Authors: Mark Kalina
Captain
Tara Yukiko O'Connor winced as the War-Hammer ahead of hers took a missile past
its defenses and erupted in flames. The initial hit raised a cloud of dust from
the tank; seconds later white-hot fire blew open all four crew hatches and shot
out of the cooling vents of the tank's fuel-cell power pack. None of the crew
survival pods ejected. No chance of survivors, a distant part of Tara's mind
noted; that's Ben and his crew, dead.
Her
own gunner was firing again, trying to nail the UEN tank that was sniping at
her company from the rocky heights seven kilometers away. A swarm of sensors
drones launched from her tanks had found just one enemy tank, but the bastard
had a good position and lots of deployed countermeasures; her drones hadn't
lasted long.
And
now that one enemy tank was pinning down the whole advance. He was badly
outnumbered, but far enough away that as long as he kept shifting his position
he was very hard to lock on to and hit. And he'd deployed multiple
countermeasures pods that were laying down a continuous barrage of laser energy
to keep the Arcadian tanks from getting a decent firing solution. The UEN's
autonomous countermeasures pods were something new to the Arcadians; a nasty
surprise that gave their enemy a serious defensive advantage.
The
muted thud-thud-thud of the 41 megajoule gun's burst vibrated the tank like a
beat to some satanic dance track. Fire from her tank, and from other tanks of
her company, was taking out the enemy laser jammer pods one by one, but so far,
the bastard still had some left.
"Gunner,
nail that pisser bastard!" Tara called out, trying to keep her voice calm,
even as she watched Benjamin's tank burn. It was important to keep your voice
calm; they'd drilled that into her in tank commander school; if the commander
sounded panicked or rattled, the whole crew got rattled.
She
took a moment to track her view-scope back behind her, to the burning tank. The
fire wasn't dying down at all; fuel cells and ammo were both burning fiercely.
No survivors, she thought numbly. A quick end; no pain, no suffering. She
hoped.
She
shifted her main view forward again just in time to catch sight of the geysers
of displaced sand and dirt as another salvo of autonomous missiles lifted out
of one of the concealed launch pods that the UEN troops had buried. The gunner
and the sensor operator were both busy trying to track and kill the enemy tank,
so she took over the point defense station and released a salvo of soda-can
sized counter-missiles. Three other tanks from her company did the same; dozens
of bright fireflies of light streaked together to explode in flashes that left
dirty brown puffs of smoke hanging briefly in the air and peppered the hard
desert floor with sprays jagged fragments.
A
UEN missile made it through the defensive salvo, and Tara triggered the "Metal
Storm" close-in weapons system; a mini-turret mounting a cluster of stubby
giant shotgun barrels that spat out a dozen giant shot shells. The last missile
detonated a few meters short of the tank, close enough for the blast to feel
like a ringing metallic slap against the hull and turret. Fragments knocked a
few sensors off-line and scoured away some of the smart-paint layer, but the
Type 51 Mark IIa War-Hammer drove on, emerging from the cloud of dust, firing
another three round burst from its long 41 megajoule cannon.
"Did
you get him?" Tara asked, as the gunner's shots arced out and exploded
into rising pillars of debris in the far distance.
"No!
I can't get a lock-on."
"Switch
to single shots on the forty-one. We're down to less than thirty rounds!"
Tara ordered.
"Johnny,
get me a lock on that bastard," she said to the sensors operator.
"He's probably the one sending guidance to those autonomous missile
pods!"
"Working
on it," the sensors operator replied. "We only have one drone
left,"
"Use
it!" Tara snapped.
"Drone
out," announced the sensors operator.
Keep
it low, Tara almost said; if the sensors operator let the drone climb too high,
it would be an easy target for counter-measures. But the sensors operator,
Corporal Jon Miller, was a good man; he didn't need his tank commander minding
his business for him.
I
don't think we can just push through, she thought. The pissers —UEN Peace
Force troops— had had most of a day to prepare, in which time they could
have dug in hundreds of autonomous missile pods between here and the gate
structure. A tank's focused bow sensors could pick up most sorts of mines
before the tank rolled over them —if not from the signatures of the mines
themselves, then from the faint thermal pattern of disturbed earth— but
the missile pods could be dug in a kilometer distant and still be deadly
dangerous.
A
preliminary reconnaissance with a swarm of sensors drones hadn't spotted
anything, so the pods had been a total surprise to her company when their
missiles had started erupting from the ground.
Autonomous
targeting sensors would almost certainly have been spotted; you couldn't bury
them deep enough to fool the drones; not if you wanted them to be able to
detect their targets. Which meant, Tara thought, that the UEN forces probably
didn't have any autonomous targeting sensors placed. Instead, they had one
lucky —and skilled— tank watching the approach and feeding
targeting information to the concealed missile pods.
"Can
you jam that pisser bastard's link to those missile pods?" she asked the
sensors operator.
"No,"
he replied. "I can't even pick out his signals from background static. If
he's guiding them at all, that is."
"He
is," Tara said, and thought that it figured that the pissers would have
top-of-the-line gear.
"OK,"
she said, transmitting into the company push. "2nd platoon move off the
axis of advance and head north. Get an angle on that pisser tank and take him
out. 1st and 3rd platoons, slow it down and focus on your anti-missile
defenses."
"Roger,"
came the acknowledgement from Lieutenant Singh, the 2nd Platoon leader. He only
had two tanks left in his platoon, but she was down to three herself, and so
was 3rd Platoon; only eight functional tanks left in the company, out of the
twelve she'd started with that morning. And all of the survivors had at least a
little damage, by now. Not to mention that ammo —for both the 41's and
the counter-missile batteries— was getting pretty low, too.
Singh's
two tanks peeled off, cutting out into the hard, boulder-strewn slopes to the
north. Even an articulated-track tank was going to have trouble maneuvering
through that terrain, but there wasn't much of an option left. Singh's two
tanks had to take it slow, weaving around the bigger boulders, moving at maybe
30 or 35 kilometers per hour; less than a third of what the tanks could do on
open ground. Even so, they'd hopefully get an angle on the pisser tank and take
him out.
A
quick check of the strategic communication push showed that the fight at the
gate building wasn't going well. The pissers were moving in reinforcements
through the gate and the Arcadian troops had all they could do to hold on. And
if they couldn't take the gate... then the choice would be to let the UEN
forces pour through and take over the entire colony, or to try to destroy the
gate, cutting Arcadia off from the rest of humanity, maybe forever. Though that
was assuming that they
could
destroy
the gate.
Her
tanks were the best chance to win that fight, though. If she could just push
them through to the gate building and bring their firepower to bear in support
of the Arcadian infantry fighting for the gate.
The
UEN tank unmasked from cover and fired again. He wasn't using laser targeting
for his shots; laser targeting allowed for almost perfect accuracy, but lasers
could also warn the targeted tank to evade and deploy counter-measures. Firing
without lasers was a lot less accurate, but increased the chance of catching a
target off guard.
Not
this time, though; all the tanks of her company knew where to expect enemy fire
from, so the flash of the pisser's 41 megajoule gun —the same model as
her tank carried— was enough to trigger sprays of concealment aerosol and
emergency evasions. It took only three seconds for the burst of fire from the
enemy tank to cross the seven kilometers of range, but none of Tara's tanks
were where they had been when the shot was fired. A burst of three 41 megajoule
kinetic projectiles slammed into the desert floor, sending up plumes of dirt
and pulverized rock a hundred meters high.
One
of her tanks, from 3rd Platoon, fired a burst in reply, targeting the enemy's
muzzle flash, but the enemy tank was back behind cover before the shots reached
him.
"We
can't afford this delay!" Tara hissed, mostly to herself, though since she
was still on the Company tactical push, all of her platoon leaders heard her
too.
"Cease
fire on the pisser tank," she ordered. "Everyone stand by
anti-missile defenses and be ready to evade. We're charging though! Full speed!
Second Platoon can take care of the pisser tank and keep him from shooting up
our backsides! We've got a date to keep at the fucking gate building! Let's
go!"
The
six tanks surged forward, articulated tracks churning the desert ground. At
full speed, they could push 100 kilometers per hour on this terrain. Tara was
hoping that the speed would help keep them safe.
"Evasive,"
she told her driver, and her War-Hammer began to make shallow zigzags, kicking
up a curtain of dust that would help keep enemy sensors at bay.
The
other tanks were following her lead, snaking across the desert.
An
eruption of dirt a kilometer ahead marked another enemy missile pod's salvo,
but with the dust kicked up by her tanks, only the lead tank was a clear
target; her tank.
"Counter-missiles!"
she called, but her gunner was launching them before she spoke, and more
counter-missiles flashed out from the rest of the company's tanks as well. A
dozen enemy missiles died in a cascade of dark cloud-puff explosions as
anti-tank missiles and counter-missiles met.
"Got
'em all!" the gunner shouted.
"Enemy
tank's firing!" shouted the sensors operator as his last reconnaissance
drone flashed a warning.
"Evasive!"
Tara shouted, on both the driver's channel and the company push, and the driver
jerked the tank into a sharper zigzag.
The
enemy tank had fired a long burst; six or seven shots. The burst of fire passed
behind Tara's tank, but walked across the path of Shinobu's War-Hammer, one of
the two other tanks of her own 1st platoon. Just one projectile hit, but it
came in between the turret and the tracks, through the hull's thinner side
armor; a slug of depleted uranium punched through the composite sandwich of
steel, tungsten carbide, synthetic sapphire and carbon fiber, flaring into a
friction-ignited blow-torch of burning metal particles. Someone screamed on the
communications push, shrill and brief, and a second later, three survival pods
ejected from the stricken tank; two from the turret and then the driver from
the hull.
But
there was no time to stop, or even to wonder which friend or comrade she'd just
lost... or even if all the survival pods had carried out living crewmembers;
sometimes they ejected a second too late and only saved a burned or mangled
corpse.
"Evasive!"
she shouted again into the company push, and then added, "gunner, return
fire!"
The
big turret swung half-way around and the gunner fired a long burst of his own,
the 41 megajoule gun thudding like some giant version of a slow, old-fashioned
machinegun, the muzzle blasts kicking up a massive rolling cloud of dust. Tara
watched as the ammo count for the main gun went down to twenty-four rounds, but
this was no time for economy of fire. A few seconds later, towering columns of
dirt and pulverized rock erupted around the enemy position, and her tank wasn't
the only one to fire back. But there was no confirmation of a hit.
The
enemy tank fired again a minute later, but this time, hit none of the wildly
evading Arcadian tanks.
And
then there was cheering coming in across the Second Platoon push.
"Got
him!" came Lieutenant Singh's voice. "We took that pisser tank
out
! Multiple hits; you can use what's
left to toast marshmallows!"
"Good
work, Singh!" Tara said. "Maneuver your platoon to follow us. We're
not slowing down, so you can't catch up, but you can follow up for
support."
"Roger,"
Singh said.
Ahead
of them on her map display, Tara could see the low ridge that gave way to the
shallow valley that held the gate structure itself. If they could just get to
that ridge —and take it, if the UEN had placed defenses there— they
would finally be in position to deliver fire support to the Arcadian infantry
troops that were fighting take the gate compound. The infantry had been dropped
in, at great risk and with great daring, by using stealth air-transport craft.
Established doctrine said that it was an impossible maneuver; established laser
defenses would always be able to shoot down any aircraft, and no stealth was
enough to defeat the sort of sensors that a front-line anti-air laser fortress
mounted; stealth could hide from radars, and adaptive camouflage could fool
distant optical sensors, but, sooner or later, the big thermal sensors could
find anything that flew, no matter how stealthy it was. Usually sooner.