Disclaimer – Everything either does belong to Joss or it should. I’m just borrowing his shiny ‘verse for a while.

The 21st Lancers belong to the British Army so I’m borrowing them too. I hope they don’t mind.

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“Attack the enemy where he is unprepared, and appear where you are not expected. These are the keys to victory”

The Art of War - Sun Tzu (500BC)

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Independent Army Rangers Team “Valley Wolves” – Toulouse – 2522AD

The Brimstone opened up a split second before the mortar, the distinctive “ka-pung” of the automatic grenade launcher easily recognisable amongst the harsh crack of the Gauss Rifles as it rapidly volleyed ten high-explosive grenades in quick succession into the remaining lightly armoured 4x4s at the front of the column of vehicles rending them apart in sheets of flame and setting off secondary explosions a some of the ammunition aboard cooked off.

With the Alliance vehicles so bunched up the mortar crew rapid fired a dozen rounds further down the column before they could scatter. Heaney, doing a fair job of aiming despite a decade out of practice, dropping four of the rounds right on top of the column sending a pair of tracked APC’s, another 4x4 and a lightly armoured six-wheel truck that must have been hauling ammunition sky high. The latter explosion completely totalled another APC and an AIFV which had been in front and behind it.

Infantry began to bail out of vehicles in considerable disarray with some firing wildly back at the Rangers. Gauss Rifle fire began picking them off as Jenkins fired another clip of high-explosive into the column then switched to the machine-gun scything into Alliance Federals as they dismounted. Mal, Zoe and the other riflemen joined in knocking down targets as they appeared their Gauss-Rifle slugs leaving harsh sonic cracks, as well as odd visible distortion patterns through any smoke they went through, en-route.

The column began to scatter from the road into the fields on both sides, they’d taken too