Chapter 4

The Slayers broke camp and prepared to begin the first major day of their invasion. They blasted away the opposition to form a column 80 miles wide! John was afraid that this would be too unwieldy, but everybody else wanted to give it a try, so try they did. They met a few pockets of stiff opposition, which they suppressed with the gunships and mortars, not because the tanks needed the help, but to keep the rest of the troops happy with something to contribute.

The grunts were getting pretty pissed off, they just were not needed (in their opinion, not wanted) in this phase of the operation. They really wouldn't be needed until the Slayers hit a large town and had to reduce it house by house. Of course, the X-Ray lasers could handle anything if there was no concern about collateral damage, but the grunts were needed if they wanted to keep down the number of civilian casualties.

The Slayers started their sweep up the highway toward the capital with their usual contempt for the enemy. On this day, they had no reason to change their opinion. The Militarists just had nothing that could compete with the heavy tanks and their lasers. The defenders tried massing troop and dispersing troops, neither one made any difference to the rate of advance of the tanks.

Back at staff, John said to Jim, "I'm concerned about us trying to advance on an 80-mile front. If the Militarists should come up with an adequate defense against the tanks, the wings are too far away for us to support them adequately. We need to cut back the front to 40 miles and keep half the tanks in reserve to cover any problems."

Jim replied, "I'm inclined to agree with you. Go ahead and pull them in. The tanks on the extreme ends of the line don't have anything to shoot at, anyway. The civilians are not exactly welcoming us with open arms, but they aren't resisting us, either. A little caution would probably be a good idea right now.

"On a different subject, what do you think of assigning a squad of grunts to a particular tank? That way, they could say, 'that's my tank.' I hope that will alleviate some of the resentment we are seeing among the grunts about their lack of action."

"That sounds like a good idea. We can't put an unarmored squad transport up with a tank; that would lead to a disastrous slaughter but the APCs would be ideal for that kind of job. I think I remember reading about that being done back on Earth in ancient times. We can give it a try as soon as Jane delivers enough APCs. I'll give her a call and ask her to try to step up production until we have equal numbers of tanks and APCs."

Jim said, "We also need to give some thought to deciding what kind of war we want to fight. I understand that we were limited in our choices at first, but, now, we should be selective in the jobs we take. We need to decide if we are a major war or a minor skirmish kind of operation. Personally, I lean toward the minor skirmish option. What do you think?"

"That depends on how you define 'minor skirmish.' We don't have the human resources to mount a large army, that's obvious. But, we can fight some large campaigns if they are of the right type. This sort of battle is not a problem, because we have much better training and equipment. If the Militarists had spent the right amount of effort in training and equipment, we could never compete with them. I do agree that we are more emotionally inclined to be a police force than an army. I'll seriously look into the problem and get back to you."

"Meanwhile," said Jim, "I'll contact Jane and tell her to stop building tanks and to concentrate on APCs until we get parity."

The push up the road to the Militarists' capital was going so well that even the tanks crews were getting bored. Then, that all changed in a flash! Three tanks simply disappeared in monumental explosions! The Militarists had finally developed a weapon to counter the tanks!

Militarist troops poured into the gaps left by the destroyed tanks and attacked the unsuspecting Slayers on their troop transports. The boredom was gone! Now, this was the kind of fight much beloved by the Saunaians: hand-to-hand, with much dodging and running about. The fighting was mostly individual, with a few small units being engaged as one. This was what the average grunt had signed up for, no more boredom, but the excitement of personal combat.

The Militarists had found that the Slayers would not shoot their X-Ray lasers if there was a chance of hitting their own troops, so the trick to neutralizing the tanks was to get in close to the Slayers and not to give the tanks an isolated target. They had rediscovered guerrilla warfare!

The Slayers' tanks could be destroyed by large mines or bombs placed in their preferred route of travel and exploded by remote control at the proper moment. Once the tanks were out of the way, the war degenerated into the old fashioned infantry slugging it out, man to man.

The Slayers still had a tremendous advantage in man to man fighting because of nearly a whole lifetime of doing that for pleasure. If a Militarist showed his head, he was done for, but the ambush was a good neutralizer. The Slayer advance was slowed to the rate a man could walk and fight, but it was still an advance.

The APCs, the mortars, and the gunships now came into their own. The tactics fell into tripping a Militarist ambush and then clobbering it with overwhelming destruction, once the enemy was located. The APCs moved in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the obvious bomb sites and delivered grunts to the next likely ambush location. Mortar transports were brought up to provide covering fire and the gunships were alerted to an impending clash.