Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

and with all conditions met, the sequencer sent a high voltage pulse to four of the A4 sparking mechanisms now being showered with fuel and oxidant, resulting in a sonic boom of combustion, and thousands of tons of thrust venting onto the concrete flame diverter, and from there into the four respective flame trenches out into the Polish forest.

But the Amerika Rakete did not climb immediately off its stand. The sequencer cycled a few milliseconds for the thrust from all four strap on A4 motors engines to rise to symmetric minimums before releasing the large clamps that held it in place. As the clamps flung back, the beast charged out of its stall, through the open oculus, and into the gray Polish overcast.

Oxygen-rich air rushed in to fill the vacancy left by the fifteen-story high rocket, combined with the methane still spilling onto the launch room floor, and blasted everything in Die Kuppel into elemental particles, including Zerrissen’s marvelous sequencer. No matter now, as it had done its job with distinction.

Those on top of the cupola, including the Kombrig himself, were in mid-escape, when they were taken by a volcanic blast of superheated gas and plasma, carrying with it jack hammer air compressions, smashing the internal organs and soft tissue smashing any organism within fifty meters to jelly, producing the loudest sound planet Earth had heard in sixty-five million years at Chicxulub.

The blast shredded the food wagons, tents, and other temporary structures forming the siege camp. The heat wave that followed vaporized the skin and bones of the dead before their corpses hit the forest floor, now itself on fire. The battalion never saw the full size and shape of the green and brown, multi-stage serpent ascend through the oculus that had just vaporized them.

The beast extracted itself with increasing velocity from the cupola, saving itself from becoming its own victim. Not spared were the two-hundred-liter drums of silver-gray powder, always warm to the touch even when not underneath angry rocket motors. Bursting open, the hot gasses lifting the dusty contents in a cloud of sparkles high into the sky, follow by a superheated channel of air several hundred feet into the air, down which jagged bolts, first of lightning precursors, followed by actual lightning, connecting to the static discharges accumulating in the cloud layers above.

With the rocket clear of its nest, ascending rapidly upward, a similar carnage was spread to everything within reach on the outside. The manner of death by this spectacle within the 6th depended entirely on where a particular soldier was stationed.

The rifle men positioned at the flame trench doors had caught a mere glimpse of the base of the rocket, their eyes not understanding the lights, meters, outgassing, and ventilator motions only meters away as they attempted to enter, however cautiously, through the open doors. They never heard the Battalion Commander’s order to run, and it would not have mattered in any case. They were knocked unconscious by the burst of sound that was intensified by the flame trench, followed by the plasma, hotter than the surface of the sun, incinerating and vaporizing not only their flesh and bones, but also the cold rolled steel of their rifles.

If Todtenhausen was hoping for maximum retaliation for the days of relentless, wanton bombardment his people had received, his expectations had been exceeded by more than double. In a little more than two seconds, over half of the soldiers of 6th Trophy Battalion Motor, including its Kombrig, were wiped from the surface of Earth.

But neither the scorekeeping nor the rocket was finished. Amerika Rackete was still on its improbably successful climb to the place where it would eventually reign as Earth’s first artificial moon.

The four trenches funneled their volts of superheated plasma into the Polish forest unabated, setting the dense and oily pine trees into exploding, flaming Roman candle fireworks. The air compression increased, pushing against the denser, freezing morning air, until the equilibrium halted the spread. Following the inescapable consequences of Boyles Law, the temperature rose to that of a smelting furnace, with sublimating solids into gaseous forms of hydrogen, silica, iron, and radioactive cesium and cobalt, all the cesium and cobalt the Reich could fleece from its occupied territories, gathered here in two-hundred-liter drums, the largest such depository in all the world, for use and dispersal by the Wermut warhead. These drums gasified into a shimmery cloud a few hundred meters above the cupola, then cooled in the upper April sky, mixing with water, and turning into radioactive snow.

Confined by the physics of superheated gasses, the firestorm could not spread into the relatively cooler air surrounding the cupola, so it spiraled upward into a corkscrew-shaped structure, a mesocyclone drafting greater quantities of oxygen, which significantly increased combustion, creating more heat. This was a self-feeding accelerating cycle one ordinarily expected to see in an advanced turbine engine, except at temperatures elevated to the point where everything was fuel, including asphalt, concrete, and sand.

This translucent tornado of swirling superheated solids was the spectacle that set the jaws of the still surviving perimeter guards agape, watching with wide eyes, understanding nothing except the Soviet training that taught them to stand their ground no matter what. This training would be the last cogent thought any of them had before the compression wave hit them with a force that shattered their teeth, and dissolved their ear drums, nasal membranes, and eyeballs.

A few struggled to their feet, deafened and blinded, pulling themselves up by their rifle butts, just in time for the heaviest particles to rain down on them. These were hot beads of superheated sand, still viscous and very sticky, tiny flashbulbs that popped audibly and emitting a few photons of light when cesium collides with a molecule of .

The orange and yellow radioactive mist drenched the landscape and its human statues, coating their lungs, solidifying as thin layers within their bronchi, bronchiole, and alveoli. As the temperatures finally abated, the components solidified into a glass, entombing each man in his