Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  "Driver! Evasive! Evasive! Gunner! Get the gun on h..."

  Aran felt the sudden, violent jolt as the tank he was riding in was hit, but it wasn't till the compartment began to fill with smoke and the gunner, sitting in the armored alcove next to him, started screaming, that Aran realized they'd been hit.

  He looked over to the gunner, hoping to help, and the sight he saw froze him. A spray of white hot fragments had hit the gunner, missing Aran by no more than half a meter. The gunner's jumpsuit and flesh were smoldering and smoking where the burning fragments had buried themselves in his body. The man's left arm was gone —only a stump of jagged, bloody bone projecting from his shoulder— and half of his face had been ripped away, so that Aran could see the bloody skull beneath. And he was still screaming.

  Aran heard himself screaming, too, and then the sight was mercifully cut off as his survival pod inflated. The jolt of the survival pod launching him out of the tank felt like being hit by a whole rugby squad. In comparison, the jolt of hitting the ground again was felt more like falling on a mattress.

  The survival pod deflated and Aran found himself on the barren, rocky ground, about fifty meters away from a burning Arcadian tank. It took him a moment to figure out it had been the tank he'd been riding in seconds ago.

  He lay there, on the ground, coughing, while the concussion of tank guns firing battered him like fists. All around were burning tanks, and the ground exploding into towering columns of shattered rock and dirt as main gun rounds stuck it.

  A figure was running to him, moving like a broken-field runner across the hell-scape before him. A soldier in a frame, he realized. The frame trooper was anonymous inside a face-covering visor and helmet, but Aran thought that the frame had the look of the sort that the Arcadians used, and not the somewhat different look of the UEN Peace Force frames.

  "Move it!" a voice screamed at him as the frame trooper grabbed him. The frame's servos lifted him from the ground as if he were a child, and the frame trooper began to run back to a jagged outcropping of rocks and boulders, bearing Aran in a fireman's carry.

  "Are you hit?" shouted the frame trooper's voice, as they two of them made behind the rocks and ducked down out of sight. "Are you hurt?"

  "I... I don't think so," Aran said, trying to take stock of himself. He felt battered, but nothing hurt bad, and a quick look showed no visible wounds. "I think I'm OK. Thank you."

  "Yeah," the frame trooper said, in a voice he could now tell was a woman's. "You were just sitting there. If a round had hit next to you, you'd have been pulped by the blast and fragments."

  "Bernie?" he asked, realizing whose voice it was.

  "Hey, Aran," she said, flipping up the visor. Her grin was weary and her face was smeared with grime, but for a movement all he could think of was how beautiful she looked.

  "I didn't know you'd volunteered to ride one of our tanks," she added. "Aren't you fighting for the wrong side?"

  "No," he said, and she grinned again.

  "Besides," he added, "all I did was run some drones. I don't know how to fight in a tank."

  "Good enough. Glad you got out of there," Bernie said. "Now stay low."

  With that, she lowered her visor and jogged to the edge of the truck-sized boulder they had hidden behind. She brought up her long rifle, an M39, he remembered it was called, and after a moment of stillness, fired a single shot, then darted back under cover.

  Bernie moved to the other side of the boulder, closer to where Aran was crouched, and again aimed around the side of the stone with her rifle.

  "There's enemy framers moving in behind the pisser tanks," she said, without taking her eyes off her rifle's sights. "They got anti-tank launchers, too. Every now and then, they break cover. And I shoot them."

  She suited action to words a second later, firing a single round and ducking back behind the stone. Another second later, an enemy bullet pinged from the edge of the boulder where she had just been standing, leaving a little cloud of dust in its wake.

  "The pisser framers aren't very good, though," she added. "But they've localized me, so we have to move. See that big rock behind us," she said, pointing.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "When I say, you take off and run for it. Don't run straight. Zigzag. But move fast. Get behind it as fast as you can. OK? If you're too slow, or if you run straight, you're gonna get shot."

  "Shit," Aran said. "First I find out how not to be a tanker, and now I find out how not to be an frame infantryman."

  "Ready?" Bernie asked.

  "Ready."

  She took a small cylinder from a clip on her shoulder armor and tossed it around the side of the boulder. "Now!" she shouted, and took off, zigzagging with every few steps, running like a sprinter in spite of the bulk of her armor and weapons.

  Aran ran after her, trying to remember to not run straight for too many steps. Gunfire sounded far behind him as he ran.

  It was like some sort of dodge-ball death-sport, he thought as a bullet cracked by past him, close enough for him to feel the faint slap of displaced air.

  "Made it!" he shouted as he rolled to the ground behind another big rock.

  "Made it!" Bernie echoed, grinning as he turned to face her. "You did good. You should be a framer. Wasted as a tanker."

  Aran only shook his head.

  "Hey, Aran," Bernie said a moment later.

  "Huh?"

  "I'm sorry I dragged you into this. And I'm sorry about... about your girlfriend. Ulla. I'm really sorry."

  "I..." Aran started to say. "It wasn't your fault. What happened to her. She... she panicked. She couldn't come to grips with this whole thing. And then those UEN Peace Force bastards killed her. Pissers, you call them, right?"

  "Right," Bernie said softly, her vivid hazel eyes meeting his. "You really are something else, Aran."

  ***

  The sound of the main gun was a constant thunder in Cal's ears as he drove the War-Hammer, mixing with the sound of the debris from near-miss enemy rounds ringing off the hull and turret armor.

  "Enemy tank!" shouted the major, "3 o'clock! Driver, evasive!"

  Cal slammed the accelerator and jerked the steering hard left.

  "Gunner, traverse right!" the major screamed, "get our gun on him!"

  From inside the driver's compartment, the sound of the UEN K19 tank's burst of 47 megajoule fire was drowned out by the sound of the tracks and the engine.

  The sound of the burst hitting was a series of massive, thudding clangs. Cal felt the whole seventy-five ton mass of the War-Hammer skid under the hammer-blows. Behind him in the turret, he heard a brief, cut-off shriek. Then one of the rounds of the burst stuck the War-Hammer's hull-side armor level with the driver's compartment.

  Cal saw a sudden white flash, felt a massive impact that seemed to lift him out of his seat and slap him into the side of the compartment. Oddly, there was no pain. All sensation faded, first into a bright, floating silence, and then into nothing.

  A second later, the driver's station survival pod inflated and ejected out of the burning tank.

  Bernie saw one of the UEN tanks race up between two of the remaining War-Hammers and traverse its long main gun to fire. The tank it chose jerked forward to evade, but the pisser tank's burst raked it and it exploded in a spray of sparks and flames. A second later, a single survival pod ejected from the driver's hatch.

  The other War-Hammer, on the other side of —and maybe unseen by— the UEN tank, brought its gun to bear and opened fire, ringing three rounds off the UEN tank's armor before a fourth and fifth penetrated. The UEN tank rolled to a stop and began to burn sullenly, pouring thick white smoke out from its gun barrel and its cooling exhausts.

  Tara heard Lieutenant Higgins report that Feldman's tank had been hit, but there were more enemy tanks out there in the smoke, and there wasn't even time to acknowledge it. Maybe Feldman was still alive, maybe dead. And if dead, all too likely she'd be joining him shortly.

  "Keep scanning," she order
ed the sensors operator. "Driver, keep us going backwards, slowly."

  There were no more prepared fighting positions to fall back to, now, just a few rocky outcroppings that she'd designated as the final fallback position. And after that, there was nowhere; the anti-air laser installation was only a few more kilometers behind them. If they lost it, the UEN forces would be able to send aircraft north, or long range strategic skimmer missiles. Or anything they felt like sending, Tara thought. She was running out of room, and tanks, and lives to spend to stop them.

  An enemy round struck the War-Hammer, ricocheting off the sloped hull armor with a vast, hollow clang.

  "Shit," Tara hissed as the shock of the deflected hit slammed her back into her seat, hard enough to bruise despite the padding.

  She desperately tried to pick out the enemy's signature through the smoke. There he was, she saw, A T-66, about 700 meters away, just a few degrees off of her tank's 12 o'clock, with his gun laid right on them.

  She had no idea why the pisser gunner had fired only a single round. Maybe he'd just though he'd had her tank dead to rights and didn't want to waste extra ammo. But he'd fire again in a second, she knew.

  "Tank! 12 o'clock! Driver, evade!" she screamed.

  But she knew there was no time to evade at such close range. Desperately she locked the auto-smartguns on the enemy tank and opened fire with all four, holding down the engagement button to override the burst-length limiter, hosing the pisser tank with heavy bullets.

  Bullets struck and sparked off armor all over the enemy tank. They had not the slightest chance of getting through the armor, but there was nothing else she could do.

  The War-Hammer lurched into reverse, turning as the driver desperately backed up, and just then the pisser tank fired again.

  Maybe one of the bullets took out a sensor or something, she thought, because the pisser tank's next burst gouged out a line of craters in the ground right past the side of her tank, missing by less than a meter. The turret rang with debris bouncing off the armor.

  In the same instant, her gunner returned fire, a short three-round burst that tracked across the pisser tank where the turret met the hull. One round deflected in a shower of sparks, but the other two punched in. A second later, the UEN driver and one of the turret crew ejected from the stricken tank, leaving it unmoving and smoldering.

  "Holy shit, that was close!" Corporal Malan, the sensors operator, exclaimed.

  Tara could only manage a shaky nod.

  The surviving UEN tanks had pulled back, out of the chaos of the point blank ranged melee, taking cover on the far side of rocky outcroppings that had been the Arcadian tanks' forward fighting positions.

  But the few remaining drones showed that they weren't falling back any further. Instead, they were reorganizing, forming up for another attack. Whatever organization the two enemy battalions had once had, it had been smashed. But they looked like they were going to try one more push even so. In a few minutes, they would be level with her remaining tanks' cover, and the point blank killing would start again.

  Too many of them, she judged, and too few of her own tanks, for a point blank melee to finish.

  "All units," Tara called. "Stand by to fall back to the final line of fighting positions. Let's get them to drive into our fire one more time and see how they like it."

  "Got it," came the response from Younger. "My people are on the way. Just one more time, though. Nowhere to fall back to after this."

  "Got that right, Younger. Nothing left behind us but the aid station and the laser emplacement," Tara replied.

  "All units," she added on the all-units battalion push, "this is the last fallback. After this we hold where we are! Nothing gets past us! Nothing!"

  "Driver, reverse us back to our final fighting position," she ordered.

  ***

  The pisser tanks kept coming. Tara had no idea how many of her tanks were left, but there was nowhere left to fall back to, and the pisser tanks were still coming.

  "All units," she ordered one last time, "unmask and engage!"

  The surviving tanks of the 8th Armored Battalion of the Armored Corps of the Arcadian Defense Force rolled forward into the fire.

  Another four UEN tanks died in the final organized salvo from the battalion's tanks. Return fire lashed out, striking home against War-Hammers' armor, glancing or punching through to send blow-torch-hot sprays of fragments and burning metal through turrets and hulls. Tanks burned, and people burned with them.

  There was no more room, now, for tanks to retreat into cover. Instead, the swirled about each other, like biplanes in some ancient dogfight, dodging and firing at point blank range.

  A point-blank burst of three 47 megajoule rounds ploughed into Younger's tank, punching through armor and filling the tank with an incandescent spray of burning depleted uranium alloy. Ammunition and fuel-cells cooked off, shooting blow-torches of fire from every hatch and cracked-open seam. The driver's survival pod ejected, but it was burning as it left the tank, hitting the ground as a rolling, smoking fireball. None of the turret crew ejected.

  A second later, a scarred War-Hammer came out of the smoke, almost ramming the UEN tank, firing a burst of 41 megajoule fire into its flank at point blank range. The UEN tank died the same way as its victim just had.

  Some part of Tara felt a spike of white-hot pain; sorrow and horror as intense as the pain when she'd lost her legs. But the rest of her, the part in control, didn't blink. There was still a battle to fight.

  "Target tank 2 o'clock! Gunner, engage!" she shouted, almost screaming. "Driver, reverse!"

  The War-Hammer's turret seemed to be traversing in slow motion. The UEN K19 tank was within a hundred yards, but somehow it hadn't seen them in the smoke, and its turret started traversing a fraction of a second later than theirs.

  The War-Hammer's forty-one thundered out a long burst. Even at point blank range, some rounds were deflected by the K19's superb armor. But some were not. The UEN tank's turret stopped with its gun just a few degrees away from bearing on Tara's War-Hammer. Two of the UEN tank's crew managed to eject before their tank began to spew sprays of sparks and fire from its hatches and cooling exhaust ports.

  Somewhere a UEN T-66 managed to lay its gun on them, and Tara felt the War-Hammer rock and heard the huge clang of a 44 megajoule round as it glanced from the turret armor, shearing away one of the auto-smartguns and a cluster of sensors.

  The driver jerked the tank into an evasive turn before Tara could order it. Several more 44 megajoule rounds smashed into the ground near them, showering the War-Hammer in cascades of pulverized rock and dirt.

  Tara triggered another salvo of smoke grenades.

  "Driver! Tara shouted, "Put us behind that burned out pisser tank!" "Gunner, engage the one shooting at us!"

  The turret shifted and the gunner triggered another long burst of forty-one fire, walking the shots into the now-retreating pisser T-66. Tara saw three shots hit. One bounced, but two went in at the base of the T-66's turret, and the enemy tank shuddered and stopped; the UEN driver punched out as it began to burn.

  Tara breathed a half-sigh of relief as her War-Hammer managed to get behind the dead UEN K19 tank. Almost instantly, a burst of tank-gun fire slammed into the burning wreck. Fragments of shattered armor pinged off the War-Hammer's hull and turret.

  "Gunner," Tara called, guessing at the angle of the inbound fire, "there's a pisser tank at about our 4 o'clock. We can't see him and he can't see us past this the dead pisser tank we're behind. Swing the turret around so we can engage him as soon as we back out from behind cover. Got it?"

  "Got it! But we're down to 22 rounds for the forty-one."

  "Fuck it. Long bursts anyway. These fuckers are too well armored," Tara ordered.

  "Ready?"

  "Yup."

  "Driver, hard reverse!" she shouted. "Gunner!"

  The War-Hammer backed out from behind the burning UEN tank.

  The UEN tank, half-a-kilometer distant, saw t
hem emerge, saw their gun coming to bear. The UEN gunner opened fire just as the UEN driver threw the T-66 into a violent evasive maneuver. The T-66's 44 megajoule gun could compensate for movement, but not quite instantly. Not quite fast enough.

  A 44 megajoule shot creased the top of the War-Hammer's turret, drawing a white-hot line across the armor. Another one ploughed into the ground just short, throwing up a geyser of rocks and debris.

  The War-Hammer's 41 megajoule gun returned fire, hammering out a seven-round burst. Some of the rounds missed. One 41 megajoule round hit the T-66's turret a glancing blow and bounced off. Another round slammed into the T-66's left-forward track module, blasting the track apart. And then another round dug into the gun tube of the T-66's long 44 megajoule gun.

  A fraction of a second later, the T-66 fired its next 44 megajoule round. The gun tube exploded like a bomb, obscuring the T-66 in a cloud of dust and debris. When it cleared, the T-66's gun looked as if it had been peeled open, like a twisted flower of blackened alloy.

  The gunner carefully laid the forty-one onto the now-stationary UEN tank and fired one more round. The T-66 rocked slightly with the hit. A few seconds passed, and then white-hot fire began to spew from the tank's cooling exhausts.

  "Got him," the gunner said.

  Distantly, another War-Hammer let loose a long burst of 41 megajoule fire, raking a rock formation five kilometers away.

  And then, abruptly, there were no guns firing.

  A handful, perhaps a dozen, enemy tanks were pulling back, popping smoke, ducking back behind the cover of rocky outcroppings, but not pausing there. Instead they turned and, launching more smoke, began to race back to the south. None of them fired as they retreated. None of the remaining Arcadian tanks fired after them.

  There was a voice coming in on Tara's radio, on the Defense Force Command push. "Calling 8th Battalion commander, this is Colonel Reed, with 2nd Battalion. Is Colonel O'Connor there? We are inbound at this time, approximately 20 kilometers north of your position. Calling Commander, 8th Battalion. 8th Battalion, can anyone there hear me?"