Tony reacted, and the man’s rounds hit powered armor as Tony’s repulsor blazed, a five second burst turning the man and those unfortunate enough to be behind him, into clouds of gore.
Moretti had Harper up again, his pistol searching as pandemonium broke out and people scattered in every direction.
“Take us to the nearest barracks,” Moretti ordered.
“Spread out and cover them,” Haas said, over the private circuit with the troopers.
The powered armor troops fanned out around the group, taking off at a run. People ran away from them as their repulsors looked for targets.
A bomb went off somewhere, adding to the panic.
It wasn’t long until they reached the nearest barracks.
“A bomb went off in Tower Three’s barracks,” Moretti said, stopping before they entered the barracks.
“Let me send a few of the armored enforcers in to check the barracks out with their sensors,” Moretti said to Harper, who was looking shocked.
“Tony, check it out please,” Harper said, giving the man a weak smile.
“Mark!” Tony said, using his speakers. He and the other Powered Armor Chosen or PAC’s hadn’t got the hang of using armor to armor communications.
“Coming,” Mark said, following Tony, his sensors going to full as he looked around the room. His back had pretty clear blind spots as well as his sides so he had to compensate using his forward sensors to check the place out.
It was declared clear and Harper and the rest of the party hustled in.
“Powered armor cover the entrances. Tyler, Dooks with me, we’ll cover Harper. Mark see to the defenses,” Tony said, he and the two others following Harper into the medical facilities, the enforcers with him looking at everyone with stony eyes. Moretti was on his communicator talking to central control.
“Got it,” Mark said, making sure that people were at every entrance ready to fight anything that came along.
The resistance had been pushing for an operation to show their defiance of Harmony’s presence, but the troopers had told them to not go through with any such antics. Doing so would only mess up their own plans.
So they’d compromised, the troopers taught the resistance, hiding their identities with masks and implants messing up their voices, and the resistance waited. The troopers kept their plans to themselves, not trusting the resistance. It seemed that their distrust was well founded.
Mark didn’t want to even imagine what could have happened if they had told the resistance about their plans.
Information started coming in, the barracks had been hit, but there had been no more attacks. At least it would make Harmony think that it was only a small group, but it also meant that Harmony knew the resistance could get a bomb into their barracks and if they could do that then they could get one into most places. Security was about to become tighter and Mark knew that the educators would be called out on more than one witch hunt. Maybe they’d actually get a resistance fighter. And if they did then they could start painting a picture that none of the troopers wanted painted right now.
“Sending message,” Haas said over the private channel. No one needed to be told what message he was sending.
Chapter 37
EMFC Reclaimer
Shipping Station, Masoul System
12/3241
Nerva got a priority alert as rounds whizzed around him and the company he had moved up with. He ducked behind cover and checked it out.
There was no shock, just his teeth tapping together in thought. It was a recording of the attack on Harper and a message from Haas. It was only two words.
Begin operation.
Nerva contacted the other majors on the field and in reserve.
“The operation begins, we push forward, slow at first, over the next three weeks I want to be at full strength. No Mercy,” Nerva said.
“We are troopers,” The other majors returned, green lights making rows on the top of his HUD.
He sent orders to his captains. It was time that they stopped pissing about and got to the real fight.
***
General Wai looked over the information with bored interest. She knew that reports were going to Earth and that someone was reading them, but other than orders to complete the operation, she was giving Nerva enough room to hang himself.
She wanted definitive proof of him stepping outside the boundaries before she jumped on him. She had ordered his lieutenant colonel and colonel to stop issuing orders, she’d had the others lessen the degree to which they held the reins over their pawns.
When he’d got the message from Masoul, he’d issued orders to the other majors. Yhat was something that no one other than her should have done.
At this rate she would have enough on him to get him removed before they reached Masoul. Then she might send a message to this Harper about Nerva’s prized platoon who were spinning up wild stories about powered armor and that this band of colonists were working with others.
Who the hell would believe such idiocy, she sneered. She’d long ago stopped reading the reports, chalking it up to Nerva’s people spreading lies to make themselves and their major look better.
Higher-ups told her to keep off Nerva’s back as long as he followed the rules. With his constant overstepping of his rank, she’d be doing those higher-ups a favor. They understood the need to cut down the commanders that got a bit too brilliant for their political masters.
She might even get a promotion for making such a display. It would keep the schemers and tacticians in the lower ranks.
She glanced at the reports on her desk holograms. One showed the cost to benefit ratio, the other the percentage loss.
Names, people, the troopers that died, they didn’t matter, she had bigger things to worry about.
Her private butler entered the room, putting down a tray of tea served in priceless porcelain from what had been the United Kingdom. It was centuries old.
The care the butler went through to pour the tea was an art in itself.
Wai took the tea, the butler standing off to the side of the room, nothing more than an expensive appliance, there to serve her needs.
She was looking forward to her next round of anti-aging treatments. With the end of this mission she should be recalled to the citadel where she could start building up her connections to the CEOs that called the planet home.
The military would allow her to go from a decent CFO to the higher echelons of CEOs.
With a wave she dismissed the reports on the troopers and instead pulled up the trading market, checking her stocks and balances. A few messages had come in from various CEOs wishing to buy her allegiance.
This was the real work. She kept the economy going, whilst the meat died out there. Sometimes they needed pruning like Nerva and other times they needed her intervention to keep her loss-benefit ratio from turning a negative.
***
Alexis looked over what had become her section.
Newly promoted Sergeant Donahue had caught a round and not even the medics could save him, turning the newly minted Master Corporal Alexis Xin to Sergeant Alexis Xin.
To say that she was anxious would be a gross understatement. Her new husband was somewhere with his platoon, apparently disappearing from all records as soon as the fighting on Shipping Station had started.
Then there were the new orders. They had been taking their time moving through the station, more time than most people liked, as booby traps were identified and Chosen killed.
The bastards liked to ambush them at every opportunity. With the slow pace that the leaders were pushing the troopers had developed better tactics for turning the Chosen’s ambushes against them.
It had taken them some time but eventually the Chosen had started giving up on the ambush tactic and instead went back to trying to use service areas to get behind the troopers, hitting them in the rear.
The people from Sacremon knew that tactic only too well - they also had mines and knew how to use
them. It wasn’t unusual to hear yelling and then see a section of decking open up as blood colored the area.
Now the commanders were done sitting on their asses and they were pushing them forward.
They were taking their time bringing everyone into the fight. They were fresh, hell they’d been able to take bird baths with water, soap and a basin when they were pulled back.
The Chosen kept their people on the front lines and they wore down. They constantly made mistakes and generally fucked up.
Problem was that Harmony was getting good at getting people and supplies to the station. The carriers and combat shuttles had cut their numbers down, making it so only about half of those that got to the station or tried to leave it were able to.
Hell, they were getting more action than the troopers; well they were yesterday.
“Move it, Wiz! Malone get a fucking ‘nade in that gunner fuck!” Alexis barked to her section.
Wiz ran past her to the next position, his repulsor barrel red from shooting. His second, Feng, was attaching additional ammo boxes to his ammo pack to fill him up.
Malone popped out of cover and fired grenades into the heavy machine gun the Chosen had dug in.
The gun went silent as Malone ejected her mag, throwing in another and following the rest of the section.
Shipping Station was built in sections, each held about a hundred containers double-stacked, and between each five there were open corridors. No matter the cargo they were all stuffed inside the shipping containers that weren’t dissimilar to the shipping containers used since the twentieth century.
Different lifters lay all over the place, stopped in the middle of their activity, some holding containers, others blocking the corridors between containers.
Grapples hung from the ceiling, also in various stages of use or inaction.
The Chosen had turned the ordered sections into a maze, pushing down containers, making defenses and booby traps with them.
Alexis watched as one of the containers, held overhead a few sections over, dropped, its grapples blown away with small explosives.
It hit the floor and exploded, the entire section going up in a short fireball as oxygen was pulled out of the hundreds of holes in the station’s walls.
The heavy machine gun came back online, holing the container Malone had been shooting from. Alexis had her own worries as she followed her troopers.
Grenade launchers blew holes in containers.
Giuseppe went down in a hail of rounds, the rest of the section hit the ground or found some cover.
Alexis hissed in her helmet, Giuseppe was a black dot.
Wiz, opened up with his repulsor. Their other gunner Xiau had been cut down three days ago.
Horley was running the gun and she ran up ducking into an alcove. Rounds pinged the container but tailed off.
Horley’s gun appeared moments later, sending a stream of rounds into the target, as red halos appeared.
Alexis got to her feet and stepped out, landing two grenades among the Chosen fighters.
“Krank, get Horley patched. Wiz move up. I want supporting fire up there. Pedro see to it, I’m contacting higher,” Alexis said, a green light from Pedro on her HUD as she connected to Second Lieutenant Dang.
“I have moved up the right flank. Securing firing position within enemy fortifications,” Alexis said.
“Good, I’m sending Sergeant Hyunh and weapons det up to you,” Dang said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, cutting the channel. She could see the weapons detail moving from their over watch positions, the low gravity allowing them to fall from the top of two containers and run to her position.
Wiz was already hammering targets; Pedro had forces out checking their rear in case Chosen tried to flank. Other troopers were throwing grenades among the Chosen.
Rounds were flying in all directions and more than one set of lights were going out as they were struck and sent into a shower of sparks.
Tracers were even more apparent in the dark, someone was firing a repulsor against them, peppering the wall behind Wiz. The containers showed metal ingots, and rounds pinged around in there like in an ancient pinball machine.
Hyunh gestured to his people and then up, probably talking to them on a private channel.
“Hey, Xin, we’ll get some fire into the fuckers in no time, could your section provide cover?” Hyunh asked.
“Got it,” Alexis said, nodding to the man.
He nodded and pulling knives out from his lower back, he jumped, using the flat of his blades to pull himself up the container wall.
Alexis could already see a clearer picture of the fortifications on the other side of the containers.
The red markers disappeared under a wave of fire, and she could feel Hyunh’s guns going to work.
“Pull back in, fire teams. Pedro detail a fire team to stay with Wiz and Horley, the rest of you reinforce the other approaches. I want a two-fer up on these containers watching for possible Chosen container hoppers,” she said.
The section got moving, people pulling back from the front roles and moving to secondary ones.
Her two people on top of the containers tagged Chosen moving over the containers. They were Malone and Riccardo, both were on the good side of shooters. And they took their time sending Chosen tumbling off of their containers; some were blown back mid-jump.
Alexis acted as a conduit to her troopers, waiting for the inevitable order to move into the fortifications and clear out any of the Chosen fuckers left behind.
Chapter 38
Landing City,
Masoul Actual, Masoul System
12/3241
As soon as Harper was secured back in the command center and they were away from prying eyes, Tyler disappeared down into the tunnels that led to the resistance headquarters.
Dasan, the man that had said to kill him at the first meeting was celebrating.
“You fucking idiot,” Tyler said as he moved past him and into the audience chambers.
“What you say, you fucking enforcer fuck?” Dasan said.
Tyler felt the blade under his right arm fall into his hand. In one fluid motion he flicked the blade between his fingers and threw it.
Dasan screamed, dropping his drink as he put his hand to his shoulder, the blade lodged deep as blood welled around the wound.
No one moved to get in Tyler’s way, they had seen the trooper’s way of fighting, none of them were drunk or stupid enough to try anything.
“Because of your fucking stupidity, our plans are being moved up months, and you know what, more fucking people are going to die. You make me fucking sick, you’re no better than Harper, sitting down here, toasting the good fucking times,” Tyler said. His hands were shaking; he was doing everything in his power to hold himself back.
“Better than...” Tyler punched him so fast and hard in the face, Dasan only got two words out before his sentence came to an abrupt end.
He dropped like a sack of shit and Tyler pulled his blade back, cleaning it on the unconscious Dasan.
“Five people died cause of that little fucking act, and that’s just in the last few hours, the tunnels will run red with blood by tonight, and you didn’t even fucking kill him,” Tyler said, looking to the others that were drinking with Dasan.
“Fucking drink up boys and girls; it’s time for the fucking troopers to go to war. Then you’ll see a real battle. Then you can drink, but it will be to try and forget those that you knew, and the images that play like a slideshow in your head. Till then, I see one person in the resistance even fucking eye alcohol...” Tyler looked in all their eyes to make sure they saw his anger; all of them looked away and the chamber was silent, “then I’ll fucking deal with him. I’m not a fucking educator, I’ll just kill them.” Tyler looked at them all again, their eyes were cast to the ground but they could still feel his glare.
“Pass the word,” Tyler growled, pushing his arm above his head, the blade sliding back into its holster.
Tyler marched into the hall; the guards went to stop him but the look in his eyes made them open the door instead.
There was a wall of decrepit screens along one side, people worked consoles on the other side of the wall, and in the center there was a flickering hologram above a table that Song was leaning on.
“Tyler,” Song started, a war of emotions on her face.
“You fucked up all of our planning, Dasan was your man and he fucking kicked this shit-storm off. Now we have to work with what we have and get things started. I want you to call the resistance together, it’s time they had more than just a few popguns.”
Tyler opened a secret pocket on his enforcer jacket and pulled out several folders, throwing them on a desk near her.
“We should have had weeks to plan this out and have the people trained up, now we’re going to have more fatalities, but if we’re to succeed we need to hit hard and fast before Harmony starts reinforcing these positions,” Tyler waved to the folders.
“Tyler, we still have time,” Song argued.
“Not any longer, we don’t. The EMF is on the move. Pausing their advance only gives Harmony more time to reinforce positions and turn this FUBAR situation worse. These towers will become abattoirs if we wait much longer. The resistance needs to keep Harmony off balance until the EMF reaches us,” Tyler said, watching Song carefully.
She looked at the table, studying the folders.
“Right now, they’re in shock, and we need to press that advantage before they find their balance. Get your people armed and in the fight. If we don’t attack now it will only be worse for the resistance and the EMF. Hopefully, it will take some attention from the witch hunts that will be started because of Dasan’s antics,” Tyler said, his tone softer.
He waited, as she searched for an answer in that table top. The room was quiet, none of the people along the walls or throughout the room talked, all of them feeling the tension in the air; they stood on the precipice of war.
Masoul (Harmony War Series Book 2) Page 28
