Tracerfire sparkled of the hull of the LAV as Sayeeda dived for cover. As she rolled her helmet visor came alive with carrots that pinpointed the position of hostile muzzle flash. Taya screamed and threw herself to the ground covering her head in panic. That wasn’t a great reaction in a crisis but it wasn’t an uncommon one in ones first exposure to a firefight. A pair of rockets leaped from concealed positions among the rocks toward the tank. They were too close for the tanks plasma guns to swat, even if they had been set to air defense but a section of the massive vehicles hull exploded outwards in a sleet of steel pellets. The missile defense system essentially detonated one of dozens of integral claymores, which sprayed ball bearings outwards in a cone the computer calculated as an intercept for incoming warheads. One of the missiles exploded in the air and the other one vereed wildly as a section of its steering fin was cut away, mushrooming against the side of the mesa and raining down rocks on the combatants below. A flash of blue bright enough that it would have burned Sayeeda’s eyes slashed across the sky touching one of the APCs and converting it into a fireball of burning metal, fuel and men. A second lance stabbed towards the tank a second later, but the user must have been using a targeting laser because the tanks sand caster fired, spraying a sheet of debris into the air. The lance struck the cloud of gravel and liberated its energy in an explosive cyan fireball that showered the tank with flecks of burning rock but did no real damage. The ambushers had probably expected the rockets to take out the tank and the second lance had been meant for the other APC but luck had been with Canek. The surviving APC cut its fans and hammered to the dirt like the thirty ton anvil it was. The side panels sprang open and Canek’s mercenaries unassed in record time, opening fire at where they saw, or thought they saw enemies. Sayeeda belatedly realised that the fact they were placing a net of sensors in a particular pattern meant that the enemy was able to predict where they be and lay an ambush. Still an ambush had to work to be effective. “AID,” she called, queuing the low level artificial intelligence in her helmet. “Slave vehicle guns to my threat indicator.” The mounted guns on the lvl slewed and began to rip out short two or three round bursts into the mesas, targeting the carroted threats on her visual display. Men tumbled down the slope missing heads or limb from the stabbing plasma discharges. Another LAV exploded in a shower of shrapnel as a rocket arced into its hull, blasting the ammunition and combustibles inside to flaming showers of debris in a fraction of an instant. Bullets wicked the dirt around her lifting puffs of dirt like geysers. Staying next to a vehicle that would draw heavy weapons fire was a bad move and there was no way they could get the LAV back into the air. Even now its hull sparkled with bullet impacts even as the heavy weapons continued to deal automated death. Leaping to her feet she grabbed the cowering Taya and half dragged her the ten meters to where a cluster of boulders provided cover. A ragged man in desert garb rosed from concealment swinging a rifle to bear. Sayeeda cut him down with a three round burst that sent his head and arms flying in separate arc. With a world ending crash the tank fired its main gun. The twenty five centimeter plasma cannon hit the mesa with the force of a thousand freight trains, converting a divot twice the tanks own mass to gaseous rock. If the LAV hadn’t already been grounded the concussion would have flipped the vehicle like a tiddlywink. Men were screaming and burned as the bullets and plasma bolts howled back and forth. One of Canek’s infantry feel to the ground, his arm shorn away at the shoulder by enemy fire. The plasma lance stabbed again, this time the gunner had taken the targeting laser offline and it carved a glittering scar across the tanks bowslow. All three of the LAVs guns converged on the shooter who had just made himself the biggest threat on the battlefield in the computers silicon brained opinion. “Neil!” Sayeeda yelled, standing up and riping another burst uphill. “We have to get some…” the tanks gun crashed again and the concussion dropped her on her ass behind the rocks before cooling drops of magma reigned from the sky.