no sign of any big weapons or, indeed, any cats. I think your expected attack isn’t going to come after all.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Charles replied, a little more relaxed, not realizing how much the anticipation of a threat had set him on edge. ‘Order all other v
ehicles to proceed through carefully. Let’s get to Sou’nd.’
Tank Three passed through the wall without a hitch, and next in line was Tank Four, Charles’ own vehicle. Once on the other side of the wall he could see for himself just how calm and serene the landscape was. If the weather had been a little less wet it might’ve made quite a picture. Charles began to feel more and more relieved that the cats hadn’t tried anything as the last of the tanks in the column passed under the wall. All they had to do now was find where the rail tracks left off and they should be able to coast into Sou’nd without the cats being able to do anything else to stop them. He had expected a lot more resistance. He had almost thought his force would have to fight for every step of the way, but here they were, just a few short miles from their target, with only one tank lost and three men injured.
The last tank was through the wall, and then came the troop transports: twenty of them, each with a hard armored shell that could even withstand being hit by the big gun on one of the tanks in the strike force. If that same tank should hit the troop transport twice in roughly the same place, though, that would be a different story.
Tank Two was a good half a mile away from the wall by the time the first of the troop transports came through the archway, and by the time the last came through, the lead tank was a full mile away with Charles’ tank just two spots behind it.
‘The cats missed their chance,’ Charles was thinking comfortably to himself. All the strike vehicles had gotten through without incident. All that was left were the civilian and support vehicles, none of which were really needed for the attack on Sou’nd. Admittedly, most of the support vehicles did have their uses, especially the Med Units. But he was sure they weren’t what the cats were likely to be after. He was wrong.
Bang!
It happened as the first of the civilian transports was passing through the archway, with the nearest tank—Tank Thirty—already more than half a mile away up the road. This was when the cats chose to strike.
At first the action had seemed like a passing shot. A missile that might have done a little bit of damage if it had hit the right point on one of the transports seemed instead to have hit the wall above it as the vehicle was passing through it.
Soon the sound of gunfire could be heard from the town behind them. It was punctuated by the occasional explosion as rockets were also fired.
‘What’s going on?’ Charles said urgently. He tried to see for himself on his command screens, but the wall was too far away to see.
‘The wall has been collapsed, dividing our force into two,’ Michael replied calmly. ‘The civilians are under attack. From the reports I’m getting, I think most of them are panicking.’
‘Get me a satellite link-up; I need to know what’s happening back there,’ Charles insisted.
It took only a moment for Michael to patch him through.
The cats had ambushed the convoy in great numbers, firing from every building lining the road leading to the wall. They were using all manner of weapons from bullet slingers to lasers and obviously rocket launchers.
None of this should have been a threat. The troop carriers weren’t vulnerable to the rockets they were using, but it seemed that the civilians hadn’t known that and had fled from the vehicles into a hail of gunfire in their attempts to get to safety.
Some of the vehicles began to maneuver so they could turn round and head back the way they had come. But it seemed that the cats had something else up their sleeves. How they had managed to get it to Benfleet without anyone noticing it was a mystery. How they had managed to secrete it in a house—the entrances of which all seemed far too small for it to have passed through—was an even bigger mystery.
It pulled out onto the road behind the broadcast vehicle, demolishing the house it had emerged from. It was a large green tank dating back to the twenty-fourth century. Its armor would have crumpled like paper under a single shot from one of the tanks in the convoy. It still had a shell-firing cannon and a machine gun, though it also had a pair of small laser weapons fitted to the front. At the moment all it was doing was sitting there like a large road block, stopping any of the vehicles from escaping.
‘What can we do?’ Michael pressed. He was watching the events unfold on his own screen. ‘It’ll take too long for us to get back there to help, and there might still be survivors in the vehicle under the rubble. The ‘papers won’t report it too well if we crush our own people under our tanks’ treads.’
‘What can we do?’ said Charles. He sighed, ‘Order all vehicles to stay calm and not let the cats provoke them into coming out, regardless of what they try to do. Even if they see someone in desperate need of medical help, they are to stay in the relative safety of their vehicles. I don’t think they can have anything that can actually harm our people so long as they stay calm and stay put and wait until we can get help to them.’
‘Can we not send any help?’ Gloria asked.
‘We have to try,’ Charles replied sullenly. ‘Quickly work out the best route we can take to get the tanks into that area, through another arch or round the side. We’ll knock down the wall if we have to, but do it quickly. Time is ticking, and whichever way we go I think we’ll take at least five minutes.’
‘Working,’ Michael said as he turned to the board.
‘When you know the way, relay it to the other tanks quickly and let’s go. I don’t care which tank leads or gets there first. No standing on ceremony, people are dying.’
‘We could take too long to help most of them back there.’ This came from Gloria.
‘Okay, let’s get some soldiers back across the wall ASAP. I want them to give covering fire to any survivors. Tell them to scare the cats off. Send five transports’ worth, and try to give them a leader who has served with the Elite; they might need it.’
‘Will do,’ Michael replied without looking up.
‘And where’s my route?’ Charles shouted impatiently. ‘Why aren’t we moving?’
‘On our way,’ Gloria replied.
‘So much for a nice relaxing drive into the heart of Sou’nd,’ Charles muttered, more to himself than anything. ‘I knew those civilians were a bad choice to bring along!’
The tank lurched into life again, and after a little bit of movement to point the nose in the right direction they were heading at full speed back along the road and looking for a turnoff that would take them back into the town of Benfleet via a different arch.
On Charles’ screen, the battle raged. Many of the cats, sensing victory, started to emerge from the buildings, still slaughtering anything with a human scent. Here a lucky shot or two felled an attacker, but only one or two. There were maybe a hundred cats moving among the civilian transports, finishing any who thought they had found cover and those who still cowered in the vehicles when others had piled out. And that wasn’t all of them; there were more cats still in the buildings. They were keeping a careful vigil on the proceedings but more importantly on the partially collapsed wall, from which direction they were expecting reinforcements to arrive at any moment.
Charles continued to vilify those in his command, ‘How is it we passed by these buildings and you didn’t detect a threat?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ Michael sounded as if he was feeling trapped. He sniffled, ‘The scanners reported people in those buildings, but not that many, no more than you’d expect to see in them. If anything, they showed fewer than you’d expect. There was nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Could they have stealth suits?’ Gloria offered, trying to support Michael. ‘It’s not like they’re a new innovation.’
Charles sighed angrily. He wanted to shout Gloria down, but she could be right. In the past, cats had attacked targets primarily for weapons. Though stealth suits had been around for a long time, they only tended to be issued to Special Forces on special missions. Even the Elite didn’t tend to get to use them. Then again, there was always the black market.
With everything else that was happe
ning, Charles had almost forgotten something else important. He suddenly tapped his screen irritably. ‘What about this tank? Didn’t you spot that?’
‘It must’ve been powered down, and it is too old of a model to have been recognized by our computers as a threat,’ Michael replied quickly. He sniffled a little more.
Charles spoke slowly as if talking to a child as he said, ‘But I ordered a full check for explosives. Didn’t it show up then?’
‘No explosives present,’ Michael replied, eager to clear himself. ‘It’s an antiquated tank. It hasn’t fired at all since it appeared on the street. The cats appear to be using it just to block the road. Even its lasers haven’t fired. It’s possible they’re too old to do so. I don’t think they have any ammunition on board for the scanners to detect.’
‘Damn it, Michael,’ Charles said, turning his head away brusquely, ‘We should’ve been more careful. You should’ve been more observant.’
Michael shrugged. He looked at Gloria and then back to the uplink scanner that was supplying them with images of the carnage. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
They were moving as quickly as their wheels would carry them. Already they were halfway to an alternate archway, nearly knocking down someone’s home to get there. Once through the city streets, though, they would have a myriad of the town’s roads to pass through. Michael would have to be on the ball then, as Gloria would be too busy concentrating on not hitting things at the speeds they were going to look for herself.
‘This isn’t going to be good for him,’ Charles thought to himself. ‘What are the reporters going to think of this debacle?’
He began to wonder about where the various broadcast units were. Seven of them had been on the tanks after they passed through the wall and had probably still been with the tanks when they had shot off for an alternate way back to the battle. At the speeds the tanks were going and with some of the corners they were taking at these high speeds, he wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had fallen off their respective tanks. He hoped not; that could bring bad news too. Then he scanned the battle zone, trying to see if there were any bodies of pressmen in among the dead.
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