Cannon Fire Arc

Chapter 958: Chapter 13: Exterminating Rats

Mike and his partner Robert were seated on a three-wheeled motorcycle, with Mike on the rear seat of the vehicle and Robert in the sidecar.

“Stop bumping around!” Robert shouted, “The photos are going to come out looking like a blurry mess!”

Mike: “No worries, I’ll make it up with my brilliant penmanship to describe them!”

The Ante soldier driving the motorcycle didn’t understand what they were saying and just twisted the throttle to the max.

The three-wheeler’s wheels momentarily left the ground as it sped across the snow-covered plains.

Ahead of them was a massive convoy of vehicles, everything from Jeeps to BMW motorcycles to Greyhound armored cars.

On each vehicle squatted a burly Ante man, gripping an oversized anti-tank mine.

No doubt the mines themselves couldn’t have imagined they’d one day be used as thrown anti-tank weapons.

Some who didn’t manage to snag a mine were clutching makeshift explosives rigged with homemade timers instead.

Just as this group charged halfway forward, a giant Prosen Tank burst out from the smoke zone!

“Not good!” someone shouted, “The bookish nerds with their Divine Arrow are coming to snatch Venus!”

As if answering the call, the Divine Arrow streaked away from the village, leaving a shimmering trail behind it!

All the drivers slammed their pedals to the floor, gripping the wheel with all their might as though sheer force could make the vehicles go faster.

But there was no outrunning the Divine Arrow. Within seconds, the glowing projectile sped over the convoy and headed straight toward the giant tank, armed with one long and one short gun barrel!

One direct hit after another struck the tank.

Everyone stared intently at the colossal machine.

It didn’t slow down! No flames erupted, and the crew showed no sign of abandoning the vehicle!

The shaped charge warheads of the Divine Arrow couldn’t penetrate the monster’s armor!

Somebody cheered out loud.

At that moment, the monstrous tank fired—it was the smaller gun. A shell landed in front of a Jeep, with shrapnel wrecking the Jeep’s front air intake grille nearly beyond recognition!

But the stubborn Willys Jeep kept moving forward.

The enemy began firing machine guns.

But the nimble Jeeps and motorcycles dodged out of the coaxial machine gun’s firing arc.

Aside from the coaxial machine gun, the hull-mounted machine gun hadn’t been fired either. It seemed that to maintain its frontal defensive integrity, this giant tank—much like the Rocossov Type I—wasn’t equipped with a hull-mounted gun at all. After all, a hull-mounted gun would pose a glaring weak point in front-line combat.

The hulking beast desperately tried to fend off the incoming light vehicles with its turret-mounted coaxial machine gun and small-caliber gun, but the turret’s sluggish rotation speed rendered this effort futile.

Mike the reporter examined the giant tank and suddenly asked, “Why don’t the Prosen Tankers rotate the hull to assist the turret’s aim?”

Robert shrugged: “How should I know! Maybe the driver’s a rookie and too nervous during his first battle to remember.”

As he spoke, he pressed the shutter button on his camera but immediately complained: “Too shaky—I can’t capture anything decent. Once we’re close enough, we should get off the vehicle! Mike, tell the driver we need to get off in front of the enemy tank!”

Mike spoke in Antenese to the driver: “We want to disembark in front of the enemy tank.”

Driver: “Are you insane? Others just need to throw an explosive pack or a mine—that’s it. And you want to get off? What if enemy infantry shows up?”

“I’ve got a submachine gun,” Robert said, patting the PPSH hanging at his side.

After Mike translated, the driver quizzically asked, “Do you even know how to use it?”

Mike: “He’s from Chicago.”

The driver couldn’t grasp the humor but seemed to decide to honor his passengers’ wishes: “I can drop you off; I’ll protect you—after all, you’re friends of the Marshal!”

Mike: “Thank you!”

By this time, the first Jeep had already reached the base of the enemy tank’s massive turret. A grenadier pulled the delay fuse on a mine and hurled it directly onto the turret top.

Generally speaking, tanks might have mine protection on their underbelly, whereas the turret top usually had armor meant to only withstand machine gun fire.

Theoretically, anyway—but no one had encountered a tank like this before.

It was impossibly colossal, having weathered eighteen rounds of Divine Arrow strikes. Nobody knew whether a single anti-tank mine could puncture its top armor.

“No! I’m not ready to take the shot!” Robert yelled.

The mine exploded, making it look as though a mushroom had sprouted atop the Prosen tank, with an orange fireball slowly blooming upward.

The spinning turret ground to a halt.

But the tank body kept moving forward.

Mike muttered, “Looks like… the explosion disabled the turret?”

The mine-thrower began to cheer, convinced that the enemy would abandon the tank any moment now.

But the tank’s turret resumed spinning.

Mike: “Maybe the shock from the blast temporarily knocked the crew unconscious.”

Robert: “Stop the vehicle! We’re close enough now!”

The driver, sparing no time for Mike to translate, stomped on the brake. The Jeep drifted to a stop in front of the enemy tank, kicking up a flurry of snow.

Robert jumped out before the Jeep even came to a complete stop, camera in hand, running toward the massive tank barely a few dozen meters away.

Meanwhile, the second and third light vehicles approached the behemoth and placed explosives on its chassis top.

The explosions went off. This time, the entire tank came to a halt.

Mike: “Did we succeed?”

Robert, too occupied snapping photos, paid no attention to his partner.

For the second time, the tank started back up, menacingly rumbling toward Robert.

“Perfect! Just like that! I got clear shots!” Robert exclaimed.

A motorcycle zipped close, skimming the tank’s edge, as the Ante soldier riding pillion tossed a mine in front of the tank’s tread.

They hadn’t gotten far before the tread rolled onto the mine. The resulting explosion shot up dirt and snow, shrouding the tank’s left tread in chaos.

The shockwave knocked both Mike and Robert to the ground.

Ignoring his pain, Mike scrambled to his feet to assess the tank’s situation.

Robert was frantically searching for his camera, now lying somewhere in the snow.

The tank continued moving for a short distance before its tread slipped off the guide wheel—the blast had severed the track.

Immobile, the tank came to a stop on the snowy plain.

Another volley of Divine Arrows streaked overhead, bypassing the tank to strike the Prosen armored grenadiers preparing to advance from afar as reinforcements.

The explosions set more than a dozen half-track vehicles ablaze.

At the same time, artillery from the attached battalion and heavy mortar shells rained down on the Prosen infantry, pinning them in place once more as they attempted to move up.

The massive tank fruitlessly spun its turret.

Another mine was tossed where the turret met the chassis, presumably to damage the turret ring.

After the explosion, the turret briefly paused before resuming its rotation.

At this moment, a courageous Ante infantryman leapt from a Jeep onto the tank’s rear chassis with a single bound.

Robert captured the action on camera, yelling enthusiastically: “I got it! A moment worth remembering!”

The Ante soldier who jumped onto the tank attempted to pry open a hatch, trying several times in vain.

In truth, tank hatches are nearly impossible to open from the outside when locked—most tank crews opt not to lock them during combat to ventilate the stifling interior or in case they need emergency rescue.

However, the crew of this massive tank clearly didn’t belong to the risk-taking veterans club. They had fully locked the hatch, making it impossible to open from the outside.

Realizing prying wouldn’t work, the climbing Ante warrior pulled out a stick grenade and began hammering the periscope atop the turret’s command tower.

Meanwhile, another Ante soldier brandished a flaming grenade.

“Let’s try something old-school!” he shouted, tossing the grenade to his comrade on the tank.

The soldier received it with glee, pulled the pin, and jammed it into the tank’s smoke discharge pipe before leaping off, rolling away in the snow to avoid the blast radius.

The incendiary grenade detonated, engulfing the exhaust pipe and the surrounding surfaces in bright flames.

The tank’s turret kept turning, but after a few seconds, it came to a complete stop.

Soon after, the tank’s hatch opened, a Prosen tanker emerging with a fire extinguisher in hand.

More than a dozen machine guns opened fire at once.

The Prosen tanker was struck and fell back inside the hatch.

A second tanker attempted to peek out and close the hatch but abandoned his effort under the hail of bullets.

A brave Ante soldier jumped onto the tank, tossing a grenade into the open hatch.

The grenade was promptly thrown back out, detonating near the tank and injuring the soldier who’d thrown it. He fell, clutching his shoulder.

A Jeep sped in to retrieve the injured soldier, its crew rapidly tossing him into the vehicle before racing away.

A third warrior scaled the tank, climbing onto the top of the turret. He shoved a submachine gun into the hatch and sprayed a burst inside.

Only after finishing the burst did he pull out another grenade, pulling the pin and holding it for two seconds before lobbing it in.

The grenade exploded almost immediately, with a puff of smoke billowing comically from the turret hatch.

At this moment, the tank’s driver hatch, near the front of the chassis, opened. A Prosen tanker emerged with hands raised, shouting in broken Antenese: “I surrender!”

Robert Capa instantly captured this historic moment.

Mike, on the other hand, yelled in Antenese to the ecstatic soldiers: “Put out the fire! Don’t let this valuable prize burn up!”

The third jumper seemed to snap out of a trance and dived into the turret, grabbing the fire extinguisher the enemy had used moments earlier and furiously spraying it over the flames near the exhaust pipe.

A nearby Jeep screeched to a halt by the tank, with Ante soldiers leaping out to shovel snow over the remaining flames.

After a minute of frantic effort, the fire was completely extinguished.

Meanwhile, the surrendering Prosen tankers lined up in front of the tank—surprisingly, two of them were still alive!

Robert enthusiastically snapped photo after photo, then asked: “Why don’t you have any Iron Crosses or the usual medals we see on veteran tankers?”

One of the captives, understanding Anglo-Saxon, responded: “We’re cadets, just graduated school.”

Mike overheard this and widened his eyes: “What? How ironic! The commander of the regiment resisting your forces was just a cadet himself when the war started! I’m sure you all have plenty in common to discuss!”