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threat to any of the war wags.
Then there was a terrific groaning, cracking sound right under their feet.
Everything suddenly shifted nose forward.
Trader was slammed against the back of the driver's seat; he had to cling to
it to keep from being flipped over into Shabazz's lap.
The front end of the MCP was dropping, and kept dropping.
"Oh, shit!" Shabazz cried, trying frantically to find reverse gear, and only
making grinding noises as he repeatedly missed his target.
"Hang on," Trader told Sam and J.B. as the earth continued to open up and the
huge vehicle slid nose down into a truly monumental chasm.
The MCP came to a crunching halt that sent Trader to his knees. All the red
lights dimmed for a second, then they came back up.
Trader estimated their downward angle to be about forty degrees, which told
him the back half of War Wag One was still hanging on the edge of the
collapsed roadway.
A hailstorm of bullets clanged and clattered against the outside of the hull,
making it impossible to hear or to think.
Shabazz acted like a man possessed, grinding the gears until he finally found
reverse. Engines roaring, every drive axle torquing, the rear end of the MCP
slipped around on the lip of the ditch but didn't move backward so much as an
inch.
Adding to the tumult and chaos, blasterfire erupted from the wag's every
blasterport and blister.
A lucky slug from one of the savages skipped through the copilot's ob slit and
sang through the compartment before cutting a silvery track along the olive
drab of the far wall.
Shabazz tried again, revving the engines to redline before dropping the
transmission into reverse. Trader could see that the man was close to panic.
Shabazz knew just how desperate the situation was. The MCP's weapons systems
were unaimable, stuck either pointing down in the hole or up in the sky. Its
vast bulk was immobile. It wouldn't be long before the guardians had their way
with them.
Despite his efforts, the big wag stayed right where it was.
The wag-to-wag- intercom blared down at them in a distorted screech. Someone
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was shouting over volleys of blasterfire. It took a few seconds to sort out
the words, and the speaker. It was
Baron Zeal. "Shabazz, get that piece of shit out of the way!" he yelled. "The
bastards are going to overrun us!"
Shabazz reached up for the mike. "Zeal, we're stuck in a tank trap. You're
gonna have to back out& back down the pass& "
"Let Trader drive!" came the shouted response.
Something big and heavy hit the roof of the wag.
The jarring impact made Trader stagger, and dropped dust and paint flakes down
on them.
"Come on! Do it!" Shabazz said to his archrival as he vacated the chair. "Do
it, you fucking bastard!"
In no particular hurry, Trader took the helm. He pointed at the stub of a
cheroot stuck in the corner of his mouth and said to
Shabazz, "First gimme a light."
The outraged Shabazz fumbled with a match. As he got the cigar lit, another
rocking impact struck the wag.
"What are they doing?" he said.
"Boulders," Trader replied, puffing the cheroot until it was well ablaze.
"They're rolling boulders down on us."
With that, he reached for the lever alongside the driver console, released the
safety catch and pushed it away from him.
From the back of the wag, there came the meshing of gears, then the already
elevated MCP's rear end lifted up slightly.
With the rear Cat tracks down, getting out of the ditch was a piece of cake.
Trader revved the engines and just backed the big rig up, and as he did, the
nose end lifted out of the trap and the front wheels rolled out onto the road.
After he'd reversed about fifteen feet from the edge, he stopped, looked over
at Shabazz and said, "Now what?"
PALMER THE GUARDIAN was watching the huge armored vehicle from a fortified
position on the edge of the cliff when it opened fire with its cannons. The
war beast had a voice, after all, a terrifying voice and a tongue of flame. He
ducked back behind the rock pile as shards of shattered stone and fragments of
steel jacketing whined past his head. When he looked out again, he saw that
the wag had blown a great smoking chunk out of the corner of the cliff
opposite. He also saw his clansmen scattered like leaves over the roadway,
their bodies sprawled in attitudes of death. He had never been witness to such
ballistic power.
Clearly the drawings in First Palmer's diary didn't do this wheeled thing
justice.
His heart lifted when he realized that the wounded down on the road were still
fighting. Legless, minus an arm, they still clutched their assault rifles and
continued to pour fire at the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]