Armored Tears Read Online Free PDF Page B

gunner.
    "All
units, double-check your fire missions and open fire. Single rounds."
    Five
main guns went off, raising dust clouds for dozens of meters around the tanks.
Seconds ticked by, and then the ground near the gate building began to erupt
into geysers of pulverized concrete as the rounds impacted. Some of the tanks'
main guns twitched onto new targets and fired a second round, and a few seconds
later, a second series of blasts showered down on their targets.
    "Good
shooting, Nutmeg!" came a shouted call from one of the Cinnamon units.
"More fire missions coming up."
    "Roger,"
Tara answered.
    There
was suddenly movement off to the left of her tank; a burst of displaced dirt
and sand. Tara slewed her view over and got a brief glimpse of a missile pod
ripple firing its dozen missile load into the sky, less than a hundred meters
from her tank!
    At
the same moment, the tank's laser detectors went off, screaming alarm as a
guidance laser illuminated the tank from behind.
    The
automatic aerosol grenades thumped and began to envelope the War-Hammer in a
fog that was opaque to laser energy, but Tara had time to realize that the
laser-homing missiles would reach her tank before the aerosol had time to cover
it.
    "Driver,
reverse! Evasive!" she managed to shout.
      There was a sudden crash that made the
seventy-five ton mass of the War-Hammer lurch, and Tara thought she saw a
momentary white flash. Then it was past, and she became aware of a growing,
searing pain, rising to unbearable intensity. She couldn't even tell where it
hurt, but she could hear someone screaming. Smoke filled the turret fighting
compartment, and a second later she felt the sudden pressure as her survival
pod inflated around her and then the massive jolt as it launched her out of the
tank.
    The
inflated pod's bouncing impact on the desert floor was soft in comparison. The
survival pod deflated, its job done, and Tara drew a breath. Someone screamed,
shrill and violently loud, close by, and it took her a second to realize it was
her. She was lying on her side, drawing ragged breaths and screaming despite
all her will to stop herself. Some of the crew of one of 3rd Platoon's tanks
had dismounted and were running towards her.
    The
pain was unbearable, too strong for her to know where it was coming from, and
it wasn't dying down at all. Tara tried to look herself over to see where she
was hurt, and suddenly she had no will to even try to stop screaming.
    Around
her, her company's tanks were still firing, the deafening concussion of their
big guns momentarily drowning out her screams. In the valley below, 41
megajoule shots were pulverizing the UEN positions, and Arcadian infantry was
surging forward, moving fast to take the gate structure and its control
facilities.  
    But
she saw none of it. All she could focus on, as she screamed, were the charred
bones protruding from the bloody stumps of her legs, raggedly burned off above
the knees.

 
 

4.

 
    Lieutenant-colonel
Tara O'Connor blinked back the unbidden memory. She still got episodes from
time to time; flash-backs to seven years ago. This had been a bad one, she
knew, an almost total recall, so intense she had almost been able to feel the
searing pain again.
    She
shook her head and let herself come back to the here and now; it was about as
far from the fighting compartment of a tank as could be imagined. The sound of
laughter and splashing water filled her ears and the smell of chlorinated water
and lush, decorative plants scented the air.
    Tara
let her eyes focus on the crystal blue water of the swimming pool, and felt her
shoulders relax. At least she hadn't screamed or cried out; something that had
happened with embarrassing frequency in the first few years.
    These
episodes never seemed to happen when she had something to do, and they didn't,
thank god, haunt her dreams. But relaxing and letting her mind wander sometimes
brought them on. Even so, she decided, she wasn't going to head back in.