[Two years later.]
The light tank raced through the little town, its engine howling, tracks kicking up dirt and dust. A shell that could have easily torn it to pieces slammed into the building it had just passed. The house collapsed into itself. A second shell flew past its turret, hitting the ground just a few meters to the light tank's right. It raced on, putting a shell into the side of the KV-4 — one of the heavies that had been shooting at it — while he was still reloading. But the light tank didn't waste even a second with trying to circle the other tank; there was a T29 appearing from behind one of the buildings. He was reloading as well, but his cannon followed the light anyway.
Before they could shoot the light tank again, it brought another building between itself and them. An explosion right before it told it that it was going in the right direction. Now it saw something move ahead of it, climbing up the cliff-lined road that led up to the base's North Plateau. It was the tank it was looking for — the arty. The light tank drove on as fast as it could, and it could see the grey and brown SPG disappear behind the steep rock face where the road made a bend. Almost reaching the mouth of the cliff, the light tank suddenly noticed movement to its left. It turned its turret. As if it had been waiting for it, a Pershing was standing a little way down an adjacent road. It happened way too fast for the light tank to even fully process what was going on; the Pershing fired just as the light tank passed it.
"Gotcha!" Sky shouted as her shell easily blew up the enemy light tank. She laughed triumphantly, then turned to her radio.
"Arty, Sky. Are you alright?" she asked the SPG that she had just saved.
«Sky, Arty … Yeah, I think …»
Sky could hear a sudden explosion nearby, and Arty yelped.
"What happened?" Sky asked at once, setting herself into motion to go look for the SPG.
«Sky, Arty. The arty knows where I am now,» Arty said hastily.
Stopping again, Sky quickly considered her options. If Arty returned to her previous position, she would most likely get killed, but if she hid now, she would be useless to the team. She looked at the clear blue sky above, her optics searching for a certain plane.
"Goggles, Sky. Can you take care of this?" she asked.
The Stuka flew over the Pershing's position a moment later, heading for the South Plateau.
«Sky, Goggles. Negative. Can't see them,» she reported as she reached it. Sky saw her fly a big loop, then directed her gaze back at optic-level.
Inspiration hit her as she looked back at the destroyed enemy light tank. Her team had a light tank as well, and it was time to put him to good use.
"Arty, Sky. Hide for now. Alex, Sky. Are you free? Can you go for their arty?"
She listened to her radio intently, but only heard distant shots and explosions before she finally received a reply.
«Sky, Alex. There's heavies between me and them.»
Sky turned around and started rolling back into the town.
"Alex, Sky. Their light could make it past our heavies, you can do the same," she said. She could have sworn that she heard something like an offended rumble from her heavy team mates, but ignored it. Alex was probably about to confirm the order, but before he could do that, a third tank intervened.
«Sky, Eohelm. I don't think that's a good idea,» the team's Centurion said.
###
Eohelm carefully took aim at the sprocket, the only part beside the cannon of the enemy tank that was poking out behind the building it was standing behind. Before he could shoot however, it suddenly backed up. Eohelm snorted with disappointment, but another matter needed his attention anyway.
«Eohelm, Sky. Why the hell not?» his leader asked.
The Centurion found himself caught in a dilemma. He didn't want to oppose Sky in front of the others, but he was positive that this order would get their light tank killed. He looked at the grey and white Leopard 1 that was standing a little way ahead of him, just next to the rocky ledge to their right. The other tank looked back at him and shrugged, then ducked as he was being shot at. Behind them, cannons roared as shells were flying back and forth between five heavy tanks, two on Eohelm's side and three enemies, and neither of them even thinking of backing up. As long as this stalemate was going on, it was impossible to go for the arty themselves.
He didn't know what to say, but it seemed like the decision had been made already anyway.
«Sky, Alex. I'll do it,» their light tank said.
Eohelm sighed. At least one of the heavies behind him reported a kill a moment later.
###
Alex took a deep breath. The WZ-132 looked at the town ahead of him. He set himself into motion, and the buildings started approaching quickly as he crossed the open, grassy space west of the town. Accelerating to his top speed, he hurried through the narrow streets, skidded around a corner — and found himself right in front of two heavy tanks. They noticed him but were too startled at first to do anything about his presence as he raced towards them. Alex didn't stop and dashed right between them. Their turrets followed him and they almost ended up shooting each other as they tried to catch him. He quickly passed them by and swerved to the left, out of their line of fire as he disappeared behind a rock. He stopped there, fuel pump pounding like mad.
A shell ricocheted off the rock's edge, which unfortunately meant that the heavies didn't intend to ignore him. His turret spun around as he looked for a possible escape route, but there weren't any that wouldn't expose him to their cannons again.
"Team, Alex …" he said slowly. "I'm in trouble."
###
"Goddammit!" Sky hissed to herself. She could basically feel her team mates judging her for putting Alex in a bad situation against better advice. Lowering her cannon as she drove on, she reached the middle of the town. The noises of the cannons of her two heavy team mates were very close now. She looked up again, could hear Goggles but not see her.
"Goggles, Sky! Do something!" the Pershing said. The plane was the only one who wasn't busy at the moment.
«Sky, Goggles …» Goggles replied, sounding exasperated. «Can't. They're too close. I could hit our guy by accident.»
Sky frantically tried to think of something, while Alex urgently reminded everyone that the enemy heavies were about to reach him.
"Rill? Eject? Eohelm! Pepper! Anyone! Go!" she shouted into her radio, naming everyone she knew was close enough to possibly help.
There were a couple of «Negative»s. Sky threw her cannon up in despair. If no one was going to do it, she would have to do it herself, even if it meant going up against two heavies. She had gotten Alex into this dangerous situation, she would get him out of it.
"Forget it, I'm going!" she informed the others grimly. "Rill, Eject: Give me fire support!"
Speeding up, she drove along the road until she could see Rill's green camo between the buildings. She approached the KV-4 and was about to tear past him when he suddenly turned his hull. Sky hit the brakes, but still bumped into him with an irritated "H-Hey!".
"Careful," Rill said.
A moment later, artillery fire tore up the ground just a few meters ahead of them, hitting the spot where Sky would have been now had she driven on.
«I saw a tracer!» Awol, her brother, reported over the radios.
"Good, shoot its origin," Rill replied.
Sky looked up at him, her irritation growing.
"I'm giving the commands!" she barked and struggled free to race on.
«Team, Eohelm. Please remember to use —»
Eohelm's transmission was cut off as something blew up noisily.
«I did it — I mean — Team, Awol! I did it!» came an excited transmission from the Wespe.
Sky's expression brightened up a little, but she didn't forget about the problem at hand. She set herself into motion again, passing the crater that the artillery shell had left and heading straight for the enemy tanks. Behind her, the T29 and the KV-4 slowly left their cover.
One of the enemy heavies showed its back to her when it came into sight, the other one facing her. Sky didn't hesitate and shot the distracted one, causing it to burst into flames. It turned around with shock and surprise, screaming as it stared at its own burning engine deck for a moment. Its comrade immediately took aim at Sky and shot her, however only bouncing the shell off the side of her turret and leaving a shiny scar on the surface. Sky shot back, then saw Alex peeking out from his cover and shooting the enemy tanks as well. As Eject and Rill caught up, they joined the shooting. It didn't take long until the enemies had been turned into smoking wrecks.
Sky breathed a sigh of relief. Alex turned around at once, telling her that he'd go help the tank destroyers at the beach. That sounded like a good idea to the Pershing. She joined him driving up the hills to the South Plateau while the heavies took the route through the town to shoot down on the beach from the cliffside.
It took several minutes until she made it up the hill and to the entrance of the beach, so of course Alex arrived there first. He started shooting the medium and the two enemy tank destroyers that had been busy there the whole time, being held back by Sky's team mates.
«About time!» a gruff Jagdpanther said as the enemy medium blew up. Sky reached the beach as well and took care of a tank destroyer that had just turned around to face the new threat; its fellow tank destroyer died to a 10.5cm shell as the allied Jagdpanther came around the bend in the cliff. He made short work of his enemy after having played peek-a-boo with it for the majority of the battle.
Sky looked at the wrecks with satisfaction.
"Eohelm, Sky. What's the situation up there?" she then asked.
###
"Sky, Eohelm. We're almost done here," Eohelm replied in an optimistic voice. He and the Leopard 1 had turned around and were helping the VK 45.02 B and the King Tiger deal with the remaining two enemy heavies, now that their flank didn't need to be guarded anymore. It was only a matter of a few moments until they managed to overwhelm them. The VK — Rex — tried to give the King Tiger — Fox — a high five with his kill-stripe-covered cannon, but it went unnoticed as Fox just set himself into motion the moment Rex started turning his turret.
Eohelm watched them with silent amusement, but then turned serious again as he turned to his radio.
"Team, Eohelm. Good job everybody. We won," he said.
'… if not effortlessly,' he added in his thoughts. The others congratulated each other as well, although some of the voices sounded reserved. Eohelm strolled towards the wrecks as well to help Fox with towing them to somewhere where they wouldn't be in the way. In his thoughts he was already preparing a debriefing for the battle. He wasn't going to point it out with the other tanks present, but he got the feeling that a second, private debriefing would be in order. Sky had made a mistake that had almost gotten one of their team mates killed, and while the Centurion wasn't going to openly criticise her for it in front of their team mates, it was still a matter that had to be addressed.
Everyone made mistakes, no matter how good a leader. But with Sky, it seemed to be becoming a trend lately. Or maybe she was just starting to disregard his advice as the team's strategian more and more. He knew that she wasn't getting power-mad or anything, she was just … very stubborn about her opinion of what was right and what was wrong sometimes, combined with a lack of experience of leading a team. And as she was becoming more confident in her self-proclaimed leader role, she was making more of the decisions herself. Another complication was her insistence on keeping low tier members on the team, even if they could barely help during battles — which left a nasty taste in some of the tanks' fuel intakes. The problem with these things was that she was merely the leader because the others condoned it, and the question was how much longer they would tolerate her if she kept this course.
With a long sigh, Eohelm continued his mental preparation for the debriefing, hoping that no one else would point out the issue for him, as he didn't trust some of his less tactful team members to handle it in a diplomatic way.
[Note: By "two years later" I mean two years after the events of the prologue, not two years after the first HQ. This story is happening a couple of months after the events of the first part.]