We're not in the clear yet, Tongana reminded herself. For reasons no one fully understood, the attack chopper had fled days ago, and the rest of the CSF had scarcely shown their faces, but the Mauves had put up a fanatical resistance. Tongana had been promised that infantry and autocannon teams would follow her, but still she couldn't shake the sense that she was about to be surrounded. Tactics involving armored fighting vehicles were new to her, and Tongana didn't trust new things. But soldiers don't get to choose.
The tank's turret panned across the horizon as it ventured into a broad street, Tongana and her squad keeping their rifles trained on likely positions for Mauve gunners.
There was a flash and a snap. The tank jerked, then stopped. "Got a problem in here!" the driver said over the radio. "Engine's dead. What hit us?"
One more look around showed nothing, and Tongana knew. "A landmine," she said. Either the Mauves have learned from the Sabers, or the CSF has a few new tricks up their sleeve after all.
Tongana's second-in-command twitched, gasped and fell, a wound in the side of her neck. Three guns aimed where that shot had come from, and Tongana saw a pigtailed Mauve dash out from behind a tree moments before it was shredded by rifle fire. A grenade lobbed in from the other side of a one-story shop, but landed short, and the tank shielded everyone from the blast."Behind us!" shrieked one militiawoman.
Whipping around, Tongana saw an anti-tank warhead peeking over a waist-high fence, with a squinting pink-haired face behind it. Tongana had only enough time to raise her gun before the warhead fired, roaring across the street into the side of the tank, punching through the armor. A geyser of flame and ammo shrapnel burst up from the tank's turret, engine fuel erupting from its rear grate. The heat and force of the explosion sent Tongana staggering back. Scalding air tortured her skin.
She was the first of her squad to regain herself. She shot the rocket Mauve, followed by the two others had been crouching next to her, firing in a quick, even rhythm.
The screaming Mauve war cry came from everywhere. The sides of the street came alive with Mauves as they leapt out from garbage dumpsters, overturned boxes, half-leveled buildings and even from beneath piles of rubble. The world was disgorging them. Berserkers charged the soldiers while riflewomen shot from rooftops and alleyways, gunning down a few of their own along with Tongana's women.
Tongana's focus narrowed as she lined up on one machete warrior, squeezed, then found another target, a simple three-step process she repeated as many times as she had bullets. When her magazine finally ran empty, she stepped back, her left hand working from muscle memory, refilling the weapon with Olympian speed.
More warriors came from ahead of the smoldering tank, but before Tongana could worry about them, the tank's top hatch opened, and four crew members staggered out. One of them was pierced immediately by a well-aimed shot, but the others scrambled down to safety before they could be next. The unmistakable pop of sidearms joined the ruckus, and the tank's forward autocannon belched a torrent of bullets, the gunner obviously not concerned that her tank was still burning.
A mortar whistle streaked through the air. Tongana's spirits sank. I thought Zanele took care of that thing.
An earth-shattering blast proved her wrong. Women were thrown off their feet. Smoke rose in patchy, choking clouds. Mauves with machetes-- there seemed to be an endless supply of them-- came howling through the smoke, their blades sinking into flesh with sickening thunk noises.
As Tongana fired back, kneeling but ready to sprint, she heard something in her radio about reinforcements. She heard the rumble of a new engine, followed by the spattering of light autocannons. Headlights heralded her savior, and a halftrack emerged, a moving fortress of vertical armor plates and guns sticking through slots.
