He visibly jerked as the Queen spoke, staring at her in surprise for a second, before shaking his head, his voice toneless as he resumed talking. "Oh, right. Sorry, got lost in the past. Anyhoo, last patrol for me was supposed to be easy. Escort a couple trucks with medical supplies to a town that had been in the background of a couple skirmishes, some of the insurgents' mortars had hit the town on accident. About thirty of us, two trucks, seven or eight light patrol vehicles, and a lightly armored personnel fighting vehicle. Nothing that mortars or RPGs could do much against.<br/><br/>Got into the town fine, and dropped off the supplies at the local hospital, healing temple if you want, and were on our way back when they hit us. We took the same road out as we did in, and that was us being almost terminally retarded. The APFV, armored personnel fighting vehicle, was leading, the two trucks immediately behind it, and the patrol vehicles behind it, making sure nothing tried to come up behind us. I was in the dead center of the convey, but the explosions were big enough that it rocked our three ton vehicle even though we were a good three hundred feet back. The insurgents opened the attack with a buried explosive chain, four or five explosives linked together to go off at the same time, and it wiped out the APFV, the two trucks, and the leading patrol vehicle, shredding them. They had buried the bombs too deep in the road though, so most of the explosion's force went straight up, rather than out and up, which would done a much worse number on us. But with those four vehicles destroyed where they were, we were stuck right in the middle of a killing field, and the insurgents wasted no time in unloading on us. RPGs, machine guns, small arms, mortars. You name it, they had it, and all of it was slamming into the ground around us.<br/><br/>They weren't very good though, hence why only the vehicle closest to the four destroyed ones, already damaged from being too close to the blast, was destroyed, but the fire was enough to completely immobilize the remaining six. That left about twenty of us left out of the original thirty three. We finally got around to returning fire as one of the two remaining sergeants, I was just an Airman at the time, began screaming to return fire. Another vehicle, either the last or next to last, ate a mortar as we began dismounting from the vehicles, a couple of us dropping to the inaccurate fire, but they were still alive, at least for the moment. A couple minutes, though it felt like years, of desperately firing and making it rather difficult for the insurgents to aim properly, before we began moving to a nearby building, abandoning the vehicles though we took the heavier weapons on them. Just as well we moved when we did, as abruptly the APFV at the front of the convey disintegrated into an expanding cloud of shrapnel, fire, and smoke. That was when we heard Sergeant Wight's last words 'Dear God almighty, they have a fucking tank.'<br/><br/>Never found out what killed him, but of the twenty or so that got out of the vehicles, sixteen made it to the shelter, as the tank, think of it like a wyrm that can move almost twice as fast as a sprinting horse except for hours on open ground and weighs about 40 tonnes, fired again, clearing the second truck from its path, allowing it to begin swinging the main turret back around toward us. We made it into the building, and it fired again, caving in the corner of the wall as the shot glanced off the wall, rather than penetrating through it, which would have killed us all when it exploded. As it was, we withdrew in good order to the center of the building, the medic tending to the wounded, and the rest of us scattering throughout the building to begin returning fire. Our comms guy, the man with the device for speaking to someone else with a similar device at a few dozen miles away, began relaying the situation to our commander, informing him that things had gone extremely and spectacularly south, and that we needed any and all available assistance to get the survivors out. All of us had shorter ranged ones, but he had patched the radio, the device I mentioned earlier, into the channel that everyone could hear, though only he could talk back, so we all heard the reply that the nearest forces were fifteen minutes out, and diverting toward us.<br/><br/>I was at the back door to the building, and rather than firing to keep the insurgents from firing back, I was shooting to kill and maim, having figured out that the situation had been dire well before finding out we had to hold out for fifteen minutes. All of us were well aware that we had about two minutes, tops, before that tank finished tearing the building down around us. And that was by itself, not counting the firing we were still taking from the insurgent ground forces around us. I noticed that I had nothing near me, and activated my radio, telling the surviving sergeant, Sergeant Salzazar, that I could slip out and take out the mortar teams that sounded like they were on the rooftop of a building not far from where I was. She didn't reply for a second, the tank had fired again, this time blowing open the front room where we had come in from, before asking if I was crazy. I argued with her for a moment, before telling her I was going, and she needed to get someone to the back door to cover it, before charging out of the doorway.<br/><br/>Admittedly, the gesture was, at best, suicidal, but it would buy time for the rest of the squad, and I had seen a couple of RPG teams moving along the alleyway when I finally broke out of the building, meaning that we might be able to slip out of the building we had holed up in, and turn the last stand into a running firefight as we gave ground and fought towards the edge of town. I managed to make it to the alleyway without getting wounded by a minor miracle, and began advancing quickly, sacrificing being thorough for moving quickly, since I was alone and didn't have to cover for someone else. A couple minor firefights along the way, three insurgents, one a child, and I got my hands on one of their RPG launchers and a backpack with three shots for it. It was a bit awkward, but I managed to shoulder the extra pack along with my gear, and wedged the RPG between the pack and my back. A few more fights along the way, another couple of dead kids, including one I had to put a bullet in his head as a mercy kill after shooting open his throat, and I found the mortar teams."<br/><br/>He took another pause, and a drink, before grinning mirthlessly at them. "So, going too fast?"