[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]Uneasily, Kathleen cut the flame, the metal of the barrel immediately ticking
as it started to cool.
Going to the turret, the baron swung down the hatch with a bang so loud it
hurt his eardrums. Twisting the lock, he set it tight and dropped to the main
floor.
There were no vents or ports in sight anywhere inside the tank, just a lot of
thick pipes that he deduced were actually periscopes, six for the commander in
the turret, and three for the driver, two for the gunner and nothing for the
seat of the loader near the blast proof door. Fair enough. His job was to move
shells, not look outside and enjoy the view.
Sighing gratefully, Kathleen unbuckled the chest harness and slid the heavy
fuel tanks off her back and placed them carefully on the rough metal floor.
The surface wasn't corrugated like that in an APC, more like sand, and it gave
a good footing.
Just then a patter of splats hit the hull of the tank, the noise softened by
the dense triple armor. Then the rain arrived full force, sheets crashing over
the machine, but even the mighty thunder was baffled down to a mere murmur.
Nervously, Gaza and Kathleen watched the floor and walls for any sign of a
leak, but the interior of the war wag stayed dry, and there wasn't the
slightest trace of the rotten egg stink of the deadly rain. Then Gaza frowned
as he realized that even the smell of the preburner fuel was gone. There had
to be some sort of automatic venting.
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Sitting in the commander's chair, Gaza ran his hands across the shiny console,
thinking of what he could do with only one such machine and wishing with all
of his might that the tank was still operational.
"Power," he whispered softly, thinking of the empire he could build with just
one such machine.
"Order received," the flat voice said from nowhere. "Switching from standby
status to primary power."
His chest pounding in fear, Gaza tried to breathe as the interior lights
slowly grew in strength until giving a smooth white light. Then the baron
laughed in delight. The nuking thing was still functioning, with some sort of
preDark comp running the controls. Blind norad be praised, this was the find
of a lifetime!
"Please, identify," a flat voice rumbled.
Fuck that, Gaza snorted angrily, he took orders from nobody, especially
machines. "No, you identify!" he snapped. "And be quick about it!"
A blinding fan of thin green light came out of the console and played across
the baron, stopping at the cluster of decorations pinned to the shirt taken
from the deader in the first APC at the head of the convoy.
"Working," the voice intoned. "Acknowledged. Ident confirmed, Lieutenant
Colonel Anderson. What are your orders, sir?"
Trying to hide his excitement, Gaza glanced at the colorful collection of
rainbow
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colored plastic squares in three neat rows. He had taken the stuff just
because it looked pretty. But they had to have been symbols of some sort, the
deader in the
APC a chief sec man in his day. Now this dumbass machine thought Gaza was the
long gone person simply because of the clothing? Excellent.
"We're in the middle of a nuking chem storm," the baron started, then cursed
himself for a feeb. He had to speak old talk.
"Correction," he said slowly. "There is an& NBC storm outside. Seal the fuc...
seal every vent and make sure none of that dreck& poison gets inside."
There was a short pause.
"Acknowledged," the voice said, and suddenly from every direction there
sounded slams and hisses. A moment later, clean smelling dry air started
blowing from the vents set under the control boards.
Approaching her husband, Kathleen tugged on his sleeve and made a gesture at
the roof, urging him to leave. With a snarl, Gaza shoved her away and she fell
to the floor. Tears on her face, the scared woman begged him to leave, but he
just swiveled the chair away to face the winking array of controls spanning
the incredibly complex instrument board.
"Tell me about yourself," Gaza ordered, reclining in the seat. "And start with
the weapons."
OUTSIDE, THE DEADLY RAIN was starting to extinguish the rampaging fires. The
exposed corpses on the sidewalks quickly began to dissolve under the deluge.
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Louder than cannons, the thunder rumbled once more, lightning flashing down to
strike a radio tower and starting a fresh fire that the rain soon drenched.
Across the metropolis, the muties sought cover from the storm, only to find
countless small fires raging deep within the buildings where the rain could
never reach. Bloody violence filled the city as the mindless creatures fought
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one another in bestial fury over the bodies, adding more corpses to the city
of death.
But that was only a harbinger of the slaughter to come.
IN WAR WAG ONE, windshield wipers worked steadily to keep the front glass
clear of the rain. Humming and shaking, the patched air conditioner was
working full power and the atmosphere inside the war wag was almost clear of
the rotten egg stink of the deadly downpour.
The burning wreckage of an APC sat blown apart before the rig, and all around
the blast site bodies of the outriders eroded under the onslaught of the acid
rain.
"Hit it again!" Kate ordered, brandishing a fist. "No prisoners!"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkajaszek.htw.pl
