When the Devil Dances

“Assumed” had so many connotations. In this case some bug in the software probably was telling the computer that these were not valid targets. She hated the software. If she ever found the idiots who had written it, she was going to line them up against a wall and shoot them.

With the commander’s machine gun; the ro-ro would probably miss.

She rolled her shoulders and shrugged. “Okay, Glenn, switch control up here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the gunner said. “What are you gonna do?”

“Use up a shitload of ammo,” she answered, switching the gun to manual.

She watched the… whatever they were for a moment. They would come sweeping in, high, really high, behind the SheVa, fire a few rounds into the back deck then bank off and come around for another shot. She considered it for a moment and hit another control.

“All tanks, flip your guns to remote control,” she said over the company net then switched to the SheVa’s frequency. “SheVa Nine, I need you to turn to the east and take a constant bearing for a few minutes, please.”

* * *

Mitchell felt like he was driving a wounded elephant. The SheVa was barely lumbering along and smoke was streaming from multiple strikes. So the call from the Meemie commander fell on welcome ears.

“I’d wondered where you’d gone,” he said. “Roger that, will do.”

He flipped to intercom and checked his screen. “Schmoo, turn east and head up the slope; don’t worry about going at max speed, just keep a constant course.”

“Yes, sir,” the private said, turning the lumbering gun to the east.

“Major Mitchell,” the warrant called. “This is Indy. We’re getting hammered, sir. We’re taking damage belowdecks.”

“I know,” Mitchell called back. “How bad is it?”

“We’ve taken some damage to the gun mounts which is really bad,” the warrant called back. “But they’ve got some redundancy in them. I think we can still fire. But if we take many more hits we’re going to be useless.”

“What’s the status on power?” Mitchell asked. “If we can speed up we can throw them off some. They aren’t coming down to engage; I guess SheVa Fourteen’s demise has put a scare in them.”

“I’ve restarted the reactors, sir,” the engineering officer replied. “But the turbines have a required warmup period; you really don’t want me to override it. Another five to seven minutes.”

“Okay,” the commander sighed. “It will have to do.” Mitchell considered his readouts and looked over at the gunner. “You gonna be up to this, Pruitt?”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said. “We’ve only got two rounds left.”

“I can read,” the commander said, gesturing at his controls. “I’ll call for a reload, but we’re going to have to put some distance between us and them first.” He shook his head at the next series of plasma strikes. “And get rid of our companions; I don’t want them shooting at our reloads.”

“Oh, good God no,” Pruitt chuckled.

“If I recall correctly, the fuel bunker for a Command Dodec is just below center,” Mitchell mused. “I think the next shot you get, they’ll be closer than they have been; under ten klicks…”

“You want me to try to get the fuel bunker,” Pruitt said.

“Simply aim with great care,” Mitchell said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

* * *

“Okay, here goes nothing,” Chan said. She watched the six circles rotating around the sky — she had hooked all six “tanks” together and now had them all under manual control — and picked a point above and behind the SheVa gun. “We really don’t want to shoot that thing in the ass.”

“Oh, no,” Glenn said, clamping her hands on either side of her helmet. “This is gonna SUCK.”

The Screaming Meemie was so named due to its passing resemblance to the WWII German mortar system of the same name. The “gun” was mounted on top of the tank on a very heavy-duty rotating pintle that replaced the turret; the tank commander and a gunner were shoehorned into what had been the bottom of the turret with the driver at the traditional position at the front. The gun itself was more or less circular in appearance with six distinct bulges or lobes on the side. The difference between the systems being that the German weapon, properly called the Neubelwerfer, was a multi-barreled mortar system. The modern Screaming Meemie was a MetalStorm 105 twelve-pack.

MetalStorm’s name said it all; each pack could throw up to twelve hundred 105mm discarding sabot rounds into the air in less than a minute. The rounds were packed “nose to tail” into twelve tubes that were both barrel and breach. The system was electrical and could fire either one round or a series at very high rates of fire. Once clear of the “barrel” the rounds, accelerated at slightly different velocities due to the nature of the system, dropped their plastic “shoes” and a sixty-millimeter dart of tungsten headed downrange at tank-killing speeds. With a hundred rounds packed into each tube, and the rounds going off at an electronically controlled sequence, the air quickly became saturated with tungsten and steel.