Chapter 95 - Fighting The Tanks
Chapter 95 – Fighting The Tanks
'Am I scared? Yes. Do I think that I am crazy? Absolutely. Is what I am doing will be worth it? No question should be asked about it.'
Del was hiding behind one of the bushes while waiting for the separatist soldiers to move out. Del could identify one of the patches that the soldier wore. It was the symbol of their country. The country was called the "Ilbistirum Empire" which made sense since they were still under feudal rule. Thinking about it, the handbook that Cole gave had "The Federal Republic of Ilbistirum" written under it.
"I have a visual of six soldiers in front of me, should I engage?" Anna asked.
"Negative, let them pass, and Anna, move to the west direction to spread our search position, over," Del said.
"Copy that, Anna out," Anna replied..
Del waited until the group of patrol moved away from his position. Del wanted to shoot them, but it would probably not be a good idea. If they had an energy field, it would be hard to kill them with only one shot. It would be pretty much a hit-and-miss situation. A headshot would probably be lethal, but a body shot wouldn't be that lethal in comparison. Six headshots would be very difficult if not downright impossible.
The six people eventually walked past them and Del moved out of the bushes. He then looked left and right to make sure that nobody was there and he continued moving towards the edge of the forest so he could have a clear shot to the tanks.
PG-7VR was designed to penetrate 750mm of RHA armor which was very overkilling to the light tanks that had less than 100mm of RHA. Del also thought that the tandem charge would help him in damaging the material shield of the tank if there was any.
Del crouched and crawl with his backpack until he arrived at the edge of the forest. The view was as same as what he expected. Three tanks were moving towards the railroad while the remaining tanks were setting up a temporary camp. Nighttime was an enemy for them, so it was expected. They didn't have any night fighting equipment after all.
It seemed that the Ilbistirum Empire put the Ilbistirum Republic's retreating tanks under a siege, or they were putting Halivaara under a siege by cutting its supply lines. Either way, the outcome wouldn't be good for the Ilbistirum Republic. This felt too much like a blitzkrieg attack, to be honest. It was so fast.
"Anna, I have visual on 9 light tanks, three are guarding the railroad and the rest of them are guarding the flanks, do you have any visual on the other tanks, over?" Del asked.
"I can ID 4 medium tanks on the back part of the unit. Other than that, I have negative visual, over," Anna answered.
All of them were there. Del just had to pick his priority target. The priority target should be the infantry around the tanks and the tanks that could lob shells at him. So far, two tanks gave the most significant threat, mostly because their turrets were pointing at the forest and straight into his head.
Del put his backpack down and he grabbed the RPG from his backpack. He also grabbed one PG-7VR warhead from the backpack and put it inside of the RPG itself. He lifted up his night-vision goggles and put his eyes right on the scope of the RPG.
He adjusted the zoom level of the scope and aimed his RPG to the tank. He put the cross-hair to the tank and aimed it at the center of the turret. Del released the safety cap from the tip of the RPG and pulled the trigger of his RPG.
BOOM!
The turret of the tank was blown off from the tank. It hit the critical part of the tank which was the ammunition storage. The infantry surrounding it was also dead from the secondary explosion coming from the blown-off tank.
Del immediately grabbed another round of RPG from his backpack and put it into the launcher before someone noticed where he was firing his gun from. Del aimed at the second tank that aimed its cannon in his direction and fired his RPG.
"Del, be advised, I have visual on a patrol approaching your position, should I engage?" Anna asked.
"You have the permission to engage, I will change position," Del said.
Anna aimed at the head of those soldiers and switched the mode of her rifle to semi-auto. She aimed carefully and blew his head off with his rifle. It had the same reaction as the flying soldiers before. The copper jacket was deflected by the shield, but the tungsten projectile passed through successfully.
"Take cover everyone!" One of them shouted.
Anna rustled slowly behind the trees while making sure that nobody actually saw her. The soldiers were holding a flashlight, but they could easily light up illumination spells. It would reduce the effectiveness of her camouflage, but it would also reduce the likelihood of someone firing a tank shell in her direction.
"Shit, we have a sniper," One of them muttered.
"Yeah, but where is the sniper, can you see it?" One of the soldiers asked back.
"No, sir, negative, I have no visual," someone replied.
Anna whispered, "[Cursed Auberium Spear]" Anna threw a black spear in the direction of the soldier and pierced two soldiers at once. She then continued by wasting the rest of the soldiers using her M16 assault rifle except for one soldier. The soldier wore a radio backpack and wore a headset.
"Federal bastard! DIE!!!" He charged his bayonet at Anna, but Anna shot the legs of that soldier first.
Anna approached the soldier and kicked his rifle away from his body. The shout would be more than enough to alert the tank troops below, especially since gunfire also gave a clear situational awareness to the soldiers outside of the forest.
"Del, I found a federation soldier here, should I interrogate him, over?" Anna asked.
"Bring him to a safe place first," Del said.
"Copy that," Anna said.
With the patrolling soldiers out of the picture, Del moved from his position to another position with the backpack on his back again. He put another rocket into his RPG and fired it again at the light tank. The tank blew up again, leaving most of the infantry surrounding it dead.
"Nice shot, Del. This radio communication officer seems to know everything," Anna commented.
"Interrogative. What do you mean by everything?" Del asked.
"He said that Halivaara is under a siege. Enemies have cut all of the supply lines but this one. He said that his commander would commence an assault on our train tomorrow. It seems that we are in the right time and the right places," Anna commented.
"Can he tell the rest of his buddies that he is still alive and support isn't necessary, over?" Del said.
"I can try, Anna out."
Del looked at the tank that guarded the railway started retreating backward. They were covering their flanks from Del's attack. Before he knew it, one of the tanks started lobbing rounds into his direction. The round landed around one hundred meters away from him, but the blast radius could be felt from afar.
"Anna, do you copy? They start bombarding us! What did the radio communication officer say to them?" Del asked from the radio.
"Bad news, Del. I just shot him. The son of a bitch told the tank company to bombard his position in a suicide attack," Anna replied.
"Bloody hell…" Del ran away as tank shells landed left and right of his direction.
All of the tanks simultaneously pointed their turrets in Del's direction. Del ran as fast as he could to dodge the barrage of tank shells that were fired at him while reloading his RPG with new rockets. Del fired another round at the tanks.
One of the shells landed close to Del and it threw him to a tree. If not for the dimensional storage in his backpack, the rockets would explode and kill him and his sister in an instant. Del checked his body as he was thrown to the tree. The material field also played a large part in saving him. The field immediately shattered once the tank cannon threw him to the tree.
"They got me good…" Del muttered.
Anna ran to Del's direction to check on him. It was not good. A fragmentation from the tank round slashed right into his left shoulder and cause quite a bleeding. It was quite fatal, and would end up disabling him if not treated.
"Del, hold on [Heali—]" Del shushed Anna before she applied her healing spell. It would worsen the situation although it was a quick solution. It might be a temporal solution, but it would probably give the MSVI a harder case to treat such as sepsis, or worse.
"Grab the first aid kit, stuff the wound with gauze, and then you inject the painkiller into the wound," Del gave her the instruction as Anna cut the upper left hand part of his clothing to expose the wound.
Anna grabbed the first aid kit and he followed Del's instruction carefully. He opened the plastic packaging inside one of the gauzes and stuffed it up into his wound. Anna thought that it was unnecessary since she had an advanced healing magic, but Del wouldn't trust it too much.
Del felt the stinging pain as Anna pushed the gauze into the deeper part of his wound, it must have touched the deeper part of his body. She then grabbed a morphine auto injector and injected it to the surrounding part of his skin.
As Anna continued her treatment, Del could hear footsteps approaching him. Using his NVG, he could see that people with dark blue uniform were approaching him as the bombardment stopped.
"You got to be kidding me," Del sighed.