Chapter 361: (Memoirs) (2/2)

He held down the trigger on the plasma gun, thankful a Telkan had jumped up on the back deck of his tank with a cannister of ammo only a few moments prior.

The plasma, bright orange, shrieked through the air, the quad-barrel's thick munitions detonating with a greasy yellowish-green snap.

Tank guns started roared, pounding the battlescreen to no avail.

”Sir, enemy vehicle has increased the power to the rear quadrants of the shield,” A'armo'o's electronic warfare officer relayed from the scanning tech.

”Look for any weakening areas,” A'armo'o ordered, swinging his weapon through a long arc that got enough space that the rapid fire shots had a foot or two space between them. ”How are the Terrans doing?”

Dremsal snarled, stomping the firing lever for the main gun. His gunner was wiping blood out of his eyes from where his face had slammed against the sight and cut his forehead by ramming the edge of his helmet just above his eyebrows.

The heavy round hit the Precursor vehicle, another mining vehicle, and detonated with a whitish blue flash, the antimatter armor defeater going off. The density collapsed tungsten steel rod hit a split second after, when half of the energy release had died down to light, x-rays, and electromagnetic hash.

Contrary to popular belief, anti-matter energy release was not 1-1 even if you mated anti-hydrogen to hydrogen.

But enough energy released to blow a massive hole in armor that was supposed to be impenetrable when heat and pressure was applied.

The tungsten-steel rod was only two inches think, only three feet long, with narrow long fins on four sides, and a blunt point for the forward quarter. Normally, it would weigh only seventy-five pounds. It had been 'squeezed' by graviton fields, collapsing more matter into a smaller space.

It was a quarter-ton of tungsten steel.

The rod, white hot from passing through the still ravening anti-matter/matter recombination fog, slammed deep into the armor. The inner lining turned white and bulged for a second before exploding into the internal spaces, which were used for cooling and ore movement.

The vehicle was lobotomized, still driving forward on powered tracks, but the burrowing lasers going dead and the drill bit slowing down.

B-3-9 hit it from the side, killing the massive engines.

Dremsal was fighting his way into the mass of vehicles streaming from the wounded Jotun class Precursor, leading his Brigade straight into hell. They were flanking and spearheading for nearly a hundred Great Herd tanks that had gotten mixed into their lines, but the Most High of the 423rd Armor Battalion had started accepting Dremsal's orders as soon as they were shouted.

The Great Herd tanks had their external weapon systems on automatic, thickening the heavy Terran main battle tank's point defense. Blowing missiles out of the air with plasma shots. Their main guns boomed to slam heavy plasma rounds into air mobile units, gutting them and sending them tumbling to the ground to explode amidst their land-locked brethren.

Sto'odfa'azt had his hands wrapped around the gun controls, his face pressed against the holographic assisted gunnery sight, seeing where the barrel was pointed. His datalink was useless, too much electronic warfare turning the entire area into nothing but screaming chaos.

Twice he'd felt the weird tingle of a Terran attack program jump to his datalink, hold still for a second, then jump again.

Not one of the big self-aware ones, more like small ones that rabidly looked for open dataports to jump to and just blare false signals.

Gunnery Assistant Fifteenth Class Sto'odfa'azt felt all four of his stomach's clench as he got a clean shot on what looked like a flying flatworm, the entire bottom covered with glowing, spark shedding Precursor graviton engines.

”TARGET!” he yelled.

”SHOT!” his tank commander yelled back.

Sto'odfa'azt stomped the pedal. ”SHOT OUT!”

The round hit the metal flatworm, easily two hundred feet long, dead center, where a cluster of grav-pods were showering sparks.

”HIT!” Sto'odfa'azt yelled as the tank lurched over debris that had been a metro-bench.

The flatworm exploded in mid-air, raining down on the top-side battlescreens of the tanks in a shower of sparks.

”TARGET DOWN!” Sto'odfa'azt yelled, watching through the scope as the Tank Most High swung the cupola around toward another target.

”TARGET!”

Dremsal just nodded, grinding his teeth, raking the upper stories of a building. He'd seen shadows on the inside of the macroplast windows and knew what that meant. The windows exploded inward and flames burst out, carrying shattered Precursor armor. Pieces of robots, identifiable as combat or near-combat models, showered from the sky, exploding on the battlescreens of the tanks.

Sto'odfa'azt put a round into the building, overriding the tank's computer attempting to keep him from firing into a civilian building.

The roof of the building exploded outward as the plasma cannon liberated its energy.

The carat flashed yellow.

Vuxten felt his knee ache as he shoved off, kicking a graviton boost, trusting 471 to keep him level as he sailed through the air.

Vuxten's gut clenched, shattered shards of old terrible memories teasing the edges of his consciousness from other times he'd flown through the air.

None of them good.

He landed on target, just like his onboards had promised.

Lieutenant Plunex and both of the Terran Senior NCO's landed around him.

Vuxten kept count of all of the Telkan that made it. The squad leaders, Terran NCO's, sticking with their squads, which had made it to their appointed jump points.

All of them.

He breathed a sigh of relief that the training and experience were paying off.

Casey was looking up. ”Next floor,” he said. He jumped up, grabbing protrusions with his loading frame's hands and pulling himself up to the next part.

The Telkan Marines just used their graviton systems to climb the thick pebbled battlesteel.

Twice more they moved up, until they were near the 'top' of the massive machine.

Six hundred meters up.

Vuxten shook his head, looking around. He didn't see any hatches, no way to get inside. There were what looked like tracks sunk into the battlesteel armor, slowly rotating.

--topside tracks-- 471 prompted before Vuxten could even ask.

”What's the plan now?” Addox asked.

”Me? I thought you had one,” Plunex said.

Vuxten chuckled. ”We get inside, we find this thing's brain or heart, and we kill it,” he said. He looked forward, where he could see the Precursor vehicles trying to slow the Terran tanks or force them back into the clattering maw of the giant mining machine.

”So how do we get in?” Plunex asked.

Casey held up on hand, making a fist pumping motion, and a whitish flame appeared around the loading frame's fist.

”Fusion torch,” Addox said as Casey knelt down and began to work.

”Well, this promises to be fun,” Vuxten said.

The battlescreens around him flared at the Great Herd kept hammering at them.