Free Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade by Mason Elliott Page B

Don’t get stuck. Move fast, and keep dodging, maneuvering, and firing. Fight well, my brave tankers.”
    “We’re about to go hot very shortly,” Python advised. “In no time, there will be fire coming at us from all sides, even if we do everything right. We are descending straight into a hornet’s nest and blowing up the hive. The slashers are going to be pissed as hell. Your tank gets hit too bad, everyone bails on gravwings, cloak, and regroup to continue the assault with the remaining elements. Keep as much heat on the foe as you can for as long as possible.”
    “Exactly,” Naero added. “We do as much damage as we can, and then if they trap us, we scatter and slip away, regroup as assigned, and find another place, another way to keep fighting.”
    Python checked his combat feeds. “Mark. Hot in 1.45 minutes when the main attack kicks in with our explosives. Everyone frost down, check your systems, and get ready to ride.”
    Hundreds of invader gravtanks had unloaded by the time the transports blew up and became an inferno. Fuel, ammunition, and power cores cooked off as the flames soared.
    Squad 3 became a gravtank unit, and vectored in toward the enemy rear under the cover of all of the chaos and confusion.
    Then they swung their guns around and blazed a path of destruction in wild, crazy, slashing arcs. They cut a zigzag trail of burning and exploding gravtanks and vehicles, where they were still hemmed in and packed too closely together to be able to move and fire effectively.
    The commander of each tank stood up in the turret, behind a unit shield pod, integrating the targeting systems in his or her helmet, patching into the battle command system and the fire control systems of each tank by itself as a separate mobile gun platform.
    The commander could also engage targets of opportunity and paint them into the profile with his secondary weapon, a viper gun–an even more devastating version of the basic autogun. The high rate of fire from these energized gauss cannons was blistering, and could degrade and destroy practically anything but another tank itself. Concentrated fire from a viper gun could even eventually take out a tank on its own. And it was positively lethal again all other soft targets with less armor or shields than a tank.
    That included other enemy tank crews and personnel out in the open.
    And everything popped by the viper guns was automatically painted and lit up on the targeting arrays.
    These feeds poured in to the main combat system, where indirect and adjacent direct fire and units could be applied against priority targets.
    The gunner operated the main gravtank energy cannons, confirming targeting patterns and redirecting rapid fire as needed. They struggled to stay several targets ahead of the actual guns, which fired very quickly and efficiently after Naero’s modifications.
    They fired so quickly that some of their firing profiles couldn’t help but overlap. They also cancelled and redirected fire away from targets already destroyed, to new targets of opportunity.
    The gunner helped monitor the onboard systems and kept them operating at peak effectiveness. That also includes shields, damage control, and fire suppression. The driver helped keep them moving, in a pattern that was not predictable, but allowed for good firing profiles to be executed.
    The four modified gravtanks roared over the enemy’s rear and–in the words of Naero’s father–tore them a new ass.
    They very quickly fought within what seemed to them to be spinning wheels and spheres of exploding fire all around them, lit from within.
    The steady bump and pulse of the tank cannons punching, rocking, and hammering at the hapless enemy tanks quickly disrupted the invader formations in several directions.
    The sweeping spray of the secondary viper guns and the launching of smoke, mines, and missiles only added to the destructive confusion.
    Because most of the enemy tanks didn’t have their shields up yet,