Durell sighed.
He glanced back at Jam.
‘Now, Jam. Kill him.’
Durell disappeared from view.
‘Kade? Where the fuck are you, Kade?’ Carter tiptoed along the tightrope of panic.
‘
You called, sir?’
Jam reared into view, slitted copper eyes gazing down at Carter. Beyond the castle more explosions echoed. Carter could feel his grip slipping. Within seconds he wouldn’t need Jam’s help to find his way to the next life.
Jam lifted Carter’s Browning.
You fucker, thought Carter. You’d shoot me with my own fucking gun?
‘Do you require a little assistance, Mr Carter?’
‘You think you’re so fucking good, Kade ... well,
you
fucking kill him!’
Carter felt Kade smile within him.
Felt Kade’s
pride
burn him.
Jam’s copper eyes narrowed. He aimed the Browning at Carter’s face.
‘O sir, your wish is my command
,’ said Kade. The world spun around and around and
down
into a flashing glittering knife-edge of razor-sharp shots: all filmed in a glossy and static sequential black and white.
The grey Nex HTank crawled along the gulley and stopped. Its turret rotated slowly, still cloaked and practically invisible to any but the specifically trained and practised eye. Tracks rocked against gravel and above, on the lip of the gulley, a cluster of Spiral SP57 tanks gathered, their engines roaring, their large guns constantly tracking on their hydraulics.
The Nex HTank’s gun lifted. The air around it shimmered as it moved.
Time seemed to shift, to displace.
And Simmo’s tank appeared with a whine of CamCloak - directly behind the Nex HTank and with its gun pointing straight at the weakest part of the enemy vehicle’s structure - the base plate behind the rear tracks. Simmo growled and fired the gun.
There was a concussive
boom
and the gun recoiled. The enemy HTank in front of him was kicked high into the air, one track ripped free with a grinding shriek of steel; purple fire billowed and the tank, trailing smoke and fire, disappeared over the SP57s and the ridge beyond. There came a distant echoing impact.
‘Fucked severely up ass,’ grinned Simmo, cloaking his tank once more.
‘Well done, Sarge,’ came the voice of Mo over the comm. ‘There’s another in the woods to our right - spec co-ords 52.33.53. I got the eyes of an eagle ...’
‘If only you had good looks! I hear you ... I’m on it,’ growled Simmo, lighting another cigar.
The Spiral HTank crawled across the forest floor, tracks grinding through pine needles and patches of snow. Matrix hissed, cold and bright, and the HTank halted in the shadows and uncloaked. Simmo lifted the hatch and poked out his head, breathing deeply the dense damp vegetative stench of the forest and revelling in the rich fragrance.
‘They’re here,’ came Rogowski’s growl.
Simmo nodded, and smoked his cigar, eyes scanning the forest. Smoke trailed down past his throat tattoos and up past his shaved head. It curled through the branches above him.
In the distance, another SP57 blew up. Another two Spiral operatives died ...
Simmo ground his teeth in frustration.
The fuckers were picking off his men ...
One by painful one ...
The first of two Nex HTanks came creeping through the forest. Simmo caught the disturbance of branches, the gentle displacement of pine needles and - trained to read the signs of the CamCloak - he smiled to himself and pretended to look in the opposite direction.
‘You picked your spot well. The other tank is coming from the other side, directly opposite.’
‘The Sarge know good gig when he see one. He know how to play fucking game.’
The two enemy HTanks halted. Now they were totally invisible. Simmo tilted his head and fancied that he could hear the whine of their CamCloaks. Below, Rogowski readied the engines and flicked free the stealth switch. Like all stealth systems, a stealth mode was always a compromise between noise and power. Without the stealth mode activated the awesome matrix engine came truly into its own.
‘Here we go ...’ Simmo felt himself tense; he forced himself to take a huge drag on the cigar, pretending to scan the undergrowth away from the enemy HTanks.
The enemy tanks both fired—
But with a burst of exhaust fumes, Simmo’s HTank was no longer there. Engines roared, followed by the twin detonations of the enemy tanks. Trees were splattered with hot liquid metal and twin craters, glowing with fire, appeared in the soft forest floor. Simmo’s tank skidded around and demolished three trees, its weight snapping thick trunks with ease. Simmo, who had almost been thrown from his perch halfway through the hatch by the sudden insane acceleration, glared down into the darkness at Rogowski.
‘Fucking lunatic!’
‘That went smoothly, I think,’ said Rogowski.
‘Yeah, except for mad-arse driving! You need take test again, lad! You need learn three-point turn and how to parallel park fucking big tank!’
‘Sorry, Sarge! But we got ‘em!’
Simmo suddenly grinned. ‘Aye. We got ‘em, lad.’
Simmo hammered the cloaked HTank up the trail, tracks crushing rocks as they went. Below, the remaining SP57s were moving up through the woods towards the castle. Groups of Nex soldiers had emerged with machine guns. Gunfire rattled and shells started to explode ...
Suddenly, the HTank uncloaked—
And picked up a lot of speed.
‘Nearly there,’ grunted Rogowski.
Simmo watched his scanners, eyes fierce, cigar clamped between his teeth. Then, as the HTank roared along the rising trail, it suddenly grated against stone and veered right - ploughing through trees with crunches of tearing wood as it sailed inelegantly through the air and heavily falling snow ...
Simmo held his breath.
They landed with a mighty jolt and a terrible crunch of battered steel. Simmo’s HTank seemed to perch on nothingness, and then slowly it crunched its way down the invisible enemy HTank’s hull and onto the trail. Tracks squealed and the HTank whirled. The enemy’s CamCloak flickered, stuttering like a faulty strip light, and its engine revved but the tank could not move. Its turret groaned as Simmo slowly lined up the crushed enemy tank in his sights and paused, finger over the trigger panel.
‘Poor fuckers,’ mouthed Rogowski. Simmo glanced at him. ‘Trapped in there, just waiting to die. It is every TankSquad’s worst nightmare. Bad bad dreams, Sarge.’
Simmo caressed the trigger.
And, grunting, he fired.
The shell shot from one of the HTank’s guns and impacted with a terrifying scream against the wounded enemy HTank. Fire flickered out to engulf and swallow it - and then, as if on the end of a piece of elastic, the tank was jerked from the trail and flung into the sky. It spun slowly, awesomely bright flames melting its hull and leaving a stream of molten metal. The HTank struck the stone wall of the rising trail from which Simmo’s tank had just jumped, and left a metal smear like dark silver blood against the rock. Then it veered off onto the slope below, bouncing against several large boulders. It came to a final rest as a smoking wreck. Simmo stared, but the hatch did not open. Flames continued to burn and he could make out the almost perfectly drilled hole where the shell had entered the enemy tank and fucked it severely from within.
Simmo stared down at Rogowski.
‘Fuck them,’ he said slowly, and placed his cigar back between his teeth.
‘Sarge?’
‘Hm?’
‘Look!’
Simmo turned. In the distance, facing them and with CamCloak deactivated, squatted the last Nex HTank. It looked subtly different to his own machine and Simmo bared his teeth in the parody of a grin.
‘Kattenheim,’ he said.
The enemy HTank revved its engine and cold fumes coughed from its exhausts. Simmo dropped to his seat and settled himself. He pulled tight his harness, buckling himself in, and stared into Rogowski’s eyes.
‘No,’ said Rogowski.
‘Yes,’ said Simmo, and nodded, his eyes shining.
‘No! You can’t be fucking serious!’
‘The Sarge always fucking serious.’
He throttled up the engines of the HTank to the max and the two machines lurched towards one another across the stone trail, pulping gravel into dust. Above, Mongrel’s Comanche spun gleaming through the snow, its guns eating through three black Nex helicopters which plunged into the forest, setting a stand of trees on fire ... But all this was as nothing to Simmo as he focused on the HTank roaring towards him from directly ahead—
The distance closed rapidly.
Tracks thundered and smashed at the stone trail.
Engines roared, billowing cold exhaust.
And Simmo’s head dropped against his bull neck, shoulders widening out as his teeth gripped his cigar so hard that he bit it in half, and the glowing tip disappeared unnoticed ...
‘Come on, you piece of Nex shit.’
The tanks powered towards one another, pulping the snow.
The battle seemed to have paused to witness this insane predestined collision: two juggernauts heading towards each other for a final apocalyptic impact - a head-on crash between two of the most ferocious machines of war ever created.
Rogowski, covering his head with his arms, screamed like a baby.
But Sergeant Simmo did not falter, did not take his intense fixed stare from the scanners and the suddenly expanding hull of the enemy HTank ... At the last moment Kattenheim’s tank veered suddenly to the right in a last-ditch attempt to avoid collision.
With a growl, Simmo veered his own tank to the left, grinding tracks skidding over loose stones, to make sure that the impact took place.
The noise was indescribable.
The tanks collided, seemed to fold in on themselves and then rose up, whirling tracks crunching against one another and eating through steel. With engines howling and smoke pluming, sparks and shards of metal fired off in all directions like shrapnel as the two HTanks joined like nightmarish glittering steel lovers,
melded
in a dark ironic complimentary parody of the joining of the Nex with insect...
Metal-bred thunder rolled out.
And together the two HTanks flipped and rolled off the trail, fire and sparks glowing around their chassis and tracks and bent distorted guns. The conjoined beast rolled and smashed down a steep slope of trees and boulders, demolishing trunks, crushing rocks, and came finally to rest on its merged single side, rocking slowly.
Snow fell, melting against the hot flanks.
Flames flickered along one hull on a stream of arcing matrix fuel.
Silence reigned for perhaps a minute.
Then came a distant hammering. There was a heavy clang as Simmo’s boots smashed open the hatch, and a deformed hunk of elliptical metal toppled into the snow. He squeezed his frame out - battered, bruised and bleeding from his reopened head wound and several slashes to his face, but with eyes still intent and focused. His groin smoked softly from the fallen cigar-tip, and he carried something in one fist - a package wrapped tight in blue plastic. Reaching back, he dragged a moaning and grumbling Rogowski from the remains of the Spiral HTank and dumped him unceremoniously in the snow where he nursed a broken shoulder; then calmly patted out his burning genitalia.
Simmo stretched his back and glanced up the slope where the SP57s were battling Nex soldiers on foot. Mongrel’s Comanche flashed overhead, MiniGun roaring. Another black Nex helicopter trailing fire disappeared over the mountains and exploded. Simmo nodded in appreciation, then turned his attention to the fused steel mess in front of him.
Rogowski had crawled to his knees and vomited before glancing up. Simmo moved around the twisted steel carcass and started tugging at the Nex HTank’s hatchway.
‘What are you doing?’ Rogowski shrieked.
Simmo ignored him. There was a crunch and something moved.
‘It’s fucking on
fire!
It’s going to fucking
explode!’
Simmo whirled. ‘You fuck off up trail away from blast zone, there’s a good lad,’ he snarled, his mouth full of spittle mixed with blood. Rogowski paled, and started to drag himself away from the battered tanks.
More shells exploded in the distance.
The fight seemed to be going well.
Simmo yanked on the hatch, which finally came free in his battered bleeding hand. He staggered back, caught off balance for a moment, then dropped it in the snow.
Simmo squinted into the HTank’s interior gloom—
Snarling, Kattenheim launched himself from the innards of the HTank and Simmo stumbled back, shocked. But Kattenheim was wedged in the opening, cursing and spitting, fighting to drag his body free—
The opening had been crushed.
It was too narrow for the Nex to squeeze through.
Simmo picked up his blue package. Kattenheim was raging insanely, scarred red eyes wide with anger and hatred. He stopped suddenly, his gaze meeting Simmo’s.