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10. Flinn Colony, 40 Eridani system. 9 July 2246.

Garibaldi ducked as rockets dropped around his position. The last two months had been a living hell. It was only the presence of the heavy ground batteries that had prevented the entire Army contingent of four divisions being glassed from orbit. Smaller ships had made it through and landed thousands of ground troops, unfortunately. As a dedicated scouting and skirmishing outfit, the 95th had taken some fairly hefty losses. The Minbari fought like fanatics, but luckily for the Earth Force units on the planet, their tactics were just as predictable as their space-borne counterparts. This particular barrage was not being intercepted since the 37th Air Defence Artillery had lost two of its Uller vehicles in recent days. Simple attrition was proving to be a killer for the dug-in Army units and the few EA ships managing to run the blockade and drop supplies to them weren’t bringing in the spares required. Engineers were desperately trying to wire the lasers from the crippled Ullers up to the colony’s power grid to turn them into static defences directly next to the anti-ship batteries, but that work had barely started when the present Minbari attack began.
  ‘Cowpoke, you still with me?’ Garibaldi grunted into his radio as the barrage eased, causing Private Trawford to stick her head over the lip of the trench.
  ‘Still here, Daffy,’ Cowpoke’s Texan drawl replied. ‘Looks like we’ve got company heading this way.’
  Garibaldi was inordinately proud that, while three of the ground batteries surrounding Flinn had been destroyed by Minbari ground forces, the 95th were holding their position. The downside was that they were now in a salient position with enemy forces on three sides.
  And right now, it looked like the Minbari knew it. Garibaldi raised his monocular scope to his helmet and saw legions of Minbari advancing on their position, both under armour and in infantry skirmish formation.
  ‘Aw, nuts!’ Garibaldi spat.

Alyt Lahoom of the family Belnea, member of the Night Walkers clan, looked up at the Human position ahead of him. The Humans were dug in on the top of a small hill, on the peak of which was the ugly squat shape of the anti-ship cannon they were guarding. Minbari ground forces had never been as big on armoured warfare or artillery support as their Human counterparts, the usual Minbari tactics deriving from single combat. As such, ground forces had little non-aerial close support and only utilised armoured vehicles that were akin to armoured personnel carriers.
  Despite the impact his barrage had made on the Human troops’ morale, Lahoom was disappointed in his lack of more powerful artillery, since the hideous cannon atop the hill in front of him was shrugging off every hit his forces could land on it. Although loathe to admit it, Lahoom was forced to concede that the Humans built fairly tough armour. If only he had more powerful artillery, or a war cruiser could get within range to carve the damnable things out of the surface of Flinn. Of course, if a war cruiser could get that close, he wouldn’t need to be there.
  ‘Hammer Regiment, proceed in the vanguard,’ Lahoom ordered. ‘That accursed minefield should have been cleared out, but be careful. I don’t trust these Earthers to just lay down and die.’
  Ironically, Lahoom thought as he watched the skirmishers move ahead of the main column, nine hundred years earlier Valen had tried to impress similar tactics to the Humans on the ground-fighting clans. He had designed armoured vehicles that served no purpose beyond carrying an enclosed cannon and even ordered the construction of compact railguns that could throw explosive charges over dozens of kilometres. As the entirety of the Shadow War had been fought in space, these innovations had never taken off. As he tried to keep the pressure up on the Humans ahead of him, Lahoom was beginning to see that the concept had some merit.

Sergeant-Major Chang was dug in in a position above and to the rear of Garibaldi’s trench, affording him a slightly better view of the plains below. As default second-in-command of 2 Company, he was issuing the orders to Garibaldi’s squad. As the Boneheads slowly moved on their position, Chang checked their range before keying his radio mic and issuing a simple order.
  ‘Snipers, at your discretion.’
  Those soldiers issued with the longer-barrelled and scope-equipped PPR now readied their weapons. Ahead of the armoured transports, soldiers in light grey uniforms were observed moving forwards in a skirmish formation. None of the Earth Force snipers were bothered about them; instead, they had their sights on those Minbari that were sitting half-out of the turrets on the armoured vehicles. They were wearing black uniforms with gold braid on the front, a key indicator of rank and privilege. It also made them very good targets.

Lahoom winced as the idiot officers around him, dressed in full parade uniform and riding atop their Tiansan armoured transports, were cut down with well-placed shots. The morons were still fighting in an age of swords and staffs, not seen for thousands of years. Although he still believed in leading from the front, Lahoom was not so stupid as to think he could ride around with impunity. Instead Lahoom was sat deep within his command Tiansan, reading and monitoring every piece of information sent back from the troops and vehicles around him.
  ‘First company, spread out into skirmish formation,’ Lahoom ordered. ‘Anvil Regiment, deploy in support formation. I don’t want them picking us off.’

Garibaldi sighed in exasperation as the Minbari AFV’s spread out into a line formation, curving gently to begin encircling the salient. Although lacking the heavy firepower of Earth Force’s Thor main battle tank, the hovering alien vehicles still had a very potent turret-mounted energy weapon. Now that they were all settled on the ground, Garibaldi had the very real feeling that every gun was pointed directly at him.
  ‘Incoming!’ Garibaldi bellowed to his squad mates. As one, they all hit the floor of the trench simultaneously milliseconds before the Minbari weapons opened up.
  ‘Green Actual, Green Actual, this is Green Two-Seventeen,’ Garibaldi yelled over the sound of energy bolts chewing up the ground above him. ‘Enemy is hosing us down with heavy ranged fire. They are out of range of our ATR’s, repeat, safe from Hammers. Requesting support.’
  ‘Acknowledged, Green Two-Seventeen,’ the dispassionate, detached voice of Colonel Mzimba said, filtering through the airwaves from the other side of the hill. “Seventh Armoured are inbound, keep your damned heads down!’
  ‘Aye, sir,’ Garibaldi replied, before addressing his squad-mates. ‘Okay, we’ve got the Skins inbound with something to make the Boneheads think twice! They’re probably gonna come right over the top of our position so do not stick your heads over the parapet unless you wanna lose ’em!’

As promised, seconds later six Thor tanks of the Seventh Armoured Regiment, descendents of the famous Royal Dragoon Guards, rumbled straight over the trenches occupied by the 95th. Shrugging off the relatively lightweight Minbari fire, the Thors aligned their turreted coil-guns and began firing at will. Each 150mm round consisted of a semi-armour-piercing design with a reinforced tungsten-carbide shell containing a plasma charge, essentially a cheap one-shot self destructive version of the Starfury’s main guns. All it took was one hit from each of these shells to turn the Minbari AFV’s into molten slag.
  Lahoom had seen them coming and ordered the Anvil Regiment to scatter, but the Human tanks still destroyed their own number of Tiansans in one volley. The Minbari vehicles’ anti-gravs took a few moments to get moving, but they were now mobile and making much harder targets. Now, Lahoom decided, was the moment to play his trump card.
  ‘Command to Alyt Trahal,’ he ordered, speaking directly to the senior Sun Lancer officer on the planet. ‘It’s time, old friend. Deploy the Tiansan’Fi.’

The terrain at the foot of the hill consisted of a small forest just outside of Earth Force artillery range, with a blasted no-man’s land between it and the EA position. The 95th had mined this plain before the Minbari landed and so far the barren area had provided a perfect killing ground. Now, from within the trees, a new threat emerged.
  Moving speedily over the shelled ground, nine Minbari fighting vehicles approached the combat at the foot of the hill. They were essentially the standard Tiansan hull and chassis, but without the trainable turret. Instead, a stubby barrel protruded from the front of the hulls and a complex series of fins ran along the top of the vehicle where the turret ought to be. Each of these new vehicles aligned their front end on a Thor tank and revealed their surprise.
  The stubby barrels in the bows of the vehicles glowed with yellow light, and then with a high-pitched electronic sizzle discharged a dazzling beam of energy that cut through four of the Thors like hot knives through butter. With no definitive method of taking on the Earth Force armour, the Sun Lancers had created a rudimentary tank destroyer by fitting the existing Tiansan with the neutron cannon from a Nial fighter. There were problems with cooling and energy supply, limiting the possible rate of fire, but this was nothing that could not be overcome.
  Realising that they were in trouble, the remaining pair of Thors retreated with heavy suppressing fire from their main guns and secondary PPR machine guns. Each took out one of the Tiansan’Fi’s pursuing them, before one of the survivors also fell to the ersatz tank killers. The surviving tank cleared the brow of the hill at full speed.
  To Lahoom, it was a fantastic victory: proof of the concept he had developed with Trahal in the past few weeks of stalemate. To Garibaldi, it meant that they were royally screwed.

A renewed artillery barrage from the Earth Force artillery began raining down on the plain in front of the hill, but the Minbari were advancing on too broad a front now. There was no way for the artillery crews to concentrate their limited gunfire to make a difference. If they stopped the advance in one place, it would continue everywhere else.
  Even as the order came in from the command centre within the Flinn city limits, Colonel Mzimba knew that their position was now untenable. There simply was not enough artillery to hold off the Minbari advance in this sector. They had lost five of the six tanks that had been hoped to make up the difference, so now there was nothing to stop the Minbari from walking right up to their trenches and clear them out with excessive firepower. Now, their orders were, the units in combat were to fall back to their reserve positions as soon as the engineers rigged the capacitors on the huge cannon behind them to blow.
  ‘Green Actual to all Green units,’ Mzimba said into his secure-net radio, ‘prepare to fall back. We are to retreat to Position Bravo and meet the enemy there. Fall back by squads, I want an orderly fighting retreat that provides cover for the squads on the move. Let’s do this, people.’

‘Okay, you heard the man,’ Garibaldi barked to his subordinates. ‘Keep the Boneheads’ busy while Charlie Squad falls back; then they’ll do the same for us.’
  ‘Roger that, Corp,’ Rifleman Oberon said, dragging a CM-12 Hammer anti-armour missile out of her pack. ‘Hey, Cowpoke, you ready on the launcher?’
  ‘You betcha,’ Cowpoke replied, already aiming the reusable tube launcher over the parapet of their trench. Oberon slid the projectile into the tube while Cowpoke lined the shot up. Seconds later, the launcher’s inbuilt lidar indicated that the target was in range. Cowpoke fired immediately, the missile boring inexorably towards the Minbari tank destroyer and punching through the brittle crystalline hull before exploding. Several other soldiers similarly fired at enemy targets before ducking out of the field of retaliatory fire. A section of trench less than a hundred metres to Garibaldi’s right simply ceased to exist as a tank destroyer’s neutron cannon ploughed through the earthworks, reducing part of Bravo Squad to nothing but bloody smears. Garibaldi didn’t even pause for breath: he knew he could grieve later once he knew who had been killed; for now, he had to focus on the enemy.
  ‘Delta Squad,’ the voice of Sergeant-Major Chang yelled at him mere seconds later, ‘Charlie Squad is in position. Get back over the brow of this hill as fast as you can!’
  ‘Move it or lose it, Deltas!’ Garibaldi shouted to his squad. As one, they ducked beneath the parapet of the trench and ran like hell along the narrow path towards the brow. Despite being in a trench, they were still climbing and visible to the more eagle-eyed Minbari skirmishers. Garibaldi saw a soldier in front of him drop lifelessly as an energy bolt slammed into the back of his helmet. The HUD on Garibaldi’s helmet told him it was Rifleman Dodds, only nineteen and one of their first conscripts from the planetary draft. It also told him that Dodds was dead, his vital signs completely gone. Cursing, Garibaldi leaped over the young man’s corpse and kept running.

‘2 Company has made it back to Position Bravo,’ Lieutenant Stogden yelled into her radio, the voice filtering through to Colonel Mzimba.
  ‘Confirmed, 2 Company,’ Mzimba said with a nod. ‘Keep your heads down, I’m calling up an air strike and artillery barrage.’

No sooner had Delta Squad made it to Position Bravo, another trench system on the Flinn side of the hill, than the order came round for the entire company to duck and cover.
  ‘Pickle, pickle!’ Garibaldi yelled as a heavy PA-44 Voodoo fighter-bomber atmosphere skimmer screamed over their position and tossed half a dozen streamlined shapes at the hill. Seconds later the bombs popped in mid-air, releasing a high-octane fuel aerosol before the casings exploded and ignited the cloud of fuel in a terrifying firestorm that sucked the very air from its victims lungs.
  ‘Mother of mercy,’ Oberon said, sticking her head over the parapet to see the incendiary storm going on less than half a klick from their position.
  ‘And from what we’ve seen, the Boneheads don’t wear sealed helmets and rebereathers like us,’ Garibaldi said solemnly. ‘I don’t care if they want us dead, nobody should have to die like that.’
  ‘Amen to that, Daffy,’ Oberon said with a nod. Seconds later, the pair were lying on the floor of the trench as shellfire began dropping on the brow of the hill, several exploding harmlessly against the anti-ship cannon’s thick barrel.
  ‘What’re they trying to achieve?’ Cowpoke shouted above the explosions. ‘Weren’t the engineers rigging that big bastard to blow?’
  ‘Yeah, but we don’t want them to know that!’ Garibaldi yelled back. ‘Any minute now, the Colonel’s gonna tell us to fall back to Position Charlie, activate the minefield here and blow that thing all the way back to Proxima!’

Less than a kilometre away, Colonel Mzimba was thinking just that. He had hoped that the 95th could hold Position Bravo and then re-take the hill with sufficient air and armoured support, but that was not going to happen now. Planetary command had ordered him to sacrifice the gun and get back to the new front line. The Earth Force units on Flinn simply did not have the resources to go on the offensive. Since the Minbari landed two months ago, the only supplies they had received had been Narn-designed light weaponry that could be dropped from orbit by blockade runners. They might have enough food and water to last another year, but they were rapidly running out of tanks, artillery, planes and most of all people.
  ‘Do it,’ the colonel said at last. ‘95th to fall back to Position Charlie. No orderly retreat, just run like hell. As soon as they’re there, blow the cannon.’

The artillery barrage and airstrike had kept the Minbari forces busy long enough for the 95th to make it to their new position with minimal additional casualties. To Lahoom, this was a good win. Not a decisive victory, but it had knocked one more gun out of action. Four down, eight to go.
  ‘Alyt,’ his aide Quavre of the Sun Lancers said, approaching him with the most formal salute Lahoom had ever seen. ‘Request permission to personally lead the assault on the next Human position.’
  ‘Denied,’ Lahoom grunted. ‘Get our troops off that hill, as fast as you can.’
  Minutes later, the ground shook as the huge cannon’s capacitors overloaded and released the stored energy in one colossal blast that rivalled a nuclear explosion for raw power.
  ‘And that’s why your armour should not have advanced up the hill,’ Lahoon sighed.
  ‘You knew?’ Quavre gaped.
  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t,’ Lahoom said wryly. ‘They did the same thing with the last two cannons we captured. I know you’ve only been here for a week or so, but didn’t you read the reports from the front on your way from Minbar?’
  ‘I am sorry, Alyt,’ Quavre said, his head hung so low his chin almost reached the bottom of his ribs. ‘Our troops were almost vaporised.’
  ‘Learn from your mistakes,’ Lahoom said. ‘I am transferring you to front-line duty for our next assault, you will command an armoured support regiment. Valeria knows, there’s a few vacancies after today. Remember, seeking glory gets you killed.’
  ‘I understand,’ Quavre said, finally raising his head. ‘I just never realised the resolve of these Humans.’
  ‘They will fight to their last breath, and make us bleed for every system like no race has since the Shadow War,’ Lahoom sighed. ‘I hope the Grey Council knows what it is doing.’
  ‘You are unsure we can win?’ Quavre asked, his tone indicating the enormous explosion just shook his own faith.
  ‘We can win,’ Lahoom said. ‘The question is, when we do, will we still retain our own honour? The Council ordered us to commit genocide to avenge one man. I have lost over two thousand men on this planet alone. At what point does exterminating defenceless children in Dukhat’s name become anything other than cold-blooded murder? At the end of all this, are we still going to be Minbari?’

Description
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10. Flinn Colony, 40 Eridani system. 9 July 2246.

Garibaldi ducked as rockets dropped around his position. The last two months had been a living hell. It was only the presence of the heavy ground batteries that had prevented the entire Army contingent of four divisions being glassed from orbit. Smaller ships had made it through and landed thousands of ground troops, unfortunately. As a dedicated scouting and skirmishing outfit, the 95th had taken some fairly hefty losses. The Minbari fought like fanatics, but luckily for the Earth Force units on the planet, their tactics were just as predictable as their space-borne counterparts. This particular barrage was not being intercepted since the 37th Air Defence Artillery had lost two of its Uller vehicles in recent days. Simple attrition was proving to be a killer for the dug-in Army units and the few EA ships managing to run the blockade and drop supplies to them weren’t bringing in the spares required. Engineers were desperately trying to wire the lasers from the crippled Ullers up to the colony’s power grid to turn them into static defences directly next to the anti-ship batteries, but that work had barely started when the present Minbari attack began.
  ‘Cowpoke, you still with me?’ Garibaldi grunted into his radio as the barrage eased, causing Private Trawford to stick her head over the lip of the trench.
  ‘Still here, Daffy,’ Cowpoke’s Texan drawl replied. ‘Looks like we’ve got company heading this way.’
  Garibaldi was inordinately proud that, while three of the ground batteries surrounding Flinn had been destroyed by Minbari ground forces, the 95th were holding their position. The downside was that they were now in a salient position with enemy forces on three sides.
  And right now, it looked like the Minbari knew it. Garibaldi raised his monocular scope to his helmet and saw legions of Minbari advancing on their position, both under armour and in infantry skirmish formation.
  ‘Aw, nuts!’ Garibaldi spat.

Alyt Lahoom of the family Belnea, member of the Night Walkers clan, looked up at the Human position ahead of him. The Humans were dug in on the top of a small hill, on the peak of which was the ugly squat shape of the anti-ship cannon they were guarding. Minbari ground forces had never been as big on armoured warfare or artillery support as their Human counterparts, the usual Minbari tactics deriving from single combat. As such, ground forces had little non-aerial close support and only utilised armoured vehicles that were akin to armoured personnel carriers.
  Despite the impact his barrage had made on the Human troops’ morale, Lahoom was disappointed in his lack of more powerful artillery, since the hideous cannon atop the hill in front of him was shrugging off every hit his forces could land on it. Although loathe to admit it, Lahoom was forced to concede that the Humans built fairly tough armour. If only he had more powerful artillery, or a war cruiser could get within range to carve the damnable things out of the surface of Flinn. Of course, if a war cruiser could get that close, he wouldn’t need to be there.
  ‘Hammer Regiment, proceed in the vanguard,’ Lahoom ordered. ‘That accursed minefield should have been cleared out, but be careful. I don’t trust these Earthers to just lay down and die.’
  Ironically, Lahoom thought as he watched the skirmishers move ahead of the main column, nine hundred years earlier Valen had tried to impress similar tactics to the Humans on the ground-fighting clans. He had designed armoured vehicles that served no purpose beyond carrying an enclosed cannon and even ordered the construction of compact railguns that could throw explosive charges over dozens of kilometres. As the entirety of the Shadow War had been fought in space, these innovations had never taken off. As he tried to keep the pressure up on the Humans ahead of him, Lahoom was beginning to see that the concept had some merit.

Sergeant-Major Chang was dug in in a position above and to the rear of Garibaldi’s trench, affording him a slightly better view of the plains below. As default second-in-command of 2 Company, he was issuing the orders to Garibaldi’s squad. As the Boneheads slowly moved on their position, Chang checked their range before keying his radio mic and issuing a simple order.
  ‘Snipers, at your discretion.’
  Those soldiers issued with the longer-barrelled and scope-equipped PPR now readied their weapons. Ahead of the armoured transports, soldiers in light grey uniforms were observed moving forwards in a skirmish formation. None of the Earth Force snipers were bothered about them; instead, they had their sights on those Minbari that were sitting half-out of the turrets on the armoured vehicles. They were wearing black uniforms with gold braid on the front, a key indicator of rank and privilege. It also made them very good targets.

Lahoom winced as the idiot officers around him, dressed in full parade uniform and riding atop their Tiansan armoured transports, were cut down with well-placed shots. The morons were still fighting in an age of swords and staffs, not seen for thousands of years. Although he still believed in leading from the front, Lahoom was not so stupid as to think he could ride around with impunity. Instead Lahoom was sat deep within his command Tiansan, reading and monitoring every piece of information sent back from the troops and vehicles around him.
  ‘First company, spread out into skirmish formation,’ Lahoom ordered. ‘Anvil Regiment, deploy in support formation. I don’t want them picking us off.’

Garibaldi sighed in exasperation as the Minbari AFV’s spread out into a line formation, curving gently to begin encircling the salient. Although lacking the heavy firepower of Earth Force’s Thor main battle tank, the hovering alien vehicles still had a very potent turret-mounted energy weapon. Now that they were all settled on the ground, Garibaldi had the very real feeling that every gun was pointed directly at him.
  ‘Incoming!’ Garibaldi bellowed to his squad mates. As one, they all hit the floor of the trench simultaneously milliseconds before the Minbari weapons opened up.
  ‘Green Actual, Green Actual, this is Green Two-Seventeen,’ Garibaldi yelled over the sound of energy bolts chewing up the ground above him. ‘Enemy is hosing us down with heavy ranged fire. They are out of range of our ATR’s, repeat, safe from Hammers. Requesting support.’
  ‘Acknowledged, Green Two-Seventeen,’ the dispassionate, detached voice of Colonel Mzimba said, filtering through the airwaves from the other side of the hill. “Seventh Armoured are inbound, keep your damned heads down!’
  ‘Aye, sir,’ Garibaldi replied, before addressing his squad-mates. ‘Okay, we’ve got the Skins inbound with something to make the Boneheads think twice! They’re probably gonna come right over the top of our position so do not stick your heads over the parapet unless you wanna lose ’em!’

As promised, seconds later six Thor tanks of the Seventh Armoured Regiment, descendents of the famous Royal Dragoon Guards, rumbled straight over the trenches occupied by the 95th. Shrugging off the relatively lightweight Minbari fire, the Thors aligned their turreted coil-guns and began firing at will. Each 150mm round consisted of a semi-armour-piercing design with a reinforced tungsten-carbide shell containing a plasma charge, essentially a cheap one-shot self destructive version of the Starfury’s main guns. All it took was one hit from each of these shells to turn the Minbari AFV’s into molten slag.
  Lahoom had seen them coming and ordered the Anvil Regiment to scatter, but the Human tanks still destroyed their own number of Tiansans in one volley. The Minbari vehicles’ anti-gravs took a few moments to get moving, but they were now mobile and making much harder targets. Now, Lahoom decided, was the moment to play his trump card.
  ‘Command to Alyt Trahal,’ he ordered, speaking directly to the senior Sun Lancer officer on the planet. ‘It’s time, old friend. Deploy the Tiansan’Fi.’

The terrain at the foot of the hill consisted of a small forest just outside of Earth Force artillery range, with a blasted no-man’s land between it and the EA position. The 95th had mined this plain before the Minbari landed and so far the barren area had provided a perfect killing ground. Now, from within the trees, a new threat emerged.
  Moving speedily over the shelled ground, nine Minbari fighting vehicles approached the combat at the foot of the hill. They were essentially the standard Tiansan hull and chassis, but without the trainable turret. Instead, a stubby barrel protruded from the front of the hulls and a complex series of fins ran along the top of the vehicle where the turret ought to be. Each of these new vehicles aligned their front end on a Thor tank and revealed their surprise.
  The stubby barrels in the bows of the vehicles glowed with yellow light, and then with a high-pitched electronic sizzle discharged a dazzling beam of energy that cut through four of the Thors like hot knives through butter. With no definitive method of taking on the Earth Force armour, the Sun Lancers had created a rudimentary tank destroyer by fitting the existing Tiansan with the neutron cannon from a Nial fighter. There were problems with cooling and energy supply, limiting the possible rate of fire, but this was nothing that could not be overcome.
  Realising that they were in trouble, the remaining pair of Thors retreated with heavy suppressing fire from their main guns and secondary PPR machine guns. Each took out one of the Tiansan’Fi’s pursuing them, before one of the survivors also fell to the ersatz tank killers. The surviving tank cleared the brow of the hill at full speed.
  To Lahoom, it was a fantastic victory: proof of the concept he had developed with Trahal in the past few weeks of stalemate. To Garibaldi, it meant that they were royally screwed.

A renewed artillery barrage from the Earth Force artillery began raining down on the plain in front of the hill, but the Minbari were advancing on too broad a front now. There was no way for the artillery crews to concentrate their limited gunfire to make a difference. If they stopped the advance in one place, it would continue everywhere else.
  Even as the order came in from the command centre within the Flinn city limits, Colonel Mzimba knew that their position was now untenable. There simply was not enough artillery to hold off the Minbari advance in this sector. They had lost five of the six tanks that had been hoped to make up the difference, so now there was nothing to stop the Minbari from walking right up to their trenches and clear them out with excessive firepower. Now, their orders were, the units in combat were to fall back to their reserve positions as soon as the engineers rigged the capacitors on the huge cannon behind them to blow.
  ‘Green Actual to all Green units,’ Mzimba said into his secure-net radio, ‘prepare to fall back. We are to retreat to Position Bravo and meet the enemy there. Fall back by squads, I want an orderly fighting retreat that provides cover for the squads on the move. Let’s do this, people.’

‘Okay, you heard the man,’ Garibaldi barked to his subordinates. ‘Keep the Boneheads’ busy while Charlie Squad falls back; then they’ll do the same for us.’
  ‘Roger that, Corp,’ Rifleman Oberon said, dragging a CM-12 Hammer anti-armour missile out of her pack. ‘Hey, Cowpoke, you ready on the launcher?’
  ‘You betcha,’ Cowpoke replied, already aiming the reusable tube launcher over the parapet of their trench. Oberon slid the projectile into the tube while Cowpoke lined the shot up. Seconds later, the launcher’s inbuilt lidar indicated that the target was in range. Cowpoke fired immediately, the missile boring inexorably towards the Minbari tank destroyer and punching through the brittle crystalline hull before exploding. Several other soldiers similarly fired at enemy targets before ducking out of the field of retaliatory fire. A section of trench less than a hundred metres to Garibaldi’s right simply ceased to exist as a tank destroyer’s neutron cannon ploughed through the earthworks, reducing part of Bravo Squad to nothing but bloody smears. Garibaldi didn’t even pause for breath: he knew he could grieve later once he knew who had been killed; for now, he had to focus on the enemy.
  ‘Delta Squad,’ the voice of Sergeant-Major Chang yelled at him mere seconds later, ‘Charlie Squad is in position. Get back over the brow of this hill as fast as you can!’
  ‘Move it or lose it, Deltas!’ Garibaldi shouted to his squad. As one, they ducked beneath the parapet of the trench and ran like hell along the narrow path towards the brow. Despite being in a trench, they were still climbing and visible to the more eagle-eyed Minbari skirmishers. Garibaldi saw a soldier in front of him drop lifelessly as an energy bolt slammed into the back of his helmet. The HUD on Garibaldi’s helmet told him it was Rifleman Dodds, only nineteen and one of their first conscripts from the planetary draft. It also told him that Dodds was dead, his vital signs completely gone. Cursing, Garibaldi leaped over the young man’s corpse and kept running.

‘2 Company has made it back to Position Bravo,’ Lieutenant Stogden yelled into her radio, the voice filtering through to Colonel Mzimba.
  ‘Confirmed, 2 Company,’ Mzimba said with a nod. ‘Keep your heads down, I’m calling up an air strike and artillery barrage.’

No sooner had Delta Squad made it to Position Bravo, another trench system on the Flinn side of the hill, than the order came round for the entire company to duck and cover.
  ‘Pickle, pickle!’ Garibaldi yelled as a heavy PA-44 Voodoo fighter-bomber atmosphere skimmer screamed over their position and tossed half a dozen streamlined shapes at the hill. Seconds later the bombs popped in mid-air, releasing a high-octane fuel aerosol before the casings exploded and ignited the cloud of fuel in a terrifying firestorm that sucked the very air from its victims lungs.
  ‘Mother of mercy,’ Oberon said, sticking her head over the parapet to see the incendiary storm going on less than half a klick from their position.
  ‘And from what we’ve seen, the Boneheads don’t wear sealed helmets and rebereathers like us,’ Garibaldi said solemnly. ‘I don’t care if they want us dead, nobody should have to die like that.’
  ‘Amen to that, Daffy,’ Oberon said with a nod. Seconds later, the pair were lying on the floor of the trench as shellfire began dropping on the brow of the hill, several exploding harmlessly against the anti-ship cannon’s thick barrel.
  ‘What’re they trying to achieve?’ Cowpoke shouted above the explosions. ‘Weren’t the engineers rigging that big bastard to blow?’
  ‘Yeah, but we don’t want them to know that!’ Garibaldi yelled back. ‘Any minute now, the Colonel’s gonna tell us to fall back to Position Charlie, activate the minefield here and blow that thing all the way back to Proxima!’

Less than a kilometre away, Colonel Mzimba was thinking just that. He had hoped that the 95th could hold Position Bravo and then re-take the hill with sufficient air and armoured support, but that was not going to happen now. Planetary command had ordered him to sacrifice the gun and get back to the new front line. The Earth Force units on Flinn simply did not have the resources to go on the offensive. Since the Minbari landed two months ago, the only supplies they had received had been Narn-designed light weaponry that could be dropped from orbit by blockade runners. They might have enough food and water to last another year, but they were rapidly running out of tanks, artillery, planes and most of all people.
  ‘Do it,’ the colonel said at last. ‘95th to fall back to Position Charlie. No orderly retreat, just run like hell. As soon as they’re there, blow the cannon.’

The artillery barrage and airstrike had kept the Minbari forces busy long enough for the 95th to make it to their new position with minimal additional casualties. To Lahoom, this was a good win. Not a decisive victory, but it had knocked one more gun out of action. Four down, eight to go.
  ‘Alyt,’ his aide Quavre of the Sun Lancers said, approaching him with the most formal salute Lahoom had ever seen. ‘Request permission to personally lead the assault on the next Human position.’
  ‘Denied,’ Lahoom grunted. ‘Get our troops off that hill, as fast as you can.’
  Minutes later, the ground shook as the huge cannon’s capacitors overloaded and released the stored energy in one colossal blast that rivalled a nuclear explosion for raw power.
  ‘And that’s why your armour should not have advanced up the hill,’ Lahoon sighed.
  ‘You knew?’ Quavre gaped.
  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t,’ Lahoom said wryly. ‘They did the same thing with the last two cannons we captured. I know you’ve only been here for a week or so, but didn’t you read the reports from the front on your way from Minbar?’
  ‘I am sorry, Alyt,’ Quavre said, his head hung so low his chin almost reached the bottom of his ribs. ‘Our troops were almost vaporised.’
  ‘Learn from your mistakes,’ Lahoom said. ‘I am transferring you to front-line duty for our next assault, you will command an armoured support regiment. Valeria knows, there’s a few vacancies after today. Remember, seeking glory gets you killed.’
  ‘I understand,’ Quavre said, finally raising his head. ‘I just never realised the resolve of these Humans.’
  ‘They will fight to their last breath, and make us bleed for every system like no race has since the Shadow War,’ Lahoom sighed. ‘I hope the Grey Council knows what it is doing.’
  ‘You are unsure we can win?’ Quavre asked, his tone indicating the enormous explosion just shook his own faith.
  ‘We can win,’ Lahoom said. ‘The question is, when we do, will we still retain our own honour? The Council ordered us to commit genocide to avenge one man. I have lost over two thousand men on this planet alone. At what point does exterminating defenceless children in Dukhat’s name become anything other than cold-blooded murder? At the end of all this, are we still going to be Minbari?’