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sections of it up on Pruitt's targeting system. "Okay, Pruitt, load up a
penetrator."
Pruitt looked at the screen and shuddered. "You're joking, right?"
"Nope," Kilzer said, tapping his keyboard again and bringing up a set of
fifteen target points on the mountainside. "Okay, it's going to be an
expensive road. But we'll have a road. And I won't have to go skiing with
you."
Pruitt looked over at the colonel, who had a pensive expression on his face.
"Colonel?"
"Is this going to work
, Kilzer?" the officer temporized. "The rounds aren't that big . . ."
Kilzer's laugh was deep and infectious. "Oh, Lord, that's a good one, sir!" he
chuckled. "You've obviously been in SheVa combat too long, sir. They're TEN
KILOTON rounds! That's the equivalent of tenthousand tons of TNT, sir.
Twentymillion pounds of explosives!"
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"Hmm . . ." After a moment Mitchell grinned and chuckled in return. "You're
right. My version of what is a 'small' explosion has gotten sort of skewed. Go
on."
"Each of them is going to vaporize a big chunk of North Carolina rock, sir,"
the tech rep pointed out.
"And the rock around it is going to settle in rubble. Fifteen shots, by my
calculations, will reduce the ridgeline by only two hundred feet or so. But
that two hundred feet is going to take out the steepest portions and lay down
a ramp a steep ramp, admittedly on both sides."
"Pruitt?" Mitchell said.
"I dunno, sir," the gunner admitted. "I mean, one side of me says 'hey, it's
Bun-Bun
. No problemo.' And then the rational side of me says 'It's a frigging
mountain
.' " He rubbed under his helmet for a moment then grinned. "What the hell,
sir. If fifteen doesn't do it . . . Hey, how many do we have in reserve?"
"There's more coming from the Asheville reserves," Mitchell said. "We'll have
two full loads of
penetrator and six area denial after we shoot fifteen."
"Colonel, this is your add-ons. What's the situation?" Major Chan could not
hear the conversation and thus was getting curious.
"We're just discussing some engineering details," Mitchell replied over the
group net. "Okay, Pruitt. Do it." He keyed his mike again and sighed. "Okay,
everybody, stand by for big noise."
* * *
Major LeBlanc had never seen a SheVa fire and she had to admit that even for
someone who crewed
Abrams tanks it was impressive. The sixteen-inch smoothbore belched fire with
a blast of sound that was like the bellow of a giant. The round itself was,
essentially, an enlarged version of the Abrams main anti-tank round, a
depleted uranium dart. The main difference being that the SheVa round had a
dollop of antimatter at its core.
But like the Abrams "silver bullet" rounds, and the teardrops of the ACS
grav-guns, the depleted uranium penetrator and its tungsten stabilization fins
left a streak of silver light behind. The light went directly into the
shoulder of the right-hand mountain and vanished. There was a flash of light
out of the hole, quickly extinguished, and a muted rumble through the ground.
"I hope the next one is a little more impressive," one of the tank crews said.
The shot might as well have been a pebble dropped in the ocean for all the
mountains seemed to care.
* * *
Pruitt methodically fired all eight of his onboard rounds. Each of them
disappeared virtually without a trace.
"We're not making any impression that I can see, Kilzer," Mitchell said.
"We will, sir," the tech rep replied. But he looked a tad nervous.
Pruitt waited while the reload process went on. Each of the reload trucks,
specially fitted HMETT
vehicles, had to pull up to the back of the SheVa and load one round at a
time. Then the rounds were transported up to the turret armory. It took quite
some time and by the end of the exercise the tank crews had gotten out and
were walking around, talking, joking and smoking. Some of them were lighting
fires to heat up their rations.
"Colonel, you might want the crews in their vehicles," Kilzer noted as Pruitt
loaded the next round.
Feeling like a bit of a martinet, Mitchell passed the order on to LeBlanc who
slowly collected her crews.
Finally everyone was loaded back up and Mitchell gave Pruitt permission to
fire.
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The first set of eight rounds had been in a flattened U, following the line of
the gap and about two hundred feet below the actual ridgeline. The ninth and
tenth rounds were at the center of the U and had the same effect as the
others, precisely none.
"Are we going to see any result soon, Kilzer?" Mitchell asked impatiently.
"I thought that last one would have shifted something," Kilzer said with a
frown. "Let me check my notes. . . ."
"What the hell," Pruitt said, lining up the next shot. "I've got rounds to
spare." He aimed at the next target point, on the shoulder of the first hill
about sixty feet above the first shot and fired.
Each of the previous rounds had, in fact, made a very solid impression. The
antimatter explosion had vaporized a sizable chunk of rock, a sphere ranging
from fifty to a hundred meters in diameter. But the refractory material above
the explosions had managed to survive and each of the explosions was widely
enough spaced that there were ersatz "pillars" between the newly wrought,
extremely hot, slightly glowing, caves in the pass's heart.
The eleventh round, however, penetrated rock that had already been fractured
by previous rounds and the impact of the ten kiloton blast propagated along
the lightly supported bridge of rock across the top of the pass. With,
literally, earthshattering results.
* * *
"Holy shit!" LeBlanc muttered, looking up as the entire pass began to move.
Down. "Back us up!" She watched helplessly as a section of mountain larger
than the SheVa slowly turned to rubble and began sliding towards three of her
tanks. She noted in passing that all of the personnel had dropped into the
belly of the vehicles and that they were just getting into motion when her own
tank suddenly revved and reversed, slamming her into the coaming. She bounced
back into the slag where the hatch used to be, banging her back and tearing a
hole in the back of her uniform then howled like a banshee as first one and
then two of the tanks disappeared in the avalanche.
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