The Assault (26 page)

“Yes,” Chisnall replied.

“They said you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow,” the worker said. “I’ll have to get clearance from my supervisor. Apparently there’s a group of terrorists running around.”

“There is,” Chisnall agreed. “They’re in there.” He pointed to the rock. “And the whole rock is about to explode. Haven’t you been given evacuation orders?”

The worker looked frightened. “Evacuation? No. Nothing!”

“Get moving, now! We’ll see if we can get this tank to safety. Go!”

Chisnall didn’t wait for an answer. He ducked underneath the metal rim of the tank, the others right behind him.

“You need to wait for clearance,” the worker said behind him. “Hey!”

Chisnall ignored him. The entrance hatch was open, and he clambered up into it, reaching back and giving Price a hand so that she could avoid putting weight on her wrist.

Only a dim glow from an emergency light lit the interior.
They were in a kind of well, a circular depression in the base of the tank. A short ladder led up to the control center.

They climbed the ladder and found two sets of controls on one side that were clearly for steering the tank, while two on the other side were for the weapons systems.

“Hey!” Chisnall heard again from outside, but it was cut off by a metallic clang as he found a lever on the control panel that slid the hatch shut.

Chisnall slid into the driver’s seat. It was large and padded. Surprisingly comfortable. It occurred to him that the padding might be protection against the shock of explosions outside the hull rather than a creature comfort.

The rain was a muted thrum on the outer shell of the tank.

Price slid into the seat next to him. That would be for the tank commander, or possibly a navigator. Maybe a communications officer.

The desk in front of him was covered with lights, buttons, readouts, and switches. It looked like the control panel of a jetliner.

Price put something down on the desk, and a dim, red flash caught Chisnall’s eye. The transmitter. Somehow she had managed to hang on to it throughout the wild slide down the rock and the plunge into the pool. All with just one good arm.

“Better leave this running,” Price said. “Otherwise our rotorcraft ride home is likely to bug out at the sight of a Bzadian battle tank.”

“True,” Chisnall said. “Now let’s see if we can work out how to drive this thing.”

Price moved her good hand and pressed a switch. The interior cabin filled with light. Screens lit up around them. There were no windows, Chisnall realized. No grilles. No way of looking out. That couldn’t be right. They had to see where they were going.

A helmet hung on a hook to the right of the desk. A thick wire protruded from the base of it. He put it on and a visor flicked down over his eyes. Suddenly he was looking outside the tank. Images from cameras embedded in the hulls were projected in front of his eyes. If he turned his head, the view moved. He twisted around and found he was looking directly behind the tank. He had full 360-degree vision, yet he was securely encased inside the machine.

Somehow the control panel in front of him was still visible, a ghostly image that seemed to be superimposed on the world outside. He turned toward Price and could see her reasonably clearly. He found that if he focused his eyes on the outside world, it became clear, and if he focused on the inside of the tank, it moved into sharp focus. He wasn’t sure if it was his eyes doing that or some clever trick of the helmet software. Price was putting on a helmet of her own.

“Wilton, Monster, get on the gunnery controls,” Chisnall said.

“The gun is out,” Wilton said. “Thanks to Monster.”

“Some people are never happy,” Monster said.

“See what other armaments there are,” Chisnall said.

Price found a starter button, and the machine shuddered into life before settling down into a smooth purr that smothered the sound of the rain. Chisnall examined the rest of the controls. Moving the tank seemed simple. It was controlled by two palm-sized knobs. He turned the knob on the left and the tank slowly rumbled forward, toward Uluru. The other one must be for speed.

“Wrong way,” he muttered, and eased the right-hand knob around. As he did, there was a feeling of movement, and he realized that the cabin had rotated inside the tank, automatically orienting itself to the direction of travel.

The controls made human vehicles—with their gas pedals, brakes, steering wheels, and forward and reverse gears—seem hopelessly complicated. One knob for speed. The other for direction. The tank could move in any direction. So to go in reverse, he would simply turn the right-hand knob in that direction.

“And now we just roll on out of here,” Wilton said.

“It’s that simple,” Chisnall said, not quite believing it.

“It’s
not
that simple,” Price said.

He turned to look where she was looking.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

Yozi, indestructible Yozi, and the big soldier, Alizza, were running toward them, weapons in hand.

“Time we got moving,” Chisnall said, and spun both knobs.

The machine surged forward, heading right for Yozi.

Chisnall kept it on course for a moment, watching Yozi
and Alizza throw themselves to the side, out of the path of the raging tank. A fence in front of them was quickly gone, trampled under the huge ball wheels of the tank. Then he steered the tank back onto the approach road. The road led into the city, and from there they could find their way north.

“This is madness. We’ll never make it,” Price said.

“Doesn’t stop us trying,” Chisnall said.

He glanced around and saw Yozi and Alizza running toward the other tank, yelling at the tank crew. The crew scrambled inside. Now the other tank was accelerating.

“How are those guns coming?” Chisnall asked calmly.

“I think we found the fire button,” Monster said.

“You’re gonna need it,” Chisnall said. He twisted the speed knob around as far as it would go and the tank charged toward the low outer fence line.

Price was studying the controls. She pressed a large red button, and around them the hull of the tank began to vibrate. It started as a hum, then became a high-pitched whine as the hull started spinning.

The outer fence line was rapidly approaching. In just a few meters, they could lose themselves between the big stone buildings beyond it. But a quick glance back showed the gun turret of the second tank was coming around to aim at them.

“Incoming!” he yelled.

There was a flash from the other tank’s gun, then a clang on the outer hull, followed by an explosion from one of the buildings. Smoke and dust billowed around them.

“What the hell?” Wilton asked.

“Takes a direct hit to kill one of these things,” Chisnall said. “Anything else ricochets off.”

They had made it between the buildings, racing down the narrow street, away from Uluru, out of sight of the following tank—for the moment, at least.

Chisnall gritted his teeth and steered around a tight corner to the right, to the north, toward the base boundary and the desert beyond. They almost didn’t make it. The outer edge of the huge tank gouged a long scar along one of the buildings, but then they straightened, and Chisnall twisted the speed knob back to maximum. Full speed ahead.

A Land Rover was parked to one side. He ignored it and felt the tank rise up slightly as it rolled over the top, crushing it.

A truck turned a corner and approached them head-on. The street was not wide enough for them both. The truck swerved madly from side to side, then smoked poured from its brakes. The driver burst out the door, fell, and rolled in the street before jumping up and running to flatten himself against a building.

The tank hit the truck off center and carried it down the road for ten or twenty meters before the back of the truck slipped sideways, striking one of the buildings and wedging there. The chassis was crushed and the cab exploded in flames.

“I got twin heavy coil-guns,” Wilton said. “Locked and loaded.”

Machine guns wouldn’t do much against a battle tank, but it was better than nothing.

“Aim for the barrel,” Chisnall said. “That worked once before.”

Chisnall felt the weight of the tank shift slightly as the turret and the mangled barrel of the tank’s main gun rotated around to the rear.

There was a thundering sound as the second tank turned the corner and appeared behind them. In the video visor, Chisnall saw Wilton’s tracer rounds spark off it.

The other tank fired. There was another clang from the hull and a building shattered and collapsed in the street behind them. Their pursuers had to slow as the tank climbed over the jagged rock in its path.

That gave Chisnall an idea.

He spun the tank wide around another corner, another tight side street. He deliberately let the tank climb up onto the sidewalk and into the curved stone side of a tall, thin building. Stone exploded in every direction; then they were past. The building, robbed of its base, tottered for a moment, then toppled, huge chunks of rock completely blocking the street.

The second tank appeared, smashing through some of the rubble before slowly clambering up over the rest. As the front of it rose up, Wilton hit them with the heavy coil-guns, hoping to strike the more delicate underside of the tank.

“Damn,” he said as the rounds just bounced off.

Chisnall turned and turned again, hoping to lose their pursuers in the maze of side streets.

He continued to head north, toward the outer barrier, the
lake, and their only hope of salvation. Cars and jeeps disappeared under the massive ball wheels of the juggernaut. Fuel tanks exploded, jarring the tank but not damaging it in the slightest.

The other tank appeared on a parallel road, visible down a side street.

“To your left!” Chisnall yelled.

The turret rotated, but they were already past the intersection, and the other tank was hidden behind tall buildings.

They were almost to the outer perimeter wall when the second tank appeared behind them, firing. Another, much heavier clang from the hull told Chisnall that their enemy was finding its range. There was a sudden plume of dirt out in the desert as the shell ricocheted off and exploded, although the rain quickly washed it out of the sky.

They smashed through the low boundary wall, the tank juddering over the crushed remains.

The going was faster over the flat, open desert, but here there was nothing to hide behind. Chisnall veered the big machine from side to side, not wanting to give Yozi an easy, steady shot.

Wilton fired continuously but had no effect on the thick, spinning metal of the other battle tank.

But the enemy tank did not return the fire.

“Fast movers, eight o’clock,” Price said, her eyes on a radar screen. “Two of them.”

Chisnall glanced to the left. Two type ones, screaming in from the west, below the heavy rainclouds. Death from the
sky. No tank hull could survive a direct hit from a Bzadian jet’s missile.

“LT!” Price yelled, pulling his attention back to the front.

Before them, rising out of the desert, was the ugly, multi-pronged shape of a Bzadian gunship. It was a three-sided attack, Chisnall saw, and there was no way out. Behind them, the tank; in front, the gunship; and high in the sky, silhouetted above Uluru, the two alien jets.

There was no chance to escape. No hope left. And no panic. He felt calm, perhaps because of the sheer hopelessness of the situation. Death was coming fast, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

“Been a good effort, team,” he said.

That was when Uluru began to dance.

It shuddered, as if terribly afraid, and fire burst out of the side of the rock, through the tunnel entrance. Another shaft of fire, like a man-made bolt of lightning, appeared at the top of the rock, in the cleft—the ventilation shaft. It was so powerful that even the clouds parted around it.

The entire top of Uluru seemed to rise up, as if drawing in a breath. Then the rock exhaled through the monorail tunnel, and all hell came with it. A billowing, fiery shock wave punched straight through the base behind them.

Buildings, vehicles, everything in its path, disappeared into the cloud of dust.

Even out in the desert, well out of the cone of destruction, inside a solid metal battle tank, Chisnall felt the force of the explosive anger.

Behind them, the second tank, closer to the outer edge of the blast, rocked on its suspension. Two figures on the back of the tank went flying, arms and legs cartwheeling through the air, slamming into the wet sand of the desert.

In front of them, the gunship rotorcraft shook and shimmied in the sky but held its position.

The fast movers were not so lucky. They were almost directly over Uluru when it blew. The upward blast of burning fuel hit one of the jets, spinning it like a football. It rolled sideways, clipping the tail of the other jet. For a second, it looked as though they would both recover. Then the first jet exploded, dissolving in a fireball, while the second, without a tail, spiraled into the desert.

Chisnall stared at the fire and dust pouring out through the openings in Uluru. The tank’s cameras saw the explosion, but his mind saw more. Much more. He saw the faces of the young mothers, impaled on their cots by snaking tubes, their dull eyes reflecting the white flare of the blast for a fraction of a second before they vanished forever.

The jets were gone, but it wasn’t over yet. In front of them, flashes came from the gunship. Rockets.

Chisnall shut his eyes, waiting for the impact.

“They’re firing too high!” Price yelled.

He opened his eyes and looked up to see the trails of the rockets passing over their heads—two of them. He twisted around and saw a brilliant flash as they both impacted, dead center, on the tank behind them. It exploded
with a brilliant flash and a scream of rent metal, jagged hunks of tank rising in parabolic arcs before crashing down into the desert sand.

“They got the wrong tank!” Wilton yelled. “They got the wrong tank!”

“No, they didn’t,” Chisnall said.