The ranger looked at him, clearly torn for a moment, then nodded curtly. He grabbed his radio. “Everyone . . . pull back! Pull back!”

The line broke then. Most of them had just been praying for such an order. Eric crawled up higher, pushing his gravity rifle ahead of him but not firing as he took in the scene for a second. The swarm of Drasin was effectively unchecked. If they’d been slowed, he couldn’t tell.

Eric thumbed the power settings on his rifle up, going well past the safe levels as he waited for the unarmored men to clear the blast zone.

“Cherokee One, Weston,” he said, eyes not leaving the approaching wall of enemy forces.

“Go for Cherokee, Weston.”

“Get some altitude,” he ordered. “You’re going to want a better view.”

There was a brief pause before the pilot came back. “Roger that, Weston. Pulling up to watch the show. Make it good.”

“You got it.” Weston grinned humorlessly as the Cherokee’s engines whined loud enough to crack glass, clawing for altitude.

He got up to one knee, aiming the GWIZ at the enemy line, leading it just slightly. They were getting close enough now that he knew that he was going to feel the blast wave himself, armor or not.

So be it.

He stoked the firing stud. The rifle barely twitched in his arms even as it loosed a heavy depleted uranium round into the air. The blast wave of the round hitting air shook him through his armor, though, and for a moment his vision was occluded by the condensation cloud it left behind.

Said cloud was blown away a few seconds later as the blast wave washed over him, slamming into his armor like the hammer of the gods, and Eric was able to see the enemy line again.

A mushroom cloud was rolling back over the ground, low and slow, with shaken and shattered Drasin on either side of the strike point. They regrouped quickly, and he watched the line begin to move again, coming straight at him now.

Eric fired again.

And then again, and again.

He fired the rifle dry, reloaded, and emptied it again. Each time the dust and smoke redoubled, then was blown away by the blast wave of the next shot. Dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of the Drasin soldier drones were left broken on the field.

Yet the wave kept coming.

A whining rush of an engine settled behind him, causing Eric to glance around in time to see the Cherokee settle into a hover just a few feet away.

“Time to go, Cap!” the gunner called. “We’ve got a Shiva Option Alert.”