When they first arrived, Ricard had wanted nothing more than to go down into the tunnels to escape the corrupted crystal mounds on the surface. Once they were in the tunnels, he couldn’t wait to get back to the surface, away from the Munican automated guns and even more corrupted crystals. After they came up for air and were greeted by heavy gunfire, he realized that their first and biggest mistake was launching this mission in the first place. Nowhere was even relatively safe, now.

It could be a lot worse. While they were under fire, their attackers hadn’t landed a single direct hit yet. Ricard guessed the rocks and uneven terrain around the tunnel entrance was providing cover for both sides. With one crucial exception, the enemy could only shake them up for now.

“It’s just one drake! Shoot it down!” Lieutenant Rog was trying his best to coordinate the 203rd’s anti air tanks against the Munican dive bomber coming toward them, but shells and rockets were coming down on them from every direction. In all the chaos, it was a wonder he was able to keep track of it himself.

The anti air kept up the barrage despite being rocked by nearby explosions, but the dragon-like plane managed to release its entire payload, receiving mostly superficial damage as it pulled out of its dive. The wounded drake left a trail of black smoke and dread behind as Ricard and so many others braced for the bombs. When they came down, the blasts were far, far behind them. Rog never gave the order for all units to report in. No one was anywhere near ground zero.

Ricard came up through the commander’s hatch to see the rising smoke a fifth of a mile behind them. “What, did he choke?”

“He missed?” Nicholas called up from inside Chaser’s hull.

“By a country mile,” Ricard said, cocking an eyebrow at the dark column in the sky. “Something’s not right here.”

The sensor team’s report was the missing piece of the puzzle. “We think the tunnel’s collapsing, sir. Checking with the rear for confirmation. Over.”

If the tunnel collapsed, they couldn’t retreat from this attack underground. Ricard winced, realizing that dive bomber hadn’t missed his target at all. In fact, he may have doomed them all if the sensor team’s suspicions turned out to be true. They weren’t so far behind enemy lines that they couldn’t make it back to their allies with the fuel they had left, but they certainly weren’t going to fight their way back overland with enemies in every direction and no aerial reconnaissance.

Ricard had a feeling–a terrible sinking feeling that the Municans had an exceptionally large division of their own armored vehicles rumbling towards them at that very moment.

Lieutenant Rog swept the whole battalion with new orders, instructing the scouts to disperse and find the 203rd a way out of the area. The anti air tanks were to distribute themselves evenly throughout the formation of tanks as they formed a large defensive circle. Lastly, the light and medium tanks were to line up their shots carefully, and try to pick off any Municans that got too close.

The crystal mounds that subtly plagued them at the Cordaean ingress weren’t quite so numerous here; at least, Ricard thought to himself, maneuvering wasn’t going to be difficult. He slipped back into the turret and closed the hatch. “Alright, Nick, we hold here until one of the scouts finds a gap we can slip through.”

“So hull-down,” Nickolas began, before something occurred to him. “Hey wait, earth hull-down or metal hull-down?”

Ricard smiled bitterly, easily recalling how wildly uneven the terrain outside was. There were plenty of spots to dig in and wait, but few of them offered a good enough angle to shoot at anything that came their way. Metal hull-down it was.

“Chaser, get those arms deployed and cover your body. Then ease into our slot in the formation.”

Chaser rapidly unfolded its arms and the skirt armor attached to them as it began moving. As numerous tanks began to form a heavily armored circle around their logistics vehicles, more and more eyes looked to the sky. The 203rd’s formation would protect them from a good deal of the sporadic, random shells coming in, but from the sky, everyone knew they were starting to resemble an enormous bullseye. With all of their support units bunched up, a well placed airstrike would devastate them. It was up to the scout cars to find them a route out of this engagement, and fast.

To be continued