FireBrand
an excerpt

Mission 01: Full Metal Gunmen

***

“What are you doing here, Captain?” Grant glared at the mechanic once her team made their way towards the disabled tank, already shouting orders to evaluate the damage done.

“My job, Lieutenant Colonel.” She flatly replied, eyeing the broken caterpillar treads on the lead Mammoth Tank. “And as you know, you can’t go through here with all those mines buried in the sand. Get to work on the tank tread, boys. You know the drill.”

“Your job, Captain, is best left when we’re at the next base.” The tank commander muttered in disapproval as the mechanic team started undoing sections of the gigantic treads and slowly slapping on new sections where the broken ones used to be. Meanwhile, May began setting up a small rectangular box on top of the lead tank’s turret and started attaching wires on it to the box. “Whoa, hey! What the hell are you doing?!”

May ignored the seasoned war fighter’s angry demands as she continued to work on the strange device, pausing only to reply after the tank commander threatened to rip the thing off with his bare hands.

“It’s a Directed Sonic Emitter, sir.” She wiped sweat off her brows before checking the electrical supply to the boombox, nodding thanks to her helpers before hopping down from the tank’s lofty turret. “Just think of it as a set of stereo speakers. What it’ll do is blast the area in front of us with high-power sonic boom. The sound wave will compress the mines, detonating them in a cone in front of the tank.”

“What, are you saying you’re going to blast these land mines out of the sand?” Grant muttered at the thought of such a trick. It took a seventy-ton Mammoth Tank, fully armed and loaded, to set off one of the land mines. The man could only shake his head as the strange device began to emit a low humming sound.

BOOM!

Sand blasted into the air just three feet away from the Mammoth Tank, peppering the mechanic crew with a shower of blinding sand.

BOOM!

BAM!

Seven more mines exploded ten feet away, leaving dusty yellow columns drifting away from the foot-deep craters left in the sand. As the dust settled, May and her team were left spitting sand and wiping dust from their powder-caked faces. Turning to the tank commander, May gave him a smiling thumbs up as she watched the frowning man wipe sand off of his face. At the least, she proved to the team that her gears never failed.

“Next time,” Grant muttered in between spitting sand and dusting himself off. “Warn me to take cover before you play with one of your toys.”

May laughed at the dust-covered soldier and scratched her cheek out of embarrassment. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something which looked like a trail of translucent white smoke and a roundish object hurling towards the convoy head-on.

“RPG!”

***