John Ringo: Hell's Faire

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.

All of this happened in a bare nanosecond, managed by vibrating magnetic fields that drew their power from the same reaction.

The same laser, to an extent, was used shipboard and in space fighters. In both cases it was a regarded with awe and respect, for the barely chained sun at its heart was as much a danger to the ship as to the enemy. And so, in the case of the ships and the fighters, massive secondary fields ensured that the slightest slip on the part of the primary fields meant that the system simply got out of alignment for a moment. Perhaps the weapon would “hiccup.” But that was all.

On the ground-mount version, however, these secondary systems were unavailable. And thus, when in a brief moment of chaos the power levels in the lasing cavity peaked over the maximum rated, or posssible, containment levels of the magnetic fields, the highly excited argon, and a bit of still unconverted anti-hydrogen, escaped the confinement. And proceeded to destroy the weapon. Letting all the rest of the highly excited argon out in a manner that was quite catastrophic.

One second Tommy was firing the laser and the next moment he was flying through the air. Well, not “flying” so much as hurtling uncontrollably. Once again his sensors were overwelmed but what he managed to read in the maelstrom and under the G forces that were slipping through the compensators indicated that the external temperature, while dropping rapidly, was pretty similar to that found in the photosphere of a star.

There was one short, sharp shock and then he was no longer hurtling. As far as he could tell he was sliding. Probably down a mountain.

He noted that he wasn’t thinking very well just about the time he passed out.

Mike looked up from the battalion command hole at the smoking atmosphere and sighed.

“I told him he’d better quit while he was ahead,” he said. The air was still filled with incredibly hot gasses and dust but the systems were already starting to stabilize and it was clear they hadn’t lost anyone to the detonation. In fact, it looked like the laser, which had blown up as usual, had actually cleared the Posleen off their position. Again.

“Nukes,” he muttered. “We should have brought nukes.”

“Oh,” Stewart said, then laughed. “Yeah. Why hadn’t we thought of that before?”

“I dunno, maybe because they were a no-no?” O’Neal muttered. “But some big damned bombs? Why have to ask other people to scratch our back?”

“Or maybe we should just have brought lasers.” Stewart laughed. “Why didn’t you tell him about the secondary ‘issues,’ as the manufacturer puts it?”

“Oh, well, experience is the best teacher,” O’Neal answered. “And, hell, nobody else was going to fire the damned thing.” He glanced at his telltales and gave an unseen half shrug. “He’s alive. Out like a light but alive. And the ships are gone and so are the Posleen. Looks like he did a pretty good job to me.”

“Same here,” Stewart said, chuckling. Then he sobered. “We still lost Slight. Dammit.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I could give the company to Sunday, as soon as he regains consciousness, but I think I’ll just turn it over to one of the platoon sergeants. They’re down to about a platoon and a half anyway.”

Stewart stood up and looked around in the clearing dust. “Time to go find out how they’re doing.”

“Yeah, and I’ll call Duncan back down. Not much more to do up there.”

O’Neal looked at the battlefield schematic. “I don’t know that there’s much more to do. Period.”

“Well,” Stewart said. “I suppose we could charge.”

“Quebec unit, follow me!” LeBlanc called over the battalion frequency then flipped to intercom. “Drummond, put your foot in it and head down the road!”

“Where are we going?”

Glennis pulled up her map screen and frowned; it was a good question. She scanned the map and finally found what she was looking for.

“Head down 28,” she said, flipping back to the battalion. “All Quebec units. Order of march, Bravo, Alpha, Charlie. We’re going to head to Highway 64 and get on the road embankment; if we get some elevation on the guns the Abrams might be able to engage the C-Decs.”

“That’s crazy, ma’am,” the Abrams gunner said. “Our guns will barely scratch that thing!”

“The SheVa’s only got four anti-lander rounds left,” LeBlanc answered. “There are six ships.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the gunner replied. “Balenton, load a silver bullet.”

“Aye, aye!” the loader said. “But if she starts singing ‘Garryowen,’ I’m outta here.”

“Reeves, back us up, fast,” Mitchell said, glancing at his map. “Head northwest. Major Chan! Switch out for one oh fives, it might come down to that!”

“What’s northwest?” Pruitt asked, lining up the first of the targets. It was a real question; should he take the outside ones and work in or the inside ones and work out? Oh, what the hell, right to left. “Target C-Dec, twelve thirty.”

“Confirm,” Mitchell replied, flipping up the appropriate screen. The Posleen ship was just cresting Pendergrass Mountain, less than five miles away. Others were closer, though, and the SheVa rocked again to the slap of one of their heavy guns. “There’s some hills over by Windy Gap. I don’t think we can make it that far and if we do we’ll probably run into ground mounts. But one problem at a time.”