[Moz-dev] Was now almost completely open. When it was clear, they sent a snooper in first

[Cendana <ove...@cu...>]

 his turret overhead, shouted: "Missile coming up; counter-missile off!"
"Grab onto something, everybody!" Karski yelled, bracing himself in his
seat. Conn, on his feet, flung his arms around an upright stanchion and
hung on. Fred's hand gave a twisting jerk on the steering handle; the
_Goblin_ went corkscrewing upward. In the rearview screen, Conn saw a
pink fireball blossom far below. The sound and the shock-wave never
reached them; the _Goblin_ outran them. _Dragon_ and _Vampire_ were
spiraling away in opposite directions. The radio was loud with voices,
and a few of the words were almost printable. A gong began clanging from
the command post on top of the mesa on the mainland. "Be quiet, all of
you!" Klem Zareff was bellowing. "And get back from there. Back three or
four miles; close enough so they won't dare use thermonuclears. Take
cover behind one of those ridges, where they can't detect you. Then we
can start figuring what the Gehenna to do next." That made sense. And
get it settled who's in command of this Donnybrook, while we're at it,
Conn thought. He looked into the rear and sideview screens, and taking
cover immediately made even more sense. Two more fireballs blossomed,
one dangerously close to the _Dragon_. Guns were firing from the
mountaintop, too, big ones, and shells were bursting close to them. He
saw a shell land on and another beside one of the enemy gun
positions--115-mm's from the _Lester Dawes_, he supposed. He continued
to cling to the stanchion, and the _Goblin_ shot straight up, and he was
expecting to see the sky blacken and the stars come out when the gunboat
leveled and started circling down again. The mountainside, he saw, was
sending up a lightning-crackling tower of smoke and dust that swelled
into a mushroom top. Klem Zareff, on the radio, was demanding to know
who'd launched that. "We did, sir; _Dragon_," Stefan Jorisson was
replying. "We had to ge