Wiley was a black man. It was a mark of his capabilities that he'd quickly risen to be the central leader of the Resistance in the Rocky Mountains, an area whose population was predominantly white.
Not too surprising, perhaps, given the general prominence of black people in the Resistance in most parts of the former United States. Oppuk had never made the attempt to understand his human subjects, so he'd never thought to use long historical grievances to pry America's black population away from its former political allegiances. He'd simply left the black population to suffer even worse than ever—after slaughtering a disproportionate number in Chicago and New Orleans.
"Okay, Rob," he'd said, smiling grimly. "Hammer 'em, it is. I don't imagine Orrie Abbott will have a problem with that." Like Wiley, Major General Orville Abbott was black.
Hammer them, he had, and Abbott had been none too concerned about human legal customs. He was, after all, a jinau officer—and he followed Jao practices when suppressing rebellions. In broad outlines, at least. The Jao never bothered with curlicues like "hanging them from lampposts."
The so-called "Dallas Uprising" had been over before Aille and his little fleet even lifted from Terra. Kenny George had decorated a lamppost himself.
* * *
The submarine was now racing toward the first Ekhat warship. Aille was taking advantage of a sudden swirl in the currents to bring them alongside as quickly as possible.
As quickly as possible, and as closely as possible—a task made all the more difficult because their target was the central pyramid, which required threading a trajectory through the outer lattice. Kralik hissed before he could restrain himself. For a moment, he thought that Aille had decided to ram the Ekhat, even though they'd all agreed that ramming was a tactic of last resort. Given the speeds involved, ramming was almost sure to destroy the submarine that tried it despite the flimsy construction of the huge Ekhat ships. And even if the submarine itself survived, the tanks that had been welded onto its back to serve as makeshift gun turrets would surely be stripped off. And the men inside it with them, including a certain Lieutenant General Ed Kralik, the laws of physics being no respecter of ranks and titles.
"Here we go!" Aguilera exclaimed—as if Kralik needed to be told. The huge flank of the Ekhat ship loomed like a cliff. Aille's superb piloting was going to bring them into point-blank range.
"Just say the word, sir," murmured the gunner.
Kralik's turret was the lead one. The submarine, a former boomer, had had eight tanks welded onto its back, each one above a former missile hatch. Four on each side, providing the submarine with the equivalent of a broadside, assuming the pilot was skilled enough to bring them into proper position.
Aille was skilled enough. "Light 'em up," commanded Kralik.
The tank's 140mm cannon erupted. The depleted-uranium penetrator blazed across the mile distance in less than a second. It looked like a tracer round, not because it was designed to be but simply because the surrounding ambient temperature—six thousand degrees Kelvin, once the penetrator shed the sabot and left the shield around the submarine—stripped away the outer layers of the projectile.
But not much of it, not with a muzzle velocity of over two thousand meters a second and less than a mile to travel. Just enough to allow Kralik and the gunner to follow the trajectory and see the fifteen-kilo penetrator strike the hull of the Ekhat warship. They managed to get off four shots before the submarine's own trajectory carried them past the Ekhat central pyramid and Kralik called off the firing.
The computer immediately confirmed what had been Kralik's own estimate. The four turrets able to bring their guns into line had hit the Ekhat warship with fifteen out of sixteen rounds. Kralik's own turret had fired the only miss, and that simply because it was the first in line. Kralik's last shot had been fired after the submarine carried too far past the enemy. The penetrator sailed off into solar oblivion, adding its own miniscule trace of heavy elements to the untold jillions of tons already there.
"Didn't look like much," muttered the gunner, half-complaining.
Half, but only half. Like Kralik, the gunner was an experienced tanker. The Ekhat ship was so gigantic that neither one of them had expected the pyrotechnics that always resulted when a DU penetrator hit another tank. But they knew full well that fifteen sabot rounds would have turned the inside of that ship into a charnel house. That much of it, at least, that the rounds could penetrate.
From the outside, it didn't look like much. Fifteen holes, mere inches in diameter, stitched across a vast surface. But once those projectiles penetrated the thin shell of the Ekhat ship, each of them would turn into an explosion of uranium fire. A bloom of sheer heat which would ignite almost anything it touched.