There were many ways to do this, but one of the most effective and dangerous was to time a TOT barrage and an attack to happen almost simultaneously. If you made an error, your attack could land too late and the enemy might be prepared. Or worse, you could arrive too early and be caught in your own artillery barrage.

If you timed it right, however, as Eric had, then you and your troops would charge into the charnel waste of the artillery TOT barrage and be almost entirely unopposed as you mopped up the stunned and disoriented survivors.

They charged right into the mushrooming cloud of smoke and debris, blinded for an instant by the dust rolling past them, with weapons ready. Thermal was blinded by the explosions, heat scrambling the instrumentation to uselessness, so Eric had the radar incorporated into the EXO-13 armor running on full power. The results echoed over the network.

“Three o’clock,” Eric said, pivoting slightly in the walking armor to open fire, sending a short burst through the smoke and dust from the tri-barrel cannon mounted on his right arm. Inside the EXO-13, Eric’s armor-shod fists gripped the control sticks tightly as he shifted back on target and continued to lead in.

A blob of movement appeared on his nine o’clock, but a burst of fire from Blake’s assault weapon roared, joined quickly by a second short burst from Lyssa’s. The blob stopped moving, so Eric continued looking for other targets while Blake and Lyssa stepped forward to confirm the kill.

The dust was settling by then, the heat from the blasts dissipating, and their thermal was coming back.

Eric could only imagine how they looked to the enemy, if the Drasin were even capable of seeing them in the way a human might. Shadows appearing from the darkness, amid the utter devastation of the first attack, firing as they walked out of the smoke like wraiths from some old legend. It brought a smile to his face as he opened fire with the tri-barrel, the whine of the high-speed cannon tearing the air itself asunder as the others joined in, finishing the fight that had started only seconds earlier.

“Clear right,” Alexander called just as Janet planted a foot on a twitching drone and emptied the remainder of her mag into it.

“Real clear,” she chuckled.

“Clear left,” Blake answered.

Eric paused the EXO-13, slowly circling it as he scanned with every detection system he had. Finally he nodded. “Clear. Get the column moving again. We need to secure the Beta objective.”

“Roger that, Cap’n,” the major of the armored artillery squadron answered, the Excaliburs shuddering back to life as he did.

In a few moments the rest of the column were moving again, and Eric had his squadron once more in the vanguard as they headed north to the city.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN