“Hope so,” said Galen. He turned toward the door and then stopped suddenly, snapped to attention.
The Chancellor extended his hand and Galen shook it. “Colonel Raper, so good to see you again. Lieutenant Colonel Miller, Colonel Baek. Glad you could make it.” Tad and Baek shook hands with the Chancellor. He glanced around, stood and smiled and waited until all the other leaders had left the room. He leaned forward and spoke softly, “I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. I’m counting on you to pull this off. This is it. Fail, and we’re done.”
Galen said, “Yessir. Are you well?”
The Chancellor said, “As well as can be expected, under the circumstances. I’m living down here now. The legislature has been dissolved and the High Command controls everything. The only reason they show me any respect at all is because of your obligations to me.”
Galen looked to Colonel Baek and said, “He’s right. Our unit charter binds us to defend the civil government against armed threats, at the behest of the Chancellor. We have no real obligations to the High Command.”
Baek smiled. “My orders attach me to your Brigade.”
The Chancellor smiled. “Good luck and God bless.” He then turned and left the room.
Chapter Twenty Two
Galen stood tall in the cupola hatch of his Lion tank, his combat suit providing protection from the radiation of the solar flare. His tank sat at the release point, the exit ramp of the highway his unit traveled along from the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound. Until now; this was the exit for the secondary road that ran west into the Kyok Forest.
Armored vehicles rolled by, oversized markings painted on them to show their combat identifications. All had a two meter round circle, rescue red, painted on top of their engine compartments to identify them to friendly aircraft. The Brigade’s Interceptors would be flying in support, as well as a few Mandarin Interceptors. The Mosh didn’t have anything that could fly under these conditions. In fact, the Mosh space fleet had backed off a great distance to get away from the flare. The Mandarin Space Force, unwilling to move too far from the planet, was sheltering from the flare in the planet’s shadow. An Armored Personnel Carrier at the tail end of the Mechanized Infantry Battalion column was marked with “D 88” on each side, showing that it was the Motor Sergeant. The number ‘8’ resembling a wrench…
Others, the tanks especially, had horizontal bands of duct tape around their turrets. One band for first platoon, four bands for fourth. Many had rings painted around their main guns, a modest way to show how many enemy tanks they had killed. Kill rings. Commanders flew storm-sized unit guideons from their sensor masts. Vehicle commanders who had combat suits stood in their hatches. Comms were out, due to the solar storm. Hand and arm signals still worked. Although the gadgets inside the armored vehicles were protected, it was the keen eyes of the vehicle commanders that were best at finding targets under these circumstances.
External loud speakers allowed the vehicle crews to yell at each other over short distances, and ultrasonic bursts allowed for delayed but secure communications. Line of sight comms between vehicles through laser pulse, that was spotty and unreliable. Galen saw the last vehicle of his task force roll by, a recovery vehicle based on a Hercules tank chassis. Galen lowered his seat and closed his hatch. “Okay, driver. Get out ahead and park at the next release point.”
The task force halted for crew rest at the far end of the forest, armored vehicles bunched up bumper to bumper on either side of three parallel gravel roads. It violated doctrine but this time it was essential to hide in the woods, compressed like a spring poised to launch from the forest. Trooper Bier managed to get the Lion tank positioned at the head of the column with half an hour to spare.
It was near midnight and the solar storm would be harmless for a couple of hours. However, the units maintained comms silence to avoid alerting the Mosh. Galen stood in his cupola and removed his helmet. The sky glowed green and crimson, great streaks of upper atmosphere aglow, moving, like a distant fire. The trees of the forest seemed to like the extra energy of the solar storm, the leaves lush and dark, and sprouting new leaves at the tips of branches to capture more energy.
To the right and left and rear were the Brigade HQ tanks, Hercules tanks. Tad on his left, Spike on his right, two more tanks behind for the S-1 and S-4 commanders, with a flak panzer section behind tasked with watching their backs. In a column to the right was the Cavalry Squadron. Behind them, the Hercules heavy tank battalion. In a column to the left were the Light Tank and Mechanized Infantry battalions, vehicles intermixed.
The Stallion medium tank battalion was lined up behind the command group, a squad of Capellan Marines riding atop each tank, protected from the storm by their medium powered body armor. Behind them were the armored vehicles of the Brigade Support Battalion. The thin-skinned and lighter elements of the Brigade and the Marine detachment were still back at the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound, hunkering down in metal-roofed buildings and underground bunkers. They could come forward after the solar storm passed, transported quickly by the Helos and Marine assault boats. That was the plan.
Galen’s tank moved out first, alone. Bad doctrine and bad tactics usually, but under the circumstances it was best. To avoid detection, or at least present only one tank for the enemy to spot, if they spotted it. Besides, there wasn’t a Mosh weapon within twenty kilometers that could kill the Lion tank with one shot. The Lion was eight hundred meters beyond the edge of the forest as it climbed up the slope of a low hill. At the crest of the hill it stopped, found its target: the entrance to a highway tunnel. It was the main road into Guri. The task force didn’t need it, they were bypassing that town. The Mandarin forces were going to encircle the town, didn’t need the tunnel either. Not yet; they could re-open the tunnel after they took Guri.
But that tunnel was a likely place for a sizeable force of Mosh warriors to shelter themselves from the rays of the solar storm. Corporal Wine laid his main gun on the target, Colonel Raper confirmed the point of aim through the optical sites, and Corporal Wine fired the particle cannon. The face of the hill above the tunnel bulged, burst outward and then a landslide buried any evidence there had ever been a tunnel. Trooper Bier backed the Lion tank a good twenty meters, to put plenty of masking between the tank and the enemy.
The rest of the command group moved up in support of Galen’s tank and stopped. The task force units sprang from the woods, across open fields and around the right side of the hill that had the ruined tunnel, kept going around the outskirts of Guri. Rolling farmland gave way to great, flat stretches of fertile fields. Resistance was futile at best. The tanks barely slowed down as they returned fire from weak ambushes. Pop-shots mostly, weak opportunity fire from Mosh light tanks that just happened to be in a position to notice the task force’s movement.
The Stallion Battalion established checkpoints along the route, a tank and a squad of Capellan Space Marines set up along every kilometer. The Cavalry Squadron’s four Troops closed in and secured the objectives designated as the firing points for the Ajax guns. Mechanized and Light Tank Companies came in to re-enforce them, and then a company of Hercules tanks moved in to secure those areas and the Cavalry Troops set to the task of securing lines of communication all the way back to the Kyok Forest. The Hellcat tank battalion remained in the forest, keeping the route of egress open. Seemed silly under the circumstances, but Tad insisted. Galen and his task force now waited for the arrival of the five Ajax guns, waiting for the Mandarins to capture Guri so that the Ajax guns could be brought forward by rail.