“Get off me, Private! And keep goddamned firing!”
Suddenly as if from nowhere a rocket crossed right over the top of the bus in a twisting and spiraling path right into the pursuing vehicle. The Uey truck exploded in a fireball with pieces flung asunder in every direction. The wheel on the front was blown completely clear and continued to roll off in the opposite direction still aflame.
“What the Hell?” Kevin shouted.
“That’ll be General Jones!” Lieutenant Gray said. Several more rockets zipped into the line of the UNE forces in pursuit. Then a hail of gunfire rained down onto them, dropping the UNE troops in their tracks. “Moralles! Get us to the tunnel entrance!”
“There, LT!” Mallet pointed about three blocks up. There was a squad of North Burrow Vols running right for them and with heavy pursuit from the Ueys. The general was covering them well but it didn’t look good. Kevin started picking out targets to shoot at. “They ain’t gonna make, sir!”
“Moralles, eleven o’clock! See them?” Lieutenant Gray radioed over the net.
“I got ’em.”
The bus swerved right then left again; but at least this time Kevin was able to hold on. He crawled forward on top of the bus to get a better line of sight on a squad of Uey bastards chasing his comrades. He drew down and locked the dot red just as his magazine ran dry.
“Shit! I’m out!” Kevin shouted. He fumbled about his body for another clip but had nothing but a grenade left attached at his molle straps near his left shoulder. He pulled it loose and popped the pin. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Kevin pulled himself up to his knees and flung the grenade as hard as he could. He dove back to the bus for cover but looked back. The grenade took a fast arc across the street just to the other side of where the volunteers were retreating. He wished he’d have gotten a few more meters on the throw, but it was just enough. The grenade detonated, throwing glass and concrete from the side of an office building’s first-floor windows. The blast wave of debris cut across and between the rushing squad of Ueys and stalled them long enough that Moralles could slide the bus just to the other side of the North Burrow squad.
“Get it!” Sergeant Moralles worked the door open for them. Rifle fire continued to pour down from the office buildings, chewing up the streets between them and the Earthers and giving them enough cover to load the bus and get the Hell out of there.
“The tunnel, Moralles!” Lieutenant Gray shouted.
“Where the Hell is all this resistance coming from?” Colonel Suarez of the United Nations of Earth Forces kept enough distance from the front lines that she could direct Bravo and Charlie companies from near the southern wall of the dome where they had entered. “We had them on the run and wiped out.”
“Ma’am, forward lines of Bravo are reporting so much resistance that they are slowed to a stop. They are dug in and can probably hold off any advances, but we got stopped cold just shy of the West Dome Tunnel. General McMillis was stopped too, but look at this, ma’am.” Master Gunnery Sergeant Kelly Vors pulled the three-dimensional map of the battlescape up in front of them and started making marks. “We have them surrounded from the north and the south. And it looks like we have twice the force level, maybe three times. They can’t hold that position in front of the tunnel.”
“They could retreat back through the tunnel, though, Gunny.” Suarez looked at the layout of the battle. The initial attacks had started to wind down and the lines had stabilized over the better part of the last hour. “They hold this wedge here at the tunnel and at the west wall. Mac is pushing in from the top and we’re holding from the bottom.”
“Yes ma’am. We could do an orchestrated push and take them out. We might push them into the tunnel but then we just follow them right in and mop them up. This revolution could be over by nightfall.”
“Any word on Nathaniel Ray’s volunteers from the west?”
“Last intel we had still seems good. They were a good hundred kilometers or more from Aldrinville on the other side of the Dish Crater. It would take him at least a day to move his troops here,” Vors explained.
“That’s what we thought about Jones’ troops. How the Hell did they get here so damned unexpectedly?” Suarez was perplexed. “The last intel we had showed them fifty or more kilometers to the south. What about Hamilton?”
“Captain Blalock from the blockade command just detected Hamilton moving a group of about forty soldiers with a few vehicles coming from way out west,” Vors said.
“Where’s he going?”
“Looks like he’s coming here.”
“Too little, too late. Let’s mop up General Jones before he can get here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Suarez to General McMillis.”
“Go, Marissa.”
“Sir, you ready to make a final push and end this nonsense with these Loonies?”
“Damned right.”
“Lieutenant Chris Gray, at your service, General Jones.” The young South Burrow militiaman stood in front of a good fifteen or so tattered men and women.
“Major Teri Carboni, ma’am. We can rearm and reload and jump back in the fight.”
“I appreciate that, I certainly do. Get your wounded out. You all have seen some serious fighting and more is coming,” General Jones told them. “If any of your volunteers want to stay and fight, I won’t stop them. But know this, what’s left of four full companies of the UNE’s finest are about to press against us any moment now. It will get rough.”
“Yes ma’am. Can’t be much rougher than what we just saw,” a private first class standing behind the lieutenant said out of turn. One of the first sergeants looked as if he were going to strangle the private.
“Very well,” Tami told them. “Your mission is to hold the entrance to the tunnel in case we have to make a run for it. But I hope it never comes to that.”
“Ma’am. Yes, ma’am!”
Tami turned back out to the edge of the tunnel and jumped in the back of a LoonieCart II that was waiting for her. The drive quickly accelerated the car down the back alleyways of the office district about three blocks to the rearward-operating base they’d set up. The lines had stabilized, but she knew that wasn’t going to last very long at all. In fact, she was expecting to see the Ueys attack with all four companies momentarily. The forward recon units had all reported back that the Earthers were getting ready to march. The car came to a screeching stop just in front of First Sergeant Meeks.
“Shawn, status?”
“As you can see, we lost about eleven percent in the first wave. We’re down to about seventy troops. We just got a resupply from the West Dome, so ammo and rockets are good,” First Sergeant Meeks said. “I think we don’t have enough to hold the line this far from the wall.”
“Well, we can add seventeen soldiers from the militia that just reupped, That probably still ain’t enough. What do you suggest?”
“Retreat back closer to the West Dome Tunnel entrance. There, we can increase our troop density and we can hold that longer. Plus, the damned Ueys will get overconfident and bring everything in close trying to take us out with one push.”
“I like it. Sound the retreat now. Be expecting it to trigger an attack.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Schooner, this is Dogleg. Do you copy?”
“Schooner here. You ready, Dogleg?”
“No better time like the present. Start a ten-minute countdown. We’re going to retreat westward,” Tami said over the long-range “encrypted” channel. She assumed the Ueys had hacked it.
“Understood, Dogleg. Godspeed. Schooner out.”
“McMillis to Suarez.”
“Go, General.”
“Intel just hacked a long-range communication that had to be between the King and Queen of Spades. Jones is retreating westward to the tunnel. Attack now!”
“Roger that, General! Commencing attack.”
Lieutenant Chris Gray leaned into his rifle stock, squinting at the
ballistic computer–driven red dot sights. He could see the motion in the distance as one big flurry and the occasional skittering of a few individuals, but it was too much all at once to truly choose a target. He knew that would change very soon, though. They’d lined up several street barricades, an excavator, and a line of blocks and sandbags across the main loading ramp for the tunnel. The makeshift barrier and foxholes stretched in either direction about thirty meters. They’d parked the school bus at one end, wedged in the middle of the street so it would make it difficult for the Ueys to drive their armored trucks into the tunnel without some doing.
“They’re coming, LT,” PFC Mallet said nervously. “At least this time we’ve got an escape route that ain’t on top of a damned bus.”
“We hold our ground until the general tells us otherwise, PFC Mallet.” Staff Sergeant Moralles dropped in the line between them and made himself comfortable. “We’re better fortified. They have to attack us. As long as we keep the fire on them hot and heavy, they won’t be able to take us. They’re gonna use big numbers and push in single points. We’ll have to concentrate our fire there.”
“And watch our flanks, because if they get in behind us, we’re sunk,” the lieutenant added, “But we’re close enough to the wall, I think they’d have to go outside the dome to do that. Major Carboni’s squads are around the corner. I think they’ll have our south flank covered. The general’s men have us to the north.”
Several rounds fired a couple hundred meters to the south and then more to the north. There were several explosions and the firefight moved closer. Lieutenant Gray let out a breath and watched through his sights until he could make out several targets moving in cover formation along one of the sidestreets. The battle for North Dome was about to begin.
“Alright, here we go. Pick your targets. Fire when ready!” he ordered.
“I’m out! Reloading!” Chris ducked back down behind the sandbags and switched out a magazine. He looked to the south and could see Carboni’s squads firing just as heatedly. The general’s troops were about thirty meters out in front and more to the north, fighting house to house, building to building, and street to street. “Northeast, Moralles! Armored truck!”
“Got it!” Moralles leaned up over the barricade, propping a grenade launcher on his shoulder. “Fire in the hole!”
The orange exhaust sprayed out of the rear end of the launch tube while a path of smoke streaked out in front of them. The rocket-propelled grenade twisted over twice and just missed the armored vehicle.
“Shit! Missed!” Moralles shouted as he ducked back down behind the barricade.
“Just keep pouring rounds on their location!” Lieutenant Gray replied. “Mallet, get us another rocket!”
“On it, sir!” Mallet scooted down and crawled toward the stockpile they’d made in the mouth of the tunnel. Chris hoped the PFC didn’t take too long because the little nine-millimeter rifle rounds didn’t do enough damage to stop the armored trucks unless they got lucky and the driver panicked. And it didn’t look like this driver had any intentions of panicking. In fact, he was heading right down the street for the barricades. His fifty-cal gunner in the back of the vehicle was firing molten rounds that glowed hot as they ricocheted about, chewing up the blocks and sandbags the Loonies were hiding behind.
Chris had just about had enough of those damned armored trucks. The heavy-caliber weapons had torn his squad up earlier and they’d been running from the damned things for the better part of the day. Something in him just snapped. He couldn’t, no, he wouldn’t take any more of it. He was going to stop that goddamned truck!
Lieutenant Chris Gray jumped over the sandbags in a single leap and immediately bounced with all his strength as soon as he hit the ground onto the top of a plastic green awning leaning out over the entrance to one of the office buildings along the sidewalk. In a single spinning motion he came to the ground about ten meters in front of the armored truck, off balance, and sliding belly-first toward the vehicle. The gunner had tracked him but somehow Chris had managed to stay just ahead of the barrage of gunfire. Once his belly-slide came to a stop he began to realize what he’d done and that he was fucked—or so he thought. Then an RPG hit the side of the truck, knocking it over sideways. The explosion pushed him backward and took the wind out of him. His ears rang violently. He tried crawling on all fours and shaking his head, but that didn’t help.
Sergeant Moralles landed next to the lieutenant onto a knee, firing another rocket down the street. PFC Mallet grabbed the back buddy-carry handle on the lieutenant’s suit and yanked him to his feet.
“Crazy shit, LT!” PFC Mallet said. “Let’s get to cover!”
“Uh, right.” Chris shook his head, still trying to regain his senses, and out of the corner of his eye saw a couple of Ueys stacked up and moving around the corner, getting the drop on them. “Look out!”
Chris pushed the private down to the sidewalk and the two of them bear-crawled to the doorway of the office building hoping to find cover against its outer wall. Then the wall exploded all around. Chips of debris flew into them, stinging like bees. He was certain the integrity of his suit had been compromised. Chris and Mallet belly-crawled through the door and to the first-floor stairwell.
“Up?” Mallet asked.
“Up,” Chris ordered. The two of them bounced at full speed up the steps, skipping several steps with each bounce. Coming to stop at the second-floor landing he shouldered through the door and dove to cover behind a wooden desk in a small office across the hallway from the stairwell overlooking the street below. “Keep an eye on the stairwell, Kevin!”
Chris flipped the desk over next to the all-glass wall and hunkered down behind it. He could see the barricades about thirty meters down the street. He couldn’t believe he’d managed to get them pulled so far away from their cover position. An explosion rocked the building and smoke and dust blew in from around the stairwell door. Several seconds later the door kicked open and Staff Sergeant Moralles stuck his head around the corner.
“LT?”
“Moralles!” Chris was happy to see him. “We need to get back to the barricades.”
“Worse than that, sir.” Moralles said, pointing his rifle barrel in a general northerly direction. “So many damned Ueys just rushed by, we ain’t going nowhere soon.”
“He’s right, sir. Look.” Mallet crawled over to the window ledge and watched as at least two dozen of the UNE forces filtered by beneath them. Somehow, they had broken through the line and were coming right down the street toward the tunnel onramp. “What do we do?”
“Hold on.” Lieutenant Gray opened the command channel on the net. “General Jones, Lieutenant Gray here. The Ueys have broken through at the tunnel onramp. More than a couple dozen are about to jump the barricades.”
“Gray! Do not pursue! I repeat! Do not pursue! And take cover!” General Jones replied.
“Attack!” Nathaniel Ray shouted as all one hundred thirty of group A from his company ran out the West Dome Tunnel, firing their automatic rifles at the unexpecting Uey soldiers from General McMillis’s Alpha Company. “Don’t let up until they’re begging for mercy!”
Nathaniel passed out of the tunnel and down to the onramp, leaping over the fortified line that the militia had done their best to hold. The wave of Schooner’s A Group washed over the barricade and out into the streets so quickly that the initial onslaught to McMillis’s Alpha Company decimated them in their tracks. The Luna 11 Volunteers split out of the mouth of the tunnel in a classic pincer movement, spreading in two lines. One line took a southerly route while the other northerly and between them they trapped all of McMillis’s western-most troops.
“We’re pushing them out, Tami!” Nate announced over the tactical net. “Pushing them right back by you.”
“Fish in a barrel, Nate!” Tami replied. “Bring in B Group from the east before they try to get back out of the dome on the North side.”
“Schooner’s B Group! Attack!” Nathaniel or
dered on an open channel. At that point the wall opened up from an explosion on the east side of the dome between the tunnel to the Dish Crater Observatory and the North Dome. The rest of the Revolutionary Volunteer army, all one hundred seventy of them, flooded into the North Dome, wading through both McMillis’s and Suarez’s soldiers. “Free Luna!”
“We have to move quickly before they figure out what we’re doing!” Mayor Hamilton hung onto the edge of the flatbed truck as it bounded down the gravel road at a top speed of about seventy kilometers per hour. “Here!”
“Hold on!” the driver warned. The truck came to a screeching halt, slinging the loose gravel and lunar regolith up into a glimmering dust cloud with the occasional rainbow of light peeking through. Hamilton went right to work pulling the large cylinders out and off the back of the flatbed. He popped the release handle on the ratchet strap and kicked one of the tubes off the side.
“They’re numbered!” he instructed. “Put them together by the numbers!”
Alton bounced down from the flatbed to the side of the long lightweight metal cylinder he’d just kicked off the truck and started propping it up as best he could over one knee. “Here! This is number one. There’s two.” He pointed. Two of the soldiers grabbed it and twisted it into place until the cylinders were adjoined into a single longer one.
“What next, sir?”
“That one is number three. And there’s four!” Alton helped the rest of the squad grab the parts and fashion them together quickly. Then he jumped back up onto the back of the truck and worked a pile of girder work free that was strapped down there. “Help me with this!”
They stacked the girders together over the side of the truck until they formed a small tower about ten meters tall. The bottom of the makeshift tower rested against the lunar regolith and midway up the tower two of the men worked strapping material around the tower and ratcheting it tightly to the stanchions of the flatbed truck.
Battle Luna Page 31
