Hell's Faire

by John Ringo

  "Sure, but they're just forty millimeters." Utori snapped his weapon back together and took a drink from his camelbak. "It needs some 105s with some small antimatter rounds. Like . . . I dunno a ten KT round, maybe. That would be enough to clear a hilltop. Not a fucking hundred KT, which requires clearing out the whole damned county."

  "Maybe, but it wasn't designed for direct assault like this." Bazzett set his spoon down as the TC stuck his head into the crew compartment.

  "The SheVa just fired."

  "Shit, what's the time of flight?" Utori asked, grabbing his helmet and pulling on it as if he wanted to crawl up inside.

  "Must be nearly a minute," the TC answered, crawling back up into his chair. "Hang the fuck on," he added, shutting down his radios and throwing all the breakers; the blast would have an unpleasant electromagnetic pulse that could damage the electronics of the track.

  Bazzett raised the plastic and metal pouch to his mouth and squeezed out the last of the entree, beef and beans, then tossed the packet into the ammo can they used as a trash can. He washed it down with a swallow of water then put his fingers in his ears, bending over and opening his mouth. "This is gonna suck."

  * * *

  "Damn," Pruitt muttered, watching the shifting reticle of the estimated impact. The SheVa tracked the round on its upward flight and predicted its probable point of impact based on observed flight. "Not good."

  "Where's it going?" Mitchell asked.

  "Looks like it's veering northeast," the gunner replied. "If it doesn't veer back it'll land as close to LeBlanc's unit as it does to the Posleen. The only good point is that I set it for proximity impact. So as long as it lands on the Franklin side of the valley, they should be in the blast-shadow."

  Mitchell just grunted; there was nothing anyone could do at this point.

  * * *

  Tulo'stenaloor looked at the report of a high ballistic fire and flapped his crest in agitation.

  "Demons of sky and fire eat and defecate their souls," he snarled. "Orostan!"

  * * *

  But the oolt'ondai had already seen the belch of fire skyward. It was far away but he knew that it could only mean one thing.

  "I'm sorry, estanaar," he said, without even looking at the communicator. "It's up to you now."

  Then he turned his face to the sky and awaited the fire.

  * * *

  The 100-kiloton round was heavier than the penetrator. This was due to a carbon-uranium matrix that was designed to armor the potentially dangerous round against stray impacts. The armor, however, fell away after firing, and the round tracked upward and then over at apogee, after which the tracking system lost lock and the round became an unknown actor.

  Fortunately for all the humans involved it caught one more blast of wind from the recently passed cold front and nosed a tad further south, angling in to land just south of the Franklin water tower. And at one hundred meters off the ground, just above the tank farm, it detonated.

  The antimatter blast created a hemisphere of fire, the ground zero zone, in which everything but the most sturdy structure was destroyed. Directly at the center was a small patch, the toroid zone, in which many structures were, remarkably, virtually untouched.

  Outward from ground zero a blast of plasma and debris from the detonation expanded in a circle, destroying everything in its path. It was this shock wave that did the majority of damage, sweeping over the Posleen gathered in the town center and, unfortunately, over the tank left at the top of the hill. The Abrams was rocked by the blast-wave and the terrific overpressure but all the seals, designed back in the 1970s for full-scale war against the long-defunct Soviet Union, held and the crew survived. They were shaken, but alive.

  The blast spread outward, sweeping across the hilltop occupied by the city center and erasing the majority of the historic buildings that made up the previously idyllic town. As the circle of pressurized air increased in size it decreased in power until an equilibrium with the surrounding air was reached . . . and passed. Then the air rushed in to fill the vacuum at the center and a return wave collapsed inward destroying much of what had survived the outward wave. When the dual shock waves passed, the only thing that was recognizable on the hilltop was the basement and foundations of the courthouse and half of the gem-and-mineral museum.

  * * *

  Bazzett rocked to first one and then another blast-front, leaning back and forth in his crewman's seat, then started dancing in his seat.

  " 'If the Brad is a rockin' then don't come a knockin' . . .' " He looked over at Utori, who was just starting to look out from under his helmet, and shrugged. "I just noticed the track was rockin' to the beat." He lifted his AIW out of the rack and thumbed on the sight, going through an electronics check. "I'm gonna get me a tattoo. I always said, I'd never get a tattoo unless I was in a nuclear war. I think this counts. Even if it is our side that's shootin' at us."

  "Fuckin' nuts, man," the SAW gunner muttered as the Bradley rumbled to life.

  "Most of the tracks are up," the TC called. "We're making a speed run from here on out. Hang the fuck on."

  " 'If the track is a rockin' then don't come a knockin'.' "

  * * *

  "Tango Eight-Nine this is Quebec Four-Six," Glennis said. "I lost three tracks to the EMP; the shields on all the rest held. Also various and sundry electronics and shock damage."

  "You're mobile, though, right?"

  Glennis looked at the tanks and AFVs moving through the predawn darkness and shook her head. "I guess you could call it that, Tango."

  "Next stop firing point Omega, Quebec. Tango Eight-Nine out."

  "Right, the mission is to get the SheVa to where it can support the ACS. Not to kill every Posleen in the valley." Glennis looked around at the devastated landscape, the smashed houses, tree trunks tossed hither and thither, the blackened ground, and shook her head. "Although . . ."

  * * *

  "Boss man," McEvoy called over the platoon circuit. "Posleen lander emissions. Three sources, one heavy two light. System says two Lampreys and a C-Dec. Should we head back and attach anti-lander systems?"

  Since the suits had been detailed to resupply the Marauders, Tommy had had them change out their heavy grav-guns for flechette cannons. If the shit hit the fan, it was much more likely that they would need to stop, or at least slow, an attack by the ground-pounder Posleen than that they would have to stop landers. It looked, to most of the battalion, as if the gamble had played out.

  Tommy had been looking at the same indicators and now he grinned. "Nah, I'll take care of it."

  The lieutenant left the puzzled suit to wonder what that meant and laid out two power packs as he prepared the item that he had kept under a blanket.

  He turned as his sensors indicated a suit entering the hole and started to nod at the battalion commander. His head just sort of wallowed in the mush within the helmet and his vision swung wildly. But he corrected after a moment and saluted instead.

  "So how, exactly, were you planning on taking out three landers, Lieutenant?" Mike said, returning the salute with a wave.

  "With this, sir!" Tommy replied, removing the silvery cloth from the device in the hole. "Ta-da!"

  "Hmmph," O'Neal grunted, looking at the terawatt laser. The weapons had been common in the early days of the war but had been dropped out of service within the first couple of years. They were, however, remarkable anti-lander systems, at least against Lampreys and unsuspecting C-Decs. So it would probably work in this instance. "And why were you keeping it a secret?"

  "I figured if nobody else knew about it, neither would the Posleen, sir," Tommy said. "I hope that was all right."

  "Your AID knew," Mike said thoughtfully.

  "I asked it to modify the inventory it sent back," the lieutenant replied, carefully. "If you didn't get the word, then neither would the Posleen. Sorry about that, sir."

  "Oh, it's okay," Mike waved. "Do you know why these were removed from service?" he asked.

  "No,
sir," Tommy said. "It never made any sense to me."

  "Well, it won't affect anything in this battle," the battalion commander replied. "I'll just head back to the battalion hole. Good luck, Lieutenant. Good shooting."

  "Yes, sir, thank you, sir."

  * * *

  Mike slithered into the hole that had been dug out for the battalion headquarters just as the first lander crested the ridge.

  "Why isn't he having his suits rearm?" Stewart snapped.

  "Oh, he's got a better idea," Mike said with a chuckle. "I had a terawatt laser in the cache."

  "And he's going to use it?" the battalion S-2 said.

  "Looks like it. Should be fun to watch. Preferably from a safe distance."

  * * *

  "I think they're serious this time,"

  SheVa Nine crawled forward slowly over the ruins of downtown Franklin searching for a firing point.

  The hill that had once held downtown Franklin, and all the rolling hills in every direction as far as the eye could see, was covered with detritus of the nuclear strike. There was rubble from the houses as well as lighter debris scattered across the roads, and in the neighborhoods around the city there were trees fallen across the roads and fires smoldering from the intense heat of the fireball. There was a fan of tracks out in front of them but for once since its wounding the SheVa could make nearly as good time as the Abrams and Bradleys; what they had to dodge, it could crush underfoot.

  Somewhere around Franklin they should reach a point in range of the Gap. The problem was twofold: angularity—they had to be able to fire into the Gap—and height—the Gap was slightly higher than Franklin and since they had to use air-bursts they needed a tad more range than a ground burst would require. The first and best chance was the hill that Franklin had once occupied, even though it would make them a better target. Failing that, they would keep moving forward until they had a good and secure firing point.

  Pruitt was watching the ballistic targeting reticle slowly creep up the Rabun Valley, sometimes getting closer to the Gap, sometimes farther away, when the SheVa rocked in the shock wave from a heavy plasma gun.

  "Jesus!" the gunner yelled, slewing the turret as he kicked on his long-range radar and lidar.

  "Colonel! We've got four, no six C-Decs cresting the ridges! And they're spread out."

  "Crap," Mitchell muttered, flipping up the terrain map. The SheVa had taken on more than six ships during the retreat, occasionally at the same time. But in that case they had had terrain to hide behind and "shoot and scoot." Unfortunately, the Franklin Valley was relatively open, at least for something on the scale of the SheVa: rolling hills with the occasional higher stony prominence. It offered some obscurement to the ground-mounted Posleen but it was as open as a putting green when taking on ships.

  The sole and only chance they had was that Posleen gunnery was not all that great; the ship guns had to be manually aimed at ground targets like the SheVa and it had been apparent on the retreat that the concept of "training" was foreign to the invaders. So they didn't get really accurate until they were inside the firing range of the SheVa. But taking on six with nowhere to hide, especially with only four rounds of anti-lander left and a max speed of fifteen miles per hour, wasn't going to be particularly survivable.

  "Better call the ACS and tell 'em we're gonna be a little late."

  * * *

  Tommy crouched behind the laser and targeted the first C-Dec cresting the ridge. This was going to be tight.

  The holographic sight showed interior and exterior targets as well as the antimatter containment system. Tommy deliberately avoided that, firing the beam along a vector to penetrate on a weak point and enter the battlecruiser's engine room.

  The weapon spat a beam of coherent purple light just as the C-Dec opened fire with the first weapon that bore, an anti-ship plasma weapon. The ship's fire missed the battalion, striking north of it on the graded roadbed laid down by the Posleen and digging out a crater the size of a house.

  The weapon was a poorly controlled nuclear reaction that was captured between massive electromagnetic fields and converted to pure photons. The beam itself was rated in gigajoules per second and cut through the heavy armor of the Posleen ship like tissue paper. It lanced through interior bulkheads and into the engineering compartment, destroying the antigravity system and removing power to most of the external weaponry. Denied its antigravity support, the cruiser lurched and dropped through the air.

  * * *

  "Oh, crap," Duncan snorted, looking up. He had seen the cruiser drifting towards his position but the weapons of the three on the ridgeline would have been love-taps to the ship so he had just hunkered down and hoped it would find another target. But when the terawatt laser hit it in the side, it was just about directly over their position.

  The cruiser staggered and then started to drop, fast, and he knew there was nothing he could do.

  The ship fell straight down at thirty two feet per second per second and impacted on the top of the ridgeline, only fifteen meters from his position and, fortunately, on the Posleen side of the ridge. Then it started to roll.

  The impact of the multiton ship had flipped all three suits into the air and they fell back with a couple of bounces. But Duncan was up on the ridge again almost immediately. This he wanted to see.

  The dodecahedral ship was not the best item at rolling, but the slope was steep and it didn't really have much of a choice. Still randomly firing, with occasional blasts of fire and plasma jutting out of hatches and along weapons positions, the gigantic ship rolled down the hill, over the Posleen scrambling to find a purchase on the side and onto the roadbed below, partially blocking it.

  "Damn, couldn't have planned that one better myself," Duncan muttered, looking over at the other two ships. They were Lampreys, far smaller and less dangerous than the C-Dec. But dangerous nonetheless. "Now if that damned laser will just hold together."

  * * *

  Tommy swung the laser onto the leftmost Lamprey, which was a tad higher and had a better shot at the battalion. It had already opened fire with one of the heavy lasers on one of its five facets and the line of fire was wiggling randomly across the ground but in the general direction of the battalion command post.

  In this case Sunday didn't target quite so carefully; the ship was farther away and if the antimatter containment system detonated it wouldn't disturb things quite as much.

  The purple laser flashed out again, digging into the side of the ship in a flash of silver fire and penetrating deep into its vitals. The shot missed the containment system but cut the feeds from it to the engine. Once again the ship stopped and dropped like a stone. Some of the Posleen in both ships would be alive but they were relatively unimportant compared to stopping the ships themselves.

  He quickly rotated the weapon onto the third ship but in this case he was just a tad too late.

  * * *

  "Captain Slight!" Mike called, cursing. "Behind you!"

  * * *

  Karen Slight had survived innumerable battles and skirmishes in the five years since she had taken over as the Bravo Company commander. Sometimes she felt like a fugitive from the law of averages. But if so, they had just caught up.

  She flipped her vision to the rear and leapt to her feet as she saw the line of flashes from a heavy HVM launcher closing on her position, but it was just a fraction of a moment too late. Before she, or First Sergeant Bogdanovich, could do more than stand up the weapons had hit their hole. And when it walked on there was nothing to be found but scattered armor.

  * * *

  "Shit," Tommy muttered, as he targeted the third ship. This ship had learned from its predecessors and tried to jink aside, spreading the fire. The terawatt laser was not, however, like the lighter grav-guns. They had only a fraction of the power available to the laser. It scythed into the third ship, clawing through crew quarters and the command bridge. For that matter, the ship pilot had not had significant training in flight at such low levels. The
Posleen ships, by and large, managed their operations on automatic, so manual flight was something for which very few Posleen were trained or prepared. And it was evident in this case as the ship, accelerating sideways to avoid the laser, slammed into Black Rock Mountain and bounced backwards, hard, into the very laser it was trying to avoid.

  In this case it was unclear if it was the laser fire or the sudden impact, but the third ship stopped, droppped and rolled down the hill and impacted with the C-Dec, where the two of them almost entirely blocked the narrow pass.

  Tommy watched the ship roll down the hill then extended the tripod on the laser to jut over the top of the fighting position to where it had a clear line of sight on the approaching Posleen. Down below they must be having a tough time forcing their way past the roadblock created by the two fallen ships but there was still a solid wall of them attacking the front ranks. And with the death of their first sergeant and company commander, Bravo company had started to slacken its fire, letting the Posleen drive forward against that side.

  Tommy had a fix for that, however, and he opened fire at the approaching centaurs with a snarl of anger.

  * * *

  "Good job, Lieutenant," Mike said with an unheard sigh of relief. "But you might want to cease fire, now."

  * * *

  "With all due respect, sir, Bravo needs the support," Tommy replied, pouring laser fire into the line of Posleen. Already the beams of purple light, designed to destroy ships, had sliced deep into the Posleen ranks, cutting through six or seven of the centaurs at a time as he swung it from side to side.

  * * *

  "Yeah, but it has a little problem," Mike said. "Let me put it this way . . ."

  * * *

  The "little problem" with the terawatt laser had been discovered within a year of its actual fielding in combat. The weapon was, as previously noted, a poorly contained nuclear explosion. Anti-hydrogen was injected, in carefully measured doses, into a lasing chamber filled with argon gas. The anti-hydrogen, opposite of real matter, impacted with argon and immediately converted itself and some of the argon into pure energy.

  This energy release was captured by other argon atoms and when they released the energy it was as photons of light. These photons were then captured and held until a peak pressure was reached when they were released.