Another round, and the mathematics of the situation or the enemy gunners upping the charge could change just enough to let a lethal shot through. Esther tried to shake off the cobwebs and ran a quick options check. They hadn’t located the cannon, for one, and even if they did, their options were limited. The M333 might be able to take out the cannon with a direct hit, but that was about it. With Hare down, that meant they had two of them left in the squad, two to stand up to a still un-located cannon.
“Telly, we need that support from the company. Where are you on that?”
“I told you. They said to hang on.”
“’Hanging on’ is going to get us all zeroed. We need the Stork or mortars. Hopefully the Stork.”
It would be a far reach for the mortar team attached to the company, but it was worth a try. The Stork, though, could stand off and take out the cannon with one of its missiles. The first would be shot down by the gun team, but the second would hit long before the cannon could re-charge.
“But I told you, they said no.”
Esther rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do any good to explode on Telly.
“Look, Telly. This is what you are going to do. You’re going to switch over command to me. Then you’re going to get your team to the smokestack and provide us with covering fire. Understand?”
There was silence on the other end of the P2P circuit. Esther understood that. She was junior to Telly, and Marines didn’t willfully pass command to someone else. After 15 seconds had passed, she was wondering if she was going to have to repeat the request when her face shield shifted to command mode.
“Basker-Three-Six, this is Basker-Three-One. Request immediate fire support to follow,” she passed.
“Lysander, what’s wrong with Eason? I’ve got him still blue,” the lieutenant asked.
“I took over,” she passed, not expounding on the situation. “And we’re pinned down by a Sylvesterie DR-40. We don’t have the firepower to take it down.”
“What about your dunkers?”
“We haven’t located it yet. And two dunkers against a DR-40 is a little much to ask. We’ve got two KIAs and three WIAs right now, and we need help.”
“Roger, and I’m trying to get it. You’re out of range with the mortars, and the Stork’s supporting First Platoon right now. They’re heavily engaged. I’m sending over Orinda to your pos now, but her ETA’s in an hour minimum.”
“Lieutenant, an hour and we’ll all be cooked!”
“Corporal Lysander, I’m working on it. Let me get off the hook with you, and I’ll be back.”
“What about the Kearsarge?”
“Staff Sergeant Ski’s working on that. Look, do the best you can and let me get something sprung loose to help you.”
“Roger that,” Esther said, tilting her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.
“Not good?” Maltese asked.
“No, not good.”
If it was only the troops, Esther was sure they could hold out until help arrived. The ground situation that kept her from assaulting the enemy position kept them from assaulting the squad. Their body armor wasn’t as good as the Marines’, and they’d be mowed down if they assaulted. But with that damned DR-40, it was only a matter of time before the gun crew hit the right combination to take them out. Esther couldn’t even retreat out of the facility. The cannon had a range of over four klicks against personnel, and they’d be sitting ducks anywhere outside of the compound. To add to the gravity of the situation, tied into the facilities power grid, the gun had an almost unlimited number of charges for all intents and purposes.
Power grid! That’s it!
She wanted to smack herself in the head. They had to take out the power grid.
“All hands, pull up the facility schematics. I need the power station or the nodes.”
She was going over her own schematics. Immediately, she could tell that the power station was a no go. Situated in the back of the compound, the Marines would have to fight past the mercs to reach it. It was a space-relay, so she couldn’t ask the Kearsarge to take out the array, which would plunge the entire area into a black-out, Lassiter Crossing included. She rejected two other nodes as only knocking out power to specific areas, and only for a few moments until the power could be re-routed.
“What about the office?” Wells asked.
“There’s no node there,” Esther said, looking at the diagram.
“No, but there’s the meter for the power going to the buildings outside, right by the security cam controls. And there’s a system-wide emergency cut-off.”
“Can’t anyone with a remote turn it back on?” she asked.
“Not if we destroy it. That would block the command signals.”
She only thought about it for a moment. It made sense, and Wells seemed awfully sure of himself. Looking over to Maltese, she raised an eyebrow that he could see through her face shield.
“I can give it a try,” he said, shaking out his leg once more.
He’d taken more nerve damage to his leg than he was admitting, Esther knew. With her team the closest to the office, that broke it down to Yadry, Wells, and her. Wells knew what to look for, and Yadry had the dunker.
“OK, Wells, it’s you and me.”
She looked at the avatars for the others, and knew none of them could put out suppression fire.
“Leroy, Pieter, put out massive rounds. Massive. Send a rocket their way, too. Maybe that’ll make them keep their heads down.
“Give me a toad,” she added to Maltese as Wells scrambled over to them.
“Telly, listen up,” she passed on the P2P.
She told him what she had planned and for him to be ready to take over again if something happened to her.”
“You two ready?” she asked Maltese and Yadry after she finished.
“Roger,” the two said in unison.
“Fire!”
As soon as the two swung around to light up the building, Wells and Esther took off, both going different directions as they left the cover of the pipe nexus. Two rounds hit Esther in the back, and while one stung like a son-of-a-bitch, she kept on her feet.
There was another crack of displaced air, and Wells’ avatar immediately went gray. She darted to the left to grab him, but the smoke wisping up from his body told the story. She darted back as the heavy pup-pup-pup of a big kinetic crew-served sounded, the angry wasp-buzz of rounds whizzing past her.
Sorry, Kelten, she thought as she darted back to the office.
A few moments later, she broke around the front, shielded from anything other than the DR-40. She set her timer sixty seconds, then started it counting down. She didn’t know if the cannon crew would target her, but she’d put herself on the skyline, so it was a good bet that they would. With the flimsy construction of the office walls providing almost no protection, they could fan out the dispersion to make sure they caught her in a lethal beam.
Wells had said the meter was with the security screens. Esther ran inside the office, vaulted the counter again, and within moments was in the back room. She looked up and out the window and, by pure happenstance, spotted the DR-40 at the far left corner of the roof of the enemy-held building. Almost immediately, stars erupted all along the back window. The mercs could see her, and they were targeting her. The pastiglass was pretty sturdy, though, and it would take lots of hits to break through. The more hits, however, the more the stars would block their view.
And then the glass shattered. Esther hit the deck as the big crew-served put 12.7 mm round after round into the room.
Forty seconds, she noted to herself. Where’s the switch?
The gunner for the big 12.7 kept shooting through the blown-out window, which was a mistake. He should have been firing through the wall beneath the window. Esther wasn’t going to correct him, though, as she scurried forward on all fours, pieces of window fragments and screens showering her. Near where Wells had been standing, she risked raising her head.
/> Thirty seconds.
At first, she didn’t see anything, and she turned to look to the other side of the room. Still, she didn’t spot any turn-off switch, and she felt a momentary rise of stress. She jammed her back against the wall, and hoping she’d be out of sight to the gunner, slid her back up until she was standing. And there, right above where she’d been crouching, but on a control panel sticking out of the wall, was a red button labeled “Main Power.” She lunged for it, turning it off. The two remaining lights in the room that hadn’t yet been shot out turned off.
Twenty seconds.
She wasn’t done yet. Wells had said they could remotely turn the power back on. She wasted a couple of seconds looking for access to the space below the control panel, giving up and shooting it open with her M99. Kicking out the splinters, she looked inside, seeing nothing. Her panic surged. How could she cut the line if there wasn’t anything to cut?
But Wells never said “cut.” He said “destroy.” And she suddenly realized that only the lines going outside the facility would be near her. The controls were just controls, not part of the grid itself. If she could destroy them before someone activated it, the power was going to be down for a long time.
Ten seconds.
She whipped out the toad Maltese had given her, thumbed it on, noticing the timer was on five. Esther placed it on top of the control, then stepped back, taking out her own toad. With a practiced move, she thumbed in live, set it at three, and tossed it there for good measure.
Her timer hit zero, and a second later, the small sun that resided in each toad ignited. Without her face shield, she would have been blinded as 1100° C of burning hell burned right through the control, leaving it a smoking ruin. Esther stood there for a moment, watching the destruction.
Shit! The cannon!
Esther might have turned off the power, but the cannon had batteries. She didn’t know how long it would take them to realize what had happened and then switch to battery power, and once they did that, how much longer it would take to recharge the cannon, but she was sure she was cutting it close. At a full sprint, she left the burning toads, darting out the door and into the main office as 12.7 rounds chased her. She barely touched the counter as she vaulted it, putting her shoulder down and smashing through the front door. If she turned right, she knew she would be in full view of the building where the enemy were lodged, so she turned left and put everything she had into getting some distance in between her and the office. Going left might not be any better, but it couldn’t be any worse.
Her timer was still going, and the now green numbers kept growing: 17. . .18. . .19. . . . For a moment, she thought the cannon wasn’t going to fire again, and she slowed down just a bit when she felt the tingle in her back, followed by yet another clap of displaced air. She stumbled, but didn’t go down. Looking back, she could see the bits of the office building’s spotlights that had been destroyed bounce off the ground. The building had been hit with what had to be a pretty big charge. If the tiny trace gasses in the lights had received enough energy to explode, anything organic inside would have been cooked.
Fire again, suckers!
That shot had to have drained quite a bit of power, and Esther would love to see the cannon unable to recharge.
“Esther, you OK?” Telly asked. “I can’t see.”
With her retaining the command display, he couldn’t tell if her avatar had grayed out.
“I’m still here. Wells is KIA, down hard,” she said. “Now, we’ve got to knock out that fucking cannon.”
“But. . .”
“I’ve got a handle on it. Who’s on the dunker?”
“With me?”
“Yeah, of course with you!” she said as she jogged over to where she could move forward concealed from the building.
“Bubba.”
“Well, you send Bubba back to see me. I’m heading here,” she said, blinking forward a position behind a holding tank of some sort. “ASAP!”
“Yadry, meet me here now,” she passed on the P2P after forwarding the same spot.
Her lance corporal beat her to it, but together, they had to wait four minutes and through one more blast of the DR-40 before Bubba arrived.
Despite the name, “Bubba” was one Lance Corporal Delight Fontana, a 1.5-meter, redhead pixie. Esther didn’t really know her that well, even if they had adjoining berthing, but she had a decent rep.
“What do yah got?” Bubba asked.
“I got a DR-40, just sitting up there, taking us out piece-by-piece.”
“But we don’t know exactly where it is,” Yadry said. “I looked.”
“Ah contraire. You were too close. Here,” she said, forwarding the helmet cam capture.
“Not much of a window to shoot at,” Bubba said. “And that’s a polychrome shield in front. My Airy might penetrate, might not.”
“Don’t need it to. Look where it’s at. Right at the corner. If we take out—“
“. . .the corner, London bridge falls down,” Yadry said., sounding impressed.
“Oh, that could work,” Bubba said, nodding. “Still. . .”
“Still nothing. We’ve got Airies and grenades. That building wasn’t built for war. It will come down.”
“So what do you want us to do?” Bubba asked.
“Wait one,” Esther said, before pulling up the lieutenant again.
“Basker-Three Six, where we at on that air?”
“Nothing yet. Orinda’s 45 minutes out. Can you hold?”
As if on cue, another clap of air echoed off the buildings. Immediately, PFC Warren’s avatar went light blue. The DR-40 team had somehow spotted Telly’s team moving forward.
“That’s a negative. We are down another Marine.”
“Roger, I just saw that.” There was a pause, and then, “What are you going to do? Can you pull back?”
“That’s a negative. We’d be too exposed. We’re going to bring down part of the building under the cannon,” she passed, forwarding her cam capture.
“Uh, wait one. Let me clear that.”
“Lieutenant,” Esther said, switching to the P2P. “I’ll be damned if I’ll get more Marines killed just to save some corporation’s credits. We did that once, and we lost your predecessor.”
“It isn’t that, Corporal. It’s, well, we’ve got a micro-drone within range, and there are ghost signals that might indicate people in that building.”
“Of course there’s people in there! There called mercenaries, and they’re killing us.”
“I didn’t mean them. Possibly human shields.”
That stopped Esther.
“Are you sure?” she asked after a few moments to gather her thoughts.
“No, we aren’t. The images are all over the facility.”
“So it could be a faulty drone, or it could be spoofing.”
“Affirmative, Corporal Lysander.”
“So are you telling me not to attack?” she asked, wanting to get his response on the record.
There was a pause, even longer than Esther’s had been, before he answered, “Do not initiate anything. However, if it’s a matter of life and death, do what you have to do. Paragraph 3b.”
Paragraph 3b of the Harbin Accords specifically stated that civilian casualties were not war crimes if the civilians were not specifically targeted and their deaths were a result of lawful engagement of enemy combatants. It was a legal out if the requirements were met.
“Aye, aye, sir. I understand.”
She turned to the waiting two Marines and said, “We wait here. If they do nothing, we do nothing. If they act, then the two of you have to take down the corner of the building. What do you think? Rockets?”
“Grenades,” Yadry said as Bubba nodded her agreement.
“OK, grenades it is.”
She had just begun to pass the word when the DR-40 fired once more. This time, Warren’s avatar went gray. Telly and Van Nustern had moved forward and were out of the direct beam, but Warren was KIA.
“All hands, on my 30 second mark, fire everything you have to the rooftop. We’ve got to keep them off our dunkers. Mark!”
As her timer counted down, she turned to the two Marines and said, “It’s up to you. Fire what you’ve got until the fucking thing comes down.”
They moved to their right, so that they could step out and take the building under fire.
At ten seconds, Esther released her safety. At zero, she shouted “Fire” and jumped forward, spraying the rooftop. Maltese, Telly, Van Nustern, and Woowoo, who’d moved back into the apartment, joined her.
The first dunk of the M333 sounded beside her, followed by the second. Esther kept up a steady stream of darts, but her eyes were on the corner of the building. The first grenade hit, blowing off a chunk of wall as she heard the dunk of another outgoing round. Another explosion erupted, spitting chunks of building like a sideways volcano. Esther could see the projector barrel of the DR-40 swing to take them under aim. Esther realized she should have started firing sooner to give them more time. Twenty or thirty more seconds, and the cannon would be re-charged.
A third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grenade hit, and the main support was cut in two, but still the roof didn’t collapse.
“Switching to rockets,” Bubba shouted.
A moment later, the flare of the Airy took off, making a beeline for the building. It hit with less of an overt explosion than the grenades, but the roof shook, and Esther could see the muzzle of the cannon projector jerk.
Two rounds hit her, one in the chest, on in the knee. The knee hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and she took a step back just at Yadry’s grenade hit inside the gaping hole. The rooftop lurched, and the DR-40 slid to the side as mercs dived to their left to more solid footing. For a moment, Esther thought the roof would hold, but creaking that they could hear 150 meters away, the roof tilted even more before collapsing with a roar. The DR-40 itself seemed to fall in slow motion until it disappeared, their sight blocked by the pipeline nexus.
Heedless of the enemy, Esther ran to her left until she could see around the nexus. Up ahead, in a cloud of dust, the DR-40 lay upside-down, projector muzzle buried into the dirt, the barrel bent almost in half. Two bodies lay still beside it.
Legacy Marines (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 1) Page 20
