begins to find this interesting.
Suppose you were a privateer commander angry over a couple of losses the previous night. Suppose you’d worked out that the panzer you were chasing was beaten up, possibly disabled, and in any case couldn’t have made it over the Mississippi before dawn. Suppose you wanted to get some revenge for your friends who had been burned beyond recognition in a Missouri cornfield the previous night.
You’d concentrate your forces on the airfield nearest to where the panzer is waiting for nightfall, and you’d have some picket planes move over the area with the best in detection technology, and the rest would be sitting on the runway apron ready to vector in on the panzer once it’s spotted, and turn it into a lightly armored grease spot in some scorched little piece of prairie. That’s what you’d do.
Cowboy puts a map on the display and finds something called the Philadelphia Community Airport only four miles away. It’s far too small to have this kind of traffic coming in and out, and it’s just over a ridge and through some woods. Cowboy begins to smile.
By dusk he’s strapped in his couch and has the engines sweetly warming. He reverses them gently and backs out of the barn, then moves at low speed across some half-rusted bobwire and along the length of the ridge, not quite daring to put his radar signature, however briefly, on top of it. There’s a dirt road here and he finds it, threads along it through a grove of pine that carries with it a memory of the smell and the sound of sweet breezes, the soft pillow of needles underfoot. He leaves the road and moves through a damp bottom, where the sound of his engines is muffled by leaves and moss. Then, moving in a roundabout track, he climbs a woody plateau, nudging young pine, until his expanded vision sees a little radar tower silhouetted against the sunset.
They are all there, a dozen or more warcraft squatting like evil metal cicadas, sunset flames reflecting off their polished bodies, the barrels of their guns, the pointed noses of the weapons in their pods. The airships have slogans and cartoons painted on their noses, evocative of swift mechanical violence, warrior machismo, or the trust of the gambler in the instrument of his passion: Death from Above, PanzerBlaster, Sweet Judy Snakeyes, Ace of Spades . There are a few techs walking about on the apron, tools in their hands. Cowboy permits himself a moment of adrenaline triumph before he cuts loose.
As the panzer trembles on the verge of the clearing Cowboy has a brief image of a runner poised on splayed fingertips, his feet in the blocks, his flesh molding the sinew in which the coiled energy waits, a faultless perfection, for the end of stillness. He unleashes the power and a covey of quail burst like scattershot from before the panzer’s oncoming bow. The engines cycle from murmur to thunder to shriek, and Cowboy can see the techs stand for a moment of frozen horror as the panzer lunges from the trees, mashing down a fence like an armored cyclone, a piece of roaring mechanical vengeance straight from the Inferno–– and then the men in coveralls scatter, crying warning.
Too late. The armored panzer is traveling at over a hundred across the flat ground before it brushes aside the first helicopter. The panzer is heavier by far and the Ace of Spades folds like the hollow death-white abandoned skin of an insect. Cowboy’s popped up his minigun turret from beneath its armored cover and has it firing behind him into the wreckage, sparking off the fuel. Sweet Judy Snakeyes crumbles in front of the armored skirts, then a coleopter named Death from Above , then another called Hanging Judge . Through one of his sensors he catches a glimpse of pilots tumbling out of the airport lounge, coffee cups still in their hands, eyes and mouths wide as they watch the conflagration. Then burning fuel begins to set off ammunition and the pilots drop their drinks and scatter like the quail for
Suppose you were a privateer commander angry over a couple of losses the previous night. Suppose you’d worked out that the panzer you were chasing was beaten up, possibly disabled, and in any case couldn’t have made it over the Mississippi before dawn. Suppose you wanted to get some revenge for your friends who had been burned beyond recognition in a Missouri cornfield the previous night.
You’d concentrate your forces on the airfield nearest to where the panzer is waiting for nightfall, and you’d have some picket planes move over the area with the best in detection technology, and the rest would be sitting on the runway apron ready to vector in on the panzer once it’s spotted, and turn it into a lightly armored grease spot in some scorched little piece of prairie. That’s what you’d do.
Cowboy puts a map on the display and finds something called the Philadelphia Community Airport only four miles away. It’s far too small to have this kind of traffic coming in and out, and it’s just over a ridge and through some woods. Cowboy begins to smile.
By dusk he’s strapped in his couch and has the engines sweetly warming. He reverses them gently and backs out of the barn, then moves at low speed across some half-rusted bobwire and along the length of the ridge, not quite daring to put his radar signature, however briefly, on top of it. There’s a dirt road here and he finds it, threads along it through a grove of pine that carries with it a memory of the smell and the sound of sweet breezes, the soft pillow of needles underfoot. He leaves the road and moves through a damp bottom, where the sound of his engines is muffled by leaves and moss. Then, moving in a roundabout track, he climbs a woody plateau, nudging young pine, until his expanded vision sees a little radar tower silhouetted against the sunset.
They are all there, a dozen or more warcraft squatting like evil metal cicadas, sunset flames reflecting off their polished bodies, the barrels of their guns, the pointed noses of the weapons in their pods. The airships have slogans and cartoons painted on their noses, evocative of swift mechanical violence, warrior machismo, or the trust of the gambler in the instrument of his passion: Death from Above, PanzerBlaster, Sweet Judy Snakeyes, Ace of Spades . There are a few techs walking about on the apron, tools in their hands. Cowboy permits himself a moment of adrenaline triumph before he cuts loose.
As the panzer trembles on the verge of the clearing Cowboy has a brief image of a runner poised on splayed fingertips, his feet in the blocks, his flesh molding the sinew in which the coiled energy waits, a faultless perfection, for the end of stillness. He unleashes the power and a covey of quail burst like scattershot from before the panzer’s oncoming bow. The engines cycle from murmur to thunder to shriek, and Cowboy can see the techs stand for a moment of frozen horror as the panzer lunges from the trees, mashing down a fence like an armored cyclone, a piece of roaring mechanical vengeance straight from the Inferno–– and then the men in coveralls scatter, crying warning.
Too late. The armored panzer is traveling at over a hundred across the flat ground before it brushes aside the first helicopter. The panzer is heavier by far and the Ace of Spades folds like the hollow death-white abandoned skin of an insect. Cowboy’s popped up his minigun turret from beneath its armored cover and has it firing behind him into the wreckage, sparking off the fuel. Sweet Judy Snakeyes crumbles in front of the armored skirts, then a coleopter named Death from Above , then another called Hanging Judge . Through one of his sensors he catches a glimpse of pilots tumbling out of the airport lounge, coffee cups still in their hands, eyes and mouths wide as they watch the conflagration. Then burning fuel begins to set off ammunition and the pilots drop their drinks and scatter like the quail for
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