"Double?" Kate said in sudden interest.
"And we'd be without the radar and such for how long?" Fat Pete growled, uncrossing his arms. "This could just be a trick to get us to weak our defenses for an attack."
Thoughtfully, Kate rubbed her jaw. "Or nuking save us in the next firefight." They could try that back at the depot, where they were safe from attack and far, far away from this battle zone.
"Hell, we could do it right now," she relented. "There's nothing Gaza can do in this hellstorm. We're safe for a while from any more of his rockets. In fact—"
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a peal of thunder, the ground shaking under the war wag in a minor earthquake. Then it happened again, and again, steady and continuous as if a giant were striding across the world.
"It's me," Kate said into her hand comm. "What the hell is going on outside?"
"We don't know!" Jake replied over the crackling speaker. "There's a whole lot of explosions on the cliff, and the ground is starting to break about…there it goes!"
As he spoke, the war wag lurched into motion, wheeling backward with the diesels roaring with restrained power.
"Okay, we're clear," Jake said, panting. "Christ, that was close. A whole section of the cliff just broke loose and dropped into the city, but we're clear now."
Ryan scowled darkly at that and exchanged looks with the other companions. He didn't know how or why, but he knew it was Gaza.
"All stations report!" Kate snapped, and listened to the familiar voices announcing the status of the department of the war wag, and then the other wags. Only the second cargo van didn't respond.
"Duncan, have you got a visual on Little Sue?" the Trader demanded into the hand comm. "Duncan, can you read me?"
"It's gone," the man said, his voice sounding like something from the grave. "It's just vanished in a fireball. She's gone, blown to bits."
"Missile hit?" Kate demanded.
"Impossible. Radar showed clear."
"Must have been a lightning strike," Eric said hopefully.
"Six more chilled," Fat Pete said woodenly, his face a waxy pallor. "Sue, Jimmy, that new guy, Bones…"
Just then the pounding started once more, moving along the cliff, passing them by in powerful waves that rattled everything in the galley.
"Lightning strike, my ass. That's cannon fire," Ryan said, standing. "Better sound the alert, I think we're under attack!"
"We?" Kate shot back, a hand resting on her boxy rapidfire.
Ryan looked the blonde hard in the face. "If that's Gaza, then we're with you all the way."
A long moment passed while the savage explosions continued, the rig shaking with increasing force.
"Deal," the Trader said at last. "This way to the control room."
Chapter Twenty-One
"Got 'em!" Baron Gaza cried as the small vehicle on the monitor violently detonated.
"Confirmed," the tank replied. "That was a kill."
"There are more, a larger one. Find it!" Gaza demanded, leaning into the vid screen. On the control board was a vid screen with a view of the cliff. The angle was bad, and he couldn't see much past the edge, but just that glimpse of the wag was enough. The robotic tank responded instantly to his command and blew it apart with the main cannon.
"Second target has been acquired," it stated in the flat voice, bringing another van into sight, this one only visible halfway up from the desert ground. It seemed to be moving fast from the rain sheeting off its chassis, but the wag stayed in the exact center of the monitor as if nailed there.
"Ready on your command, sir."
Gaza bared his teeth in a feral grin. "Kill them," he whispered.
The turret traversed a small arc, and then the main gun fired, the barrel pulsating with a high pitched hum. A split second later the black hole appeared in its side and the wag flipped over sideways as if exploding from within. Bodies and wreckage flew into the storm, a tire going over the edge of the cliff and falling from sight.
"Target has been eliminated," the machine said, patiently waiting for the next command.
The metal voice was getting clearer constantly, as if knocking off the dust of a hundred years of sleep. That made sense to Gaza. If you built a machine this complex, what the hell difference, was there between it and a living thing? None that he could see.
"Anything else? Is there a large wag, covered with guns and missiles?"
"Wag?"
"Vehicle, truck—is there any other enemy transports? Any further movement on the cliff?"
There was a brief pause, as vid screen flicked along the visible length of the cliff, large sections hidden behind the preDark buildings. Only a few of them still had fires burning in their guts. The rest were cold and dark, many beginning to crumble from the combination of fresh air, fire damage and the acid rain. The preDark city was dying before his eyes. In a few days this would be only a hole in the ground filled with rubbish and bones.
"Negative. The perimeter is clear. Mil-sat relays inoperative for unknown reason."
Try the end of the world, tin brain. "Well done," the baron complimented. "Stay razor."
There was a long pause. "Razor, sir?"
Fuck! "Stay…sharp and on alert," Gaza said carefully, feeling a trickle of sweat flow down his face. Damn, he had to be more careful than that.
"Roger, order confirmed, sir. Alert status will be maintained at razor level."
Unnerved, the baron arched an eyebrow at that but forced himself to say nothing. So it learned, eh? That was both good and bad. He was riding a wild mutie here, but there was no other way out of this hellhole but this behemoth.
Hunched in the gunner's chair, Kathleen held her eyes closed tight, hands over both ears. She was clearly terrified by the sentient machine. Gaza sneered—well, too fucking bad. There were lots of sluts in the world to replace her, but only one behemoth. Yeah, good name.
"Alert, change of plans," he decided. "We shall leave the area and begin digging efforts. But shoot anything you see. The…enemy has a lot of missiles and they must be stopped."
"Confirmed."
Setting the tank in motion, Gaza was first startled, then delighted at the smoothness of its ride. Somehow the machine adjusted itself to always stay level, even as it rolled over the preDark cars. On the side monitors, the machine was passing dozens of stores ripe for the looting. But that wasn't pressing at the moment. There was a stash of MRE packs in the tank, enough for him and Kathleen for a few days. After that, he could get all he needed from the Trader. He knew that she had hidden depots across the Deathlands filled with fuel, food, rockets, everything. The tank was powered by some tech thing called a fusion reactor, so didn't need any fuel, but the rest would come in handy as rewards for his new army of sec men.
As it cleared a squat monolithic structure, the western face of the cliff came into direct view and now the turret swung around and hummed again, a fireball instantly exploding on the rocks.
"Is this what we're firing?" the baron asked, lifting a plastic cube in his hand.
"Confirmed," the machine responded as the cannon hummed again, and then again.
The baron turned the object about so that it reflected the rainbow lights from the complex control boards. At first he had thought it was sort of paperweight or target marker. The thing was only a greenish cube about the size of his fist. There was no brass, no C-4, not anything that he recognized as dangerous.
"Explain how this works to my civilian wife," the baron said, pronouncing the old words carefully and glancing at the woman cowering in the chair.
The machine started into a tech talk involving kinetic energy and caloric conversion that was far beyond his understanding of such things. But he slowly got the idea. Yeah, a strong man could hold a bullet in his hand and throw it at you with all of his strength and it wasn't going to do anything. The bullet wasn't dangerous; it was the speed of the lead. This thing took those cubes and fired them so nuking fast they hit like bombs.
"How many more in storage?" he demanded, placing the cube aside with some reverence.
"Four hundred nine." The cannon hummed. "Four hundred eight."
And the truck in the park was filled with thousands of them. Once he got out of this fucking city, there was nothing and nobody in the world that could stand before this monster war wag.
"Hit the new cliff lower so the rocks pull themselves down," he directed. "Then hit the fresh fall high to widen the destruction. Gotta have a wide path for a wag…for a tank of this size."
"Confirmed, sir," the machine replied, and the cannon shifted its angle, humming and humming as fresh sections of the rocky cliff exploded into pieces, the rubble tumbling into the sinkhole and slowly building a wide sloping ramp that was reaching for the surface and freedom.
The cannon hummed, and whole new sections of the cliff came tumbling down, the pile gradually growing in width as the rainy desert sands began to flow down into the city.
Gaza was pleased it responded so well. Mebbe he was getting good at this tech talk. But he had to stay double razor, keep everything simple and try to talk as if he was preDark. Treat this as his new wife and the world would be his command! Once he got out of this fucking pit.
IN THE CONTROL ROOM of War Wag One, the group of people listened to the thick silence coming from the ceiling speaker. Only a second earlier it had been the driver of Cargo Van Three, then there was an explosion and nothing.
"War Wag Two has confirmed," Jessica said, a radio receiver held to her ear. "Three is gone, blown to pieces."
"Aced, a dozen of us like muties in a pit," Blackjack said, frowning at the concept.
Standing in the doorway, Anders said nothing, but his face was a mask of controlled terror. Twice, he started to speak, but decided to remain quiet.
"Yeah, but aced us with what?" Kate demanded angrily, slumping into her chair. "What the nuking hell hit us?"
"It came from the city," Jake said hesitantly. "Or at least, I think it did. Damn thing moved so fast I couldn't really track it in flight. Only the afterghost on the screen showed where it had come from."
"Impossible! Nothing moves that fast," the Trader snapped. "Check the screen."
"I did," he stated firmly. "It's working fine."
"Laser?" Dean asked.
"Nothing on the thermal scanners," Jessica stated. "Cold and clear."
"Rain hide heat sig," Jak suggested.
The woman shook her head. "The downpour only makes the air colder and increases a heat sig. This was no rocket."
"Armbrust rocket fires silent and cold," J.B. said hesitantly.
"The ear didn't hear any cannons firing or rockets flying either," Eric's voice said from the speakers. The comp tech was back in his air conditioned blister of tinted plastic, with Mildred standing nearby, the two of them surrounded by a maze of wires and cables.
"Armbrust makes noise flying. No way around that."
"It's a coil gun," Ryan said, rubbing a fist into a palm. "Gotta be. That's the bastard thing that makes sense. Trader found one a long time ago."
"Somewhere down there, Gaza found a fucking coil gun, a portable one like a bazooka, or an APC," Krysty said, then scowled. "Mother Gaia, he was going for spare parts for his busted APC and found an armed one!"
"Hopefully, one that cannot drive," Doc added in a bass rumble. "If he achieved mobility with such a weapon, the baron would become a most formidable opponent."
"A coil gun," Kate said slowly. "Those are just legends, mag guns firing plastic balls so fast they hit like skybombs. That's just a fairy tale to scare the littles."
"Plastic cubes, actually," Mildred said over the PA system. "That form gives a better caloric yield on impact."
Kate gave Ryan a hard disbelieving stare.
"If Mildred says that's what it is, then you can load that into your blaster and start shooting."
"Eric?" Kate asked meaningfully.
"I agree, Chief," the man said. "But it's only a guess on my part. She knows things. I'd say listen to the healer."
"Accepted, then." The Trader nodded. "Okay, Mildred got any clever suggestions?"
"Coil guns are purely line of sight," Mildred said. "Have to be because their prime function is pure velocity. The cubes can't track like a missile or arch over a hill like a rocket. Think of them as fast bullets and you understand."
Listening from her chair, Kate almost smiled at that news. Good, so there was the flaw. Excellent. "Jess, tell the others to stay away from the cliff, the more distance the better. Down in that hole he can't see up here. We stay clear, he can shoot all day and wouldn't hit a nuking thing."
"And neither can we," Jake replied from the control board. "We just going to leave him down there?"
Kate snorted. "Not a chance in hell. Can we get a reading with the radar?"
"Not into the city. It's designed for the sky, not to scan down into holes."
"How about change the angle?" J.B. asked.
"Not in this," the man said, gesturing at the ceiling the sound of rain on every side. "No way."
"Can we hit him with the L-gun?" Blackjack asked, swiveling about at the machine gun blister. With the enemy down in the sinkhole, he had nothing to guard for a moment.
"Angle is wrong. Never planned on shooting down a goddamn well," Kate replied with a frown. "We could do it, but we'd have to be right at the very edge of the cliff. A sitting target for his coil gun."
"You have a working laser?" Ryan asked.
"Bet your ass we do. We made it ourselves," she admitted with pride. "Or rather Eric did. Took us a year. Uses diamond dust as a light source. He is an ace tech, and can make anything."
"Shit lousy blaster shot, though." Blackjack smirked at the blister.
Behind the tinted plastic, Eric made a rude gesture in response.
J.B. mused on that. Burning diamonds was clever. Jewelry was without value these days, and so a lot of it could still be found in the ruins. Diamonds were merely coal, after all. Probably used thermite to ignite the diamond dust and then watch out, the stronger the source, the hotter the laser.
"Heads up," Eric announced suddenly, his voice distorted with static as lightning flashed nearby. All conversation stopped for a moment as the thunder rolled over them shaking the wags.
"The ear has a series of explosions to the north," Eric continued reporting. "A lot of them, very fast, very strong."
"Is he fighting somebody else?" Dean asked hopefully.
Jak replied, "Mebbe it only thinks it's us."
"Bah, the feeb has gone blaster-happy," Blackjack muttered. "Just shooting for the sound of it."
"Or he's clearing the line of sight," Ryan corrected. "Once those few standing buildings are gone, he'll be able to track the entire rim of the cliff from one central location."
"Fuck it," the door guard said with conviction. "Let him keep the city. He'll be ass deep in muties for the rest of his life."
Then Eric spoke, "No, he is shooting at the cliff. I hear rocks falling, but no glass shattering, or anything else breakable. This makes no sense."
Frowning in thought, Ryan turned. "J.B., you took a recce of the rim while we were on top of the building."
"Yeah. So?"
"Is the north face of the cliff the lowest point?"
"Sure," the Armorer said, then realized what that meant.
"He's digging a path out," Kate growled, slamming a fist onto the arm of her chair. "Using the coil gun to blow down the cliff and make a ramp of solid rock to reach the surface!"
"If he achieves open ground with that APC," Mildred started.
"Tank," Jessica interrupted. "During the lightning I got a brief vid of the city and saw it. Big monster, five, six times the size of any APC. It's a goddamn tank."
"Nuking hell!" Anders whispered, slumping his shoulders. "Gaza with a working preDark tank."
"If the baron escapes from the pit in that behemoth, he'll take over the Deathlands in a year. He was a major danger with just an APC, but w
ith a full operational preDark tank—" Kate paused "—he'll be unstoppable. We got nothing that can even dent that big bastard until it's close enough to blow us to bits."
"The bastard has all of the advantages," Fat Pete said, speaking at last.
"Except one," Ryan stated, going to the windshield and looking at the pouring rain. "Think any of those motorcycles might still work?"
"Sure," Blackjack said, leaning on the .50-cal, making the belt of ammo jingle. "They've survived acid rain storms before. Why?"
"We'll need a lot more plastic sheeting," J.B. said, tilting back his fedora. "And a hell of a diversion. But if these folks have enough cable and a good winch, we can use the ravine and ledge we climbed before to get back down into the city."
"A ground attack?"
"Yeah. Gaza may be blasting the cliff to make a path out," Ryan said with a grim smile, "but we already know the way down, and the very last bastard thing he would ever expect at this point is a strike from behind."
"And above," Kate said, tossing the man her personal hand comm. He made the catch. "Only use the even channels. Jump each time you make a call. We'll hit him together."
"Allies?" Ryan asked.
"Partners," she agreed. "Deal?"
The one-eyed man nodded at that and started along the corridor, pushing Anders out of the way as he and the rest of the companions started toward the washroom and their battered ponchos.
In the tumultuous sky, the chem storm raged away, completely unconcerned with the very human battle about to begin on the muddy ground below.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rumbling, tumbling and rolling madly, the pieces of the shattered cliff cascaded into the city, crushing cars and smashing into the sides of small buildings.
Gaza watched impatiently as the loose material shifted and slid about in the pale yellow rain, the salt and sand mixing into a vicious mud that flowed as thick as snot from the desert above. Damn. There was no way he could roll the behemoth through that mess without becoming completely quagmired, a sitting target for the Trader to shoot apart at her leisure. Fuck that nonsense.
Axler, James - Deathlands 64 - Bloodfire Page 23