They never let us do this in training. He couldn’t help but chortle as the big motors of the tank hummed smoothly along.

The two lead tanks had been outfitted with hug steel cowcatchers and were clearing the road by literally bulldozing everything out of the way. Every now and then, however, one car or another bit of debris would slide back into the road and he’d get a chance to flatten it into the dirt.

Still, it was slow going. They had info-net reports of an active combat scene just another dozen or so blocks up, and in three blocks they’d be able to get off the streets and into the park, where they could pick up some decent speed.

“Stop playing around, Burke. You’ll throw a track if you keep that shit up.”

“Oh, relax, Sarge.” Burke grinned, glancing over his shoulder. “These things are built like tanks, didn’t you know?”

“Idiot.” The Sergeant rolled his eyes. “Just watch the damn road. We’re coming up on the park.”

“You got it, Sarge.”

First Platoon of the Hundred and First rumbled into Central Park, eighty-millimeter cannons seeking out targets to hit. They were already leaning in the right direction when the first of the enemy spider-looking beasts burst out of the tree line, being patched into the drone network that was flitting around the area.

The platoon leader gave the order and the two closest tanks rocked back on their tracks as the big guns spread fire across the park, the recoil of the cannons tearing chunks out of the earth with the blast wave alone.

Two armor-piercing rounds slammed into the alien, lifting it clear off its legs and blowing it back into the tree line across three times the volume of space it had previously occupied. Cheers and whoops of victory went up across the network, but were quickly cut short when three more creatures burst out of the trees, firing as they came.

Crackling red beams of energy sliced across the park, lighting afire whatever they touched, burning into the lead tanks with enough power to trigger their active armor. The explosives blew outward, temporarily defeating the particle beams, but that defense only lasted an instant. When it was finished the beams lanced in and turned the ceramic and steel armor to slag and vapor.

The munitions in the war machines went last, blowing the remains of the tanks apart as their fellows began to react. The other three tanks in the platoon opened fire on the move, turning to give themselves enough room so as not to get in each other’s way or catch a blast intended for another target.

In seconds Central Park turned into a war zone the likes of which hadn’t been seen on Earth in over eighty years. The last great tank war had probably been during the Second World War, in fact, and heavy armor had been going out of common use slowly but steadily ever since. Of course, if you considered that one side of the engagement was a group of alien invaders, then eighty years was a most conservative number indeed.