stern elevated. Magnolia’s cannon punched through the lighter armor as if it weren’t even there, vaporized the brain below it and—possibly, spectral analysis suggested but couldn’t prove—the bodies of one or more Slugs which may have been inside. The resultant flash of metal and plastic—and maybe flesh—turned to gas and plasma that demolished the power station and drove the turret up out of the hull. Even if it was a less spectacular death than Leo's, the Slug Xiphos died all the same.
Meanwhile, the Ratha’s secondary armament, a 75mm KE cannon, electrically driven and coaxially mounted, plus two similarly mounted 15mm Gauss Guns, the twin gatlings in the bow, the three on the cupolae atop her turret, and the top deck-mounted AP/AF guns, kept busy, whirring out a nearly continuous stream of smaller, hypersonic projectiles, eviscerating Slugs and blasting their sleds into wicked, black clouds of fragmented metal.
Gradually, an almost perfect semi-circle of destruction built up around the Ratha, to a distance of several kilometers. Its imperfections were due to folds and depressions in the ground, as well as some of the dead space created by the granite tors rising above the plain.
Not that there weren’t plenty of dead Slugs in that dead space; the Ratha had a twin battery of 300mm mortars, mounted behind the main turret and rising in a broad, flat turret of their own, as well as two arrays dedicated to vertically launched missiles. The problem was that unlike her ion cannon, both mortars and missiles were limited, and her stock would eventually run out unless replenished. So, she had to limit her use of them to the most critically dangerous concentrations of known Slug infantry….
I can't find them! I can’t always see the Slugs! How do they defeat my sensors? Even visual is sometimes unreliable. There was heat shimmer across the valley already, of course; but all this destruction has made it worse. I can hardly pick out one thing from other, not from all the glowing spots and wrecks.
In an effort at improving her position, expending power that she had in abundance to conserve ammunition she did not, the Ratha began targeting the granite tors, hitting them with enough energy to shatter them, thereby spreading showers of razor sharp granite shards out in a fan behind them.
The problem was that the Slugs’ infantry and heavy combat vehicles were essentially immune to the shards and they had taken cover in the low ground.
This is preposterous! There’s no benefit to the Slugs in destroying me that’s remotely commensurate with the price they’ve already paid, let alone what they’re going to have to pay! No wonder we haven’t talked; we don’t share even rudimentary mathematics!
A score of wrecked Xiphos-class vehicles smoked across the landscape. A few of the larger and more powerful Phasganons were littered among them. There were others out there that the Ratha could sense, but rarely well enough for good targeting. Only when they showed themselves did she have a shot worth expending the energy on, and the havoc she’d already wreaked upon them seemed to have finally dissuaded them from launching another direct assault. She sat there for the time being, immobile, scanning… scanning… scanning….
Suddenly, from all around that perimeter of well-marked death, surged the Slugs in their hundreds and thousands. Incoming fire poured down upon her like a hailstorm from Hell, but for the nonce, the Ratha’s screens held. Even so, she had to divert more power to them than she liked. And then….
6f68686868736869747069737363756e746675636b636f636b7375636b65726d6f746865726675636b6572616e6474697473! I want my boys back! They never should have taken them from me!
From around the Ratha, on both flanks and even a couple in the space behind, where her close-defense weapons could not train, began to rise some twenty-seven pairs of Slugs. They’d slithered across the
Meanwhile, the Ratha’s secondary armament, a 75mm KE cannon, electrically driven and coaxially mounted, plus two similarly mounted 15mm Gauss Guns, the twin gatlings in the bow, the three on the cupolae atop her turret, and the top deck-mounted AP/AF guns, kept busy, whirring out a nearly continuous stream of smaller, hypersonic projectiles, eviscerating Slugs and blasting their sleds into wicked, black clouds of fragmented metal.
Gradually, an almost perfect semi-circle of destruction built up around the Ratha, to a distance of several kilometers. Its imperfections were due to folds and depressions in the ground, as well as some of the dead space created by the granite tors rising above the plain.
Not that there weren’t plenty of dead Slugs in that dead space; the Ratha had a twin battery of 300mm mortars, mounted behind the main turret and rising in a broad, flat turret of their own, as well as two arrays dedicated to vertically launched missiles. The problem was that unlike her ion cannon, both mortars and missiles were limited, and her stock would eventually run out unless replenished. So, she had to limit her use of them to the most critically dangerous concentrations of known Slug infantry….
I can't find them! I can’t always see the Slugs! How do they defeat my sensors? Even visual is sometimes unreliable. There was heat shimmer across the valley already, of course; but all this destruction has made it worse. I can hardly pick out one thing from other, not from all the glowing spots and wrecks.
In an effort at improving her position, expending power that she had in abundance to conserve ammunition she did not, the Ratha began targeting the granite tors, hitting them with enough energy to shatter them, thereby spreading showers of razor sharp granite shards out in a fan behind them.
The problem was that the Slugs’ infantry and heavy combat vehicles were essentially immune to the shards and they had taken cover in the low ground.
This is preposterous! There’s no benefit to the Slugs in destroying me that’s remotely commensurate with the price they’ve already paid, let alone what they’re going to have to pay! No wonder we haven’t talked; we don’t share even rudimentary mathematics!
A score of wrecked Xiphos-class vehicles smoked across the landscape. A few of the larger and more powerful Phasganons were littered among them. There were others out there that the Ratha could sense, but rarely well enough for good targeting. Only when they showed themselves did she have a shot worth expending the energy on, and the havoc she’d already wreaked upon them seemed to have finally dissuaded them from launching another direct assault. She sat there for the time being, immobile, scanning… scanning… scanning….
Suddenly, from all around that perimeter of well-marked death, surged the Slugs in their hundreds and thousands. Incoming fire poured down upon her like a hailstorm from Hell, but for the nonce, the Ratha’s screens held. Even so, she had to divert more power to them than she liked. And then….
6f68686868736869747069737363756e746675636b636f636b7375636b65726d6f746865726675636b6572616e6474697473! I want my boys back! They never should have taken them from me!
From around the Ratha, on both flanks and even a couple in the space behind, where her close-defense weapons could not train, began to rise some twenty-seven pairs of Slugs. They’d slithered across the
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