Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  "And the cleaning up operations on our end? Are we ready to move to help Hafez?" Mbala asked.

  "Sir, we've encountered a few disorganized Arcadians units. For the most part, we've scattered them. We've also taken control of several Arcadian settlements. The irregular forces set up by our Special Operations came in quite useful for that.

  "Good," Mbala said. "Now, what's the status on those Arcadian tanks in the highlands?"

  "Confirmed at reduced battalion strength. We have their exact positions as of the last orbital pass by the Yang Liwei. However, they do seem to move around quite a bit, so those positions aren't certain anymore."

  "And the probing attack?" Mbala asked.

  "As ordered, a reconnaissance in force was undertaken by 1st company, 2nd battalion. The probing attack was repelled, though we estimate that the Arcadians took severe losses. The Arcadian's tanks are modified Japanese Type-51s. Not as modern as our T-66s."

  "Very well," Mbala said. "Send in the entire 2nd Battalion. Bring it up to full strength, drawing units from 1st Battalion if needed. Let's push past these highlands. Once we take out the laser installation that our orbital reconnaissance says is there, we'll have some room to deploy those aircraft that we brought at such a cost of toil and effort.

  "Meanwhile, I want you to make sure that 1st and 3rd Battalions are ready to move as soon as we've cleared the Arcadian armor out of the way. I want the 3rd Battalion in particular to be ready to hit the main Arcadian positions facing Major Hafez's forces in the rear. We've paid a lot of money for those fancy Korean tanks and I want to make sure the UEN gets its money's worth. I particularly want Major Hafez —and his Public Information Section camera crews— to see it when our most cutting-edge forces rescue him."

  29.

  "Drones are picking up several formations of enemy tanks, Colonel," came the report from one of Younger's platoon leaders, a young lieutenant named Wasserman, fresh out of Armored Corps Officer School. Younger had mentioned that he was "house-broken."

  God save me from baby lieutenants, Tara thought.

  "Get as good a count as you can, Lieutenant," she said, "but don't expose your platoon to enemy fire unless you can get flanking shots. Keep under cover, and fall back to your main fighting positions if you're in danger of being cut off."

  Switching to the Battalion Command push, she said, "OK, people. They're coming back, like we thought they would. Not a little nudge this time, either. Looks like a multiple-company-strength attack. Younger, Feldman, we do this like we planned, OK? Stay behind cover, let them come into range. Then we unmask your 3rd platoon, Younger, off to the east. And when the pissers reorient to engage, we hit them at a flanking angle from the west."

  "We got it, Boss," Younger replied.

  "My company is ready," Feldman added.

  "OK, then," Tara said. "One more thing, Feldman. If I get taken out, it's your show. Follow the plan, or come up with your own plan; you'll be in charge. But, remember, we cannot fall back past the laser installation. Can. Not. We have got to hold the line forward of that laser. Otherwise we give the pissers an air-corridor right into the north."

  "Understood Colonel," Feldman replied. "But if it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon you stay alive. It's not that I don't have ambitions about battalion command, but I'd really rather get promoted for my own merits, and not because you managed to get yourself killed."

  "I'll see what I can do, Feldman," Tara answered.

  ***

  "Ma'am," said the sensors operator, "the lead enemy tanks have crossed line 'x-ray' and launched drones."

  "Good. Right on schedule. Nice when the enemy cooperates by being so predictable," Tara remarked.

  "OK," she said into the all-units battalion comm push, "All units, stand by to execute the plan. And good hunting."

  Around her, the twenty-nine tanks of her battalion prepared for battle.

  Off to one side, a platoon of three of Younger's tanks rolled up a shallow slope to bring their guns to bear over the rocks they had hidden behind, and opened fire.

  The first bursts struck among the UEN tanks' leading platoon. At five kilometers, the shots took less than three seconds to reach their targets. The first UEN tank was hit twice, but its armor held. A second later, it was obscured by smoke as it launched a salvo of concealment grenades and backed off, evading at high speed.

  The other UEN tanks started evading before the next rounds reached them, but the Arcadian tanks were firing long bursts, tracking 41 megajoule rounds across their targets to compensate for possible evasions. Two more UEN tanks took hits. One shrugged them off from its thick armor, but the other one took a round that either found a weak-spot or came in at just the right angle. The UEN T-66 rolled to a stop and began to vent fire from its hatches and exhausts in a series of short, explosive bursts as its internal fuel and ammunition cooked off.

  A dozen UEN tanks returned fire, traversing their turrets to bear on the Arcadian tanks that had engaged them. Before the first round hit, the Arcadian tanks had popped smoke and backed away, reversing back under cover.

  At the same moment, another seven Arcadian tanks, off to the opposite side of the Arcadian defensive line, rolled forward, unmasking their guns from behind cover, and opened fire. Their targets were the UEN tanks that had traversed their turrets to bear on the first Arcadian tanks to engage, which gave them shots at the side turret armor of the UEN T-66s.

  The first salvo saw six of the UEN tanks hit. Five of them began to burn as 41 megajoule shots from the Arcadian slammed through their thinner side armor and sprayed showers of burning magnesium into their turrets. The sixth managed to turn in time, dodging three shots and taking one that glanced off the heavier front armor of its turret.

  UEN tanks near the rear of the enemy formation opened fire on the newly visible Arcadian tanks, but the range was long, and the seven tanks —two platoons from Major Feldman's 2nd Company— reversed back behind cover in the roughly three seconds it took the return fire to arrive. 44 megajoule shots shattered rocks and threw up huge plumes of debris, but not a single Arcadian tank was hit.

  "Yes!" Tara shouted, watching the carnage among the UEN tanks. Six tanks, almost two platoons worth of enemy armor, wiped out without a single hit inflicted in return!

  "That's the way to do it!" she called into the Battalion Command comm push. "They can't take this for long!"

  The UEN tank commanders seemed to agree. Almost every UEN tank began to pump out concealment grenades and back away.

  "Hold your fire, all units. Hold your fire," Tara ordered.

  The UEN tanks were heavily armored enough that long range sniping wouldn't be decisive, and their heavier guns made them more likely to take out a War-Hammer in reply. Not to mention that the battalion had to watch its ammo expenditure. Some of her tanks' ammo loads were already down by close to 30%.

  "That went well," Younger said over the comm. "Let's have them do that again two or three times and we can all just go home."

  "Well, Younger, if you can get them on the comm and convince 'em to cooperate, I'll put you in for a medal and a promotion," Tara replied.

  "Multiple enemy drones inbound," reported the sensors operator.

  "Here we go," Tara said. "Too much to hope for that they'd have stayed dumb the whole time."

  The UEN drones began to climb up, getting an angle to see over the rocky cover where the Arcadian tanks were hiding. Arcadian tanks responded with a storm of auto-smartgun fire, sending burst after burst into the sky. Drones, their wings and fuselages shattered by heavy 10.5mm bullets, fell from the sky in broken pieces. Other drones evaded, or got by on luck. And every drone that got an angle on an Arcadian position meant that the UEN tanks now knew where one of the battalion's War-Hammers was.

  "Battalion; all tanks, stand by for fire on your positions," Tara sent. "Get ready to pop smoke and stand by to move to your alternate firing positions!"

  Ahead, the UEN forces were preparing to move forward. A line of a dozen tanks
formed behind a barrage of concealment grenades. Behind the first line, a second line of a dozen more prepared to follow, lagging by a precise kilometer, ready to engage anything the first line uncovered.

  "Colonel!" announced the sensors operator. "Some of our drones are picking up long range anti-tank missiles inbound... coming in over the UEN formation."

  "Fuck," Tara said. "Stand by missile defenses! All units, missiles inbound!" she called into the all-units comm push.

  Dozens of missiles skimmed in, flying low over the barren, rocky terrain. Each missile was targeted on a position that had been marked by a drone, going after a tank that was behind cover, which meant that the targeted tanks didn't have clear sight or clear targeting on the inbound missiles.

  Tara watched through one of her drones as the missile salvo roared in. Realization of what was about to happen hit her like a sledgehammer.

  "All units! Reverse and unmask your anti-missile systems. Missiles coming in low over the terrain! Unmask your defenses!" she shouted into the comm.

  Some of the battalion's tanks backed up in time; counter-missile salvos flashed out to detonate among the inbound missiles and Metal Storm turrets filled the air with projectiles.

  Other tanks weren't fast enough. Anti-tank missiles streaked on over their cover, giving them no time to fire counter-missiles. Some didn't even have time for their Metal Storm turrets to traverse and acquire the inbounds. Three tanks were hit. One, by luck or chance, took the missile at an angle, right in the center of its turret's frontal armor. The armor held, though half the tank's sensors and two of its four auto-smartguns were wiped out in the explosion.

  Two other tanks, one of Younger's, in 3rd Company, and one in Tara's own 1st Company, weren't that lucky. One was struck on the turret top by a single missile; everything inside the turret was eradicated in a blast of focused high explosive force; only the driver managed to eject. The other tank was hit by two missiles. The first hit shot a blast of black smoke from every hatch and vent in the tank. The second missile set off the ammunition and blew the War-Hammer's turret thirty meters into the air, flipping the 30 ton armored mass like a leaf, to land with a massive crash next to the fire-gutted shell of the tank. There were no survivors.

  Two other tanks reversed too far. Counter-missile salvos killed the missiles aimed at them, but they found themselves unmasked against the main guns of the UEN tanks. One tank, from Major Feldman's own platoon, newly commanded by Corporal Velazquez, managed to get back into cover in time. Only a single 44 megajoule shot struck and rang off the frontal armor of its turret. The other tank, one from the 3rd Platoon of Tara's company, took two hits that punched through the base of the turret, setting the tank on fire and killing two of the turret crew. The driver and sensors operator punched out alive.

  Three of her tanks gone in as many seconds, Tara realized. And the UEN formation was moving in.

  "Battalion! All tanks, maneuver into your firing positions and engage!" she ordered. No more time for clever ruses. Now it was going to be a slugging match.

  The twenty-six surviving tanks of the battalion rolled forward to unmask their guns and join the fight. Thirty surviving UEN tanks drove forward to meet them.

  The UEN tanks had the advantage of heavier armor and a marginally more powerful gun, but that margin was often the difference between penetration and a glancing hit that bounced off. The Arcadian tanks had the advantage of carefully chosen firing positions, showing only as much of their turrets as was needed to allow their guns to bear. The UEN tanks could evade as they advanced. The Arcadian tanks could reverse back into cover in a matter of seconds.

  Hundreds of main gun shots crisscrossed across the deadly space separating the two lines of armor. At about four kilometers range, the shots took barely two seconds to cross the distance. Misses gouged craters into the dirt and stone of the rocky ground. Hits rang off of armor, or punched through with a sound like a drop-forge to set tanks alight.

  Firing from cover gave Tara's battalion an advantage. In the first salvos, three UEN tanks went down under concentrated fire, smashed into burning wrecks by multiple 41 megajoule hits. A single War-Hammer was hit in return, the 44 megajoule shell penetrating the turret just next to the main gun tube. An ammunition explosion reduced the War-Hammer to a gutted wreck spewing a geyser of fire-shot debris and sent its turret tumbling into the air; electrothermal-chemical propellant was hard to cook off, but very energetic when it went.

  Another salvo lashed out from the battalions positions, kicking up rolling clouds of dust in front of each firing tank. War-Hammers fired, retreated to cover, tried to guess at the next target with data from short-lived drones, or from pure intuition, then rolled forward to fire again. More and more of her tanks were shifting to alternate firing positions, popping smoke and racing backwards at angles to alternate cover that they had picked out —and practiced driving to— before the fight had started.

  The UEN tankers were dodging like madmen as they drove forward, punctuating their advance with bursts of smoke from salvos of concealment grenades. Even so, another UEN tank was hit and knocked out, and then one more.

  As the range closed, the UEN tanks' fire became more accurate; there was no longer time to reverse behind cover before an enemy could fire and hit. And the 44 megajoule main guns of the T-66s began to exact an ever more severe toll.

  Tara watched as another two of her tanks were hit, dead on the thick frontal turret armor, and penetrated anyway. One managed to reverse away, its turret burning but its engine, tracks and driver intact. The other exploded in a spray of fireworks sparks and smoke. No crewmembers ejected.

  Another UEN tank died in exchange, sniped at an angle by a 41 megajoule burst —from one of the tanks from Feldman's own platoon, she thought— that punched two rounds through its side armor. But the damn pissers kept coming, soaking up their losses but not slowing down.

  "All units, fall back to the next line of firing positions. Fall back!" she ordered. "Driver, reverse to our next firing position," she added via the intercom, triggering a salvo of concealment grenades as she did.

  The battalion had mapped out multiple lines of fallback firing positions, besides the "parallel" firing positions that they'd been dodging between so far, and now it was time to trade ground for time, she thought.

  The War-Hammer lurched into motion, backing up at over 50 kph as Tara desperately scanned for a target through the smoke.

  The thermal signature of a T-66 briefly stood out from the billowing chaos of the smoke.

  "Gunner, target tank! Acquire and engage!" Tara shouted.

  A second later the forty-one spoke, hammering out a burst, but the T-66 evaded, fading into a bank of its own concealing smoke. 41 megajoule shots tore into the ground where the enemy tank had been.

  A burst of 44 megajoule fire streaked out of the smoke, back at them. A round glanced off the left side of the turret with a sound like a sledge-hammer on a steel drum. The shock snapped Tara's head into the back of her seat, only her helmet saving her from a concussion or worse.

  For an endlessly long second, she could almost see the white flash, almost feel the sudden, searing pain. She could feel, with sudden, exquisite exactness, just where the stumps of her legs ended and her prosthetics began. What was it going to cost her this time, she thought. All of it in a second.

  "Get the gun on him!" she shouted, banishing the thoughts. "Engage!"

  Before the gunner could comply, another Arcadian tank —the same one from Feldman's platoon she had seen make a kill earlier— raked the T-66 with a four round burst, penetrating twice. The UEN tank's turret was blown into the air by an explosion that scattered fragments of burning debris for fifty meters in all directions, briefly leaving a flower-like pattern of smoke trails.

  Most of the Arcadian tanks had reached their first fallback positions now, and reemerged to fire on the still-advancing UEN tanks. Range was down to about two kilometers, and shots crossed the space between gun and target in scarcely more than a
second.

  "Bring us into firing position," Tara ordered the driver, spotting, through the sensors of one of the few remaining drones, the flash of an enemy's main gun in the pervasive dust and smoke.

  The War-Hammer pulled forward from the cover it had just reached.

  "Gunner, acquire and engage!"

  "Engaging!" the gunner shouted, and the 41 megajoule gun spoke again.

  The enemy tank was less than two kilometers away, its own cannon pointed at a different target. A four round burst streaked out, all four rounds hitting. Two glanced, one shattered a track pod, and one punched into the armor of the UEN tank's bow, next to the other forward track pod. The T-66 slammed to a halt with jarring force. Slowly its turret began to traverse.

  "Gunner! Hit it again!" Tara shouted.

  The forty-one thundered a second time and the UEN tank flashed with the violence of hypervelocity shots hitting armor, fragments of shattered projectiles and shattered armor spattering in the dust for dozens of meters around the tank. The UEN tank's turret continued to traverse, though.

  A second later, another tank, the #3 from her own platoon, Sergeant Hall's tank, fired a short burst, hitting the stationary UEN tank again. 41 megajoule rounds glanced off in showering cascades of sparks, tearing away external equipment. Before Corporal Shalik, her own gunner, could fire again, all three turret crew ejected from the stricken T-66.

  "They're pulling back!" came a shouted call from Younger. "We've got them on the run!"

  "Continue engagement!" Tara ordered.

  The same War-Hammer from Feldman's platoon darted forward out of cover a third time, pumped out a three-round burst angled into the side armor of a UEN tank that left it stopped and venting fire from its crew hatches, and then pulled back into cover before return fire could strike it.

  "Damn good, whoever that is," Tara said to herself. She'd have to find out which tank commander that was. He or she was damn good.

  The retreating UEN tanks kept firing. A round slammed into the turret of a War-Hammer from her own platoon, thankfully glancing off the armor, leaving nothing worse than one smashed auto-smartgun and a briefly glowing gouge across the tank's turret face.