Chapter 32: Burned Be The Ground

The first mortar shell pinged out of its launcher exactly two hours from when Chad had given the order. Tux watched it trace out its lazy arc across the slightly-too-blue Drammal sky and idly wondered if any lizard had seen it yet. As it slammed into the compound's shield releasing the small thermo-nuclear fireball contained within, Tux gave the order to fire at will and all of a sudden the air around him was filled with the heavy static generated by the mass drivers and the thrumming of half kilogram slugs being fired two a second from the repeating rail gun. The feeble Union shield gave out quickly under this sustained fire and just as Tux was giving the order to fire the second mortar shell a new sound was added to the cacophony around them. The sharp cracks of high powered gamma cannons ploughing into the rocks around them signalled the Union's reply.

The fight continued like this for around ten minutes with only one Orfine casualty one of the young snipers, GorGor, a Private in the O.A.A.-Marines, took a gamma burst to the chest and now lay smoking to one side while the mortar loader took up his gun and continued picking off lizards. Then without any sort of warning two ships shimmered into existence high above the Union compound but tearing towards it at terrific speed. The Photon in front dropped its particle bombs and the venom following released a ball of poly-acid.

The results were devastating; a large section of the eastern wall broke off and was then covered in an acid so strong that Tux could see the still standing section of wall slowly shrinking even from two hundred metres. The gamma ray fire around the Orfine troops dropped off to only a trickle as soon as the two ships struck. The ships weren't recloaking after firing though, and for some reason no fire seemed to be directed up at them. All of a sudden something shrieked over there heads from no-where heading in the direction of the two quickly distancing fighter. Tux turned from his Mass Driver just in time to see a union Tashak-ma accelerating after Leader of Darkness and his own photon at a rate which would make a prism look sluggish. By now the fire around them had dropped off to nothing and Tux ordered the two snipers to advance towards the base and check for any more resistance.