“Is our leaper all right?” asked Major Jacques de Ris.
With a tired, fatigued sigh, the Russian mechanic nodded.
“Are you sure?” prompted the leaper gunner once more.
“Yes,” he said gruffly in French.
“Are you really sure?”
“Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure,” said the mechanic with finality.
Jacques paused and nodded.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Just get in the damn leaper,” he snapped.
“All right, all right, just asking, that’s all. Come on, Pierre, let’s move!”
The two Frenchmen bounded into their vehicle gracelessly. It wasn’t the same Adder II leaper they had driven at Perpignan. That Adder had been damaged beyond repair by the Spanish leaper, which they had finally found out to be a Cobra VIII (better known as a King Cobra).
Their old Adder had been damaged so badly it had to be scrapped. They’d been given a new Hussar IV, a real state of the art leaper, which, though they had been reluctant at first, they found to handle even better than their Adder.
In the distance there came the rumblings of hundreds of tanks, guns, and troops moving into position.
“We’re moving soon,” Jacques said quietly.
“Obviously,” said Pierre testily, “Now don’t bother me, I’m going to get some sleep before this invasion begins.”
Jacques nodded. All around him he could hear the sounds of hundreds and hundreds of paratroopers loading into nearby airplanes. Each transport plane could only carry a few hundred paratroopers. How many hundred transport planes were there, though? And how many thousands of fighters to defend the transports?
He was too excited to sleep. Here it came, the biggest thrust in the whole Last War. The Allied invasion of Mongolia. The largest single strike force in the history of warfare. The Winter Offensive! And he was going to be a part of it. He shivered in anticipation.
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