John Ringo: Hell's Faire

“On the waaay!” Pruitt called, visually tracking the round into the ship. “Target!” he called as the hatches of the ship gouted silver fire. The lander started to fall to earth and then exploded, but not catastrophically. The remains pelted into Pendergrass Mountain and rolled out of sight. “I think I must have gotten a magazine that time,” Pruitt muttered, tracking to the left. “Bun-Bun’s on the WARPATH!”

“Bloody hellfire!” Kilzer snapped as the back of his rad suit was sprayed by liquid. He looked over at the giant shock absorber of the SheVa gun and shook his head. “Colonel Mitchell, can we call a time out?”

“Boss, I’ve got a red light on hydraulics!” Pruitt called.

“This is not good,” Mitchell muttered. “Kilzer, Indy, talk to me. How bad is it?”

“This is Indy,” the warrant replied, climbing through the hatch from the engineering deck. “We’ve got hydraulic fluid all over the gun room, but I don’t see a breach.”

“There’s not one,” Kilzer said, rubbing his hands up the side of the shock. “It just blew fluid through the seals. We should be able to top it up and be back up shortly.”

“ How shortly?” Mitchell snapped, looking at the encroaching C-Decs. “We’re under fire here people!”

“Shortly,” Indy said as she gestured one of the loaned SheVa techs over with a hose. “No more than two minutes!”

“This isn’t good,” Pruitt muttered over the radio. The SheVa shook to another near miss as if to counterpoint his statement.

“We’re working on it.” Indy said.

“Reeves, keep backing us away,” Mitchell ordered. “They’re not coming on very fast.”

“No, but they are coming on steady,” Pruitt said. He had pulled up a reservoir indicator on the hydraulics and watched as the level reached yellow and then green. “Sir…”

“You’re up,” Indy interrupted over the radio. “There will be a short lag between each firing while we top off. And God help us if we run out of hydraulic fluid!”

“I’ll get someone right on that,” Mitchell replied. “Pruitt?”

“Target, C-Dec!”

“Fire at will,” Mitchell replied. The SheVa suddenly lurched to a titanic BOOM through the structure. “Son of a BITCH!”

Indy ducked as a live cable swung overhead throwing sparks. The cable itself dropped onto one of the luckless SheVa techs, sending him spasming across the deck. Indy’s flailing hand snatched a stanchion as the firing chamber filled with a rush of superheated air, and held on for dear life as it seemed the entire weather-shield, with its attached armor, was going to rip loose. The shaking finally stopped and the air cleared, too quickly; she looked up to see stars where four MetalStorm mounts had once been.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered, keying her radio.

“Colonel, we’re hit,” Indy said, unnecessarily. “We just lost the upper left side of the gun cover. Along with three MetalStorm turrets.”

Mitchell closed his eyes and shook his head. “Pruitt, are we up?”

“The gun reads as functional, sir.”

“The gun wasn’t hit,” Indy interjected. “Just the side of the cover. But I don’t think we can fire any of the Storms until we’re sure of the structural integrity.”

“Colonel Mitchell, this is Kilzer,” the civilian said over the radio. “I’m looking at the damage, too. We might be able to fire the right, rear Storms. But all the others aren’t going to have enough structure to withstand the shock of firing. And the frontal armor is… creaky. The hit slagged some of the supports on the left side and I can see support beams dangling. The whole place looks like a pretzel twister with an evil sense of humor got loose in the gun room. I think the combination of the heat and the shock probably broke the welds. And we’ve got a lot of electrical damage.”

“We can still fire the main gun, right?” Mitchell pressed.

“As long as it lasts, sir,” Indy replied, nervously.

“Pruitt, get as many as you can, while you can.”

The gunner slewed the turret and sought out the next target as the SheVa lumbered laboriously to the north. There was nowhere to hide; it was just a matter of shoot and hope like hell the Posties kept missing. So far they had.

Pruitt lined up the third C-Dec as another shot crackled overhead and one slammed into the ground, tearing up soil and leaving a smoking crater large enough to swallow an Abrams.

“On the way!” he called, then “Target!”

This time the target vanished in silver fire, and a mushroom cloud formed where it had been. However, although the nearest C-Dec rocked in the blast front, it neither was destroyed nor wavered in its course.

“Blast, they’re too far apart!” Pruitt snarled. “Why did they have to get smart .” He lined up the fourth ship and then paused. “I want it to get a little closer, sir.”

“Okay,” Mitchell replied. At least the fire had been halved and the third C-Dec had been the closest. Mitchell glanced at his map then at the external monitors. Most of them were down from the damage but a few on the right side were still functioning. “Reeves, to the right rear, see that gap?”

“Yes, sir,” the driver replied, angling the SheVa slightly to the right. “Are we going to be hull down?”

“Close,” the commander replied.

“Okay, they’re closing,” Pruitt said. “Hydraulics are up. On the way!” The round tracked straight and true “through the x ring” and the C-Dec rolled to the side, seeming momentarily to be under power, then dropped into the river before rolling out of sight.

At the tremendous splash, Pruitt sighed. “That’s it, sir. Four rounds. We’re out.” He glanced at his indicators then at the targets. “Then again, maybe not. Sir, where are the lead elements of the division?”

“General Simosin, this is SheVa Nine, over!”

“Station on this net, identify!”

Mitchell frowned at the radio; every other time he had tried to call the general he had gotten the general . So who the hell was holding the radio this time?

“Look, this is SheVa Nine. I don’t have time to identify because, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve got Posleen landers on the way in. We’re going to try to take out the last two, but there’s a problem; what we’re going to do will probably hit the division. Now, where are your lead elements?”

“I can’t answer anything unless you identify yourself and I certainly can’t give you the location of our units.”

“Okay, well, in that case I hope like hell that they’re all behind the line of hills around Wooten Mountain. If they’re as far forward as East Franklin, tell them to duck and cover because it’s about to get nasty. Out.”

“Okay, Pruitt, whenever you’re ready,” the colonel said.

“Sir, are you sure about this?” the gunner said. He had keyed in the particulars and was just updating the target point now. “We are going to catch the division in this blast.”

“I don’t like it, but that’s what we’ve got to do,” Mitchell replied tiredly. “Fire.”

“Roger, sir,” Pruitt replied, looking straight into the rising sun. “On the way.”

The area effect round tracked straight and true to a point two thousand meters above an imaginary line between the C-Decs and then detonated.

The ships were interstellar battle cruisers as well as transports for the Posleen. And under normal circumstances a 100 KT round detonating 2000 meters away would have been shrugged off. In vacuum. Between planets.