By the time Nerva got to Ortiz’s position Ortiz and Demar’s reinforced companies were heading through the cleared areas. Advancing on the Harmony fighters.
“Harold,” Nerva said, overriding the man’s channel.
“Sir?” Harold asked, the sounds of battle audible behind him.
“I’m moving up Ortiz and Demar’s forces to reinforce, detail positions you want them to fill,” Nerva said.
“Fuck yes, sending waypoints,” Harold said, cutting the channel.
For one of the few times Nerva broke his stoic expression and grinned as he and Ortiz’s forces ran full out through the extractor.
There was something powerful about running with that many warriors at your back.
***
Haas checked the information on his HUD with a glance, putting rounds in a Harmony fighter trying to run.
He vaulted over a desk, tossing a grenade at a reinforced area that housed a repulsor and had claimed a half-dozen of his troopers.
The grenade went off, the fortification blowing apart as the repulsors ammunition went up as well.
“Move it troopers! We’ll clear these fuckers down to the maintenance floor and grind them down there. The rest of the Division is being committed to support,” Haas said while he was crouching low and cutting down some Harmony fighters which were hiding behind a cubicle trying to escape the troopers suppressive fire.
He saw Mark’s section running, guns up and shooting. They moved in on the enemy repulsor position which was now a smoking wreck.
Fire suppression foam came raining down as Haas’ HUD changed to Infrared.
“Use the foam for cover and move up!” Haas called, the troopers rose from their positions, working through the thick foam to take down the blind Harmony fighters.
“Section clear, let’s move on!” Haas said.
The troopers pushed out of the room, dropping on their stomachs and firing at the weapons teams setting up down the halls, they were still hidden in foam.
Grenades and rounds ripped the Harmony positions apart as troopers moved up, others went into the office complex across the hall and right into another firefight.
Infrared returned to normal for Haas who wiped the foam off of himself.
The troopers looked like they’d just come from the world’s biggest foam party. He shook that particular memory from a leave many years in the past as he moved into the offices.
Because they were chasing the Harmony forces they hadn’t set up anything, the fortified repulsor position was a new one.
Here grenade launchers were being used against them.
It seemed the Harmony fighters were finally breaking out the EMF hardware.
Haas would have preferred to have never seen it used against his own people. Grenades sent the troopers backwards, reds, yellows and a spattering of blacks showing where the grenades had been the closest.
Haas didn’t say anything as troopers from two platoons fired with their grenade launchers. The difference was hellish. Troopers had lived with and used their weapons for years.
They were damned accurate and knew how to use them to the best effect.
Explosions landed among the Harmony fighters, blowing them out in all kinds of directions, turning cover into shrapnel, starting fires.
Even as grenadiers fired, repulsor gunners combed the area like the universe’s deadliest scythe.
The whole time they advanced. Nerva had taught them the tactics of fighting a retreating enemy. They had to maintain contact for as long as possible, not giving the enemy time to make defenses, or do anything but react.
The Harmony forces, now panicked and scared were no less deadly, but they were broken into individuals. A single person can do a lot, but it is always outnumbered by the concentrated effort of many. Part of Nerva’s lecture came back to Haas as he saw an E-12 barrel moving above a cubicle. He aimed for the wall on his side, putting a grenade in it.
The weapon clattered to the floor and the Harmony fighter was not coming back from his wounds.
Haas looked to his right seeing Mark toss a grenade over a cubicle, it went off. He and Dominguez were running and jumping from opposite directions, red halos appeared and then dropped as they put rounds in the surprised fighters.
Mark got up and put a grenade into the wall of the offices, it came apart as Jerome moved around it. Fleeing Harmony fighters were cut down by Holm’s gunners. Haas’ platoon had worked together long enough to predict their fellow’s actions.
“Move to the next office-plex,” Haas called, looking to the medical reports and information that Zukic updated as he ran to the casualty collection area.
***
The maintenance areas of the extractor were a mess of fires, tracers, hand-to-hand combat and fire suppression foam.
Troopers reinforced by Demar and Ortiz’s forces were pushing through it all.
The half-sections above were getting some much needed support and clearing the overhead. Removing the E-12’s and repulsors hidden up there.
Command and control was limited. In here it was the trooper to the right and left against the enemy to your front.
“Lux get a grenade round!” Alexis called, up against some tall piping, covering the weaving corridor in front of her.
Lux tapped her back, thumbed the grenade and tossed it around the piping.
A Harmony fighter came out from behind the piping, as Lux was coming back on her throw’s back-swing.
Alexis pushed Lux, registering the Harmony fighter’s wide eyes as they wandered in on a trooper section. Then she didn’t see anything as her rifle fired, faster than the Harmony fighter’s sending them tumbling backwards with fist sized holes in their basic vac-suit.
Lux pulled out of Alexis’ grip their rifle up and ready as the grenade went off, shrapnel blowing out from behind the piping.
Alexis moved around the corner, three writhing fighters got a tombstone-touch from her E-12.
She dropped to a knee as Harmony fighters moved out of the recesses and passageways through the tubing piping from the industrial machines.
Red halos appeared as she pulled the trigger until the target went down, moving as soon as they faltered.
She felt spent casings fall on her shoulders as Lux fired over her.
The smart Harmony fighters got back into cover.
“Fuck this,” Alexis said her trigger hand sliding up the grenade launcher’s grip, she fired at the fighter’s cover.
It clicked empty.
“Reloading!” She called whipping her spent mag out of the grenade launcher, scanning and watching the corridor with her hand on the rifles trigger as she reloaded by feel.
She cocked the grenade launcher.
A fighter ducked out. Alexis’ rifle was coming up as Lux put a burst into the fighter, throwing them back.
The passageway of tubes, curling steam and gasses were mangled, spewing gasses everywhere.
“Moving up,” Alexis said, not giving herself time to think on the fact that if Lux hadn’t been where she was then she’d almost certainly be dead right now.
That was war, so many close calls that you heard death walking beside you. You were fighting to keep him at bay, but knowing that at anytime he would reach across and pull you down with him.
“Forces have pushed the remaining Harmony fighters into the maintenance areas, we end this here! No mercy, we are troope...” Captain Harold’s words were cut off by a gruesome noise.
“We are troopers!” Someone started the words rising above the firefight.
It took on like wildfire, yelled in savage growls and yells, a war-cry. They were declaring who they were and what they stood for. Fuck the rest of them.
Alexis was moving through the passageway, breaking off a group to go down a small recess that opened up into a maintenance corridor.
Harmony fighters ran past, not seeing them as the rest of the section pressed into the other passageways down the corridor they’d left.
Alexis saw
two people moving a repulsor, it wasn’t that cumbersome as a piece of kit, but Masoul’s people were used to half-gravity so it was awkwardly heavy, especially with an ammunition pack.
She fired into them her gun slamming into her shoulder and dropping the gunners.
“Going Left,” she said, moving up on the gun with speed. She’d seen others moving up and down this corridor, more might be on her in seconds. She needed to seize the ground and that gun.
“Going right,” Lux said behind her.
“Set,” Alexis called, making sure Lux was ready to go so as to not fuck them both over.
“Good,” Lux said.
They moved out, turning in opposite directions.
Alexis had made the right call; Harmony fighters were just feet away about to fire down their maintenance hallway.
Alexis tensed up, firing before she had even settled into a kneeling position. Rounds pinged off of machinery and drew a line into the Harmony forces, making them jerk from the rounds and drop as their momentum was suddenly stopped.
A Harmony fighter jumped at her.
She let her gun go, remembering the training that Mark and Tyler had pressed into her. They stumbled as the gun came free in their hands.
She pulled a blade from her lower back, dragging it across the attacker’s shoulder, they yelled out in pain and turned to present their front.
Opening them up for Alexi’s back cut, putting her blade at the side of their skull, angled up.
The lights went out as Alexis pulled the blade free, blood now coating it as her next attacker came.
The Masoul forces might have weapons but they had grown up for the last thirty years scaring people with their fists, bullets were hard to make and Harmony only wanted to use them for the EMF.
It meant they were more comfortable punching kicking and biting than they were shooting, but it also meant that they were usually good at it.
Another fighter, punched Alexis’ helmet, her head whipped to the side, but other than being a bit dizzy she was fine.
He howled in pain, his fist broken. She drew her knife over his arms and body, keeping him between her and the other fighters trying to get to her.
She glanced to her HUD as she came back, the fighter with a new cut up his forearm and cried out from the kick to his hand.
Red halos filled the corridor.
Realization hit her like a brick, if she or Lux failed, they were both dead. If they fought more than one person, then they didn’t have good chances.
There wasn’t anyone around except for a few levels up.
They would have to fight.
The broken hand dude finally scrambled out of the way, a new fighter with a blade moved up; she was fast and darted in, stabbing at Alexis’ side.
Worry bout that shit later, win for now, she thought, trying to push the panic aside as she and her new opponent traded slashes and stabs. Thankfully she had armor, and she was stronger from being trained at one-point-three gravity and having her body frozen in two point four.
Her attacker, well she was fast and didn’t need strength as much as time to score a hit.
Alexis felt the blade bite into her side as she moved out of the way of a blade aimed at her head, bumping into Lux who was fighting her own battle.
Anger focused her as she moved forward, giving Lux room, slapping her attackers arm away and drawing a red line through her arm.
***
“Fuck,” Tyler said, feeling his heart twist in his chest as an alert he hoped to never come up appeared on his HUD.
“What?” Jerome asked, Tyler was on the command channel.
“You got this? I need to be somewhere,” Tyler said, pulling up a blueprint, using his hand implants to manipulate a hologram only he could see in real-time.
They were on the fifth floor of the maintenance area. The Harmony fighters had got creative with booby traps and gun positions hidden in the tubing which was the opposite of the precise and ordered offices they’d begun their fight in.
“The hell are you talking about?” Mark said.
“Gotta do something!” Tyler cut the channel as he took off from his position, firing his grenade launcher to confuse the Harmony fighters targeting.
He jumped off of a catwalk onto a pipe, he jumped off of it, rolling on a catwalk below. He rolled, coming up firing as red halos appeared.
He ran straight, cutting right, then left, eyeing his HUD and the tentative route he’d made.
He felt the catwalk shaking with others running on it.
He picked up his pace. He couldn’t get slowed down here, if he did then Alexis might die. He ran faster, firing bursts at any red halos or movement that wasn’t outlined in green.
He came to the end of the catwalk, not even slowing as he jumped, using the railing as a launch pad. He let his rifle dangle from his harness as his extra dense muscles threw him fifteen feet to a thin pipe. He caught it, wrapping his arms and legs around it.
He looked down, seeing Alexis and another trooper tagged as ‘Lux’ below.
He released his grip sliding down past floors until the pipe turned away, ending five feet above the fighting.
Tyler sighed, released the pipe and fell, right on top of the person Lux was fighting, his legs hurt with the impact but he grabbed his rifle, the stunned looking Harmony fighters getting a full magazine of rounds.
More were swarming and Tyler’s gun clicked empty, he didn’t have time to reload.
He heard twangs and noises of metal moving above him.
An all too familiar shadow was dropping down catwalk to catwalk. His bulk landed on the floor, he rolled onto a repulsor Tyler hadn’t seen.
Tyler whipped his arms to his sides, twin blades now in his hands as he took over for Lux who was bleeding from a dozen places and panting. She was listed as a yellow on Tyler’s HUD.
Tyler moved up onto the Harmony fighters, his left blade up his right along his forearm as he bobbed, weaved, landing harsh punches and opening blood vessels with his blades.
Tyler heard the sounds of a repulsor behind him. He didn’t have time to look as he dropped to his knee, under an attacker’s punch, stabbing into their leg and dragging it up to their groin.
Blood pumped out as the person fell screaming and holding their leg.
Tyler kicked them in the face and pulled back, using them as a barricade for the next fighter who tried to step over his buddy, focusing on his footing on the blood-soaked decking and squirming comrade.
Tyler tilted to his side and kicked the man in the chest, throwing him into his friends, winded and useless his friends dropped him, a new attacker moving up.
“Tyler, move!” Mark barked.
Tyler turned for the maintenance corridor which was the only real cover and dove, seeing Mark with the repulsor in his hands, only one of the straps holding the ammo pack on.
Behind Mark the scene could only be called an abattoir.
As soon as Tyler was clear, Lux was sitting on the ground, working on her injuries and out of the way.
Mark held the repulsor and fired, tracers ripped down the corridor, grinding anything and anyone in his way.
Shell casings fell at his feet as Tyler felt a sliver of cold pass through his spine.
Tyler got to his feet, spying his rifle, he grabbed it, pulling magazines as the shooting ceased.
Both hallways were clear on either side and fighting could be heard all around.
Tyler put his grenade mag back in place.
“Next time, give me some warning you idiot,” Mark growled, his own ammo pack had been used long ago as they’d moved through the offices.
He pulled the repulsor’s other strap on, glowering at Tyler before turning his attention to the gun.
“Sorry bro,” Tyler said, shrugging.
Mark sighed securing his rifle to the side of his pack and looking to Lux as Alexis jumped at Tyler, wrapping him up in a hug.
For a second they held one another, then she stepped back and punched h
im.
“Shouldn’t be down here you idiot, your platoon is five levels up,” she said, anger in her voice.
“Good to know you’re keeping tabs on me,” Tyler joked.
“This is war Tyler Victor, as much as I’m thankful you pulled Lux and my asses out of the fire, you should be leading your section, not down here. You even brought Mark down here, that only leaves your platoon with two section leaders, and we both know Holm is nervous since it’s his first turn as the section commander,” she said.
“I know, but they’re only slowly advancing and I trust Mark made sure that someone was leading our sections before he followed me,” Tyler said, wincing as he tried to fight her accusations but they were all too true.
He should be up there watching over his people, but he couldn’t have left Alexis to die.
“What’s done is done, Haas is gonna have your ass, now we need to clear this area out if we’re going to survive this,” Mark interjected, helping Lux to her fee. Tyler could see her wincing but as soon as she was vertical she was checking her rifle.
Alexis looked like she was going to say something else but simply nodded, “yeah.”
“You two lovers take left, Lux, you’re with me on the right,” Mark said, pulling the repulsor to his shoulder.
Tyler took the lead as they separated, Alexis at his back, his barrel looked for fighters coming out of any nook and cranny he saw between the piping.
The corridor angled to the right, Tyler slowed his pace, trying to see what was down the bend.
He saw five people scattered around what looked like a supply closet, red halos tagged them as he slowly moved back into cover.
“You hit the ones on the right with grenades, I’ll hit the ones on the left,” Tyler said, pulling his grenade launcher magazine and checking he had enough rounds.
“Got it,” Alexis said, doing the same before slapping it home.
“I’ll go low, you high,” Tyler said, facing the supply closet but still behind cover. He was wishing he could say so much more, but right now they just needed to survive, not think about the fact they were in love with one another.
“Good,” Alexis said.
Masoul (Harmony War Series Book 2) Page 19
