The heavy tanks were more than powerful enough to take out the alien invaders, of that there was no question. The twitching bodies of three he could see proved that right up front and beyond any shadow of a doubt. The problem was that the platoon was stuck on a street between two lines of wrecked cars and rows of buildings. Without any way to evade, they were getting sliced to ribbons by the alien particle weapons, while the Drasin were using every ounce of their mobility against the tankers.

Harsh red icons filled his HUD as he settled in against the cement edge of the elevated section of the expressway, resting the Priminae weapon to steady it better. It wasn’t designed as a marksman’s weapon, but Eric knew that the device could effectively ignore the force of gravity over some extremely long ranges. Similarly, other factors like windage weren’t factors he had to be concerned with. The energy imparted to the projectile was enough to make the range he was working at practically point blank.

One of the Drasin had gotten about the tankers, obviously intent on cutting them down from above, where their cannons couldn’t elevate to. Eric haloed it in his HUD, getting range and motion figures, but couldn’t send that data across to the alien weapon he was using. So he began to count off the math in his head as he looked down the enhanced sights of the GWIZ.

The Priminae weapon didn’t buck as he stroked the firing stud, the gravity control preventing recoil from being a significant problem. The DPU round he’d loaded earlier exploded into the atmosphere, throwing up a brief cloud of condensation as the pressure wave changed the air in front of him, and lanced across the intervening distance at several times the speed of sound.

The trail of ablated material left a laser-like beam in the air between him and the Drasin, visible for a few moments after the alien exploded into shards and splattered remains across Zerega Avenue.

Eric felt another person land beside him and his eyes flicked to check the IFF, but he didn’t look away from the target zone. “Guardies need a hand, Commander. Think they’re up to it?”

Granger was silent for a moment, looking over the scene ahead of him. He wasn’t fully comfortable with the armor yet himself, so he had a sinking feeling just what the answer really was. “No” wasn’t an option, however, so he let out a deep breath before answering.

“My men can shoot. Let’s keep this out of knife range, if it’s all the same to you.”

Eric nodded. It was a good idea. “Fair enough. Deploy to the rooftops between Newbold and Waterbury. We’ll catch them in a crossfire and try to end this fast.”

“Roger that.”