If you want an idea of what a Wolfhound looks like, picture the Type 74 hovertruck fully armored and with a Bradley turret. I chose 60mm for their guns since that's also standard mobile suit vulcan size, so it makes sense the caliber is already in use.

Whistling Dixie

There were actually four surviving tanks from the Two-Eleventh Armored, out of a roster of forty-eight. A fifth had also manage it to make it to the rally point, but not this far. That left Jeannette's own Two-Four-Two, Wilder in One-Two-Four, HQ-Three with Sergeant Major Roberts, and Three-Four-Three under Guzman. Some of the "tail" of the battalion had made it; a few ammo and fuel vehicles, the battery of light artillery. The non-tank HQ vehicles, both of them, had apparently been stepped on by a Zaku. Serves the major right for trying to gloryhound.

They were moving north, along Interstate 59. The 215 Mechanized Infantry had linked up with the 233 Mechanized Infantry, then dug in. They had managed to fend off a Zeon attack, at the cost of a hundred and twenty killed and fifty-nine wounded, as well as a dozen and a half vehicles. The survivors of the 211 Armored had lead the countercharge as the Zeke mobile suits had threatened to break the line, costing them Lieutenant Cruz and One-Two-One in exchange for a pair of Zakus. The Zekes had broken contact and started moving away from them, towards Dallas, and they hadn't really had the means to chase. A determined attack by either side would have been a bad idea.

Then a bolt from the blue as Zeon forces dropped from the skies over the East and West Coasts, taking them almost entirely in a day. Now they had to get out the trap they found themselves in. The EFGF was a peacekeeping force, mostly infantry, lightly mechanized. It was currently ill-suited to fighting Zeon's Earth Attack Force. The best thing to do now for most of them was to go to ground and act as a resistance, or for the mechanized units, get out of the way.

"The locals don't seem happy about this, Sarge." Ritchie and Cat were poking their heads out of their hatches for the road march too, while she stood in the commander's hatch, hands on the 12.7mm, keeping the barrel pointed up 45 degrees.

"Would you be, Cat? The Zekes practically destroyed Seattle." Another little town in North Louisiana, turned out to watch them go by. No cheers. They were well-ordered, but a unit retreating has its own special air, just as a unit advancing. "They've got nothing good to look forward to right now." The tank was trundling along at a good fifty klicks an hour, about as fast as they could go without tearing up the road. Ahead and behind were Wolfhound IFVs. The 215's commander had assigned them to her, as her own little unit, and in no uncertain terms explained to the Wolfhound commanders that if it cost them their vehicles they had to keep that tank intact. Jeannette scanned the sky again.

Apparently Zeon's Dopps weren't doing well; training inside space colonies was a bad way to teach people to fly jet aircraft in a large-scale dogfight, a colony was just too small a space. The EFAF's Flyarrows and Toriaries could have ruled the skies if their bases didn't keep getting overrun by Zakus. As it was...the sky was probably neutral. Maybe. If you squinted hard enough.

Like the weather. Jeanette almost snorted. One of the first lessons of a soldier was that weather wasn't neutral. If you were lucky it was the enemy to both sides equally, but the weather was still always the enemy. Clouds rolling in, this time of year...early for thunderstorms, but rain was possible. Not a problem as long as they stayed to hard-surface roads. The rain would ground Zeon's planes, too; they weren't equipped or probably trained for all-weather attack. That made Jeannette snort in amusement. It's always nice weather on Earth, right? Just like the colonies? Ritchie had caught a cold from standing out in the rain without a raincoat his first week with her track. A lot of Zekes were doing the same, she guessed.

"Something funny Sarge?" Ritchie asked.

"Remember that cold you caught? All these Zekes on their first trip to Earth, never seen rain or thunderstorms before. Getting wet, catching colds, staring in mute confusion at the ocean. A lot of 'em probably can't swim. God help them come winter, they've never seen snow, they have no idea what it can do." Jeannette replied, smirking. "Mother Nature's revenge."

"Right now she's the only defense the planet has."


Trading space for time. Arkansas now. The tanks were the limiting factor, the hover-based Wolfhounds and Bloodhounds could have road-marched to Canada in three or four days. The Zekes, bless their gravity-less lack of souls, were content to stay out of the cold and frozen wastes, or what they imagined to be the cold and frozen wastes. Their experience of Earth weather was turning out to be a significant culture shock, and the Zekes were more scared of it then they perhaps should have been. That was fine with Jeannette.

If they made it far enough north and could find an airport suited to handle one, they might just be able to catch a Medea out of this whole damn mess even.

"Two-Eleven Three, Two-Fifteen Actual," her earpiece said. That was her new callsign, on the much-reduced communications net of the 211 Armored.

Jeanette dropped into the turret and shut the hatch to reduce the ambient noise level. "Two-Four-Two here, go for message."

"We have an EFAF rescue beacon fifteen klicks off our route. I'm giving you three Wolfhounds and five hours to check it out while we make pitstop. Be at the command vehicle in two-zero mikes."


"Little landing strip. Privately owned. Think it was somebody's personal estate from the mansion there." Jeannette was pointing to a map tablet. Thank god those still worked; paper maps would have driven everyone mad, because they had long since passed the edges of the area they would have had good ones. A good map was the first step to surviving whatever plan you had to execute in the soldiering business. "No idea if it's big enough to land a sick military plane at. We go there. We check it out, carefully. We come back." She highlighted a route. "This route, unless the bridge is out. Then Wolfhound Three will find a ford for the tank while the other two proceed to this point. We link up and proceed to the objective."

Four nods, the three Wolfhound commanders and the infantry platoon leader. The infantry louie outranked her, but the colonel had given her the op so she was in charge until he said otherwise. And the tank had as much firepower as the rest of them put together, considering the infantry had shot out their supply of LAWs and guided antiarmor weapons fighting off the Zekes back in East Texas.

"Okay. Let's go. We finish up early and we can catch a little sleep." Sleep was in short supply on the road march, and most of the rest of the unit would be sleeping, refueling, and eating while they were gone. Her group had already gotten chow, at least. She waved them off and moved at a fast trot back to her own vehicle. "Cat, start 'er up."

It was only a muted roar; the turbine used on the 61A3 and later models was softer than you'd think. She climbed up and dropped into the commander's hatch. They were parked in the parking lot of a strip club, of all things, yet another town, this one a bit larger. "Rich, how we fixed for ammo?"

"Full load, Sarge. Didn't let Cat go in and shoot off a few rounds." Ritchie replied.

"Kid, I outrank you." Cat grumbled as he guided the tank onto the street.

"Tell you what, Cat, if we make to it Canada I'll show you a few moves. Took pole-dancing classes a couple of years." Jeannette said.

Ritchie sputtered out a confused noise that might have started as a "What?" but his brain wouldn't work properly, turning his head to look at her from the gunner's seat. Cat jerked the vehicle left a moment before getting it back under control. "Sarge, what the hell? For real?"

Jeannette smirked at her gunner through the hatch. "It's good exercise. You ever tried hanging on to a metal pole with only your legs? Takes a lot of strength. Cat, I'm sending you our route, it'll pop up on your screen in a moment." She started whistling to herself and ignored the strangled noises coming from the gunner's seat.

The trip took about an hour. "Wolf Three, circle around that stand of white pine and run along the back until you're even with the hangers, then dismount your infantry to check it. Wolf Two and Wolf One, flank the strip behind that hill. We'll move parallel to the road. Go."

"We got a problem here," Wolf Three's voice came back after a few minutes. "Zeon transport plane, the rotor'd thing and not the Gaw. And some things that look like attack helos."

"Look like, Wolf Three?"

"You've seen a Dopp, does that look it was designed by anyone sane? It's got a big pair of rotors on top and stub wings mounting weapons." Wolfhound Three replied. "They've also got a Gunperry and some folks in Feddie uniforms under guard."

"Figures. Wolf Two, get your Talon team out so they can use the hill." The Talon was the EFGF's man-portable SAM, and its passive infrared guidance still worked with Minovosky interference, not that there was any here. "We'll try to catch them on the ground. Leave the transport to me. Try not to hit the friendlies. Only hit the Gunperry if it starts moving. On my command." She switched to the intercom. "We're hitting a Zeke airbase. Cat, that nice tree-lined road? Parallel it at twenty-five meters and get us to the edge of the tarmac. Load HE."

"Loading." Ritchie replied.

They had three hundred meters to go, and knowing the rough radius at which a tank could be heard or seen...Jeannette stood out of the hatch, her hands on the 12.7 again, and gave the command at two hundred. "Attack."

Immediately small arms chattered from ahead, followed by the loud brrrrrt of a five-round burst from the 60mm main gun of a Wolfhound. There was a rising whine as well; someone was trying to start up a jet engine. They came around the corner and beheld chaos, Zeon-uniformed personnel running around in a panic. None of them even seemed to notice the tank.

"Target transport aircraft, one o'clock!" She swung the 12.7 towards a clump of Zeon uniforms with rifles and opened fire. The turret traversed several degrees, throwing off her aim, but half the group was down and the rest were scattering. Several of them ran directly into the path of Wolfhound One, which ran them down. Then the concussion of the 150mm gun firing drove the breath from her lungs. The Zeon plane...was it even a plane? It didn't have wings, just big rotors, but it had a plane-like body-Doesn't matter! She swung the 12.7 again. "Rich! Take the helos!"

Wolfhound One took her target away from her with another brrrrrt, and the one helo whose rotors were spinning exploded as Wolfhound Two fired as well. Wolfhound Three was engaging Zeon soldiers trying to shelter in the smaller of two hangers with its coaxial gun chattering away while its infantry complement flanked the building to both sides. She found a target, finally, a Zeon soldier stopping to aim a tube-like device at Wolfhound Two, and fired. The burst of 12.7 rounds threw him back several feet and did terrible things to his body.

Again the 150mm fired and one of the helos jumped about ten meters in the air before scattering itself over a large area. Jeanette spotted another Zeon soldier trying to run out of the larger hanger and swung the 12.7mm around, firing a burst just as his hands went up. Damn! Wolfhound One and Wolfhound Two had disposed of the other two helicopters, and the big transporter was listing drunkly onto one of its larger rotors as it burned. Ritchie played the coax across the smaller hanger while Wolfhound One grounded briefly to dismount its squad of infantry, who advanced quickly towards the Gunperry, trading shots with some Zeon soldiers who weren't very smart along the way. Wolfhound One's gunner took offense to that and annihilated both the Zekes and the low hedge they were using as concealment with another brrrrrt.

"Don't assault the hanger, keep them suppressed." Jeanette shouted into the all-hands channel, to make herself heard. "I'm not wasting good soldiers on these bastards. We'll bring the damn building down on them." She switched back to the intercom. "Rich, we reloaded?"

"Ready to rock, Sarge!" Ritchie replied.

"Put one through the hanger doors!" She added a burst from the 12.7 at a window she thought she'd seen movement in. Wolfhound Two took a whole corner of the building out with a spiteful brrrrrt after some rifle rounds struck sparks from its armor. Then the 150mm settled the argument, punching through the hanger doors, the fuze activating several meters beyond since it was intended to deal with concrete fortifications or bunkers. All the remaining doors and windows blew out, even the big doors on the front, which came off their tracks with a sequel of stressed metal and fell forward.

Wolfhound Three's squad advanced. They found a few unconscious Zekes in the hanger, and a few who indicated they wanted to offer no further resistance, but mostly dead ones.


"Will it fly?" The Gunperry hadn't taken any stray rounds bigger than a rifle bullet, but that didn't mean it was okay.

"Have to check the bird out, Sergeant," the head of the flight crew replied. "What outfit you from?"

"What's left of the Two-Eleven Armored, the Two-Fifteen Mechanized, and the Two-Thirty-Three Mechanized." Jeannette grimaced and took off the soft helmet, revealing her blonde pixie-cut. Armor crew had to have short hair lest it get caught in something, and besides she actually liked the look. "Mostly the latter two, they're still above half strength."

The Gunperry pilot, an EFAF lieutenant whose skin tone suggested his family was from India, sighed. "We were supposed to meet up with part of the Two-Five-Two Armored, but we ran into these assholes. Those helos look silly but they're fast. Suppose we're lucky they wanted to see what kind of supplies we had aboard."

The 252 made it? They'd been in Dallas at some point, until the Zekes had thrown a mobile suit battalion that way. That was too much for any tank battalion to cope with, and they'd not been heard from again. "They were in Dallas when the Zekes dropped a mobile suit battalion on the place. We didn't know any of them had gotten out."

The lieutenant made a face. "We weren't sure either, honestly, but we couldn't get recon to check. Hence only the one Gunperry." One of his subordinates on the crew of the Gunperry waved him over.

The infantry lieutenant replaced him. "We've got about a dozen and a half prisoners, nobody higher than a corporal. The were setting up an advanced base, apparently, for tactical air, happened to stumble on the Gunperry."

Jeannette grimaced. "Looking for us?"

"They won't say that, but there's Dopps and another airlifter due in a couple hours. Radio silence, they knew people were around to hear them talk if they weren't careful. Has to be us." The lieutenant paused a moment. "What are we going to do with them?"

"Leave 'em here. Can't take them. Not going to shoot them, we're Feddies, we don't kill the helpless." Jeannette grimaced. "If you haven't already, get on the horn with the colonel and let him know the bad news."

She turned and started to move towards the Gunperry; knowing the colonel he'd recall them and get them moving again at once, so the Air Force pukes didn't have much time to decide if they needed a ride out.