Elliot orderred the company to halt. His men helped the children out. Bumped and shaken, but otherwise they seemed okay. The driver looked ready to scream at them, but seeing their weaponery, she probably thought better of it.
Technically enemies....actually....confused. Frightenned. The children had to get home before dark, and it was already too cold and too late for them to walk. Telephones were out, thanks to tac infantry. Mobile B had been sent from the Sacramento Valley up into the Sierra Nevada to deal with a feint towards Truckee. Most of the unit was sent on to the San Joaquin Valley but two battleunits guarded the passes. Elliot decided to drive the children home with his own carriers.
The IFVs holding the children had been flagged in red crosses. Four ISA fighters had slipped through Pacific air cover and roared out of the canyon to their east. They disappeared in the mists west of the ridge, but company could hear their jet engines wheeling back. The infantry ran for cover in the drifts on either side of the road. Elliot's AA switched on active radar to direct the tanks's machine guns and their own missiles.
Elliot was pumping the 12.7 in front of the sound tracks try to match the shouted coordinates. Two lancers whooshed past him. Maybe three, maybe five missiles broke through the mists and then three fighters. He vaguely registerred the explosions and cannon fire around him. One of the fighters jerked suddenly and then broke north. He ducked instinctively as the last two roared over him. Then they heard the sonic booms to the south. Friendly interceptors. The ISA fighters climbed back into the clouds.
They listenned to the thunder, as children before the gods, until the battle faded to the northeast.
Elliot ducked again as the shells in a burning tank detonated. The one Jon had been in. Elliot surveyed the damage. One tank, five carriers, including the four he had detailed to carry the children. The children had been too dumbfounded to move, even as their flesh caught fire.
It could have been our wounded and doctors.
Hell, it could've been prisonners of war. It's not your fault, Elliot.
Those pilots wanted to be so big and tough they shot anything that moved.
And so they killed their own children. You fulfilled your responsibility,
you marked the carriers as noncombatants. It was their own stinky fault
they didn't bother to verify their targets.