The men loading Spetnin and Balthus were already slotting in fresh rockets. From the midline of the vehicle barricade, Venar and Golightly fired their tread fethers. Venar’s rocket burst a stalk-tank, flinging it around hard, toppling it into a burning pool of its own fuel. Golightly hit an oncoming SteG so square and low it flipped as if it had tripped over something. It tumbled and blew up.
On the right-hand flank of the barricade, Chiria’s company fired its anti-tank weapons. More rockets streaked across the open highway. One made a clean kill of a running SteG, the other ripped the turret off a second. The crippled tank kept going, trailing fire in its wake, but either its crew was dead or its steering was ruined. It veered off, headlong, hit the rockcrete sidings of the seawall and overturned, its six oversized wheels spinning helplessly.
A second and third wave of rockets spat from the roadblock line. More of the advancing tanks exploded or were brought to a standstill. The road was littered with wrecks. Big AT70s could have piled through, but the light SteGs and the delicate stalk-tanks had to slow down and steer around and through the burning hulls. The Ghosts’ support weapons opened up, punishing the slower targets with .30 cal hose-fire. Armour shuddered and buckled under the sustained hits. Melyr swung the spade grips of his tripod-mounted .30 and poured a stream of fire into the body of a stalk-tank, ripping it open and shredding the pilot. The stalk-tank remained upright, but began to burn: spider legs frozen, supporting a fierce ball of flame, one leg lifted to take another step that would never come. Seena and Arilla focused their .30 on a SteG that was trying to turn past a blazing wreck, and shot out its engine. Fuel loads and hydraulics gushed out of the punctured hull like blood, and the vehicle shuddered to a halt. Its turret was still live, and it traversed, pumping two shots in the direction of the roadblock.
Arilla, small and scrawny, tried to retrain to finish the job, then cursed. Her weapon had suffered a feed-jam. Seena, twice her size and all muscle, reached in and cleared the jam with a fierce wrench of her fist, then fit a fresh box to the feed.
‘Go!’ she roared.
Arilla squeezed the paddles, and the weapon kicked into life. Her torrent of shots mangled the SteG’s turret, and sheared off its gun mount. The impact sparks touched off the fuel gushing out of its ruptured tanks, and it went up like a feast day bonfire.
On the roadway, Archenemy crews were dismounting from damaged and burning vehicles, and trying to advance through the smoke and billowing flames. The Ghosts on the makeshift line now had human targets their rifles could take. Las-fire rattled from the jumbled row of trucks, chopping down men before they could move more than a few metres.
Smoke and haze from the killzone blocked any decent view.
‘Advise!’ Pasha yelled into her mic.
‘Another pack of SteGs about two minutes out,’ Kolosim voxed back. He had a better view from the right-hand edge of the sea road. ‘We can hold them off with the launchers. Major, stand by.’
Kolosim scurried along the line of the sea wall to get a clearer angle. He could feel the heat on his face from the burning tanks.
He touched his microbead.
‘Pasha, I think at least two of the big treads have got past the bombardment. They’re coming in, four minutes maximum.’
Pasha acknowledged. AT70s. They would swing things. The big tanks were robust and heavily armoured. They could shrug off the support fire and only the luckiest hit with a launcher would make a dent. Chances were the big treads would blow straight through the wreckage belt, and they’d have the meat and firepower to punch through the roadblock too.
Pasha had fought in the scratch companies during the Zoican War. Far too many times, she and under-equipped partisan fighters had been forced to hunt big enemy armour and woe machines that had massively outclassed them.
‘Remember Hass South?’ she asked Konjic.
‘Is that a joke?’ Konjic asked.
‘No. Grenades. Fast. Not loose, boxes.’
‘Gak!’ said a young trooper in her first squad, ‘Which unlucky bastard gets to do that?’
Pasha grinned. ‘For that remark, Trooper Oksan Galashia, you do. But don’t worry. I’ll come teach you how we did it in the People’s War.’
Galashia, a very short, thick-set young woman, turned pale.
Konjic returned with six men lugging metal crates of grenades.
‘All right, lucky ones,’ said Pasha, ‘you’re with me.’
She led them out, past the roadblock and onto the open road. Rockets whooshed over them, striking from the line at the next pack of SteGs.
Heads down, they began to run towards the burning enemy wrecks.
‘Feth!’ said Rawne. ‘Is that Pasha? The feth is she doing?’
The batteries had fallen quiet. There was nothing left they could hit. From the roof of the packing plant, Rawne had a good view of the sea road and the resistance line of the roadblock. He could see figures – Ghosts – sprinting out from the cover of the roadblock into the open.
‘Criid’s calling, sir,’ said Oysten.
Rawne cursed again, put away his field glasses, and hurried back into the street.
‘You were right,’ said Criid. ‘Obel’s scouts have spotted enemy infantry moving up through Millgate.’
‘Let’s go welcome them,’ said Rawne.
They started to move through the narrow streets, fanning out in fire-teams.
‘Marksmen in position?’ Rawne voxed.
‘Affirmative,’ Larkin replied. ‘Main force seems to be coming in along Turnabout Lane.’
Still moving, Rawne found it on the map.
‘Can we box them in, Larks?’ he asked.
‘We can try, but the locals have proofed this area against snipers.’
Rawne frowned. Overhead, carpets and drapes hung limp over the street in the smokey air.
‘Varl!’ he said.
Varl came up. Rawne showed him the map.
‘This is Turnabout Lane. We want to clear back to about here. Here at least. Give each long-las as much range as possible.’
‘We’ll be giving them range too,’ said Varl.
‘Yeah, but they’re moving and we’re dug in. Get to it.’
Varl nodded.
‘Brostin! Mkhet! Lubba! Shake your tails!’
Varl and the three flame troopers moved ahead, with Nomis and Cardass in support.
‘Are we gonna burn something?’ Brostin asked as they hurried along.
‘Yup,’ said Varl.
‘People?’ asked Brostin.
‘No,’ said Varl. ‘Fething carpets.’
Over by the sea wall, at the right-hand end of the roadblock, Zhukova found Mkoll staring out at the graveyard of rusting agriboats.
‘Signal from Cardass,’ she said. ‘Confirmation – enemy infantry extending up Millgate towards Rawne’s position.’
Mkoll glanced across the broad road towards the dark maze of habs and mills south west of the batteries.
‘Sir?’
‘Rawne was on the money,’ he said quietly. ‘Armour push on the road, infantry in the cover of the streets. That would have been my call too. The armour’s the distraction.’
‘The tanks are still coming,’ said Zhukova. ‘They’re going to be more than a distraction.’
‘To an extent, but the infantry’s the big problem, if there’s enough of them, and there will be. In those streets, it’ll be the worst kind of fighting. House-to-house, tight. With numbers, they could break, force an overrun. Maybe even take the batteries.’