And now on to SheVa. There is one part I didn't include, I wasn't quite sure how to qoute it besides transcribing half the chapter. A SheVa gets stuck, partially driven into the ground on a downward slope it can't back up out of. The solution? Pull the turrets off the Metal Storm tanks so they can wedge 6 Abrams chassis under the treads, lock them into place with brakes and let the SheVa back out over them. It works but pretty much destroys the chassis which at least tells us that you can fit a turretless Abrams under the treads.
The cheers of the Metal Storm crews as their vehicles are destroyed is faintly disturbing, but now Bun Bun has Metal Storm turrets and nowhere to place them. Hmmm...
SheVa:
"No, it's not good," Horner agreed. "The area that they are in actually has three SheVas; unfortunately all of them are under construction and none of them are armed; we're looking at losing them half built, which is four months production down the tubes.”
SheVa production facility at Shenandoah Valley. There are 3 SheVa being worked on at once, and SheVa construction probably takes ~8 months.
"ON THE WAAAAAAAAAY!" the gunner called and squeezed the trigger. The result felt like being inside a massive bell that had just been hit by a giant. The command center was heavily sound-proofed, but the result of firing wasn't so much "sound" as a vast presence that rang through their bodies, shook the massive structure of the tank like a house made of straw and vibrated every surface. It was the most overwhelming, frightening and invigorating feeling he had ever experienced; like he truly was controlling Shiva, the God of Destruction.
More SheVa firing, this time from the perspective of the crew.
This was the point where most rounds would have detonated their antimatter charge. However, as Kitteket had pointed out, the rounds had a minimum arming distance of six hundred meters. What happened instead is that about halfway through the ship, the containment vessel shattered. The result, from the outside, was very like an antimatter explosion, but in reality it was a very fast flash-fire.
Minimum arming distance for SheVa rounds, 600 meters.
"Reactors two and three just went offline," Indy called. She unstrapped and headed for the hatch. "I doubt this is going to be a one-woman job."
"We're way down on speed, sir!" Reeves called. He had the throttle all the way open, but the SheVa was barely moving. "Under ten miles an hour!"
So, I guess they can normally go faster than 10 mph, since this is what they’re reduced to with half their reactors dead.
"Roger, sir," the gunner replied with a gulp. "Come on, Schmoo, find us another firing position."
"There's one by Fulchertown," the driver said, checking his map. "But it will mean running over a bunch of houses."
"You afraid of getting 'em stuck in our treads?" the gunner asked sarcastically.
"No . . . it's just that . . ." Schmoo looked up and over his shoulder to where the gunner was grinning. "Never mind. I've been trying to stay in the woods so we wouldn't run people over."
"Anybody that's still here deserves to be run over."
These are the same people who call infantry ‘crunchies.’ Just thought you ought to know that.
"SON OF A BITCH!" Pruitt shouted as all the viewscreens went black then flickered back on. "What in the hell?!"
The western valley of the Gap had a towering mushroom cloud over it and fires had started in every direction. The devastation area was wider than that from the SheVa explosion and there were no landers visible at all.
"Catastrophic kill!" Major Mitchell said. "Yeeeha! Get us the hell out of here, Schmoo!"
"What in the hell caused it, sir?" Pruitt asked as the shockwave hit. "Whoa big fella!"
"Posleen ships use antimatter as an energy source," Indy said. "You probably managed to penetrate their fuel magazine. I've seen the schematics for them; they're hard to hit and even harder to penetrate. Congratulations. But we've lost some systems from the EMP. Nothing major; most of our stuff is hardened and the EMP really wasn't all that high."
"A couple more of those and we won't have to worry about any landers," Pruitt said, patting his control panel. "Good Bun-Bun, good rabbit. EAT ANTIMATTER, Posleen-Boy!"
SheVa can, with some luck and/or skill, penetrate antimatter containment on a C-Dec. The SheVa is also somewhat vulnerable to EMP, or at least its sensors are. Most of it is hardened, which makes sense in a nuke-firing tank.
Reeves engaged the drive and threw the multiton tank up the 30-degree slope, leveling it out at the top.
SheVa can climb 30-degree slope. It’ll pull off more extreme maneuvers yet, but I’m half-surprised it can do this much.
The SheVa gun had not been designed to climb mountains and a couple of times he was pretty sure they were just going to go tumbling back down a slope; once just west of Chestnut Gap when they had to ascend a ten-foot bluff while already on a very steep slope and another time when the mountainside was just a bit steeper than it looked on the map. The SheVa often felt like it was going straight up and knowing that there was a multiton gun and two stories of steel above you, pulling the gun over and backwards, was pretty nerve-wracking. It was almost worse the few times that they had had to straddle a ravine with one giant tread half supported on either side; the undercarriage would creak and groan, sounding like it was going to shatter at any moment.
Some more extreme maneuvers.
"What happens when I fire this thing?!" Pruitt yelled, locking in a round.
"I don't know," Indy said tightly. "We're on a forty degree slope, sliding downward in max reverse, firing sideways at about forty miles per hour. We're not designed to do any of those at all!"
"Shit," Mitchell muttered.
"I'm losing it here, sir!" Reeves called. "We're headed for a bluff!"
"TARGET! Lamprey, two thousand meters!" Pruitt sang out.
"Danger close!" Mitchell called, indicating that the explosion of the gun's own penetrator could potentially damage it; the minimum recommended distance for a SheVa to engage was over three thousand meters. "Fire!"
A few things the SheVa wasn’t designed to do. 3 Km recommended safe distance for SheVa fire.
"Target C-Dec! TWELVE HUNDRED METERS! TOO CLOSE!"
"FIRE!"
"TOO CLOSE!"
"IT'S KNIFE-FIGHTING RANGE! WE'RE BUN-BUN! FIRE THE DAMNED GUN!"
The round tracked straight and true into the top of the ship, actually punching out the back side before exploding.
The detonation was the equivalent of ten thousand tons of TNT, but both it and the flash of gaseous uranium and spalling would have been survivable by the C-Dec; the explosion wasn't actually in contact and wasn't at a particularly vital or vulnerable point. However, the compression wave was above the lander. And that drove it downward into the hard and unyielding ground. C-Decs were designed to survive much, but slamming into North Carolina mountains at over a hundred miles per hour was not one of them. Internal compartmentalization gave way throughout the ship. Not from the acceleration, but from the deceleration.
A ten pounds per square inch compression wave, strong enough to damage or destroy heavily constructed buildings, also washed across the MetalStorm tracks. But compared to the damage they took from firing their own weapons . . .
10 kt again, C-Dec destroyed mostly by slamming into the ground at better than 100 mph (160 kph.) The incident with the Metal Storm tanks not noticing a nuke.
Reeves carefully ran the motors up to ten percent and then engaged the transmission. The SheVa had originally been designed without the latter system, but it was added late in the game in recognition that sometimes "throwing it into gear" was the best way to handle a situation.
SheVa not originally designed with a transmission, but one is later added.
Major Ryan stepped off the SheVa as it began the complicated process of crossing the Tuckasegee River without killing anyone.
They had run into the rear ranks of stragglers near Dills Gap and many of them had latched on to the SheVa. The gun had four "loading points" and each of them was now covered with soldiers.
SheVa has four loading points for taking on fresh ammo or other supplies. In extremis, these can hold a lot of people.
"Just be glad it didn't hit the reactors."
"Yeah," the commander said with a laugh. "Or the track. I'd hate to have to break track on this thing."
"Oh, it's no trouble at all; you just call up a CONTAC team," the warrant said, breaking the nut free. "There's a reason that there's a battalion in a SheVa repair team. A battalion of engineers and three really big cranes."
The CONTAC team mentioned before, SheVa repair crew. A battalion (300-1200) of engineers and three cranes.
"Sir," Major Ryan said again. "Bun-Bun has four area denial rounds available in his reload team, two from his reloads and two from SheVa Fourteen."
Standard reload group carries two area-denial rounds.
The area effect weapons had similarities to the anti-lander penetrators and differences. Since the gun remained a smooth-bore and the round therefore had to be fin-stabilized, they were discarding sabot. But they were thicker in cross section than the penetrators and flew at a lower velocity. Last, but not least, since they were not penetrators, they were made out of simple carbon steel. Since the metal they were made out of was going to be distributed as a fine dust, better to have it composed of materials the human body could metabolize.
The round flew out of the tube in a river of fire, dropped its sabots and headed for Balsam Gap.
Comparison between AD and anti-lander rounds.
"The University of Tennessee has both a SheVa gun enhancement testbed program and a nuclear, antimatter rather, rounds program."
"So . . . they can fire?" the President asked. "Antimatter is better than nukes, right? I mean, their fire can reach the Gap? And it's a better, a cleaner, system?"
"Possibly," Horner answered. "I'd . . . Both of the systems are experimental, ma'am. And their . . . area denial round has never been field-tested. It's also . . . rather large, a very heavy warhead; you really would prefer not to know the megatonnage. The first time I fire something, I don't want the price of failure being the loss of the entire Cumberland Valley."
"Oh."
Horner shrugged at her expression. "I suppose this is what I get for letting rednecks play with antimatter; they just don't know when to say 'Okay, that's 'nough!' Instead, it's always 'Hey, y'all! Watch this!' I only became . . . apprised of the size of the round when we went looking for something to open up the Gap. I've since ordered a 'reevaluation' of the program.
Oh, so
that’s what the area-denial antimatter rounds for the SheVa are. Fixed SheVa test gun at Tennessee U. Am I the only one who thinks the involvement of Tennessee U and ‘a bunch of rednecks’ explains so much about the SheVa program?
"And close," Pruitt said over the intercom. "Although some of it had better not be too close; my AD rounds are 100kts. The explosions in the mountains were lovetaps compared to that."
Yield of SheVa area-denial rounds. Equivalent to W76, not the biggest nuclear weapon, but I think it’s in the top fifteen.
