“Two.”
“Continue engagement. Three, when two goes dry…”
“Three, gotcha.”
Chan flipped off of the company frequency and down to the SheVa intercom. “Major Mitchell, we’re going to be out of targets soon.”
Mitchell shook his head at the blood bath on the roadway. The road-cuts to either side of the narrow gap were splashed with yellow nearly to their tops. And you didn’t often see that.
“When the opening is clear arc your fire over the ridgeline. We don’t have much maneuvering room here; the crunchies are in the way.”
“Understand, sir. I’d like to get us up on the next ridgeline. My map says it opens up on the other side. I think we could do good works up there.”
Mitchell chuckled and nodded his head, unseen. “Concur, and we’re probably in trouble for running over the church. I’ll get on the horn to the division and see if they can clear out a few of their crunchies.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a pause. “We’re shot out on turrets one through six and twelve. The others don’t have the angularity.”
“How long to reload?” Mitchell asked, turning his head sideways as the tech rep waved one arm in his direction.
“About another three minutes, sir,” Chan said awkwardly. “We fire this stuff off way faster than we reload.”
“Hold on a second,” Mitchell replied, cutting the intercom audio and furrowing his brow at Kilzer’s gestures. “Yes?”
“Rotate the turret,” Kilzer said.
“She did,” Mitchell replied acidly then stopped. “Oh. Jesus.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kilzer said, waving his hand. “I’ve been thinking about this stuff longer than you have.”
“So, boss, you want I should rotate the turret?” Pruitt said with a chuckle.
“Major Chan,” Mitchell said, keying the intercom again. “We’re going to rotate the turret to bring the rest of your guns into action.”
There was another pause and he smiled. “If you’re pounding your head on the TC controls, it’s okay. So am I.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chan called back as Pruitt keyed the controls.
“Hold it there, Pruitt,” Chan said, flipping to the company frequency. “Number Five, you’re up. Everybody watch where the previous turret has fired,” she continued as the blast of fire arched over the nearby ridgeline. “I want to try to saturate the area on the other side of the ridge.”
She nodded as the SheVa turret began to rotate. Pruitt apparently could feel the MetalStorm fire even in the heavily armored control room and had rotated automatically when five had finished its shot. And he did it again when six was done. So she could quit worrying about it.
Time to find something else to worry about.
She popped her head out of the TC’s hatch and watched as Glenn manipulated the loader. There were four packs, three 40s and a 105, connected to the SheVa’s top directly behind the turret. The loader was a multi-angularity forklift that connected to special points on the bottom of the packs. Once it was connected, which was the most ticklish part, all that Glenn had to do was hit the “Load Sequence” button and the multi-ton pack was lifted through three dimensions and carefully dropped into the gun-cradle. Once in place the gun system inserted the pintle and trunnions making the whole system ready to fire.
Simple. So simple that they’d be reloaded before Nine’s turn to fire came up. And so would Nine. The question was whether to continue the fire-mission.
There were packs stashed in the interior. But to get to those would require the crane and someone, Pruitt probably, who was qualified to operate it. Which meant an hour or so to replace all her ready-packs. Which meant she really didn’t want to shoot off all her reloads blind.
“Colonel Mitchell,” she said, switching back over to intercom. “I recommend we give them one stonk from here and then either move forward to the ridgeline or begin our movement towards Franklin.”
Mitchell was regretting releasing Kitteket. The specialist had been dumped on them by accident during the retreat, but having someone to handle all the communications had turned out to useful. SheVas, by and large, did not do a lot of communicating. They mostly stayed in place or were moved by careful coordination of the local force commanders, who “owned” the SheVas as attachments. Operations orders, movement orders and communications were laid out days in advance. Otherwise they tended to run over such unimportant obstacles as front-lines, headquarters or, in one particularly unpleasant accident, the entire logistics “tail” of divisions. There was a reason that SheVa crewmen referred to everything other than SheVas, including “lesser” armor, as “crunchies.”
But the battle for the Tennessee Valley had been a wild scramble and, as far as Mitchell knew, he was an independent command under Army headquarters. Which meant that he wasn’t in the decision loop of the local division. Furthermore, the entire battle both in retreat and advance had been, of necessity, much more fluid than most battles that involved something the size of the Great Pyramids. And then there were the MetalStorms.
All of that meant far more communication load than was normal for a SheVa commander.
Which was Mitchell’s problem at the moment.
“Wait one, Vickie,” he said, switching back to another frequency. “Whiskey Five Echo Six-Four, this is SheVa Nine, over.”
“SheVa Nine, you are not authorized on this net.”
“Great, Echo Six-Four. I’m glad you have such great commo security. The point is that we’re about to make a movement forward and unless we can coordinate it, we’ll run over about two companies of your troops, over.” He was on the division command net and he knew he was supposed to be on a support net, probably a dedicated one. That was how they usually ran SheVas. But he didn’t have a correct frequency. All he had was a hastily scribbled note that said “Local Division” and a frequency.
Welcome to the Real and the Nasty, boys.
“SheVa Nine, authenticate Victor Foxtrot.”
“Look, first of all the damned net is compromised in case you hadn’t been told. Including the current SOI. Second of all, I don’t have your SOI. So, I’m sorry, I can’t authenticate. Look, we’re this great big metal thing on a ridge near Green’s Creek. If you look closely, we have ‘U.S. Defense Force SheVa Nine’ on our side and we have a great big picture of a mini-lop rabbit on the front. And we’re getting ready to roll over one of your battalions. So can we quit the commo games?!”
“SheVa Nine, this is Grizzly Six, over.” The voice was gruff with a slight accent. It fit the name.
“Grizzly Six, this is SheVa Nine, over.” Six meant a commander. Hopefully the commander of the unit they were about to run over so that maybe the crunchies would get out of the way.
“You’re right, the SOI is compromised. But that doesn’t mean you’re you. Rotate your turret back and forth.”
“Hang one, Grizzly, we’re completing a stonk.” Mitchell unkeyed the radio and looked over at Pruitt. “Pruitt, where we at?”
“That was eight. We’re done. Vickie wants to hold onto her ready ammo.”
“Okay, rotate the turret back and forth a bit. And don’t you ever call her Vickie around me again.”
“Will do, boss,” the gunner replied, with a shrug. He tapped the controls back and forth. “What was that in aid of?”
“No idea,” the commander replied. “But at least we’re talking to the locals again.” He keyed the microphone and took a breath. “Grizzly Six, have complied.”