The turret kept traversing, and the anti-personnel guns kept buzzing. Snow and frozen ground erupted. Hardware crumpled. Bodies shredded. The position was pretty well reduced by the time we reached it, but I rolled over it a few times to make sure.
I spotted a white-suited figure limping from the gorge's mouth, and drove over. It was Toglog. Stopping in front of him, I popped the turret hatch. "Schmidt, get rid of the tanker corpse and help Toglog in!"
"Ja, Sarge!"
Toglog had acquired a few more minor wounds, and he was packing a Skoda instead of his Enforcer. "Grenades all used up!" he explained as we patched ourselves and gulped more keep-going pills. It was a good thing that we had transport again; we were all running down despite the pills.
"What happened to Ski?" I growled at Toglog.
"One of the .50 calibers carved him from head to toe! Fine weapons-too bad you crunched them!"
"You would want to stagger into combat carrying a field piece! Forget it! The run and games are over, you yahoos-time to do the job we came to do!"
"We still don't have anybody to ask where the base is!"
"Don't need to!" I tapped buttons on the command console, and a map appeared on the tac screen. "The auto-con will show us!"
Following the map course, we set out for the hijackers' base. I drove, and Schmidt stood by in the turret just in case. Toglog didn't like the cramped quarters; he rode on top of the turret, enjoying the scenery.
Rounding the volcanos, the T-680 wove through a region of geysers and hot springs. Blasts of steam turned the tank's interior into an oven. The hijacker force's outbound tracks had been covered by fresh snow, and visibility was down to a handful of meters, so I had to rely mostly on the auto-con. Picking a way through the rough, dangerous terrain kept me pretty busy.
"Expecting another attack, Sarge?" Schmidt asked.
"It's the one you don't expect that fries your ass! Keep your eyes open, and that wound under your mustache zipped!"
But the trip was uneventful, except for a few quakes, avalanches, crevasses, and a hail of lava chunks that almost knocked Toglog off the turret. I could see how the hijackers had managed to operate here so long without being discovered. What I couldn't see was how they managed to operate here at all.
The T-680 climbed through a pass in a nuked-looking ridge. In the middle of the snowbound lava field beyond, I could make out a lone dome-shaped hill. There were streams and some vegetation on its lower slopes, but the wind kept the glossy black summit swept clear.
"According to the auto-con," I yelled, "that's our target!"
"I don't see any base!" Toglog replied over the com. "Just rock!"
"Stay sharp anyway! Just in case that rock falls on us!"
The auto-con guided the T-680 down onto and across the lava field, toward a cavelike hole in the hill's flank. The mouth was about thirty meters across. A thin column of steam rose from it.
The back of my neck started itching again.
"Schmidt, lob a few shells into that hole!"
"You think the base is in there?"
"I think it's-"
KRUUUMP! An explosion under the front of the T-680 lifted it. It landed hard. More cannon shells erupted into flame and dark smoke around us, and .50 caliber slugs jackhammered off the armor. Toglog was thrown into a snowdrift. He popped up, chased the tank, climbed the left treadshield, and took cover behind the turret.
"-damned likely!" I finished.
"Where's the fire coming from?" Schmidt yelled.
I checked the tac screen. "A cannon and three machine guns in bunkers upslope from the cave!"
"Got 'em!"
"Then get 'em!" I switched on my com. "Last chance to come aboard, Toglog!"
"I was born on the steepe!" he answered. "I won't go to my ancestors in an iron yurt!"
"Have it your way! See what you can do about those machine guns!"
I sent the T-680 racing toward the cave mouth at max speed, through flame and smoke, slugs and shrapnel. Schmidt had the cannon in action, blowing huge chunks of snow/dirt/rock out of the hill.
A blast rang the T-680 like a bell. A treadplate was blown loose; I cut speed to a crawl before it could jam. Smoke came down from the turret, followed by a coughing yell from Schmidt. "Scratch the cannon!"
I was watching a combat-suited figure zigzagging up the slope. Machine gun bursts kicked up snow at its feet. "Cover Toglog!"
"Ja!" The twin anti-personnel guns dueled with the three hijacker .50 calibers. One silenced. Two. Then Toglog went down, his left arm a red-spurting stump.
Too late, Schmidt nailed the last machine gun.
Another near-miss from the hijacker cannon slammed into the T-680. It was still moving toward the cave mouth, but at turtle speed it would be scrap before it could reach cover.
Suddenly I noticed that Toglog's corpse had moved. Following the red trail upslope, I spotted it near the slit through which the hijacker cannon fired. Rearing up, it tossed four grenades liberated from a hijacker through the slit. A moment later the whole part of the hill blew out. Snow and rubble slid over Toglog, all the way down to the lava field.
The T-680's sensors picked up a strong energy reading from the cave mouth. "Hose the cave!" I yelled. "Now!"
The anti-personnel guns buzzed. Two lines of tracers disappeared into the cave's darkness, sweeping back and forth, up and down.
Something big and airborne shot out of the cave mouth. It screamed low over the T-680.
KRAAAAANG! The T-680 was blown over on its back. I tumbled down into the turret behind Schmidt, banging my head thrillingly. Fire and smoke filled the interior. Finding my helmet, I put it on, then helped Schmidt find his. The tank's electrical system shorted out spectacularly. In the darkness and sudden silence I fumbled for the hatch's manual release. "Are you ambulatory, grunt?" I growled.
"Ja. Barely."
"Follow me." I felt wonderful, but my body wasn't obeying orders the way it used to. I had to get tough with it. Grudgingly my hands worked the crank. The hatch opened partway, revealing red-lit snow. I squeezed through, with Schmidt tight behind.
We scrambled to get clear. The screaming overhead got louder. Looking back, I spotted a stubby fighter-a Yak VTOL-coming around for another pass. Flying and fighting in a blizzard wasn't easy, but the hijacker pilot had had quite a bit of experience. The fighter was one of those which had been raiding the shimmerstone camps. It had used up its load of eggs on the T-680. Now it was chewing up tundra with its wing-mounted aerial cannons, closing on us fast.
One other thing I noticed: it was trailing dark smoke. Schmidt hadn't missed completely.
"The cave!" I yelled. We staggered, zigzagging, toward the dark opening. Schmidt looked as blissed-out and played-out as I felt. But we still had a job to do. We kept going.
The strafing line missed us by a meter or two, pelting us with snow and frozen dirt but nothing worse. The Yak banked right to avoid the hill and swing around for another pass.
Tried to, rather. The dark smoke thickened, and the Yak plowed straight into an upper slope. The orange fireball briefly outshone the nearby lava flows.