I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 4
Day 3
Day 3 Near Chiayi City Blue Road 18
Rex and his team were high priority cargo, and they were waved through many checkpoints on the way from the navy base going towards the battlefront. Things were going very well. That is, until they were deep in the mountains on the highway marked as Blue 18 on their maps. It was a natural chokepoint, and at one of the many bridges on that road someone had noticed it as well. It was just too bad that the person was on the other side of the conflict.
No one knew if it had been a cruise missile, ballistic missile, aircraft launched missile or a dumb bomb that had done the damage to this chokepoint. In the end, the two-lane bridge had been knocked out, at least for use with any wheeled traffic. The only way to advance any further was on foot over a slowly growing wood and metal frame patch over the blasted bridge. Rex checked his location on a locally made tablet computer that his allies had given him after landing on this island. It didn't take long for him to figure out that it was going to be a long walk to Chiayi.
Crossing the bridge was, well, call it a hair-raising experience. The pathway was only about a foot wide in some places. In other areas of the patch were wooden boards that had more than just some flex in them. It was only about a hundred and fifty meter drop into the mountain creek below the feet of the people on the bridge deck. It was a slow stream of foot traffic going across the bridge, but Rex and his team were moved to the front of the slow moving line of troops.
The commander of the infantry battalion currently slowly making its way across the steadily growing patch was not happy that a team was jumping the line. Fortunately it was a small group, and the delay would not be that much in the larger picture of things. It also would give the slowly moving troops motivation to see others doing it faster and carrying heavier loads. That they were seen moving faster than his troops would help him and his junior officers push their troops through a little faster. The unit commander doubted that one or a hundred of his troops would notice how this group was armed, and then even fewer would make the connection about what this small unit might be. Most would just see a group moving at the quick step under heavy loads seemingly oblivious to the potential damage of falling off the wooden boards.
After Rex's mixed team had made it across the wood patched bridge, they were able to pick up the pace of their march to what was normal for them. There was no transportation on the other side of the barely repaired bridge. They were only being carried by their boots towards the sounds and smells of war. Soon, they were passing other small units on their way to the battlefield, under self-power by BPC or boot personal carriers. Rex's team only stopped once, and it was only for about an hour. Chinese fighter bombers had been making attacks somewhere and overflew the road. Everyone was in a mud and water filled ditch as the twin tailed craft went low and fast over their heads twice within a few minutes. They had been so close that Rex could see the rust stains at the bottom of the aircraft.
Rex was feeling exposed and wishing that he had some way to shoot back. After the second set of low passes by the enemy aircraft, he saw a team of four locals come flying out of one of the side ditches with long tubes over their shoulders. As he watched - he had nothing better to do, so why not - they went to a more open area off to one side of the road and visibly scanned the sky. When another jet flew down the valley, it was chased by a pair of upgraded Stinger missiles homing in on the now wildly avoiding craft. The fighters had either seen the missile launched at them or had been tipped off by another nearby aircraft.
Rex during the after-action report would claim that he did not know if the craft crashed into the hillside first or if it was hit by the chasing ground launched missile and then crashed. He did suggest that the Colonial military needed to invest in a similar weapon system. Two fifty thousand dollar weapons had just taken out a forty to sixty million dollars worth SU-35.
It took Rex and his team of locals six more hours to make it to the North/South Major Highway 3 from the blasted bridge. This major artery was assumed to be the next major goal of the enemy tank units in this area. If the mainland Chinese forces took this major road, it would allow them to move faster north to link up with other units of their attacking forces and help them close in on the capital of the island, Taipei.
When his team left the still building ROC Army main battle line, it had been to move along the same type of road as the one called Highway 1. This major road was closed to the advance of the enemy because all of the bridges, overpasses and even the culverts had been rendered unusable, blown up by ROC Army engineers within hours of the Chinese landing. Two compact civilian pickup trucks and an open backed Humvee were acquired, and the mixed group went south of Chiayi City along Highway 82. A kilometer and a half short of the currently reported battle line they were back on foot, the three vehicles turned over to the nearest headquarters unit. They were supposed to keep an eye on them, but it was even money on whether or not the special forces team would ever see them again.
Rex and one of the locals worked out places for the rest of the SF team to hide. They were to be thinly spread out along a line of resistance. After getting everyone settled and under some kind of cover, the ROC Army NCO made his way to the local area's command post to let them know that they had some back up if the enemy armor broke through the frontlines. This would give a safe line of retreat for the ROC forces in this local area. It also would pull any attacking enemy units right into the waiting guns of this powerful but small unit. This was the same tactic that Rommel had used to break the British so many times in North Africa back during the Second World War.
The SF team leader was gone for about half an hour after the team was emplaced. The mixed team of locals and offworlders did what all soldiers do when left alone. They went to sleep in their foxholes or defensive points. All but one that is. He would be up for an hour and then wake someone else to keep an eye out. They were professionals. Highly skilled and well trained soldiers. They would not be surprised by an enemy attack.
When the ROC Army NCO returned, he had what was left of an infantry platoon tagging along with him, eighteen troopers fit for duty. The leader was a senior enlisted man. Their last remaining officer had been dead for a day now. The task for the new troopers was to keep enemy infantry off the heavy hitters that this eight man team was compared to the rest of the local troops.
They had found out through many training events that the easiest way to take out a Colonial armed and armored person was to bury them under five or six people and just hold them down on the ground. After all, it is very hard to raise your arm to fire a weapon that can kill a tank when you have seventy kilos or so sitting on or otherwise pinning that arm to the ground. Rex and his team could not legally give orders to this new team. The platoon had its own orders, and they would enforce those orders. It seems counterintuitive as a good way to fight a battle, but it had been working with infantry supporting tanks for years.
This new team was armed with T91 carbines each with underslung grenade launchers. The team even had a pair of upgraded Javelin ATGM's with a couple of extra missiles for the reusable Command Launch Units. They also had on body armor going from their heads down to their knees. It was good body armor, at its core half inch thick plates of boron carbide with top and back layers of what the locals called triple hardness steel. This was a variant of the nano-crystal steel armor that the Japanese had started to field a few months before the Colonials announced they were moving into the system.
It was very good body armor but not at the same level as the Colonial marine body armor being offered for sale at the Trading Post. It was a lot cheaper and the ROC Army had been able to field it to all of their combat troops after the technology to make plates that small was figured out.
It was a good thing that they had this body armor for all of the rank and file ROC Army troopers. The 9th Artillery Division was about to let the whole island know they were out on the battlefield. It was hoped by the Warlord's planning staff and the local combat commander that by holding them back until they were ready it would help spring the much needed breakthrough on a narrow section of the ROC Army lines.
Rex was dozing when he felt the earth start to move like footsteps of the gods. Rex and Heather were not sharing the same foxhole. It would be bad if they were both taken out by one lucky hit. Was it very likely? No, not with the body armor the pair of them were wearing. It could still happen, and Rex had seen a lot stranger things happen in real life.
When Rex put his head up over the lip of his defensive position, he could see the marching line of explosions. They ranged in size from large to small, and there were a lot of them. They were fireballs and grey or black bursts of smoke with just a little orange fire at their hearts. They were made by 107mm rockets, 122mm rockets, and 300mm rockets falling along with 120mm mortars and 105mm rounds going all the way up to 155mm rounds along with anything else the local commander had to throw. And it was all hitting this one local area.
How to respond to a mass artillery attack had been one of the training points that the ROC's had shown the Colonials and Rifters. It was a little unorthodox but seemed to work in all of the testing they had seen. Each person in Colonial or Rifter armor would drop to the bottom of the nearest foxhole. The foxhole should not be in a building as buildings could be dropped on top of a trooper during a massed artillery attack. At the bottom of the foxhole, the person would go into a fetal position with the face, hands, along with most of their arms and legs covered by most of the mass of the core body and armor. The locals called it, 'doing the armadillo'.
Rex and his team did as they had trained for who knew how many hours and waited for the rolling barrage to pass them by. Rex had been in combat for most of his life, but this was the first time that he had been exposed to an attack of this scale. There were very few militaries in the world he had come from that had a hundred artillery pieces. Much less have them all aimed and firing at one single spot on the ground. He had an eye-opening experience as his body was hit time after time with shockwaves of varying strengths caused by the explosive shells and rockets. He and the SF team all had noise canceling hearing protection as standard issue. They did not have to worry about their eardrums being ripped apart but their sanity was a different matter. It did not take Rex long to notice when most of the explosions started happening behind him. He waited only a few more seconds before going to the edge of his foxhole to see what was going on. He had a bad feeling that they had gotten in position just in time.
When Rex peered over the dirt and stone lip of his foxhole, all he saw at first was a grey and brown wall made of falling concrete and fine dirt. He hit a button on his goggles and a heartbeat later the screen cleared up so that he could see about three hundred meters in front of him. That was about where the main defensive line for the local unit had been. In a few seconds, he thought that he saw movement and it was too big to be the defending infantry unit in this area. If the locals had something that size in defense, his unit would not have been needed in the first place.
Rex scanned the whole area, then hit the communications button on his helmet. One of the first issues to be discovered by the first team and fixed by working some more with the locals was the ability to talk to them on one channel. It had taken some time and effort, but it had already proven to be a very good idea and worth the effort.
"Okay, looks like we are about to have company. Heather and I will take out the big boys. Master Sergeant Win, I want your team to target the light tanks. Everyone keep an eye out for friendlies that might be trying to fall back. Are we good to go?" Rex was rewarded with twin clicks over the radio speaker mounted in his head gear.
Rex had a tight-lipped smile on his face as he looked down the built-in scope of his laser rifle. With a flick of his tongue, he started recording everything. He was seeing a few somethings moving in the still falling dirt and dust, but they were still just a little too far away. He had been studying a list of threat vehicles for months. He would not claim to be an expert on IFF, but he was comfortable knowing friend from foe in this limited environment. If he had been sent to somewhere else on this planet, he would have had to spend just as much time reviewing the local warfighting equipment and hope he didn't make a mistake in the height of combat.
As he watched, a ZBD-08 became more visible. He could see little silver flashes coming from the angled front and down both sides of the twenty-five ton tracked war machine. The rear mounted turret was smoothly turning from side to side looking for something worth its 100mm main gun's attention. The smaller of the two cannons mounted in the turret would fire at less worthy targets.
As Rex watched, 30mm shells went from the turret to the defending positions in front of the light tank. Rex let his weapon track to the left a little, and he could see the effects of the lighter shells as the defenders were blown out of their well-hidden defensive position. Then he tracked back to what was a light tank that just happened to also be able to carry seven infantry personnel within its hull. Just as he was watching the light tank slowly move, a flash went off on the left side of his field of view. It came from within the forward defensive line and he had seen this type of flash before. An eyeblink later the Javelin missile came down on top of the armored turret on the back of the enemy tracked vehicle.
As he watched, the ATGM separated the turret into its component parts in a flash that was a lot brighter than the flash of the initial hit. The large 100mm cannon went forward with its 30mm co-axial weapon while the rest of the wrecked turret went off the aft of the track. It went from a million dollar fighting machine to flaming junk in a few eye blinks.
Rex kept watching, and he could feel his finger getting closer to the trigger well of his weapon. He was almost blinded by a huge flash that came from deeper in the gray bank that Rex was thinking was now more generated smoke than falling dirt. Off to his left, about where the missile might have come from, there was a large explosion. Rex figured that if that missile team had not relocated, then it was dead or as good as dead for the rest of the battle.
Rex's eye was drawn first to movement to his front after the flash and possible loss of the friendly missile team. The flaming wreck of the dead light tank started to shake. Then with almost unnerving slowness, the wedge-shaped light tank started to first move forward and then to right. Soon it was out of the line of travel it had been taking while intact, cleared out of the way for follow on forces to use the damaged axis of advance. With the obstruction now clearish, the pusher was now clearly seen by Rex.
Now in combat, if you can be seen, you can be fired on by enemy forces. A Type 96 or 99 main battle tank now had command of the local battlefield. As soon as the light tank had been pushed clear of the road, two TOW-2B(fast) reached out towards the lead tank from the damaged ROC defensive line. They might have taken a beating, but this ROCA infantry unit was not about to give up their homeland to these invaders while they could breathe or had weapons to fire.
The Type 99 mod 3 tank's commander was looking for his next target when his active defensive system fired from a small and stubby cannon mounted onto the side of the main tank turret. The warhead reached out and felt for the incoming ATGM. When it thought the time was right a heartbeat after clearing the tank, it blew itself apart in a cloud of metal and fire. One of the American supplied missiles was stopped in flight by the flak rocket fired by the updated tank. The second ATGM was coming from the same side of the tank and the counter measure system could not cycle fast enough for the second threat. Then the 152mm missile with two anti-tank warheads did its job.
The US made and knockoff TOW missiles had been around for decades. They had been regularly updated over the intervening years by those countries that produced them. The latest update involved a new rocket motor that pushed the missile at almost 1300 kph.
The TOW 2B weapon was also known as a top attack weapon. That meant that when the missile's look down systems saw the target, it fired a smaller warhead first. The flame and concussion from this went down towards the top of the tank in a copper jet too fast to see. This first warhead was meant to take out any ERA or explosive reactive armor block that might be between the ATGM and the target. The small plasma lance reached down and melted through the thin outer metal covering of the ERA block.
This caused the explosions that made the next layer detonate, doing two things at the same time. First, the explosion interferes with the fast moving plasma lance and reduces its effectiveness. Second was that it forces the thicker back metal plate of the ERA block to move and bounce off the outer hull of the tank. It then flies back into the still disturbed plasma lance. By the time the metal plate cleared the area, what remained of the lance was just hot enough to burn the paint off that part of the tank. The first warhead was small compared to the main charge but it would have been strong enough to kill a light tank all by itself.
With that blocking device detonated and the main hull of the tank now exposed, the main charge fired a split second after the weaker first charge. The 15-pound HEAT warhead turned itself into a copper coated plasma torch that could cut through 900mm of RHA in an eye blink. This could kill any tank in service back when the missile warhead first entered production. It was a great ATGM, but even the makers knew it was on its last legs for modern performance. The next upgrade was most likely going to be the last for this venerable family of missiles.
The tank the missile hit was a Type 99 MBT but it was not the same as the Type 99's that the Colonials had sent off for scrapping or sold to friendly nations a few years ago. Those had come from the captured RO/RO's or other landing craft. While the Chinese nation could not buy or trade for the high strength armor plate the Colonials were selling, they could still buy or even make some of the new types of armor plate being made on planet. It would not be the best, but it was better than nothing and some of it they could even make on their own. So, they did their best using whatever information they could steal.
What this means for China is that they did not have the best steel, and what they did have of the new types of steel was of spotty quality. To work around this known issue, they had come up with a mixed solution of applique and spaced armor plate to take the best advantage that they could. On every tank the Warlord had, his depot maintenance teams had added five centimeters of the new type of amorphous steel with a five centimeter space of open air between it and the main hull of the tank. The Nanjing Warlord had someone who had stumbled recently onto something over the last two months that allowed them to mount ERA to a handful of tanks with this new hard armor. If they had time they would have refitted the whole fleet, but they did not and only about a hundred tanks had both ERA and the new applique armor.
The applique armor even had surface cuts to make it look like ERA to anyone who might see it. The ERA could not be mounted on most of the applique armored tanks just yet because of issues of welding mounting bolts to the super hard metal. The effect it had against the ATGM looked impressive. In this case, the modified TOW 2B only blasted the additional armor off the top of the tank in a shower of hot metal fragments. Now the ATGM could work on the original armor of the tank turret. It hit like a hammer of the gods, but the warhead just did not have the muscle or energy left to work as designed.
The tank commander, whose head was not far from the point of impact, was not feeling too good. He was out of command of his tank for now as his brain was almost turned into mush. The gunner turned his turret mounted 125mm gun toward where he thought the missiles had come from. With the auto loader fitted to his main weapons, he puts two rounds into the general area. The first round was just a nonexplosive dart, but it was followed by a quickly loaded round with a bit more blast effect built into it. While the gunner was working, the driver stopped the fifty-six ton tank. He was young, having turned 18 just a few months ago. He had no idea what to do, so he waited for the commander to give him orders. It was just like he had been trained to do after taking a hit like they had just been given. This driver's action killed the tank.
Rex saw the commander slump in his command position with the hatch slamming shut as he dropped into the hull of the tank. After seeing that the ATGM's had failed to take out the target, he felt it was his job to do what the ATGM gunners could not. He was supposed to stop any breakouts of the enemy forces and this looked to be the beginnings of a large breakout of the enemy. He pulled the trigger to the first detent and an off frequency laser dot that was visible only to Rifter tech weapons was placed on the target. With the laser spot moving along the slab and sharp angles of the MBT, Rex looked for the best place to put his shot in. Normally three hundred and seventy meters was a long shot to make in combat like this but that was if you were going against a moving man-sized target. An MBT is a lot bigger and easier to see than a single person.
In his mind, Rex was replaying the informational videos on the internal layouts of Chinese and Russian tanks that he had sat through a few dozen times. He had a good memory, but the last class had been a while ago. He put the targeting dot on the top part of the sloped nose as the main gun started to swing back to cover the front of the 50 plus ton tank. Rex did not grin as he made a few slight adjustments. This was killing work. Work he had done a lot of in his life, but just because he did a lot of it did not mean he liked doing it.
Rex pulled the trigger group all the way to the trigger stops in the trigger well. The seven pounds of the C-12 heavy laser was well balanced and Rex was a good shot. He had good cover, a stable firing stance, and a steady trigger squeeze. More importantly, he knew just at what point during his breathing cycle to shoot. The laser weapon did not recoil. It did not make a sound, or even give a flash as it was fired. It looked like it did nothing at all on this Earth, as far as firing a combat rifle went. The C-12 had a combat range of about 600 meters, and the target was under 150 meters from Rex's hole. His target was a 50-ton metal beast that he had been planning on hunting for hours now. So the weapon had been on setting three. That was the hardest hitting option this weapon was capable of. This was a mega-damage class weapon on his shoulder and this beast could hit hard in that weight class way back on a different Earth.
The invisible wave of highly focused light energy hit the Chinese made tank at the top of the arrow shaped bow. It hit the tank like a trip hammer of the gods. The energy hammer first made contact with the bow mounted ERA. The thin metal and explosive just flashed into steam under the heat of the strike of the made off planet weapons. The ERA did not even measurably diminish the impact energy form the C-12. It was like it had blown through a roll of toilet paper, extra soft.
Then the energy wave hit the band of oddly cut applique armor. It was hard, just as intended by the people who had made it, but this strike was not some ATGM or even a cannon shell in the four to five inch range. The armor took some of the damage but its durability was just barely at the mega damage level even by Colonial standards. It shattered like glass, and it flew through the air in a mix of hard and melted flying stuff.
With the hard outer shell done, the energy wave went through the ten centimeters of composite armor like so much paper or cardboard. A fist sized hole was just there in the hull armor, and the hit had only lost about half of its deadly invisible energy. The driver's compartment went from 60 degrees in temperature to 1000 degrees so fast the driver did not have time to know that he was dead. He went from a something made up of about sixty percent water to a dry and blackened husk of carbon in the space of a single eye blink.
The destruction blew through the thin plate of steel that separated the driver from the troop compartment of the tank behind him. When this new compartment's temperature rose so sharply it was in greater danger. The compartment had things other than humans taking up the limited space. Items that did not deal with that kind of heat spike very well. Even as the crew of the tank died, the stored ready ammunition for the 125mm cannon started to cook off. That was a nice way to say the tank was as dead as her crew was. This tank still had twenty-two rounds of 125mm within its hull when it was exposed to a heat level that rivaled the sun's surface.
To those watching, it was crazy loud and bright. It was like looking into the end point of a welder. The blast was like an inverted rocket engine coming out of three different hatches on the tank. The jets of flame were between two and four meters high, each a roaring pillar of white-hot flames. That was just the ready to use rounds burning.
When the stored rounds overheated, they blew the 12 ton turret into the smoke filled air like a giant flipping an off balanced 12 ton coin. The back half of the turret was a little heavier than the front, so as the turret went up and rotated, it started to shift its flight path backwards towards its own lines. It was a very impressive sight, and it stopped the ROC Army unit from pulling back. Retreating under pressure was just a good way to get shot in the back and die anyway. The sudden movement of superheated air caused the carefully laid smoke screen to clear within a small area. This exposed the follow-on forces to incoming fire from the ROCA locations.
That did not mean that the attack stopped. The twin metal and burning tracks were in the way and Rex could not see that much being this low to the ground. Heather was across the road from Rex, and almost sixty meters back from him. She could see deeper into the forming attack of Chinese heavy weapons. She put her six pound O2-10 pulse laser rifle to her shoulder like she was born with the weapon.
The Quebec made weapon was a less refined weapon than the C-12 and it was not as powerful but it still could do the job. A second tank died, this one an older and modified Type 96 series tank. It had been in storage in one of the many heavy equipment depots until the civil war broke out. It had been outfitted with additional armor and a new fire control system before being sent to receive a new crew. It died, just like its newer sister had just done.
The attacking force had no idea where the attack that had taken out two heavy hitters came from. The survivors just started firing in all directions. They had no directions given to them because their company commander had been the one with the idea to just push the wrecked IFV out of the way. While they blindly fired, Rex could pick up on Colonial grade weapons joining the fight. Rex scanned around the local area, looking for targets and wanting to see the effect of his team's fire. His eyes were drawn to movement once more. Another ZBD was trying to make it down the road towards them. It was a show more of guts than sense, but the driver or commander was hoping to break through this defensive line at last.
As Rex watched the battle in front of his fox hole, he could see flashes and even tracers bouncing off the front and side armor of the APC/AFV/IFV/light tank. The range was perfect for his team to support the combat line. That was why he and the local NCO had picked this location in the first place. He took a still image of this light tank with the built-in systems of his Dead Boy suit. It looked different from the other one that had just died in front of his foxhole.
As part of the upgrade the Chinese land forces had undergone, some of the AFV's had a lot more armor added to their hulls. Without a central authority to give guidance for these needed modifications, each depot, high level maintenance military post and factory had come up with their own plans and ideas. These ideas and plans were drawn up to match whatever that the local area had on hand to do the work with. They had been told to improve the survivability to all of their armored vehicles. They had taken those orders and done the best that they could.
This class of tracked vehicle was on a knife edge of design parameters. The added mass of the new armor meant that they would have to lose capabilities somewhere else. Every place came up with different ways to address this. For the most part, the Chinese chose to reduce the ammunition loadout and lose one person in the cargo area. They pulled the GATGM that was carried to be fired out of the 100mm cannon and replaced them with standard type rounds in the now open holders. They also did away with the swimming capability. They could still float, to an extent, but they could only cross small rivers by using their treads.
All of these modifications now allowed for a twenty millimeter layer of new armor plate to be put over the sloped nose, turret, and halfway down each side of the track. This was proof against lead and copper bullets all the way up to cannon of about 40mm in caliber. It also stopped steel and other metal core rounds that normal soldiers would have access to still on today's battlefield. It would take a tank or an ATGM/heavy RPG to remove one of them from the battlefield using conventional weapons. For all this though, it was still was an egg armed with a sledgehammer, if one had the right weapons.
The thing was, the SF unit was packing Colonial military grade weapons and ammunition that could kill Centurions all day long. As Rex watched on, someone from the support SF unit fired his Colonial made rifle at the light tank. The round was not a tracer. When it hit the harder add on armor plate, there was a green flash of fire and sparks instead of the white one that would have marked its imperviousness to earth made ammunition. There still were white flashes visible on the light tank.
The hard and fast-moving Colonials made bullets hit with such power that the new Chinese made armor plate mounted on the outside of the metal skin of the tank heated up to over 900 degrees Celsius. Hot enough to make the armor act like warm plastic and flow away from the advancing projectile. When the hard projectile touched the weaker but lighter aluminum-based shell, it had less of a problem punching through. The aluminum armor did slow the round down enough that it stayed inside the light tank after it had passed through the final layer of the hull. The projectile spent the rest of its energy bouncing around inside the vehicle and the soft bodies it held from the driver to the last man in the back of the troop compartment. The single shot was a mission kill on the light tank but it still moved for another ten meters after the impact. So, the still moving light tank drew five more rounds from Rex's support team.
A new sound greeted Rex's ears. It was what was left of the escorting infantry assigned to the expanding ROCA SF team. They were targeting leakers of Chinese ground pounders that were moving through buildings and side streets. Rex let them do their jobs and he went looking for the next tank to kill within his limited field of view. It did not take long for another one to come into the center of his field of view. It met the same fate as the first two as soon as Rex could get a bead on it.
The battle was just a blur as each group took out the targets that they had been told to. In around twenty minutes of battle, the four lane road was nothing but one big and long traffic jam of burning armored vehicles. The whole Chinese advance was blocked. At least the part that was on this road. As Rex was scanning the local area trying to find a target worth his weapons output, his built-in comms unit picked up a frantic call from an adjoining ROC unit. They were about to be overrun. The follow on attack units were not going down this road. After losing a company's worth each of tanks and mechanized infantry, the rest of the regiment was looking for a different way through the ROC lines.
Rex pushed his radio button. "Okay team. We need to shift east. We need to get to the next road that is about this size. Looks like the tanks are looking for somewhere else to push through. Heather and I will go first, then SF, then the grunts. If we run into anything, we take it out on the run. We move and fire."
Each group leader acknowledged the order and Rex was out of his foxhole cutting across the fire strewn road. He spent a few minutes first getting his stuff together and replacing the half-used E-Clip first, then used a five second rush to get to some nearby cover. Heather was out of her foxhole as soon as Rex went to cover. Rex saw her get to cover by dropping into a crater off to his right. He was up again and at the edge of the road covering for Heather to move again. They were leading the group because they could take a few more and harder hits than anyone else on the team. If someone was going to run into an ambush, it should be them.
When she was across the road, he moved further down the small side road. He had trained with the SF team enough that he did not need to see them to know what they were doing. The lead pair of combatants fast walked down the side of the building. They were off to one side of a small two lane road that would lead them to the next engagement zone. That was the nice thing about having a grid system of roads to fight in. Sometimes they run in such a way that you could maneuver from one site to another with the mass of the city block providing cover. It gave the enemy a hard time tracking you.
Rex could see the large road with flattened buildings on both sides ahead. He could see tracers of different colors going back and forth through the opening that should lead to the combat zone. Rex put his back against the nearest concrete wall for protection, then he slowly looked around the nearest corner to see down the major road. He was rewarded with seeing a mass of enemy armor and infantry stretching out from two hundred meters from the corner to as far as he could see. As he was watching, a group of ROCA soldiers broke cover and tried to make a run for it to another defensive line behind them. They started out with five troopers as they tried to break contact but one by one, they were shot in the back as they tried to make it back to their fallback lines. Not one of them made it as far as the corner Rex was using for cover.
Rex hit the team button. "Okay, they are coming through! Everyone up and at them."
Rex was almost hyperventilating as the battle picked up pace. He could not mentally center himself before he stepped out from behind the cover provided by the rubble wall. It would seem that this Chinese unit was tracking down the limited line of advance all in one push. When Rex started to move out from cover, weapons were quickly swung to face the new threat.
The Chinese had been studying the weapon systems that the Colonials had been seen with. They had added the information into their threat training over the last few years. What stepped out from the rubble pile was not in their not so limited list of threats. The paint scheme was woodland but the skeleton man design was still very much recognizable under the greens, browns, and flat black. Just as Rex was bringing up his laser rifle to fire, a TOW missile passed close to his right shoulder and hit the underside arrow shaped nose of the lead ZBD. It would seem that the ROC unit had not expected someone to step out between the anti-tank team and the wave of enemy armor wave.
The flash of the 15cm missile passing near his ear almost made Rex jump but it was moving too fast for him to do anything more than a hard flinch. It was there, and then it was gone just as fast. The six inch missile was not the attack from above kind. It was following a designation laser mounted on a gunner's sight, and it hit the underslope of the arrow shaped hull of the track. The 20mm thick outer layer of armor that could stop anything smaller than a tank gun could not stop the heavy HEAT warhead that the missile carried.
The 22 ton light tank blew off its top hatches when the copper plasma torch reached through the armored hull and caused the people inside as well as the ammunition to start cooking off in less than an eye blink. The quickly building up pressure inside the light tank killed everyone inside and then another blast wave announced the ammunition blowing the four ton turret high into the air. The light tank slewed hard to the right and came to a stop when about a foot of its nose burrowed into the concrete front of a bookstore. Almost two lanes of the four lane road now had a thick, burning road block against any advancing enemy units.
Rex noticed the hit and the now disabled light tank. With the closest threat to breaking the lines now taken care of, he shifted his aim a little to the right and fired his rifle with a quick double tap of the trigger. The Type 99A tank came apart under the two pulse laser hits. Rex was in combat mode and fired his rifle as fast as he could target and squeeze the trigger. His old training said to double tap anything as large as these tanks, so that was what he did. When he shifted to the next target, another MBT in the advancing line but before he could put pressure on the trigger group, he was hit six times in a line running from left leg to right shoulder. The 7.62mmx54mm bullets had come from the stabilized coaxial machine gun. They were not your standard round but were instead heavy anti-vehicle armor piercing rounds. These had a new tech very hard core made out of some of the newer metals that may or may not have been imported into China illegally.
Rex felt the impacts on his armor, but kept on firing and servicing targets to his front. He was soon joined by Heather and the two of them side-walked across the road, taking out armored vehicles as they crossed the four lane road complete with a wide median. Nether knew when the SF unit joined the battle. They were taking out the supporting infantry besides and behind the tanks and APC's with well-aimed and practiced fire discipline.
The Chinese attack had hit a living roadblock at the run. They thought that they had finally broken through the enemy's line. The local commanders had seen the line falling and had rushed to make the breach wider. Rex, while still crossing the street, had to shift back to engage a ZBD. He should have hit it at least once at this range, but somehow it was still in operation putting heavy fire into the lightly armed SF troopers. When he tracked back and pulled the trigger he had the perfect shot, and still nothing happened to the target. Rex gave a quick glance out and down out of the corner of one eye. Now he could tell that the long E-Clip had spent its stored energy. He had been pulling the trigger on an empty energy pack.
He stopped walking, and at the same time he pulled the seven pound weapon out of the pocket of his shoulder. He removed the left hand from its forward bracing position, and he let the heavy barrel start to rotate so that the pistol grip and the E-clip in it could point inwards. While the weapon was moving, his right-hand pointer finger hits the release button for the E-clip. As soon as the weapon was pointed down, in a smooth motion his left hand came over the top and pulled the spent high tech battery out of the weapon. With the spent E-clip in his left hand, he drew it back across the body and the clip went into an empty holster made for the battery. Then the left hand tracked over a few centimeters from the now filled holster, pulled out a fresh long E-Clip out of its holster, and just as smoothly it was put into the laser rifle. E-clips were technology that the Colonials had not traded yet to the locals. They had a small factory on New Kobol that was able to make enough to keep the supply steady. It was a hard rule in the Colonial military that every E-Clip had to be accounted for at all times.
Rex did not have time to start to bring the weapon back up to his shoulder when he was hit again. He was hit right in the nose of the skull like ridge that covered his upper chest. A ZBD had fired three rounds at the walking green, brown, and black vaguely skeleton like body armor. Rex was only hit with one of the rounds. The other rounds went left or right of him in a scream of tortured air once he had stopped moving.
The Russian made HE-FRAG round exploded as soon as the point fuse hit something hard. The round that hit was not designed to kill an armored anything. It was made to kill troops that had the older systems of body armor and in fixed defensive points. They were good for taking out things like foxholes or machinegun nests. That did not mean that it was useless against the newer and harder body armor. It just was that it had not been made for that type of work.
Rex was looking down range, using muscle memory to reload his weapon when he was hit. One second, he had an eyeful of enemy amour of different types. The next second, he only could see a bright flash and then black smoke. The force of the impact had to follow the normal laws of physics and it transferred its speed into Rex's chest.
Rex now went flying backwards, arms and legs all windmilling in the bullet crisscrossed air. He was able to keep ahold of his weapon, but only just, as he flew through the air. When he hit the cratered street, it was with his back first. He hit so hard that he did not move for a few seconds. Heather almost made her way to his new location six meters from where he had been hit by the 100mm shell to check on him.
Rex was looking up at the sky with a ringing in his ears and an ache in his chest. As he laid there on his back, he would swear that the ache was moving to other areas of his body as the seconds went by. He was at the point of being stunned, but just on this side of not being fully concussed. He was just to the point of counting toes and fingers when an MBT fired its main gun and the round went over his head by a few meters. Something like that has a way of letting you know that the world is still moving around you.
This wave of sound and pressure brought him more fully back into the land of the living, or the battle at least. This was when he noticed that he was lying spread eagle on the street. He closed his legs and rotated from his hips down to come up to a sitting position on the battle scarred asphalt. That was the movement that Heather saw as she was taking out another Chinese armored track that looked like it wanted to charge.
Rex was still a little dazed when he sat up. He was trying to work out why he was having all of these silver flashes over the front of this body. Those flashes were the escorting mainland infantry firing their 5.8x42mm QBZ-95's at the stationary target in the middle of the road. Rex could not hear anything over his comms due the blast of the cannon shell on his chest but he quickly noticed the advancing wave of troops that looked like they wanted to do him some bodily harm.
Rex dropped back down out of sight and the wiggled around, so that he could affectively target the advancing wave of very mad infantry. His first pull of the trigger put a full powered shot into the poor sod in the lead of the ground attack. This one was only a single shot and yet the body, along with whatever was behind it, just went away in a flash of fire and steam. Rex realized what he had done, and how much overkill it was even if the body had the best local built body armor. A full powered single shot took out tanks with a meter of armor thickness.
He also knew how much a shot like that would drain his E-Clip. Even a long one had its storage limits. He quickly flipped the switch to the lowest power setting and resumed engaging the wave that was now only 100 meters from his prone body. He would shoot, scoot, shoot, scoot, shoot, and then roll off to one side. He was lucky that his weapon did not give a flash or report when it was fired. This made it a lot harder for his attackers to know where he was and what way he was moving between shots. They just knew that their fellow attackers were having holes blown through their bodies and both sides of their body armor.
The attacking infantry was losing personnel fast, and they could not tell who or what was doing it. They did know that if they kept going towards one way, they would lose more, and this was at a solider instinct level. It was the way that they were losing their friends that was crushing their morale. When one of them was hit with a Colonial tech weapon, it would punch completely through the front and back plate of their body armor along with a good chunk of the trooper who had the armor on.
The other weapon was just blowing infantrymen into sprays of blood, steam, and cooked meat. Also, they had trained with some look-a-like Colonial made weapons. Their training said that it had a very loud report. This new weapon did nothing of the sort. Whoever was in front was drawing the strange fire first. Soon the survivors dropped to the ground behind any cover they could find. The mindset of the attacking infantry was that the tanks had armor to protect them from this kind of crap.
When Rex no longer had a clear shot at the infantry he started thinking that he was out of the woods. He looked around to see what was going on. He was, after all, the one who was supposed to be in charge of this goat rope. His ears were still ringing from the hammer blow, so he could not use the built-in communication devices of his high tech body armor to any real affect. He used his old Mark 1's and looked around him.
He first saw Heather about 200 meters to his right. She was just down the way from him on the same side of the war-torn street. She was taking cover behind a crumbing four story building as she took out targets that he could not see. Next to her was one of the SF assault unit troopers. He was higher up the rubble pile on his belly firing away in the same general direction as Heather was. He waved to both and made a fist with his right hand to tap his helmet on the side. He then flattened his hand and used the flat of his palm to pat the top of his head. These hand signals told them that his comms were out but that he was okay.
When he turned his head the other way, he could see that the rest of the team were all deployed and spread out on both sides of the wide road, firing down it. Their fire was taking effect and it looked like the attack was stalling. It could have been stopped by the aimed and heavy firepower. Or it could have been all of the wrecked and burning armored vehicles littering the wide road and the now rubble sided buildings. Rex was thinking about what to do next when his eyes were drawn to the movement of one of the escorting infantry platoon's remaining members. He slowly started moving higher into the mound of rubble that had been home and business for someone. Rex could not see what the escort was shooting at but that gave him an idea.
Rex did one more scan of the battlefield laid out to his front from his new location. There were still some targets, but it was not the target rich environment it had been when he first turned around that one corner. He took a few deep breaths to get more air into his lungs, then he popped up like a jackrabbit and bolted. He was in very good shape, even for his age, and in less than six seconds he was going up the side of a rubble pile. He angled to one side so that the stone and junk filled hill would block the enemy's line of sight from down the road. The side that the enemy could see.
Rex made his way to an exposed steel beam and jumped for it. He used this as an access point to what remained of a six story building. After gaining access through a blown out middle class apartment, he made his way to a stairwell and went up another three floors. He was so out of breath after he hit the stairwell that he had to kick the locked access door to the roof three times before it would separate enough for him to squeeze through to the flat roof.
Rex wanted to stop and bend over to put his hands on his knees until he could get enough air into his burning lungs, but deep in his soul he knew that he could and would not do something like that. He still had stuff to do. He duckwalked to the edge of the roof, and looked over the four foot wall that topped the side of the building. As soon as he looked over the building's edge, he had a huge line of sight. And he had a problem.
It was the wrong area. He must have gotten turned around while making his way to this location. He made his way around the roof, duckwalking to keep from being seen and drawing fire from below the vantage point. When he came to the area he wanted, it turned out to be perfect. He had a great view of the enemy lines and some of the lower rooftops around him. By now, his ears had stopped ringing from the blast and from the blood rushing through them from his effort to get to this location in the first place. He pushed a button on the command net and let them know where he was and why. This information was quickly passed up to higher levels of the ROC command structure. Friendly fire is anything but friendly.
Just as the team's SF leader warned him about enemy snipers over the radio, a bit of stone that made up his cover turned to powder about a quarter meter from his head. The weapon was a very high powered rifle, maybe in or above the 12.7mm class. This was not a small, light, or quiet weapon to fire even on today's louder battlefield. That did not mean that it was easy to find to shoot back at.
Rex used his skills to look for the shooter. He first looked at the damage done to the wall. It gave him a basic idea of where the shot might have come from just at a glance. He only had to look a little closer to know that the shot had come from a higher elevation. With those two bits of information, he started looking around while staying at least behind concealment if not cover of the concrete wall.
He had two buildings in his line of sight that fit the evidence of the impact crater. One was about a quarter kilometer away and the other was more than twice as far. The closer building he looked over at first quickly, then a little more slowly. This was spread out over a few peeks over the barrier. He decided that his first choice was not where the shot had come from. So he started looking at the farther building using the same method and changing location after every peep. This time he saw a glint of glass and a flash. This let him drop back out of the line of fire before the bullet hit near his head for the second time today. It was very unlikely that the round would have punched through his helmet, but unlikely did not mean never going to happen.
Rex gave himself a shake and worked out what he needed to do. First, he checked his weapon energy charge. He had shot a lot since his last E-clip change, but it had been at the lowest power setting, and that gave him a longer engagement time. He had forgotten that this one was a fresh charge. He thought about the target. Snipers were a very high skill set group. The ROC military gave theirs all the best equipment that they could afford.
"That would make them harder to kill", thought Rex. With that worked out, he thought about the distance to the sniper's perch. Six hundred meters was not a short shot, just at the edge of his weapon's effective range. That was with the laser range finder and designator activated. Then he thought about the nest the sniper had set up for protection. At this distance, he could not make out that many details about that nest. With an evil grin behind his face covering, he flipped the switch on this weapon. With another breath, he let a little out.
With his breathing under control he threw the weapon into his shoulder pocket and came up over the low wall giving him cover. The weapon snapped up and he lined on the target point like it was magic. He let a little more air out of his lungs and pulled the trigger. When he felt the trigger wanting to go forward at little to let him know that he had fired, he pulled it back a second time. With the second shot done, he let his knees relax and he fell back under the cover provided by the low wall running along the building's roof.
The laser blasts went at the speed of light, and the first shot had impacted the area before Rex had fired the second shot. The building had been close to ten stories tall but now it was a lot shorter. Rex had not been shooting at the small target that was the sniper, or even the larger area that might have been the nest and protection for that sniper. Rex had aimed his shot at the top two floors of the old building. The taller building was a lot shorter, and the debris were falling all over the Chinese held lines below in a rain of concrete, steel and glass. Rex was calling that action a two for one in his head.
Rex popped his head up over the wall to check out his handiwork. When no one fired at him for half a minute, he looked down on to the streets below his perch. He had a commanding view of the battle going on below him. Unlike the sniper, he did not have to worry about his weapons fire giving away his location. He just had to make sure that he was hard to see with the old mark ones and maybe a few odds and ends devices that picked up body heat. And he had to be careful not to have any part of his weapon be seen over the protection of the low wall.
He found his first target. It was another tank and it looked a lot smaller from his location over twenty meters above the ground. He had no idea what type it might be but he could see the big red star painted on the top. It was behind the growing roadblock of metal and was protected from most of the ROC forces' fire. He lined up his targeting laser on the center of the turret, and on a hunch went to a lower power setting before pulling the trigger to the stop.
The laser bolt or beam hit the flat topped tank just between the two hatches on the turret. The armored top that had stopped the twin warhead ATGM did not stop the fire from Rex's C-12. It did take a whole microsecond longer to punch through it but that was about all that the added ERA and new skin of armor was able to do. The thin skinned top armor that the Type 99 had been built with had given away quicker than the added on armor had, and then the energy strike hit the crew compartment. And it still had a lot of the energy that it had when it left Rex's weapon.
The crew was lucky, or well, luckyish. The energy unleashed by the Rifter weapon hit the massive autoloader for the 125mm cannon that was the main gun of the tank. The cannon was a modified copy of the Russian 2A82 made in a Chinese factory, without the chrome lined tube of the Russian weapon. The heat energy of the strike melted into the heavy metal of the autoloader, along with the dozen rounds stored and ready for the autoloader to use. The rounds started cooking off as the laser blast exited the bottom of the tank's lower hull. The blast expended its remaining energy by blasting a crater two meters in diameter and seven hundred centimeters deep at its center. Rex was rewarded with the multi-ton turret flying into the air for his targeting.
Rex smiled and moved to his next target. Tanks were the hardest to kill items in the enemy's order of battle. So Rex looked for any more that were in his line of sight. Sometimes he would shoot an APC or light tank, but only a few times. He was supposed to be taking out the enemy's heavyweight items. He didn't hit every time for a number of reasons, like odd angles. Shooting from higher and at long distance is also not easy. He would shoot until the E-clip was spent, then he would reload a fresh one into the weapon and find something else to shoot at.
The attack was faltering and Rex could tell this just with the combat sense that he had developed over his years fighting before the rift. He was just about to leave his perch on the building when a glint off in the distance drew his attention away from the ground combat. It was flying fast and it made a close pass to his building.
He had no idea what it was besides that it was an airplane, but he could see that it had what looked like weapons hanging off attachments to the outer airframe. Rex felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he fired twice at the aircraft from the hip. Unfortunately, it was too far away, and moving way too fast for any of that John Wayne crap to work. He was running for the stairwell before his forebrain worked too closely at what he was doing. It was just that part of his brain knew he was in trouble and had decided to try to do something about it.
Two Nanchang Q-5's, code name Fantans, were overflying the front battle line of the PLA's 10th Armored Division. Each was carrying four 500Kg high explosive bombs and two large drop tanks for the extra fuel they would need to make it home. The Fantans were made only for ground support and little else. They had gone out of production in 2012 but over 1600 were made before production stopped and over a thousand were still air worthy in mainland China as of last month. They also had a huge amount of spare parts. They were spread out all across the country and they were a good trade item with places like Myanmar, Sudan, or Bangladesh. Even Pakistan had a few hundred they liked to keep operational. The Liming Wopen WP-6A engine could also use most parts off any old MiG-19. They were trading a box of a hundred new Iphones for new engines at most trade points near borders or in open harbors to China.
Captain Lin tilted his right wing down and looked at the localized battle below him. He could see where two different areas had stopped the great attack to liberate this island. He was not under any control from the ground. It was expected, and now proven true, that the Colonials or the island rebels had taken down the local radio and internet network. The invading Chinses army had to revert back to using flags and hand gestures to give orders. Captain Lin, his wingman, and other groups like them were flying all along the battle space. They had been given orders go to the front line and bomb the enemy as they had approached the Chinese Strait. After that, they had not received any additional orders from ground controllers. No one could go that wrong by dropping bombs on the enemy. They just had to make sure that they did not get shot down over the people they had just bombed.
After making his look around, he turned to a point in space that his GPS told him was the rallying point for this area of the battle space. When his wingman rejoined him, he took the lead to the attack point he had seen before. The ten minutes delayed their return just long enough, which Rex badly needed. He had been able to rest to recharge, and he now was using that charge as he flew down the stairs to the lower floors.
He was soon on the rubble hill outside of the building, the same one that his team had been using as a firing point. When he was about halfway down the rubble hill, he had to fight to keep his feet under him as the unstable hill started to shift under the pounding of his legs. He was soon helped along his downward run, as the Q-5's made a return visit.
Each of the aircraft dropped a pair of 500kg or 1,100 pound high explosive bombs in the general area. They only had four bombs between them but they were large and powerful, if not very accurate by nature. The damaged buildings fell. Wrecked tanks and burning APCs flew through the air like toys pushed along by the shock waves made by the pair of bombs. These weapons had not been filled with TNT, RDX, or even HDX. These weapons were filled with something called CL-20, and it had a lot more power per pound than any other explosive.
Rex, Heather, and what was left of their team and escorts fell back towards the east. It was the next line of defense, and they had planned to fall back before now anyway. The close use of those bombs had stunned the attackers more than it had the ROC's. The movement by the mixed team was slow and not rushed as they moved away.
Soon, the enemy ground unit recovered from the attack made by their own countrymen and they started to follow the retreating ROC forces. The mixed team made the Chinese pay for every inch, but they had to keep falling back or they risked getting cut off by mainland ground forces advancing down other roads. The small group could not be everywhere at once, but wherever they were at, they stopped the enemy advance for at least half an hour.
Not every area had the additional firepower that Rex and his group could bring in short order. Even with that fire power, Rex and his team were powerless against the air attacks, artillery shells, and rockets falling around them like ice in a hailstorm. It was dark when Rex and his team were pulled out of the battle line and sent back east of Highway 3. While Rex was eating his cold packaged meal that the ROC Army had supplied him, he looked around the tree covered area. It was just him, Heather, two SF troopers, and two of the escorts that were left alive and somewhat combat ready.
Everyone else who had been with the mixed team were dead or had been evacuated to a medical tent. They had not left one member of the whole team behind, including the last minute escorts, each time they pulled back. It had been a long and stress filled day on top of a long few days. And Rex still had to update his command on his actions as well as what the rest of the Colonials on the island had been doing. It would be hours before he could get some sleep on the wet leaves that were under his armor's hard outer skin. He would be thinking that maybe he was getting too old for this. Then he would think about who could do the job better than or even as good as he could. When the number came back zero, he fell asleep with a satisfied smile on his face.
While Rex and his mixed team had been getting up close and personnel with members of the PLA's ground force, other areas of the island and her allies were hard at work countering different parts of the Warlord's attack. Fighters were starting to go in to nip at the edges of the Chinese air superiority zones from airbases that were outside of the ranges of most of the mainland craft. Command and control infrastructure for the local seas was being set up, and soon more and more surface and subsurface forces would be in the area contesting PLA(N) presence.
P-8's, P-3's and other sub hunters were flying from Japan and even South Korea. All were working on clearing areas of the sea of Chinese threats. There were a growing number of Japanese and U.S. submarines lurking at the edge of the expected Chinese submarine defensive lines. By dawn the next day, China was going to be short a few Kilo-class submarines. The idea was not to roll up each of the Chinese underwater defensive lines. It was to punch holes through the lines and then go deeper while keeping eyes and ears out for any forces that tried to backfill those lost enemy assets.
South Korea had already had found that line. They had lost a Chang Bongo-class and a Sohn Won-Il-class submarine earlier in the day. They had taken out thee Improved Kilos, and one of the Kalina-class vessels in exchange for those two losses. Also during the night, other attacks were launched at the bases of the Warlord. A massed PGM attack would be launched from areas along the north and west coast of the besieged island soon. A hint that had been dropped to the ROC command from the Americans, which had led to this attack being launched. Now six Taiwan SSM's that were longer ranged than anyone had thought launched at midnight.
The target was one building that belonged to an otherwise nondescript artillery unit. It looked like most buildings on any of the other military base in the area. It just happened to have a very well-kept secret. It was hiding a 210mm rail gun/cannon within its walls and under its specially designed roof. She was one of a few new classes of weapons in testing, and one that few knew about outside a very small circle on the mainland.
This weapon had been dropping 200 pound explosive filled, GPS-guided rounds all over the island since this new war started. They were completely passive, and even the GPS package had used commercial tech like what was found in all modern cell phones. The only way the site had been noticed as operational at all was when an allied command and control plane picked up the incoming shell as it was flying 30,000 meters above the ground and it interfered with the American built object's own GPS signal on a backup system. What the Americans and others did not know was that she was not the only weapon of her kind, and all were being used in this operation. The ROC military would take out this one weapon/building, but soon other assets would be able to target them as the battles ebbed and flowed. Golden nuggets were hard to find, but when you did find one, you needed to act very quickly or it would be lost again.
