Read Online War Weapons by Craig Sargent - Free Book Online Page B

and the body spun and jerked wildly in the air, held in place momentarily by the
     sheer force of the multitude of bullets. Then the flood of lead ceased, and the body, bleeding from so many holes that it
     would take an hour or two to count them all, slammed down onto the dust and flopped around like a spastic worm.
    This couldn’t go on, Stone suddenly realized. If he had an ace in the hole, it was time to use it—or there wouldn’t be any
     more games to be played. He slammed his hand down on the “Missile Systems On” button, and a whole portion of the control panel
     suddenly lit up.
    “Missiles?” The machine read out on the computer terminal before him.
    “All.” Stone slammed his finger down on the answering button.
    “Range?”
    “Impact detonation,” Stone input. “Firing at ninety degrees.”
    “Formation?” the missile systems computer program asked.
    “Four left, four right,” Stone input. He glanced up at the video screen and saw that the vehicles were almost upon them. Once
     there, they could plant dynamite, petrol bombs. It was now or—
    “Systems armed,” the screen read out. “Signal launch to implement.”
    Stone ground his thumb down hard onto the “Launch” button. There was a whirring sound, and above them, the top of the tank
     seemed to lift up, at least to those killers who were within yards of the Bradley, bringing their vehicles to a screeching
     stop. On each side of the turret a missile rack popped up into view, four steel tubes with the tips of shining, cone-shaped
     noses just poking out of them. The things buzzed and clicked and quickly spun around into firing position, moving on ball
     bearings hidden in the armor below. They seemed to set themselves, as if shocks were coming out beneath them, and then they
     fired.
    The leader of this particular group of slime, who had fired the grenade launcher at Stone’s tank, had just driven up to the
     side of the Bradley as the missiles went off. In fact, he was looking right at the point of one, reaching his hand out to
     touch it. It took his head clean off as it shot free of its launching pad—severing the tattooed face cleanly from its body—but
     not detonating, as the flesh didn’t even offer enough resistance to its sensing devices to trigger it. On each side of Stone’s
     tank, four Mini-Hawks, the most powerful short-range missile ever built, shot out exactly six feet above the ground, their
     own computer-guidance systems taking control. They began veering off from one another within a fiftieth of a second, heading
     left and right. By the time they reached the first lines of the advancing cars and trucks ahead, they were about thirty feet
     apart.
    Eight mountains of fire erupted around the three besieged tanks. The very ground beneath them seemed to shake, and the Bradleys
     shook back and forth, buffeted from every side by shock waves. It took almost twenty seconds for the main explosion to settle
     down and just the secondaries to continue on, little pops here and there through the thick tank walls. Stone’s brain ceased
     ringing like a bell. He wondered if the video camera mounted topside was still functioning, but as he raised his eyes to the
     screen he saw that it was. And the scene it transmitted back was one of total devastation. The attack vehicles lay strewn
     every which way, steel bodies peeled back like opened tuna-fish cans, melted tires like gumdrops too long in the sun. And
     the bodies—or pieces of bodies, really—lay draped over everything, like the final strokes of a painting, buckets of blood
     and ground-up flesh heaved over the picture, adding a certain element of unquestionable finality.
    Here and there Stone could see bodies moving feebly through the smoke, as the vehicles burned like bonfires on both slopes,
     like some sort of sacred ceremony of winter. Ceremony of death. The invasion was clearly over.
    “Let’s move out,” Stone said over the mike as he guided his Bradley over