she's bothered how she does it."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Spartacus followed up its stab at the shuttle with a full-scale assault aimed at getting into the Hub, both by pushing northward out of the Spindle and by breaking in from the outside. It brought its full complement of new weapons to bear, including cannon-firing and flame-throwing spacedrones and self-propelled bombs, but the defending troops were prepared for depressurization and faced the assault wearing suits and well entrenched behind formidable walls of rocket launchers and automatic weapons. The battle developed into an ebb and flow concentrated mainly around the region where the Hub joined the Spindle and around the vicinity of Northport.
Somebody in the Hub had the idea of loading some of the cabs with explosives and dispatching them down the tubes through the Spindle into Detroit, in hopes of an explosion somewhere deep inside Spartacus's vitals. Some of the cabs never made it and nobody was sure exactly where the others were when they detonated, but not long afterward the vigor of Spartacus's attack slackened considerably. A counterthrust developed from this point with spacesuited infantry regaining a number of positions in the Hub-Spindle junction; at the same time a swarm of bugs that had been specially rigged to fire rockets and Gremlins went out to deal with the machines attempting to work inward from the outside. In some places troops emerged onto the outside surface to add further pressure.
The tide turned once more when Spartacus's 'Mark I' missiles proved lethal for bugs and its space drones took out the infantry, who had no equivalent weapon of their own to counter them and were soon forced back inside. When a lull at last developed, the soldiers were still holding the exits from the Spindle but Spartacus had gained sole ownership of the outside.
By this time most of the Hub was
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Spartacus followed up its stab at the shuttle with a full-scale assault aimed at getting into the Hub, both by pushing northward out of the Spindle and by breaking in from the outside. It brought its full complement of new weapons to bear, including cannon-firing and flame-throwing spacedrones and self-propelled bombs, but the defending troops were prepared for depressurization and faced the assault wearing suits and well entrenched behind formidable walls of rocket launchers and automatic weapons. The battle developed into an ebb and flow concentrated mainly around the region where the Hub joined the Spindle and around the vicinity of Northport.
Somebody in the Hub had the idea of loading some of the cabs with explosives and dispatching them down the tubes through the Spindle into Detroit, in hopes of an explosion somewhere deep inside Spartacus's vitals. Some of the cabs never made it and nobody was sure exactly where the others were when they detonated, but not long afterward the vigor of Spartacus's attack slackened considerably. A counterthrust developed from this point with spacesuited infantry regaining a number of positions in the Hub-Spindle junction; at the same time a swarm of bugs that had been specially rigged to fire rockets and Gremlins went out to deal with the machines attempting to work inward from the outside. In some places troops emerged onto the outside surface to add further pressure.
The tide turned once more when Spartacus's 'Mark I' missiles proved lethal for bugs and its space drones took out the infantry, who had no equivalent weapon of their own to counter them and were soon forced back inside. When a lull at last developed, the soldiers were still holding the exits from the Spindle but Spartacus had gained sole ownership of the outside.
By this time most of the Hub was