Lin Cuo did not wait for the General Staff to hold another full operational briefing.
In real-world artillery operations, once the fire plan, coordinates, fuzes, firing arcs, ammunition allocations, and authorization procedures had been prepared in advance, the artillery could open fire as soon as the targets entered the designated area. There was no need to wait for the enemy to form up, much less for both sides to introduce themselves first.
"Notify the artillery groups. Prepare to execute the Heaven's Gate One Fire Plan."
The order spread through the theater data links. Along the southeastern side of the predicted strike ellipse, the first artillery positions capable of covering the landing site disengaged their safeties simultaneously. The system also transmitted BETA data and designations to the systems of every deployed combat unit.
By then, the gun crews had already posted their firing tables, weather corrections, and charge numbers beside their guns. The loaders rammed the first high-explosive shells into the breeches. The gun commanders needed only to confirm the coordinates and fuzes.
Thirty-seven seconds later, the first 155-millimeter shells left the barrels.
The positions were at different distances, and their shells had different flight times. The fire direction center had arranged the firing sequence in advance according to their trajectories: the most distant artillery groups fired first, and the nearest fired last. The first salvo from more than seven hundred guns covering the landing zone struck within almost the same ten-second window.
Several black fissures had just opened along the northern edge of the landing site. Before the first Tank-class had fully crawled out, proximity fuzes detonated in succession overhead, sending masses of fragments straight down.
Hundreds of Tank-class were sliced open through their backs. Pale tissue and dark red fluid sprayed across the landing unit's ablated shell. Those behind