Pathspace
Page 92
Chapter 92
Xander: “HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME”
His lungs were burning despite the cold. But something inside him was even colder than the snow. Some things just have to be done. “Come on,” he muttered. “Finish it.”
The tank kept coming, as he'd hoped and planned it would. The Honcho was about to get a nasty surprise.
The front of the treads actually came a couple of feet onto the ice before the weight of the sixty-ton tank cracked through. From there, gravity did his dirty work. The front of the tank hung there for a split instant before the unsupported weight pitched it down head-first into the hole his workers had dug and filled with water.
Xander smiled grimly, remembering how hard they'd dug to make the pit that deep. “What good will this do?” one of the soldiers had grumbled. “He'll never fall for it.”
It was a fair question. Xander had studied books on tanks, and knew that tanks could easily climb out of holes. They would have had to dig the thing really deep and somehow make the sides slippery and too hard to break, or else the tank could simple grind against the pit walls and build itself a hill of debris to climb out. And there had been no time to do that. Besides, it would have been visible. Stretching a tarp across it wouldn't have worked, either – it would have sagged suspiciously in the middle.
He'd found a better way. They'd filled it with water. A coldbox spell had frozen an inch or so on the top. Enough to support his weight – but not a sixty ton tank.
As the water closed over the rear of the tank, with chunks of ice bobbing in the waves and gushing over the edges of the pit from the displacement of the tank, Xander reached out again with his mind. Imagine a coldbox forty feet on a side and forty feet deep. That was a lot of water in the box now. Plus one tank and four people.
He breathed deeply and wove tonespace around the pit, pushing the coldbox spell as hard as he could and then straining for more.
Lester rushed out of the Governor's stronghold and dashed over to him. “What are you doing?”
“Making a two thousand ton ice cube.” Snow was melting all around them and the patch of clear pavement around the now-frozen surface was spreading.
“What? Really?”
Xander pushed some more, then finally sagged. He could feel the growing warmth beneath his feet, even where he stood five feet from the pit. “No, of course not. What was I thinking? It'll be heavier than that, because of the tank inside it.”
Lester's eyes bugged out. “But won't it just climb out?”
“No. With any luck, it's on its back spinning treads against solid ice. But even if it only landed gun-first, it's trapped like a fly in amber. And the Honcho is in it, with some of his men.
There was a humming vibration coming from the ice. After a while it stopped.
“Are they . . .?”
“Yes. He forgot to close the hatch.”
Lester shivered. Xander could see him wondering. What would be a worse way to die? Frozen solid in ice? Or frozen inside an air bubble waiting for the oxygen to run out?
At last the apprentice spoke. “At least it was quick. I'm only sorry I didn't get to say goodbye to Brutus.”
At the sound of an engine Xander looked up from the surface of his ice cube. “You might still have a chance,” he said, grinning. “I'd be willing to bet he's in that other tank, with the Runt safely tucked back with the others lying in ambush for the Governor.”