Major Christensen kept a close eye on the split screen of
the holo-tank as he barked out orders to his company, all the while grimacing
each time the tank cycled and ‘fired’. The accelerator magnets of the railgun
played havoc with one poorly done filling, twisting it slightly each time one
of the ‘silver bullets’ ripped down the barrel. And he wasn’t keen on that part
of the accompanying sonic boom that made it past his noise cancelling headgear.
No matter, this was nothing compared to what his infantry were
dealing with as they sprinted from their APCs and hit the buildings where the
off worlders were dug in. Cyan power gun bolts mixed with the shrieks of his
troops’ 10mm sabot rounds, the hard bright flashes of the demo grenades
silhouetting the torn bodies as they arced away from the detonations. He turned
his concentration to the hostile’s armor; those energy discharges were daunting
even in the display, he cursed the corrupt Terran Authority apparatchik who
sold top line equipment to a band of freebooters and he cursed those
freebooters for coming to his planet. Though he was aware of the hypocrisy or
maybe just irony of that emotion as he watched the tri-barrels of “his”
freebooters tear into the line of New Israeli positions and the death dance
they executed in the real time screen.
A cheer went through his command push as one New Israeli MBT
caved in on itself from a Clibanarius strike and another gelded as its main
guns were silenced. Yet another strike
destroyed one of their very lethal IFVs while the lasers of the Cataphracts and
Peltasts struck another Sabre, taking out its main drives and sending it bow
first into a stonewall.
Then a double tap of cyan lightning struck a Clibanarius as
it approached the Helstrom and Sons main VTOL pad. The vehicle slammed to a
halt and Christensen could see the railgun mount blown free of the vehicle, a
series of explosions fountaining from the rent hull top as the fuel cell and HE
rounds went up.
The vehicle carat went black, followed by one for a Peltast,
the Major cursing and shouting for his troops to widen the angle of attack and
cursing again when his Clib’ hit the rocket rail tracks at 80 KPH, knocking him
back in his couch as they jumped the line and began to make a run down it. A
glance at the screen showed his roller commander taking out another of the NI
Sabres; then it felt like they slammed into a granite mountain, the world went
white, then tinder night black as the AI triggered the crew pods just before
his Clibanarius vanished in one bright flash.
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