The augments gave him almost scary reaction time and strength. Tyler just wanted to get off the damned planet and try to get some kind of normality back to their lives that didn’t involve checking if the enemy was coming for them. He removed his helmet, grabbing his tray and sitting on his cot as he ate it.
As much as he wanted to get away from this all, he knew that they both had a number of years, that they had to survive in order to get out of the EMF, or get that elusive retirement.
It doesn’t look like some trivial amount of time now does it? He ate his food, not really tasting it as he tried to forget the realities around him.
Chapter 20
Processing City
Sacremon Actual, Sacremon System
8/3171
Jerome took the coffee over to Mark who was on last watch, he’d finished his watch an hour before and getting extra would only leave him more tired.
“Thanks,” Mark said, accepting the warm pack. All of their liquids were stored in packs so that they didn’t get liquids everywhere if they were in space.
Zero grav is a bitch. “No worries,” Jerome said as he took a seat next to Mark who was down behind a mounted repulsor. The two gun’s barrels moving as he looked for any sign of the colonists.
Nerva had made the techs help out with all their fancy gear and turned the warehouses into fortresses.
Jerome hadn’t focused much on defensive works, but Nerva seemed like he had made the damned manual on it.
“So how do you think it’s going to go down now?” Jerome asked, filling the silence.
“We hold, starve them out, they charge we put them down. It’s not going to be pretty,” Mark said, his voice cold and hard.
Jerome nodded to himself.
Mark drank his coffee for a few minutes, then looked to Jerome, “You good?” he asked. With all of your section gone, Mark’s eyes added.
“No,” Jerome sighed, choosing to not put up a front that he and Mark would both know was fake. “Though I know I did everything I could, it doesn’t feel like it.” Jerome looked to his coffee, “it’s like I know what to expect and, well it scares me and comforts me. I know that with time the grief and guilt will become easier, though I also know it’ll be like a wave, at first it’s hard to deal with, washing me out and draining me. I’m start understanding the waves and when they’re coming, they’ve become less but I can still tell when a big one is coming and I how to prepare myself for it.” Jerome looked to the warehouses steadily getting taller before the eight massive towers which shot into the sky.
Down in the warehouses it was shit, weapons fire could be heard in the distance, broken roofs and smoldering trails showing the damage that had been reaped on the city.
Debris covered courtyards and broken warehouses marked no-man’s land. Jerome took it in, remembering the friends he’d joked with, had a drink with, trained, lived and seen die, or seen it on the cold updating casualty lists.
Though in the distance, those towers looked pristine. Night and day, the slums and mega-city. Jerome looked away.
“Yeah,” Mark said, that simple word infusing how he was there for Jerome and understood his pain as someone who had gone through the same experience.
They sat there in companionable silence. They might be tired, in need of a shower and have an entire planet gunning for them. Yet they were alive, they had food in their stomachs, coffee in their hands and they had a new day. They took the time to crystalize those moments in their minds, to cling to them when they were deep in the shit.
***
Three hours later Jerome was in the entrenchments with troopers to his left and right, movement had been seen in the city.
Lieutenant Ortiz was in charge of their section of reinforced warehouses.
He’d taken his time making sure the defenses were damned tough, they didn’t want to lose another batch of troops to the colonists going ape shit.
Ortiz stopped next to Jerome and looked around.
“If you don’t tell Company Sergeant Quan where I am, I’ll let you fire the first burst,” Ortiz said in a conspiratorial tone.
Jerome felt a smile form on his face at the Lieutenant’s antics, the CSM undoubtedly wanted the Lieutenant to the rear and guiding the whole thing, not in the middle of the front line!
“Deal sir,” Jerome said clasping arms with Ortiz.
“Seems you picked something up from Nerva too,” Ortiz said, looking at their clasped arms, releasing one another.
“Easier than shaking with our damn gloves,” Jerome said.
“You may have a point there!” Ortiz laughed slapping Jerome’s shoulder. He cleared his throat and checked his rifle.
“Alright let’s see if we can’t wake these sleepy fuckers up! Watch your arcs and shoot anything big ugly and not Mark!” He switched to Jerome’s channel as the other’s got the giggles out.
A good laugh was better to focus troops than inane yelling.
They sat and waited, flickers of movement could be seen in the shadows.
It was near dusk; the colonists didn’t understand that the Trooper’s helmets allowed them to see nearly as good in the dark as the day.
Red Halos started popping up, sensor bundles tagging all in their view.
“Could you knock for us Jerome?” Ortiz asked.
“With pleasure sir.” Jerome nestled the familiar rifle in his shoulder leading someone running towards a large container hauler. A burst sent them sprawling.
The colonists in the immediate area stopped in shock.
The troopers had no such pause.
Red Halos dropped as weapons came alive, streams of tracers ripped through walls, machines, ricocheted around warehouses and cut down oncoming colonists.
The colonists switched from trying to sneak around to an all-out charge. They returned fire, the buildings the troopers were in being rocked by explosions.
Walls crumbled down and roofs cracked.
The world was the rapid sound of EMF weaponry and colonists ground shaking grenade-shotguns.
“Mortars incoming,” Ortiz said, he was standing to Jerome’s right and firing like any other trooper.
In that moment Jerome knew he would happily fight along Ortiz anytime.
He wasn’t like some of the officers he’d seen previously, he was more like Nerva. If he was going to make his troops do something, he’d be right down among them doing the worst job.
Mortars whistled overtop, hitting warehouse roofs and open areas, dust and debris rolled out in an angry and violent cloud as anything caught under the blast was turned to churned gore.
Jerome had no time to sit and watch the massacre, he was constantly changing magazines, slapping in new boxes and standing back so he could pick off the fleeing colonists.
The mortars were taking out the sensor bundles, but at this point the opposing warehouses were so filled with colonists that it was hard to not find a target.
The EMF was a wall, but the colonists had numbers.
For every colonist that dropped another made it a few feet. It was a hellish slog but they kept advancing, kept pushing forward with an unmatched ferocity.
The troopers that went down were pulled back to the medics and ended up out of the game, leaving barely any reinforcements left to commit.
“Pull back to secondary positions!” Ortiz said, seeing the same shit storm as Jerome.
The troopers turned and headed through the dugouts, firing as soon as they were in the second line of defenses. Jerome made sure everyone was out of the way before he pulled Lieutenant Ortiz. It would not do to have his Company Commander get shot while acting as the rearguard.
“Thanks,” Ortiz grumbled as he regained his footing and ran to the second line.
“No problem sir,” Jerome replied, reloading his rifle and checking over his people’s ammunition levels.
“Three section! McNara, Smith drop ammunition packs, rest of you get a full battle load, work in fire teams, one person reloading while the others fi
re!” Ortiz yelled.
Jerome dropped his pack, “you two keep shooting, I’ll get you ammo.” Tapping Li and Ortiz so they understood he was talking to them before flipping the pack over and pulling the covering down. He fished out magazines, putting a handful of them between the two so they at least had something.
“What you need Li?” Jerome asked.
“Five grenade mags, four normal!” She replied.
“Ortiz?” Jerome asked, grabbing the ammunition from the pack.
“Six and six,” Ortiz answered.
Jerome dumped ammo on the trench’s parapet next to Li, he did the same with Ortiz’s ammunition before filling up his own pouches.
Jerome was getting up when he saw someone catch an explosion to their side, right where their plates were connected with open spaces instead of a large sheet like the front and back of a person.
They were tossed to the side, their side looking messed up.
“I got it!” Jerome said on the local area net, looking over the wounded person, they were from some other company, there were so few troopers left that Forces had been dissolved to make full Divisions.
Even though Jerome didn’t know them, it didn’t matter, they were a trooper, one of his own.
Their arm and shoulder were pulverized and bleeding, ribs were cracked and blood was getting in their lungs.
Basically they’re side had been blown in and punctured by the explosion—not fucking good.
“Well fuck,” Jerome muttered as he pulled out the person’s medic pack.
“Hey, calm down there fuck head!” Jerome said batting the persons flaunting arms out of the way. He added himself to their channel, getting panicked moaning.
“Calm the fuck down you!” Jerome said in his command voice, getting them to quiet down.
“I’m going to…” Garcia started.
“Oh shut up, no angel is going to want to be singing your damn name tonight, Garcia.” Jerome looked to the trooper’s nametape and pulled the needles he needed from their pack. He stabbed one into the shoulder through his armpit where there wasn’t armor.
The moans and noises made Jerome think his rousing speech hadn’t penetrated their skull.
“Fucking die on a colony world! Oh, please help me. Make it stop.” They started crying, their words broken by the pain of their wounds and their pleas for help.
Jerome grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
“None of that fucking quitting talk trooper, you a trooper or you some fucking slum wannabe?” He barked, he couldn’t see into Garcia’s helmet but he felt his eyes on him.
“I’m a trooper,” Garcia said, biting back the pain.
“Now that’s what I wanna hear trooper!” Jerome said, putting two more needles in Garcia’s neck.
“Fuck!” Garcia said in a mix between anger and pain.
Anger was good, anger was fighting back the shock and focusing on getting healed instead of dying.
“How are they?” Medic Qi asked, getting on scene.
“Got clotters and pain meds going. His helmets regulating his oxygen,” Jerome said.
“I’ve got it from here,” Qi said, pulling open his larger medic kit and getting to work.
“Good luck doc,” Jerome said, turning and heading back to Ortiz and Li.
The doc’s stretcher runners got Garcia rushing back to the medical area, Qi headed off to find more wounded, a new stretcher team followed him.
Jerome settled behind his gun and for a bit he was a trooper again, nothing but a man with a gun an order to kill anything that was trying to kill him.
God I wish the world was always this simple. His thoughts were interrupted by word to pull back to the third line.
They followed the orders as expected. The mortars, rifles, grenade launchers and repulsors covering the pullback. Two were hit with debris, one was unlucky enough to have a reinforced pole of some kind go through their knee, the other got a pile of mud.
The warehouse looked less like a building and more like an open-plan piece of crap someone might call art, metal roofs were holed and flared outwards with explosives.
Windows no longer existed and most machines were covered with holes, or physically melted from hits.
The colonists were hot on their asses, until a brutal barrage served to level the dead ground behind them, and a large section of the warehouse.
“Looks like all the cave people are out today!” Ortiz growled as more ammunition packs were dropped and people filled up on ammunition once again. Jerome didn’t need any ammo after dealing with Garcia and giving others ammunition.
Colonists were coming out of all the buildings in the dozens. They were met by tracers, grenade launchers, and mortars.
Some smart colonists had grabbed the EMF weapons that had been dropped in panic or in the hands of the dead and were using them against the troopers.
Red tracers raged between the two groups, as the colonists tried to advance, running and jumping over obstacles, only to be cut down in mid-air and thrown back.
Explosions tossed them out of the way like they’d been slapped away by the hand of god.
Mortars kept up their fire as did the troopers. Colonists weapons caused explosions along the defenses and in the troopers positions.
It was chaos as colonists rushed forward, being cut down, but taking a toll on the troopers.
Magazines and spent casings littered the entrenched positions. Ammunition packs were ripped apart as the troopers tried to keep the colonists at bay.
Bodies covered the ground, piling on top of one another. Medics rushed behind the troopers doing what they could to get them back into action and fighting.
“Combat Shuttle run!’ Ortiz said over the company channel.
Someone nestled up between Jerome and Ortiz, Company Sergeant Major Quan. His rifle was up and firing shifting from target to target.
Jerome got back to the task at hand, following Quan’s actions.
“Thought you be dealing with the wounded,” Ortiz asked.
“Medics don’t need me over their shoulder, and you need all the guns you can get,” Quan said.
Ortiz didn’t disagree.
***
“Got the call,” Young said.
Yu looked back into the hold, they’d carried three loads of broken troopers to Reclaimer already.
Now the cots were replaced with containers bolted to the floor with belt feeds disappearing into the floor and walls of the Combat shuttle.
“Weapons good to go,” Bobbie said, anticipating his question as Yu pushed power into the engines and they floated off from behind the Troopers defenses, shuttles were still going low and fast to get away from the city, once clear they drive up towards Reclaimer, a shiny sliver light in the sky.
“Weapons fire from the lift towers,” Young reported.
Combat shuttles rose from their positions and their auto turrets fired, walls of the towers disintegrated under their barrage, any anti-air weapons were taken out with prejudice.
The shuttles rose, one gun looking to the lift towers, the other sent plunging fire into the colonists crossing between warehouses.
“Getting shot,” Young reported, focused on her console. She moved her toggle stick, finding a target. She depressed her trigger a violent thread of tracers following her aim. Dull thumps twangs and odd turbulence of the colonist’s grenade rounds exploding agreed with her assessment. The colonists were shooting at them.
Bobbie did the same with the other auto-turret, both of them aiming and firing on anything that wasn’t friendly, leaving nothing but bodies and spent casings behind.
“Bravo flight, you are clear for gun run,” Flight control said.
Yu didn’t have to be told twice, he powered the engines and banked high and right, the tilting engines allowed him to be nose-down while pushing forward.
His auto cannons barked, leaving twin trenches of destruction. He ripple fired a bank of five missiles nose to ass.
As soon as one left its l
auncher another was firing.
The colonists didn’t have a chance, anything cut out in the open was shredded or blown into oblivion.
Missiles hit the warehouses, ripping walls apart and turning machinery into burning piles of slag.
Auto turrets continued to focus on colonists shooting at the shuttle, raking their position with hundreds of rounds, turning the shooter and those around them into rusty smudges.
All over the city combat shuttles plied their trade and their trade was to bring pain down on those below.
They brought troopers, they brought ammunition, they brought techs, medics and weapons. Anything to hurt the enemy.
When it was their turn to engage, it made even troopers watch in horror as they swooped past, rounds sending colonists reeling and explosions throwing them back.
***
The combat shuttles gave the troopers the breathing room they needed to get organized.
Ammunition was pulled up, positions checked and reserves deployed, it was too much for the colonists.
They broke and ran.
The troopers didn’t cheer and dance, they shot the colonists in the back. It wasn’t honorable, it wasn’t nice.
It just meant the bastard wouldn’t be able to come back and attack them later.
“Alright, I want everyone to secure their positions. Be ready to counter-attack and for another wave of colonists. I want all wounded pulled back to the casualty area,” Nerva said to the Platoon and a half left under his command.
There wasn’t just colonist bodies’ littering the floor.
***
General Orlav looked up from the last report that had been passed to his hands, gloved and sealed hands.
He, like every other surviving person in the Army of Sacremon was sealed up in a suit with a rebreather firmly mounted to his face.
It was no way to leave, having to go through decontamination every time someone had to go to the bathroom, or they wanted to drink and eat. Hell most of the food was gone because it was so covered in that damned gas!
He had lost four hundred thousand people when the gas had first dropped. Another two hundred thousand had been claimed by not having the right gear, either it had a hole in their gear or they just became too overwhelmed by the deaths of so many so they gave up. It was a hellish experience wearing the suits.
Sacremon (Harmony War Series Book 1) Page 31
