Luna Marine(136)
“Objective is under fire!” Hartwell called.
“Outstanding!” That meant that LAV-2 and LAV-4 were also close enough to engage, somewhere on the other side of the UN base. Approaching from two directions, coming around both sides of the central peak, must have the enemy commander beside himself. “Pop a comm relay!”
“Roger that!”
Hartwell pressed several screen touchpoints as the LAV gave another lurch and thump. On the upper deck, just behind the laser turret, a hatch popped open and a burst of compressed nitrogen blasted a baseball-sized sphere into the black sky.
Almost immediately, a crackle of radio voices sounded in Kaitlin’s helmet headset.
“LAV-2, this is LAV-4! I’ve got movement on the ship!” That sounded like Staff Sergeant Mohr. “I think I see the turret!”
“Hit it!” the captain’s voice cried back. “Take out the turret!”
“Firing!”
“Damn! You hit something! Can’t see what!…”
“Two, this is One!” Kaitlin called. “Target in sight! Watch out for hoppers!”
The other two LAVs were masked by Tsiolkovsky’s central peak, and there was no ionosphere here to bounce signals off of, but the comm relay, following its mortar-lobbed trajectory, could relay communications between the widely scattered elements of the company for over a minute before the Moon’s sixth of a G could drag it back down to the surface.
“Roger that, One,” Fuentes replied. “Nice you could join us!”
“Hoo, yeah!” Mohr added. “Kick ass and take names!”
“We’ll be moving too fast to take names,” Fuentes replied. “I’ll settle for initials!”
“Two, Four! I’ve got hoppers incoming, bearing one-nine-five!”
“LAV-1, this is Two! Hit the primary target, and keep hitting him! LAV-4, open fire on those hoppers.”
“Roger, LAV-2.”
“Roger that, Skipper,” Kaitlin said. She looked at Hartwell. “You heard?”
“Aye-firmative. Lemme get clear of the damned dust!” Hartwell’s erratic driving had provided at least one side benefit—sending a cloud of fine, lunar dust into the sky…dust that at least partly obscured the fast-moving LAV. As the image on the screen cleared, Hartwell began moving the targeting cursor up the side of the UN ship.
An instant later, a flash of intense and silent light blanked out Hartwell’s monitor, a flare as dazzling as the surface of the sun.
Général de Brigade Paul-Armand
Larouche
Tsiolkovsky Base
0037 hours GMT
“A hit!” d’André shouted. He pointed at the monitor, which showed now the view from a camera mounted on the main weapon turret. From that vantage point, thirty meters above the ground, an immense cloud of dust was rising from the barren Lunar plain, just beyond the low hill sheltering the base to the west. For a moment, the camera’s optics had been blinded by the flash, but as the image cleared, there was little to be seen but a slow-falling cascade of dark gray dust. “We got him, General!”
“Swiftly, now,” Larouche ordered. “Bring the weapon to bear on the two vehicles to the northeast!”
“Slewing about to zero-eight-one…”
With the lone attacking vehicle killed, perhaps they now had a chance. Even if the primary weapon turret was knocked out now…
“It’s going to be difficult, General. Our people are too close!”
Merde! That was the biggest disadvantage of being forced to fight at such close quarters. The blast of the positron beam—heat, light, and radiation—was as undiscriminating as the detonation of a small nuclear weapon. The UN troops outside would suffer, too, if they were too close to the blast.
“The main turret is taking hits!” d’André shouted.
But that couldn’t be helped. “Fire! Fire now!…”
God forgive me!…
Captain Carmen Fuentes
Tsiolkovsky Crater
0037 hours GMT
“Fire!” Carmen yelled. Her eyes were watering from the flash that had momentarily blanked the screen. “Fire!”
A flash, a burst of white-hot incandescence, flared from the side of the UN ship, now less than four kilometers away.
“Score one for LAV-4!” Sergeant Mohr’s voice called over her headset. “I think we nailed the bastard that time!”
“I just lost the relay from LAV-1!” Staff Sergeant Michaels, LAV-2’s driver, announced.
“Put up another comm relay,” Carmen told him.
“We still have two in the sky,” Michaels replied. “And the LOS hit when the UN ship fired. Captain, I think LAV-1 just got scragged!”