Starfist: Kingdom's Fury by David Sherman & Dan Cragg

Sergeant Hu followed closely, to make sure Crucifix went to his quarters as ordered. As he walked he spoke into his personnel comm unit and gave orders for a supplyman to meet him with tools and a padlock. Hu had been around long enough to know that a lot of generals thought orders didn't apply to them; he was going to make sure Crucifix stayed in his quarters as ordered.
    Van Winkle didn't see Hu escort the Kingdomite division commander out of the command center. He was too busy ordering the Kingdomite artillery liaison officer to relay the fire order to his regiment, and contacting Brigadier Sturgeon to get authorization for the artillery fire mission he'd just ordered.
    Within the bunkers no one could tell what was happening outside. The crashing and battering impact on the bunker faces reverberated inside with a din so loud it allowed for awareness of nothing beyond itself. The sonic overload beat men down, opened their mouths in silent howls, bled them from their ears. On the entire twelve-thousand man front, only the 350 Marines whose helmets were able to muffle the noise were capable of fighting—if they could see through the thickening clouds of pulverized ferrocrete dust.
    The Over Master spoke a command, and his ten thousand armored Fighters, urged on by Masters and Leaders, began their climb.
    Brigadier Sturgeon didn't hesitate to issue authorization for the fire mission Van Winkle had ordered. It arrived at 34th FIST's artillery battery seconds before the guns were ready to fire. The six guns of the battery finished locking their guidance systems into the string-of-pearls and fired. The string-of-pearls, which had so much difficulty picking up infrared signals from the Skinks, had no problem seeing their horrid weapons. Seconds after the guns of 34th FIST's battery fired, six canisters of scatter munitions burst open above six Skink buzz-saw weapons. The hundreds of submunitions the canisters expelled spread over a wide area and exploded before they reached the ground. Shrapnel tore the crews of the weapons to shreds. The crews of six other weapons had died moments earlier, when the guns of 26th FIST's battery fired. Both batteries fired again, and twelve more weapons fell silent.
    The twelve dozen guns of the two Kingdomite divisions also fired. But they couldn't tie into the string-of-pearls guidance system, and their fire wasn't as accurate. They didn't have scatter munitions either, so rounds that hit more than a hundred meters from Skink positions had no effect on the devastating fire, and most of the Kingdomite rounds landed more than a hundred meters away. The Skinks had two thousand weapons firing at the defensive line. They held more buzz saws in reserve.
    "Each of you, get two Raptors in the air," Brigadier Sturgeon ordered Brigadier Sparen and Colonel Ramadan. "I want Jerichos on those weapons."
    "Aye aye," the FIST commanders replied. They contacted their squadrons, gave orders. Ramadan told his air people to instruct 26th FIST's air wing on the tactics they'd developed to use against the Skinks.
    In moments two Raptors from 34th FIST's squadron lifted off and headed for Heaven's Heights Ridge, staying well below the ridge top. They hovered a kilometer behind Heaven's Heights and locked their Jerichos onto the string-of-pearls guidance system. One at a time, four Jerichos belched out from under the wings of each Raptor, swooped up over the ridge, and hit their targets. Each Jericho wrought the destruction of a tactical nuke, leveling an area half a kilometer in diameter. Their areas of destruction overlapped. A three-kilometer-long swath of forest and wetlands was cleared of the monstrous Skink weapons.
    The pilots from 26th FIST's squadron had to wait a few minutes before taking off because they needed extra briefing in the tactics. They headed for their firing position behind Hymnal Hill and locked in. One of them wasn't tucked behind the hill well enough. His Raptor had just fired its second Jericho