Corporal Burke swore, bouncing in his seat as he ran his tank over a cement guard. The Abrams was cushioned on sixteen independent air shocks, but even so a hundred tons of tank doesn’t like being airborne.

“Goddamn it, Burke! I’m trying to fire here!”

“Well, do it on the fly, ’cause I’m not letting those fuckers fry us!” the corporal snarled back at his superior, not looking away from his controls. “Those beam things just sliced right through Rogers and Mick!”

“I saw it, but I’d like to kill them before they slice through us, if you don’t fucking mind!”

Burke growled, letting the right tread drag as he brought the tank around in a smoother motion. “There they are. Light those fuckers up!”

“Firing sequence coded! Going weapons free!”

The smoothbore barrel of the big eighty-millimeter rail cannon glided on its stabilizers, sliding into position as the tank kept on the move. The computers adjusted for the movement, compensating automatically for hundreds of variables, and began to auto fire as soon as they had a positive acquisition.

Eighty-millimeter rounds of solid depleted uranium roared across the park, slamming into their targets with enough force to shatter even the best Terran armor. Against the Drasin’s alien composition they did no less, blowing molten silicon across the park as the insect-like soldier drones were shattered and thrown about like toys in a hurricane.

The remaining three tanks of the One Oh One were firing eight rounds a second as they coordinated their response to the loss of two of their own, but they were not the only ones firing.

Particle beams crackled back across the park, melting and vaporizing everything they crossed with equal ease. Ground, cement, battle-hardened armor . . . it made very little difference as they all fell under the blasts. Another of the Guard tanks blew apart under the barrage. Two of the aliens were blown apart seconds later.

The battle became one of attrition in short order, each side losing one after another. The side with the most fighters was going to win this battle and that side wasn’t the Hundred and First.

“Die, you mother f—!” Burke’s scream was cut abruptly short as the crackling beams that dissected the remaining two tanks of the One Oh One’s First Platoon finished their grisly work.

“Shit.”

Eric nodded in complete agreement with that assessment, having watched the fight with a better view than Lyssa had, thanks to his armor enhanced optics. The Guardsmen at the point of the charge had dished out as good as they got, but they’d been outnumbered and main battle tanks were not intended for fighting in terrain this enclosed.

“They’ve distracted the drones in the park,” he said. “We should move now.”