From: Cendana <ove...@cu...> - 2009-08-24 04:35:17
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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 |