Einstein Must Die! (Fate of Nations Book 1) (23 page)

He was too big to fit through the main gate. His width exceeded the entrance by several feet. The colonel cursed. He could see the battle being waged not one hundred yards away, but he was powerless to get in there and help. He scanned the thick masonry of the gatehouse and the watchtower and swore again.

He checked his inventory and was disappointed to find he had not been equipped with any mortars. From this close, it would be a simple matter to land the explosive clusters on the British’s heads.

He focused, singling out British soldiers, hoping to at least pick off a few, but they appeared and withdrew behind cover too quickly for a clean shot. His steel treads churned the ground as he maneuvered back and forth for a good angle, but he came to realize he would be of little help to the desperate Americans.

***

Lieutenant Danvers knew the day was his.
 

The American force was quickly being whittled down. And with every man lost, their combat strength dropped further, accelerating their decline. The snipers had been key, and he made a mental note to see them properly recognized.
 

Now that he thought of them, he realized they’d stopped firing.
Perhaps they’re repositioning
? In any event they’d done their job well. His men could handle it from here.

The British troops had found cover behind several military transport trucks. The windows had all been shot out, but they still provided good firing positions. His men’s boots stepped over the shattered window fragments as they fought, adding the crunch of broken glass to the sounds of rifle shots and screams.

He crouched low behind a transport truck. Kneeling beside a large tire, he peered under the truck’s flatbed at the Americans’ position. He guessed they had sixty men left, bunched together into a tight ball by the sniper fire. He paused, watching them carefully. A dozen men had rifles, but were no longer firing.
They’re out of ammunition
! And the rest would be running low.

He sprinted away from the truck and joined the staff sergeant, who crouched behind a steel water tank, lining up a shot. He fired, and another American went down, clutching his belly in shock and surprise.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked, looking up. Without missing a beat, he ejected the five-round magazine, snapped another in place, and chambered the first round. Then he paused, expecting orders.

The lieutenant appreciated the man’s military bearing, and his respect for an officer who had seen far less combat than the grizzled NCO.

“I want you to take fifty men. Circle around and push into the Americans from the east. I will lead the remainder, and we’ll crush them between us.”

The staff sergeant saluted crisply. “Yes, sir!” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and ran through the British ranks, slapping men on the back, calling them to follow him. In minutes, he’d assembled his group to the east of the beleaguered Americans, and waited for the lieutenant’s move.

Danvers knew the major was up on the bluff, watching the battle unfold. Well, let this be the first chapter in his military legacy. He looked around at the tired, eager faces waiting for the command to charge. They tasted victory and wanted to end this now, decisively. Still one hundred or so men strong, they would hit the Americans hard.

He raised his hand, then brought it down. “Charge!” he cried. The men rushed forward, yelling as they stormed out of cover. Rifles were raised and fired as they ran. The British stayed low, but surged forward in a wave.

On the far side of the battle, the staff sergeant saw the lieutenant charge, and led his fifty men forward to join them. They rushed to hit the Americans first, but the larger group had less distance to cross. Running, he brought his rifle up. He saw a beefy corporal taking aim at the lieutenant. Sighting for the man’s gut, he squeezed off a round. The shot went wide, impacting the mess hall’s outer wall. Without breaking pace he cycled the bolt to reload and fired again, this time hitting his target. The muscular corporal fell against the man standing beside him, then collapsed.

The lieutenant hadn’t seen the corporal aiming for him, but he was elated to see the staff sergeant’s men approaching. Both groups would hit the Americans and crash around them like a wave striking a rock. This battle would be over in minutes, and the base would be theirs. They were close now, twenty yards and closing fast. He clearly saw the Americans’ panicked faces and felt pity for their fate, but also the thrill of conquest.
If only my father could be
—

A tremendous crash ripped through the air, like an avalanche or a ship running hard aground. The sound turned the head of every man on the field, and they all gaped at the sight that caused it.

A monstrous steel tank was roaring through the main gate. It was too big to fit, but with high speed and the mass of a building, it plowed forward. The gatehouse exploded in a cloud of brick and mortar as am eight-foot-tall tread punched through it. The other tread gouged a jagged truck-sized chunk from the watchtower’s cement pillar. The thousand-pound mass of stone fell onto the tank, then rolled back and fell to the ground behind as the tank surged forward.

Beowulf was in the base now. Both British and American forces stared in astonishment as the tank roared toward them. Behind it the watchtower tilted, then crashed to the ground in a mound of rubble. A cloud of dust billowed into the air with a loud
whumpf
and served as a dramatic backdrop as the steel beast raced straight at them.

***

The colonel scanned the three masses of men and quickly found his allies. He mentally marked each of their faces as friendly, then willed his guns to kill every other man standing. One hundred and fifty-one hostiles. Detaching a small part of his mind, he assigned it the task of managing firing solutions and confirming enemy status before firing.

Satisfied that ballistics would be handled properly, he swung his main cannon to bear, but realized the force would be too great with friendlies nearby.

He adjusted course, swinging left twenty-seven degrees, bringing him on a collision course with the larger of the two British groups. He’d covered sixty yards already, since smashing through the gate. In another three seconds, he’d be upon his enemies.

With his electronic mind, he had the leisure to ponder thoughts in milliseconds. What used to be minutes of internal debate in his mind now happened in the blink of an eye. For him, everyone else had slowed to a crawl, but he knew it was he who had changed, not the universe.

He scanned the British and identified their ranking officer by insignia. Large command for a lieutenant, he mused. He wondered why the major stayed back on the bluff. Thomas was no coward. If anything, he loved the thrill of a fight. Especially one against Americans, given his history with Savannah. This must be a proving mission for a protégé. It would be his last.

The colonel checked his internal chronometer. His musing had used up fourteen-hundredths of a second. Again he marveled at how radically different his life had become. He closed on the lieutenant’s group at twenty-seven miles per hour. Smashing through the gatehouse had slowed him down a bit, but this speed was sufficient. At twenty-three yards out, his shredders sprang to life.

As he bore down on the stunned British, both forward shredders spit rounds in a nonstop beat. With American lives at stake, he allowed himself two shots per kill. Twin rounds ripped through British soldiers before the shredders would twitch slightly, realigning for their next target. All around the lieutenant, his men dropped like leaves from an autumn tree.

Beowulf roared into their midst then, and the British found the will to tear their eyes away and dive aside as the tank burst through their line, stopping their charge instantly and dividing the group in two.

Around the tank’s outer edge, the lieutenant saw eight shredders rise up, eager to send metal through flesh. They swiveled smoothly, mechanically, seeking targets and firing in 360 degrees around the huge tank.

Danvers couldn’t quite process how deadly this machine was. In all directions, his soldiers continued falling and accumulating on the ground in morbid heaps. Nothing killed this fast. Even crack gun crews needed more time to fight this effectively. In seconds a hundred men were dead. The horror of the macabre spectacle froze him in place, and his breath caught in his throat as he watched the machine do its terrible work.

The stunned Americans had dived for cover at first, having never seen the top-secret tank before. But when they realized it fought for them, they stood and cheered as it brutally engaged the British.

The staff sergeant was equally appalled at the force tearing them apart, and his men were dropping as quickly. But years of combat had trained his nervous system to react without waiting for commands from his mind. He knew the battle was lost, even as men fell around him. He ran for cover, sprinting to reach the brick mess hall. If he could get behind it, he might be able to slip back out of the base unseen. Besides saving his own life, he knew Command needed to hear about this machine. He pumped his legs as hard as he could and threw down his rifle, letting his arms swing widely. Behind him he heard someone else following him, someone who also had fast instincts.
Good for him
, he thought, not taking his eyes from the safety of the building.

In the small, reserved part of the colonel’s mind that handled firing solutions, British faces appeared, were checked against the database of allies, and condemned to die. Their faces were added to a queue for elimination, and a second later, a shredder swung and executed the sentence.

At times the colonel saw an opportunity to save ammo. By delaying firing for several tenths of a second, he was able to line up multiple targets. His rounds would cut through the closer target and pass through, killing the more distant one. He appreciated the efficiency possible by processing the tactics so extremely.

The lieutenant’s face appeared in the kill queue, but the colonel placed an override on it, saving his life. If possible, he wanted to capture the man for interrogation.

The staff sergeant’s lungs were screaming. The battle and his frantic sprinting had exhausted him, and he sucked the air hard for every bit of oxygen it held. He reached the corner of the mess hall, surprised by not feeling twin rounds rip into him, like his fellow fighters. As he whipped around the corner, he slammed his back against it, desperate for a quick breather. A moment later a skinny private raced past him, then joined him against the wall. Panting, they shared a silent look of congratulations as they caught their breath.

All around the lieutenant, his men fell in droves, until he was the only one standing. He stood alone, surrounded by piles of the dead. The morning sun on his face was warm, but he felt a deep chill spread up from his gut. His entire command, a full company. All gone in less than a minute. It simply was not possible.

Beowulf’s guns ceased fire. The eight barrels each glowed a dull red, and Danvers saw the distortion of superheated air wavering above them. Simultaneously, they all retreated back within recessed ports, and the deadly machine was still.

The colonel scanned the area. He confirmed no friendly casualties had been targeted. He counted 148 British dead, plus the stunned lieutenant. With a sharp prick of alarm, he realized he was two men short. It had been a chaotic fight. It was possible two British had slipped out while he was otherwise engaged. He was already growing accustomed to machine-like efficiency, and loose threads annoyed him greatly.

Then he realized he had powers of sight beyond normal men. By default he preferred to see the world with eyes that saw light as he did as a mortal, in the 380- to 700-nanometer range. But now he could choose what frequencies his eyes saw. He shifted his visual receptors, allowing light in longer wavelengths to be detected. As he did so, he began to see the world of infrared light, which let him look through walls.

He scanned the area again. The heaps of dead British were quite hot, though slowly cooling. The standing lieutenant was brightly visible, of course. Then he saw two thermal masses, hiding behind the mess hall. They were resting, leaning against the wall. From his current angle, he guessed there was seven inches of brick between him and the two British. Too thick for a standard round. And if he moved, the sound would spook them. The colonel mentally smiled as he remembered he carried a magazine of armor-piercing rounds. He told a subsystem to load them into a shredder.

***

The staff sergeant was getting his breath back, and he clapped the private on the shoulder.

“Good instincts,” he said. “Now let’s get back and report this.”

The private grinned and rested his head back on the brick. “Damn right, Sarge. We’ll—”

He never finished the thought. Instead, he looked down, amazed to see a hole blasted through his stomach. Beowulf’s armor-piercing round had sliced cleanly through the bricks and punched its way through the private’s digestive system.

As the dying private slid down the wall, the staff sergeant threw himself to the ground. He heard a concussive crunch and saw a second fist-sized hole appear in the wall, right where he’d been standing.

He scrambled along the ground, crab-like, diving behind a shipping container, then standing to run like a man with the forces of hell behind him.

Beowulf saw the first shot connect, but the rapidly fading heat signature of the second told him he had a single runaway. He threw his treads in opposite directions, spun about in a fast 180, then tore after the fleeing staff sergeant.

He was limited in his mobility, as he didn’t want to destroy the base for a single hostile, but he drove back along the main entryway, scanning in all directions. He came across a dozen Americans, mostly clerical workers who were coming out now that the fighting had stopped. But no British.

“You lucked out today,” he muttered, terrifying an older admin woman peeking her head out of her office. She hastily slammed the door shut.

He thought of Major Thomas on the bluff, but knew he’d be gone before he could reach him. The colonel reversed course and returned to the grateful Americans.