40. Tornadoes Destroy the Artillery Positions

Tornadoes Destroy the Artillery Positions

Two high-altitude drones recorded the army’s first major battle on its own soil in decades with mechanical indifference.

Images were transmitted in real time to at least seven different facilities for preliminary analysis, from theater command to headquarters in the capital, to civilian contractors, and even farther still to the drone operators themselves.

Computers and humans evaluated firing accuracy and damage before sending the review back to mission control. After the self-propelled guns completed twenty-two of the thirty-nine salvos supported by their onboard capacity, the bombardment ceased.

Of more than one hundred thousand enemy targets on the battlefield, only six hundred and seventy-one had been destroyed.

Of the five targeted enemy structures—including four production centers and the main fortification—not one had suffered more than superficial damage, despite more than one hundred confirmed hits on each.

Analysis of the damage patterns indicated that the structures were not built from black stone or any similar ancient material, but from solid steel. Because their armor had never been penetrated, the total thickness could not even be estimated.

This caused severe concern at every level of military leadership for several reasons.

The enemy’s supernatural powers and the alien creatures that composed their forces were difficult to understand. Simple durability, however, was easy to grasp.

In the opening salvos of one battle, the self-propelled artillery had fired half the number of shells ever fired in the entire service history of that model, and the enemy had not even blinked.

They would run out of ammunition before truly hurting the enemy.

Level-Two artillery units fifty-five kilometers from the enemy base received orders to open fire. At the same time, authorization requests for the allocation of “special” munitions were moving up the chain of command.

Forty-seven multiple launch rocket systems and three times as many newer HIMARS-type systems had been deployed on several low hills fifty-five kilometers from the enemy base.

At that distance, considering the enemy’s known capabilities, fortified artillery positions were deemed unnecessary.

The units still had some ground troops and more numerous air escorts. Most armed helicopters, considered “unsafe” after the enemy’s lightning attacks, maintained overwatch from what was believed to be a safe range.

No one truly expected the rocket artillery carriers known as “commander sniper rifles” to come under attack, but caution was still preferable.

Each multiple launch rocket system carried twelve M30 or M31 rockets. The former carried hundreds of submunitions apiece, enough for twelve rockets to cover nearly half a square kilometer and destroy infantry, unarmored vehicles, or civilian structures. The latter could deliver a two-hundred-pound warhead with considerable precision, damaging even lightly fortified bunkers.

Both types of rockets had maximum speeds above Mach 2, and all twelve rockets could be fired within a single minute.

The HIMARS systems carried the same types of rockets, though each vehicle carried “only” six. In total, that made one thousand four hundred and ten guided rockets.

During the past several days of preparation, given enemy numbers and the absolute priority of the conflict, enough ammunition for multiple full reloads had been delivered to every unit.

All told, this represented almost four years of the nation’s rocket-artillery production, committed to the first modern war ever fought on home soil.

Since the older, lighter artillery had proven ineffective, and aircraft were gravely threatened by the enemy’s weather manipulation, heavier conventional weapons were the only option left.

Because if these weapons failed as well, nuclear authorization procedures were already underway.

When the first true guided rockets appeared, a thin smile touched Legion Commander Mott’s pale, bloodless…