Picture a funnel.
The wide part is the main courtyard of Special Weapons Research Base. Steadily narrowing as it approaches the base’s main gate, this vast open area is covered in a sea of heavily armored vehicles, jammed together front-to-rear in long lines that are slowly but steadily merging as they make their way toward …
The neck of the funnel is the wide-open gate. The many lines of vehicles are now reduced to one, steadily streaming between the thick-walled gatehouses standing sentinel at either side of the gap in the perimeter wall. The vehicles are now picking up speed and moving further apart. This would not be an opportune time for a clumsy fender bender (though few of these massive military vehicles bother with fenders anyway).
Swarms of hexacopter drones soar overhead, following the line of vehicles below for a short distance beyond the gate, before fanning out across a thirty-degree arc. They are gathering visual, infrared, and radar information from whatever lay ahead and off to the sides, and are broadcasting it all back to the Command-and-Control vehicles scattered at regular intervals along the line.
One of these drones, however, is simply hovering well above the main gate, its high-definition camera gimbaled to point straight down. The wide-angle shot of the great mass of vehicles streaming out of the gate and along the old, potholed road is being broadcast to one vehicle only.
Commander Barbara Wallace gazed at this live scene playing out on the holographic display floating above the dashboard in front of her. She was riding shotgun in the front seat of the lead vehicle. Indeed, the first four vehicles of the seemingly endless train were a train: each forty-foot-long armored behemoth was linked to the next by a thick steel coupler and numerous cables. The lead car was essentially an enormous armored van, so tall that one had to step up about three feet to climb into it.
Lieutenant Wendy DeKalb jogged along the road immediately outside the Commander’s open side window. She was close enough that she could reach up and touch her Commander’s beefy arm, which hung loosely over the door, the palm of her hand skipping on the wind. The lieutenant’s more-than-ample breasts jiggled violently within her skin-hugging cherry red leotard, and the massive muscles all over her body were powerful gaze magnets as they flexed and rippled with each step.
“HAVING FUN YET, LIEUTENANT?”
Wendy smiled up at her Commander, who was gazing down at her through the window from her high perch in the van.
“NO, COMMANDER!” she shouted back over the steady roar of the huge all-terrain tires. “WHERE’S THE WRECKAGE YOU PROMISED?”
The Command grinned. “I’M SURE WE’LL BE ENCOUNTERING SOME SOON. PATIENCE, YOUNG PADAWAN.”
Patience my steely ass, give me something to SMASH. It’s playtime for this unstoppable body!
The Commander turned her head on top of her massive V-shaped neck to face the van’s driver, a petite blonde in full battle uniform.
“Sergeant, we better find something for my lieutenant to play with soon before she starts ripping apart our ride.”
The staff sergeant smiled knowingly, flashing cute dimples. “Yes, ma’am. Recon drones are reporting considerable road debris in less than two klicks.”
“We might just survive then,” the Commander replied, as she swiveled her head back to look out her side window, down into her luscious lieutenant’s bouncing cleavage.
A couple minutes later, the jogging muscle goddess shouted, “I SEE SOMETHING!” Then she dashed ahead, despite orders to stick close to the van.
The Commander just glanced back at the driver, then shrugged in a “what are you gonna do” gesture.
“Maintain present speed, sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am. I think the lieutenant has made contact with the first roadblock.”
The red-headed musclebeast looked forward just in time to see, off in the distance, something large fly up in the air, fall back down, then suddenly get ripped apart into two huge chunks that sailed in opposite directions, landing on either side of the road.
“I see that, sergeant. Continue at present speed, and enjoy the show.”
The driver grinned as she took in the amazing sight that unfolded ahead.
Standing in the middle of the road, Wendy broke into a double-biceps pose and bellowed her triumph against the one-ton pickup truck that now existed as two heaps of mangled metal. Then she turned toward the next roadblock: a tractor-trailer that lay abandoned and slowly rotting in the desert sun.
The lieutenant crouched down, pumped her muscles hard, and snarled at the big metal object that taunted her with its very existence. Then she charged at it like a bull, plowing directly into the truck’s front grill.
The entire truck ballooned as Wendy’s super body bored through it from snout to tail. Sharp steel tore at her unstoppable body. It caught on her bouncing chest, rock hard abs, and monstrous hammering thighs before parting to either side of her like water crashing and splitting around a ship’s bow. The shrieks and howls of the blasted metal were the best kind of music to Wendy’s ears.
Wendy whipped around, rammed her hands deep into the trailer’s frame to either side of her, and yanked the whole mess apart. Then the savage musclebeast swam back through helpless truckmeat the way she had come, unzipping the entire length of tortured steel and aluminum. Her face was the very picture of lunatic joy.
By the time the lead vehicle of the Expedition reached that point, the remains of the truck were now piled by the side of the road, and Wendy was viciously attacking the next impediment to their progress.
The lead van’s driver gulped as she gazed down upon the passing wreckage just outside her side window.
“Ma’am, if I ever manage to do something that upsets the lieutenant, permission to cower behind you?”
“If I’m not cowering behind you first,” the Commander responded with a laugh.
“You’re not feeling the least bit tempted to, um, assist her, ma’am?”
The Commander held up her hands, showing the staff sergeant her freshly painted fingernails. Their glossy coat matched her army green leotard. “And ruin my nails, sergeant? Besides, I think she has things well in hand.”
And I LOVE watching her play!
She punched a button on the dashboard. “Deploy SSCATs, both sides. Plenty of food coming your way.”
“Roger, ma’am,” came a voice from the speaker. “Deploying SSCATs, left and right.”
About a kilometer down the line, huge doors opened on both sides of several massive cargo carriers. Ramps extended outward and down beneath the openings, and large trucks slid sideways out of the carriers and onto the road, bouncing briefly as their tires made the transition from stationary ramp to rapidly passing pavement.
The SSCATs (Scrap Separation, Compaction, and Transport) were essentially huge armored garbage trucks. Each one stopped at a mass of wreckage that the lieutenant so helpfully prepared for it, then picked it up, using a set of robot arms equipped with magnetic heads and claw-like grippers. Depositing the whole mess into the large opening on top, it then moved onto the next pile, while machinery within the truck sorted out the various materials, then compacted them to make room for more. The SSCATs were a recent invention of the base’s materials recovery team, and this was their first genuine field test.
