He had just squandered his last rounds and his chance to cripple the
gantry. He sighed involuntarily. _C'est la vie._
At that instant, however, whoever was manning the controls locked the
wheels and there was the loud screech of metal on metal. He watched the
wheels slide across the patch of gelignite, creating instantaneous
frictional heat.
Immediately a blinding white flare erupted from the tracks, followed by
the loud crack of an explosion. He watched as the first steel wheel was
sheared away and the gantry lurched awkwardly forward. Next the axle
ground into the gravel next to the track as the motion of the giant
tower tilted it askew. It had not toppled over, but it was leaning
dangerously. Whatever might be required to repair it, the gantry was no
longer functional. SatCom was shut down for the foreseeable.
He was less than happy with his handiwork. Cally's going to kill me--
that was his first thought--after her long diatribe about not doing any
big damage.
Then he watched as it got worse. The gantry jerked again as the axle
cracked from the stress and began slowly to heel. Like the slow crash
of a tumbling redwood--he almost wanted to shout "timberrrr"--it toppled
forward, landing with an enormous crash that shook the very ground
around him. Angle-iron and lights splintered into the granite-strewn
soil that separated the launch pad from the rest of the facility. Now
the gantry lay like a fallen giant. . . .
As he watched, he slowly recognized he had achieved nothing but
malicious damage. By collapsing, the gantry was now out of the way,
below the sight lines between the Cyclops system on the mountain and
the vehicle. They still could launch.
VX-1 must already be armed, he realized; the bomb is aboard and set to
fly.