The tank thumped as its main cannon fired. Kat clutched onto the harness strapping her into her seat as the world vibrated around her, the hum of the tank’s antigrav engines picking up into a whine as it compensated for the force of the shot.

On the monitor in front of Baker, the slug skewered an armored personnel carrier, punching a fist sized hole in the front of the vehicle and annihilating its rear half in a gout of flame and plasma. Lasers flickered, flashing dark purple as they ionized the air in their wake.

A pair of anti-tank missiles launched from a nearby infantry fighting vehicle erupted into flame, venting their fury into the open air as the point defense turrets punctured their fuel tanks.

Kat felt her body get thrown into the side, webbing biting into her shoulder, as Baker wrenched the tank into an impossibly tight turn. A pair of NeoSyne tanks jolted over a dune, spraying sand into the air as their turrets tracked toward Kat’s vehicle.

One of their opponents exploded as another 3445 tank’s main cannon punched through its armor like it was tissue paper, but the other returned fire.

Kat jerked forward, her ears ringing as the armor penetrating round crashed off of their tank’s armor, sending their hovering vehicle sliding forward as it bled the attack’s momentum.

“Capacitor recharged!” Dan shouted, slamming his joystick to the right to rotate the tank’s main turret. It thumped and the enemy tank erupted into flames.

“Where are you Heather?” Baker practically shouted into their mic. “It’s only Sam and I here shoring up our left flank, the APEX’s should have taken down their infantry formations by now. We need your support and we need it about a minute ago.”

A jet soared toward them, launching a pair of missiles at the two wildly weaving tanks. On the monitor, the beams of ionized air stabbed upward as the automated defenses went to work. The four lasers on their vehicle pulsed twice, each burst barely lasting a third of a second, and the missiles exploded.

On a nearby dune the other tank’s point defense lasers targeted the plane itself. Streaks of dark purple flashed through the morning light, causing the air itself to boil as they carved fistsized holes out of the underside of the oncoming aircraft.

The enemy vehicle shook as the lasers transformed chunks of its armor into balls of glowing plasma. Barely a second later, one of the defensive turrets found the plane’s fuel tank, transforming the sophisticated war machine into an expanding mass of flame and twisted machinery.

Baker pulled their control sticks to the side, halting their tank and spinning it in a narrow circle. Almost a dozen infantry fighting vehicles led by a quartet of tanks and flanked by at least twenty infantry in powered armor whirred into view.

“It looks like we have some unwelcome company trying to sneak past us,” they shouted, fiddling with the controls to send the hovertank into an erratic sideways skid.

“I see ‘em,” Daniel responded, touching the stud on his turret control and impaling one of the opposing tanks on a magnetically propelled rod of hypersonic metal. The armored vehicle didn’t explode, but the round stopped it dead, transferring enough energy through a small hole in its plating to turn everything in its cap into flash-fried barbeque.

“Switching the secondary gun to smoke now,” he continued, his tone calm but tense. Kat heard a whirring click above her as the machinery built into the turret shifted the weapon’s ammunition feed.

The tank’s secondary gun wasn’t much compared to the heavy magnetic accelerators that made up its main cannon. Rather than high powered penetrators, it could rapid fire larger but slower rocket propelled rounds that would deliver different payloads onto the battlefield.

The 3445 hadn’t had much time to experiment with some of the more exotic loadouts such as seeking flechettes, and plasma spheres, but the tubes labeled ‘armor piercing,’ ‘smoke,’ and ‘high explosive' were fairly self evident.

Autocannon rounds from the infantry fighting vehicles crunched and whined as they ricocheted off of the tank’s armor, doing little more than buffeting Kat back and forth in her restraints as Baker halted their momentum on a dime and reversed their machine’s course. Overhead, their secondary shells burst, dropping a curtain of thick white and grey over the battlefield.

Both sides had scanners that could pierce the smoke enough to tell where the enemy generally was without providing enough data to aim any of the heavier armor penetrating weapons needed to take down a tank. In short, it bought the two 3445 vehicles enough time to recharge the capacitors on their main cannons.

The autocannons on the infantry fighting vehicles couldn’t do much unless they directly hit one of the tiny laser apertures built into the hovertank’s armor, but the NeoSyne tanks were a different story. The stallesp modified armor pressing into Kat’s back could take a round or two from a normal tank’s main gun in the same area, but from what they’d been able to glean from the barely comprehensible engineering reports on the vehicles, five or more shots clustered around the same spot had the potential to penetrate.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be all that much of a concern. The new tanks reloaded quicker, were slightly more accurate, and there wasn’t much on Earth that could survive more than one hit from them. Against equal numbers, the hybrid tanks would turn Earth’s finest into a pile of smoking wreckage before they had a proper chance to respond.

That said, the battle today was lopsided beyond belief. Baker’s best estimate was that they were outnumbered ten to one by the NeoSyne army that had barely beat them to the crash site, and it was only a matter of time before reinforcements and Tri Holding’s forces turned the entire warzone into abject chaos.

A vehicle burst through the wall of smoke only for the other hover tank to practically rip it in half with its main cannon

Baker cursed, wrenching Kat sideways in her webbing as their vehicle slewed to the side a half second before the three remaining enemy tanks barreled through the smokescreen, their turrets spinning to track the other 3445 vehicle.

“Sam,” they growled into the intercom. “Main cannon rounds are for main battle tanks. Use the AP shells from your secondary gun on the infantry fighting vehicles if you must, but otherwise ignore them. They’re mostly just here to harass and distract us.”

Their tank shook as the gunner fired its main cannon once again. The sleek spear of metal hit one of the NeoSyne vehicles square in its side, shredding the thinner armor and triggering a secondary explosion as it overcooked the enemy tank’s ammunition.

The two survivors fired, one saboted round carving a shallow divot out of the other hover tank’s armor before being deflected upward by its smooth curves. The other shell slammed into the sand just below the tank, a shot that would have mission-killed an ordinary tank by destroying its treads only served to spray sand over the prow and gravity projectors of the newer model.

Then, the hair stood up on the back of Kat’s neck as a gunship flew overhead, the electromagnetic field created by its anti-gravity projectors sending her nerves tingling. Some of the armored infantry began to open fire at it as they emerged from the wall of smoke alongside the smaller NeoSyne vehicles, but a glowing field of force stopped their bullets dead.

The gunship returned fire, a quartet of downward facing mag cannons turning the remaining NeoSyne tanks into smoking craters. A half second later, a dozen or so glowing balls sprayed out from the bottom of the hovering warship, at about head level before they struck the ball.

Baker’s viewscreen flickered, dimming to protect their eyesight as the electromagnetic containment holding the pressurized spheres of plasma together all cut out in the same millisecond, turning the landscape into a glowing hellscape.

A second later, the light died down to a more manageable level, revealing a rolling hill of bubbling glass, studded with the partially molten remains of the NeoSyne vehicles.

“Targets neutralized, but there’s another formation coming right behind it.” A woman’s voice spoke calmly from the intercom. “Looks like at least ten tanks and a pair of self-propelled artillery pieces coupled with infantry and a drone carrier. Please advise on our next steps, Baker.”

Baker leaned forward tapping another set of buttons on the console before responding. “This is Baker and I have Heather overhead, I’m gonna need Mike, Kim, Richards, and Whisper to shift to the left flank to relieve me. I’m also going to need an update on the fortifications surrounding the crashed ship.”

“This is Merrimac,” Davis replied. “The stallesp ship is secure. NeoSyne is trying to hit us pretty hard, but at this point we’re just using their burned out tanks as cover. We’ve god Danner in a gunship overhead, and he’s keeping their forces thin enough that we can handle anything that leaks through.”

Baker glanced back at Kat and she nodded a wordless reply.

“Then I’m on my way to you with the package Merrimac,” Baker answered, shifting their gloved hands to spin the tank to the side. “Just make sure you have an engineering team assembling those long range anti-ballistic pylons. It’s only a matter of time before someone realizes that we’re winning and tries to play sore loser by wiping out the entire battlefield.”

“Agreed,” Davis said tightly, the thump of cannon fire audible through his connection. “I have teams assembling all three of them now.”

Baker grunted, pressing down on a pedal below their right foot as they pushed the tank’s control sticks forward. Below Kat, the anti-grav engines’ hum transformed into a whine as the vehicle took off, making a target of itself as it lifted itself above the desert and zipped away toward the crashed starship.

A light flashed on Baker’s console as a surface to air missile targeted their flying tank only for one of the twenty point defense lasers on the nearby gunship to shred the projectile before it could even properly pick up speed.

Kat turned to Whip, putting a hand on her knee to get the other woman’s attention. She jumped slightly at the contact, only calming when Whippoorwill looked at Kat.

“Masks on Chiffon,” Kat whispered, patting Whip’s knee. “We’ll be landing in just a minute, and we need to get under cover as soon as possible. Remember, the second we get inside the ship, we’re going to find a spot for you to hide out. I know you’re not a fan, but this is a mission for me and me alone.”

Kat reached under her seat, grabbing her infiltration suit’s hood before slipping it over her head. The tank shook around her as Baker performed some sort of evasive maneuver before beginning their descent.

On the viewscreen below her was a scene out of a science fiction flick. A loose, double skirmish line of APEX suits darted through the burning wreckage of a NeoSyne tank battalion. Near the back of their formation four hover tanks rushed back and forth in a complicated dance of evasive maneuvers as they pounded away at the inexorable wave of metal that was trying to submerge them.

By now the corporate general had to know that the 3445 had superior equipment and defensive positions. Whoever they were, they didn’t care, content to try and bury them in lives and equipment in a vain attempt to run the mercenary company out of ammunition.

Unfortunately for them, the stallesp hybrid equipment didn’t really require much by way of logistics. All of the war machines were powered by exotic proto-elements generated by the antimatter reactor, each of them carrying enough power to operate for at least a decade or so straight.

As for ammunition? The lasers didn’t need any, and the magnetic accelerators in the APEX rifles and tank cannons fired small metal tubes at incredibly high speeds. Each vehicle carried at least five hundred rounds.

Only the rapid fire secondary guns on the tanks and the plasma bombs on the gunships used heavy enough ammunition that the 3445 would have supply concerns. Even then, before sabotaging the Mesa Verde facility, they had made sure to pull the equivalent of four semi trailers full of replacement parts, machinery to manufacture ammunition, and tanks full of the needed isotopes.

Unless NeoSyne and Tri attacked with enough force to force their way through the defensive cordon around the looming, crashed battlecruiser, a war of attrition would only serve to bleed them dry.

The whine of the anti-gravity engines faded away as Baker touched them down. The tank shook once as the main cannon fired, spearing a mobile mortar at extreme range.

“Hold fire!” Baker shouted, pressing a button to open the hatch atop the tank. Whip scurried out first, crossbow in hand. Just as Kat put both her hands on either side of the porthole, Baker reached out, tapping her on the calf.

“Good luck out there girl,” they nodded toward the smoking wreckage of the stallesp battlecruiser. “Keep yourself safe, and make sure to stab one of the mole bastards for me.”

She gave him a quick thumbs up before pulling herself out of the tank. Whip waved to her from the nearby sand. Kat slid down the smooth side of the tank, jumping at the last second to land next to her friend.

The two of them jogged away from Baker’s tank as it hummed back to life, charging toward the hazy battlefield. In front of them the dark metal of the battlecruiser towered overhead. Even half-buried in the desert, it was at least four stories high. Kat had no idea how thick its armor was, but there were at least three cracks in the warship’s shell in sight that she was sure she could crawl into.

The crash hadn’t treated the vessel kindly, but Dorrik had been confident that there would be at least a couple of survivors, so Kat wasn’t going to take chances. She reached down and pulled the pulser from where its sheath was strapped to her calf. It was far from her favorite weapon, but Kat was more than willing to stomach some unfamiliarity if it would ensure that she could punch through alien body armor.

“How is the cypher working?” Kat asked, scanning the battle-scarred flanks of the spaceship. “Is Dorrik’s little toy working, or are we just out of luck?”

“Well I have some good news and bad,” Whip responded as an oval of armor slid away from the side of the spaceship, almost a story off of the sand. “The good news is that the cypher works. I have access to their systems and it doesn’t feel like there’s anything actively trying to stop me when I log in.”

“What’s the bad news?” Kat questioned hesitantly, her eyes trained on the entrance to the warship.

“The stallesp systems are fragmented,” Whippoorwill replied with a sigh. “Some of them survived the crash intact, others are scrambled. Worse, there are some dark spots in the network. I don’t even know enough about how their network was structured to know what should be there.”

“So that will slow us down a bit,” Kat said thoughtfully. “Once we both get inside the ship, I’ll need you to stay in touch with me about those dark zones. It’ll take a little more work for us to keep track of everything, but-”

“Sorry,” Whip cut in. “It’s not going to work. I don’t know what the stallesp put in the ship’s walls, but my smartpanel has almost no range. I could barely trigger that airlock. I’m going to need to be in there with you. It’s the only way for me to provide support.”

“No!” Kat shouted, shaking her head. “We talked about this Whip! It’s too dangerous in there for you to come with. You don’t have enough combat training to deal with the stallesp that we’ll be running into.”

“And that’s exactly why you can’t go alone, Kat,” Whippoorwill replied firmly, crossing her arms. “We came to an agreement when we thought that I would be able to set up shop and help you from the rear. The situation has changed, and you need my help. I’ll let you take the lead, but I’m not going to let you put yourself at risk just because you’re afraid for my safety.”

“But-” Kat began, a complex knot of emotions tangled and churning in her chest.

“I will not let myself become a burden Kat,” Whippoorwill hissed at her. “I don’t care who I have to kill or what mountains I have to move, but I will keep pace with you. You can’t do this alone, we both know that, and I’m not going to let you try.”

Kat’s throat bobbed once, swallowing her response. For a long moment they stood together in silence in the shadow of the downed spaceship. In the distance a 3445 gunship fired another spread of glowing orbs into a mass of NeoSyne tanks. They detonated, pelting the two of them with a dry hot wind that pulled at their infiltration suits.

“Okay Whip,” Kat finally answered. “Just stay safe. After everything I… I just don’t want to lose you too.”