Senior Lieutenant Philip failed to grasp what was happening until it was too late. He brought his company of "tanks" -If he could call his Chimedons, which were Chimera APCs modified to fit a turret and conqueror cannon in what the PDF called "Hammerhead" configuration tanks- behind the smokescreen, moving at combat speed toward the enemy, maintaining reasonable order despite his spiky nervousness. Then the tanks began to sink in what had appeared to be a normal field. Reconnaissance had not reported any difficulties. Now his command tank was halted in the ground, and none of his vehicles succeeded in backing out. Their efforts only worked them deeper into the marshy soil. His entire company had ground to a halt. Philip attempted to call back through the battalion for more smoke and for recovery vehicles. But the smokescreen began to dissipate noticeably before he could establish contact. The vox channels were cluttered with strange voices.
"Prepare to engage, prepare to engage," he shouted into his vox. When his platoon commanders failed to respond, he realised with a feeling of near-panic that he had been speaking only through the internal vox channel. He switched channels, fingers clumsy on the control mechanism, and repeated his orders.
"Phil, I'm stuck," one of his platoon commanders responded.
"We're all stuck. Use your call sign, damn it. And mine. Use your head." Philip tried to raise HQ again. Without more smoke, they'd be dead. Philip was sure the enemy had trapped them, that this was a clever ambush, and that enemy anti tank gunners were waiting to destroy them. The smoke continued to thin. Nothing on the battalion net. It was as though HQ had vanished from the earth.
Philip's gunner, a diminutive, dark skinned man, was praying. Philip tapped on the side of his headset. "The emperor is guiding the entire offensive with us. Get on your gunsight. You won't be any use to him if you're dead." Flares popped hot bright through the last meagre smoke. From the angle of their arc, Philip could tell that none of his people had fired them. In any case, the use of flares was inappropriate. Even with the rain and smoke, there was still plenty of light. Probably a distress signal, Philip thought. But he had no idea who could have fired. He tried the battalion net again, begging the machine spirits to respond.
The old cannon welded onto the turret of his tank was so low to the ground that it barely cleared the grasses. Philip wondered if they could dig themselves out. He technically knew how to recover tanks, when there were trees or walls nearby. But now they were stuck dead center in the open.
He was about to order all of his vehicles to begin erecting their camouflage nets and to send one of his lieutenants back on foot to locate the rest of the battalion when the last smoke blew off. The battlefield showed its secrets with painful clarity, the rain and mist offering no real protection. Less than five hundred meters from his line of tanks, set at an angle, Philip saw five enemy tanks. Just like his Battalion, they were modified Chimeras, with conqueror cannons installed in a lightly armored turret. The enemy vehicles were also bogged down almost to the turrets. Even with so little of the vehicles showing, Philip could see that the tanks were defiled with iconography and spikes. The original regimental numbers were gone, red paint splashed over them messily.
"Fire!" Philip screamed, paying no attention to which vox channel he was on, forgetting all fire discipline and procedures. His gunner dutifully sent off a round in the general direction of the enemy. Philip tried to remember the proper sequence of fire commands. He began to turn the turret without making a decision on which enemy vehicle to engage. The enemy fired back. Philip's entire line fired, in booming disorder. Nobody seemed to hit anything. Philip settled on a target. "Range, four-fifty." The loader slammed the round into the breech. "Correct to four hundred."
"Ready."
"Fire." The round went wide, despite the ridiculously short distance to the target. But another one of the enemy vehicles disappeared in a bloom of sparks, flame, and smoke under the massed fires of Philip's right flank platoon. Philip's headset shrieked with broken transmissions.
"I've lost one. I've lost one."
"We're hit, the ammunition is on fire-"
"Confirmed hit, re-engage on target. He's still turning his turret!"
"This is Kestral 2- vehicle inoperational. We're bailing out, emperor protect us."
"Range, five hundred."
"Wrong net, you karking moron, clear the line!"
The enemy tanks fired as swiftly as they could, their rounds skimming through the marshy grasses. Philip could not understand why he could not hit his targets. He had always fired top scores on the range, perfect fives. He tried to slow down and behave as though he were back on a local gunnery range.
Philip's gunner sent another round toward the enemy tank. This time it struck home. The enemy tank failed to explode. After a bright flash, the hammerhead was still there, settling back down as though its sleep had been disturbed. But the vehicle's crew began to clamber out through the hatches, clumsy in their haste.
Out of the corner of his field of vision, Philip saw the turret of one of his own tanks fly high into the air, as though it were no heavier than a ball. Then another enemy tank flared up in a fuel-tank fire. It was too much. Philip opened his hatch and scrambled out.
This was insane. Murder. They were comrades just days ago. His vision collapsed inward. His headset jerked at his neck, and he tore it off. He stumbled down over the slippery deck of his tank, then abandoned his last caution and jumped for the grass. He saw other men running across the field in the distance. It was senseless to stay. For what? They'd all die. Just shoot until they all killed each other. What would it accomplish? The whisk and thunder of the tank battle continued behind him, punctuated occasionally by the metallic ring and blast of a round meeting its target. The sopping mud sucked at Philip's boots. In his panic, he began smashing at his legs, as if he could slap them into cooperation, as if he could beat the ground from underfoot. He ran without looking back.
2 Hours Later
Captain Cyril had never faced such a frustrating problem. He had the honor of leading the southern vanguard, it was his job to move fast, to locate the enemy and overrun him, if possible, or, otherwise, to fix the enemy until the advance guard came up, meanwhile searching for a bypass around the enemy position.
Textbook stuff. Yet here the enemy had already pulled back. And his element was blocked by nothing more than a mined road crater and an unknown number of mines in the surrounding meadows. He had no idea where the combat reconnaissance patrol had gone, or how they had gotten through.
They should have warned him of this situation. Now Cyril was stuck. His pioneers had become separated from his element in the confusion of initial contact and penetration of the enemy's covering troops. He had no mine-clearing capability without them.
He judged that the advance guard was no more than twenty minutes behind, unless they had gotten bogged down in more fighting. Leading 2nd Shock army's attack, the regiment's lead regiments had struck the thin enemy deployments so hard that it had been surprisingly easy to force a gap. Cyril had not lost a single vehicle in combat. He was only missing the wandering engineers.
Until the lead Chimera attempted to work around the road crater.
A mine had torn out its belly and butchered the crew. Now Cyril's element was static. Thirteen Chimeras, three homemade Hammerheads, a battery of basilisk self-propelled guns, and over a dozen specialised vehicles with ground-to-air vox equipment, artillery communications, flamethrowers, and light surface-to-air autocannons were backed up along a single rural road.
It was a tough little battlegroup, well-suited to the mission and the terrain. But now, without engineers, it was helpless. Cyril dismounted and began walking swiftly forward along the bunched column. But before he reached its head, he saw one of his lieutenants flush all of his guardsmen out of their Chimera. The lieutenant got into the driver's compartment and, after a jerking start, edged slowly toward the blasted vehicle. The lieutenant guided his vehicle behind the hulk and began pushing it.
Cyril stood still for a moment in surprise. Then he began to shout at the rifle troops who were standing around watching as casually as if this was a training demonstration. He came back to life now, as if awakening, stirred by his lieutenant's example. He ordered the vehicles into a more tactical formation.
He was suddenly ashamed of himself. He had allowed them all to back up on the road like perfect targets while he had waited for divine inspiration. The lieutenant had not been able to push the destroyed vehicle in a straight line. Finally, he just edged it out of the way, crunching and grinding metal. The mine-struck vehicle had peeled off a track, and the hulk curled off to the left as its naked road wheels bit into the turf and sank. The lieutenant drove slowly forward, seeking a safe path to the roadway on the far side of the crater.
He was a new officer, and Cyril had had little sense of him. Another lieutenant. Now the Carian boy had taken the lead when his superior had failed. Cyril stood in the disheartening Guryoran rain, painfully conscious of his inadequacy.
He regretted all of the opportunities he had let slip to better train himself and his officers, to get to know his lieutenants a little better.
Cyril watched, fists clenched, as the vehicle neared its destination. The left side of the Chimera suddenly lifted into the air, lofted on a pillow of fire. Cyril instinctively ducked against the nearest vehicle. When he looked up, the lieutenant's vehicle stood in flames. Without looking around, Cyril could feel the crushing disappointment in all of the soldiers. They had been united in their hopes for the lieutenant. Now expectation collapsed into a desolate emptiness.
As Cyril stood helplessly again a young sergeant ordered all of his soldiers out of their Chimera. And the sergeant drove slowly in the lieutenant's traces until the prow of his track crunched against the flaming rear doors of the newly stricken vehicle. Then he applied power. Before the sergeant finished working the burning vehicle out of the way, a Hammerhead pulled out of the column and carefully worked its way up along the shoulder of the road, ready to take its turn in case another probe vehicle was needed.
Cyril knew it was all right then. They would get through. He began to shout encouragement. Following his lead, his soldiers began to shout as well. The flaming wreck veered out of the way, and the sergeant aimed at the roadway beyond the crater. Cyril felt as though he could win the war with just a handful of men such as these. He was suddenly eager to get back on the move, to find the enemy.