The Assault-class creatures crossed the first marker line, and ninety main battle tanks opened fire simultaneously from positions on both flanks. Their 125-millimeter shells struck from side angles of forty-five to ninety degrees, punching into the backs of their necks, the joints connecting their torsos, and the relatively soft tissue at their rear.
A dozen or so Assault-class creatures in the first rank lost their balance at high speed and tumbled into the mass behind them. The concealed TQ-21s immediately rose from behind cover, their seventy-millimeter Linear Cannons firing repeatedly into the exposed backs, while their thirty-five-millimeter autocannons swept the Tank-class creatures pouring through the gaps.
For the first dozen seconds, human firepower really did work.
Assault-class creatures died, Assault-class creatures had their forelimbs blasted off by shells, and Tank-class creatures broke apart in swaths of shredded flesh under autocannon fire. Then more emerged from behind the dust.
The icon for the 2nd Squadron of the 7th Division's 1st Infantry Regiment went from green to yellow, then red, as more than three hundred Assault-class creatures slammed into its two-kilometer-wide defensive sector at once.
When the first tank took a head-on hit, its fifty-ton-plus hull slid backward as though struck by a runaway train. Its tracks snapped, and its turret ring warped. A second tank tried to reverse, only for another Assault-class creature to charge in from the right. Its impact shell smashed into the side of the hull, folding the entire vehicle into an almost unrecognizable angle.
The command screen began sounding a continuous series of short alarms.
[2nd Squadron combat strength: 71%.] [54%.] [Communications node lost.] [Armored Squadron requesting support.] [2nd Squadron combat strength: 28%.]
From first contact to less than thirty percent strength, only three minutes and forty-seven seconds had passed.
The Assault-class creatures followed close