“Reposition!” Corvin shouted.
“Cover us while we move!” Daniella shouted back.
The sound of barrels spinning up to max RPMs echoed in the street. Twin rotary cannons on the front of the Scorpion whirred to life, spitting out twenty millimeter rounds in a cyclonic barrage that ripped into the second building occupied by the squad. Walls, floors, and support columns alike came apart like a sandcastle kicked over by the beach bully. Harlan's team was running down the stairs when one of the rounds blew through the wall. The round slapped Private Colon into the wall where he bounced into the rest of the team. They fell in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
“D! SITREP!” Corvin shouted into the radio.
“Gonna need... a minute. We got our bell rung. Colon is down. We need a medic.”
Latisha dropped her head to her chest, trying to search her training for an answer that would undo the beating they were about to take. They had to get that PPC back up. It was the only weapon they had to crack its armor. “Three-Charlie, Three-Alpha. SITREP.”
She heard screaming on the end of the com. It was the grunting people did at the gym, trying to hoist weight they weren't ready for. That straining growl that could get someone another kilo, another rep, or free them from the bar when the weight came crashing down on them. “Got it! Pulling the gun out of the...”
There was another burst from the guns on the front of the Scorpion. The Dirty Thirty belted out percussive death to a tune faster than any drum battery a marching band could beat. The whirlwind's tail end traced up the side of the building, pulverizing Corporal Riggs into a bag of meat only held together by his armor.
“Drive it down!” Sloan shouted to LaCroix.
The PPC, righted onto its quadro-pod, flexed its legs before springing into the stairwell, dragging the power cable like a flaccid tail. They stumbled onto the ground floor, running the gun up to the bunkered window. LaCroix swung the weapon away from the portal to keep the barrel from sticking from the building.
Croix shouted through the doorway where Corporal Corvin was hiding behind the overturned truck in the middle of the street. “Riggs is gone! We got the PPC down here, but we need another power core!”
Twin Hells. First her NCOs had been ripped up, now Colon and Riggs. They were in a meat grinder. They needed a miracle and they needed one now.
“Guard Dog Actual this is Guard Dog Three-Three-Alpha. Over.”
The holo of the captain flooded her HUD. Animated gestures punctuated her yelling to someone away from the camera. “I got you on the feed, Three-Three-Alpha. Help is running up the street to you now. Need you to hold for three more mikes, how copy?”
“Roger out.” Latisha slammer her lid into the truck body. Three minutes, she wouldn't last thirty seconds, much less three minutes. “Croix! You think you can rig a power battery from this junker to that gun?”
“Yeah! I can probably get a single shot out of it.”
“Saikon! Need you down here.”
Running footfalls echoed a fraction of a second before the bulky Zelezni slid across the street into Corvin's position. Rounds flew over his head by centimeters as he came to a stop beside his boss. He got to his knees, slamming his fingers into the rusted hood of the vehicle. Hard impacts battered the other side, driving deep dents into the shallow truck bed while slashing into the nose of the vehicle.
“That was close! Heard what you needed over the coms, Teesh!”Saikon tore off the hood, yanking one of the four power cells free from the housing. He slid the cell across the street, into the open doorway to the waiting gun crew. Without waiting to be told, he scooped up the HI-CAB, sending a nine round burst into the waiting tank. Screaming ricochets bounced off the armor, knocking dust covered holes into the surrounding structures.
Harlan was there, on the other side of the alley, holding onto the Duster. She gave it a heave, sliding like Saikon had done with the battery. It stopped a few meters from the rapidly deteriorating safety of the truck bed. Harlan turned her head to the side, mouthing the word sorry to her besieged friend. Harlan primed herself, looking as though she would sprint for the weapon to get it to her. The launcher, tapped against the ground, jittering in the road of its own accord. It traveled the last bit of distance, laying close to Corvin's knees.
Corvin brought her gaze up to see Sergeant Toda's squad running up, with what could only be a Marshals Templar and a teenage girl. The kid flicked her hand, pulling one of the shocker rounds from the building, setting it beside the launcher.
Latisha cried out, elated, “Staff Sergeant Toda!”
“Got some friends here, Teesh. You got a plan?”
“Yes, sergeant! Croix!”
“We're up, Teesh!”
The marshal held up both hands. She'd heard the rumors a marshal had come to the fight, but she never would have believed it if he weren't standing here in front of her. A simple nod from him was all she needed to know this was the only chance they were going to get.
The guns at the end of the intersection spun up again, raining against the power of the Crucible. Rounds flew off in all directions except for where the squads were hunkered down. Latisha loaded the launcher, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Duster up! Back blast area clear!”
Looking behind her, Corvin confirmed she had no one in the path of the dangerous exhaust the weapon would cough out. Saikon was beside her, aiming his HI-CAB at the guns themselves, hoping to ruin the weapon system. She fired, holding as steady as she could in the middle of the dust and smoke. Dropping the launcher, she pulled her CR-45 back to her shoulder. She focused through the rifle optic, watching the rocket propelled grenade sail in with the concentration of a murderball player trying to score in the final period. It stuck the leg of the tank, exploding in a sizzling array of sparks.
“Now!” Latisha roared.
Croix finished whatever he was doing with Sloan, nodding but never taking his focus from the HUD where he was aiming the weapon system. The gun moved about on its robotic quadro-pod legs, shifting until it satisfied the private with the sight picture. There was a rapid pulse of energy and the gun launched a tremendous bolt. The blubbery projectile looked like a dark speckled water balloon wrapped in a brilliant energy corona thrown at a party goer. It decimated the paralyzed leg of the tank, spinning it into the facade of the closest building.
Both squads cheered their victory against the monstrous machine, patting, hugging, and shaking in relief. Sergeant Toda was walking with one of his soldiers, carrying the replacement battery for the PPC between them.
Corvin noted the girl with the marshal, she was nodding, almost as if this was just another day at the office for them. The deputy redirected her attention, freezing her stare on something others couldn't see. Latisha couldn't see the girl's face under her helmet, but she knew what her canting her head to the side meant. She'd heard her cousin's stories about serving with the Devil Hunters, the famous marshals who hunted supernatural threats across the frontier. A marshal standing still, trying to listen after something like this, even a kid, meant that they sensed bad things coming in the Crucible.
She turned back in time to see a box magazine at the end of a gyroscopic mount, flare from the back of the tank. So, that's why they called them scorpions. She finished her thought right as the vehicle launched a salvo of rockets straight into their position.
Finger-sized projectiles tore through the building into the rooms and the hallway beyond. The four story tenement building housed families in cramped apartments stacked one on top of another. If there was anyone left on that side of the building, the rounds ripping through at insane velocities would surely have evicted them from their homes as well as their lives.
The soldiers at the end of the hallway were fighting from a stairwell. They had packed sandbags along with bands of prosteel they had probably stolen from the airfield at the end of the city. It could have come from any number of starliners that the government hoped would shuttle tourists to Dagoshu’s once lush beache
s. A dream that had rotted along with the vessels on the runway, once the warlords rose to power, eventually squabbling over who was fit to control the world’s biggest city.
Just past the doorway were three bodies who weren’t lucky enough to get behind the barrier when the rounds had come in. A skinny child soldier, carrying an ancient-bolt action rifle on his back, pulled another of their militia to the pile.
High pitched whistles echoed outside as another barrage of twenty millimeter rounds dug their way through the outer wall into the structure beyond. Marco high crawled through the hall, wearing his shield on his front to prevent rounds from coming up from the floor into his chest plate. While his armor was snug, a sure sign he’d been comfortable the last few years, he really didn’t need hyper-velocity impacts to give him a tailored fit the hard way. “Ares, what in the Twin Hells is going on. I felt Brand dip into the Crucible to deflect incoming rounds, but what are they shooting at us?”
“Feeding to your HUD now. Took me a hot minute to get into their system.” Ares sounded frustrated, not unlike a chess master being challenged by an up an comer. “It’s not a lancer Battle-Net, but it's still heavily encrypted.”
A side screen overlay Marco's field of vision just above his natural eyesight. Looking up and to the right allowed him to focus on the screen while not robbing him of his peripheral vision for threats. “Really? Scorpion Tanks? I mean, who in the Hells still uses those.”
“Probably brought them from a surplus shop,” Ares said.
“Until I can get close enough to shut them down, those things are going to really cramp my style.”
“Speaking of getting close, I have an incoming transmission from Hera.”
“Put it through.” Marco grunted.
The video feed coming from one of the drones switched over. The image of Hera's helmet was static, like an icon vs a live feed. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Oh you know, I'm just crawling up a hallway to a gun emplacement so I can put down the pain. You?”
Hera didn't join him in his gruff retorts, choosing the more direct route in their conversation. “My rook is following your markers through the sewer system. Poseidon has secured the beachhead below the city, with Kratos' heavies in tow. Nyx has already crested the ridge to the airfield on her way to arrange passage of lines through the defenders. Athena is in the air, waiting on us to disable the ADA towers.”
“Good work, Hera. I have one more tower to deal with on this side. Once it's down, we can signal Athena and her rook to drop in.”
“Good hunting, Father Lion.”
“Thank you.” Marco cut the feed, rolling his back to the wall. Snap cracks from bullets piercing the hallway showered him in dust. The projectiles disintegrated against the shield, raining onto the ruined carpet as tinkling grit. “Come on, Brand! Keep that on the other side of the street. I'm way too old for this.”
The cannon fire stopped, just ahead of a crash that shook the building he was in. Rolling away from the wall, he replaced the drone feed on his HUD. The scorpion was resting against one of the nearby walls when a mounted coaxial launcher unfurled itself, aiming at the far building the Elysian soldiers were fighting from.
“That's not good.”
The heavy chunk noises coming out the of the launchers signaled six rockets taking flight.
“Mine!” Marco shouted into his helmet, taking a firm grip on all six weapons in the Crucible. The first changed course, slamming into the batch of soldiers fighting down the hall from him. The projectiles burst into a fireball that tore through the side of the building, sending the prosteel beams rebounding down the passage. They came to a halt, impaling the walls at odd angles, which would make leaving by that side like running an obstacle course. Four more rockets targeted nearby apartments, splattering enemy combatants in blasts of burning stone.
Marco jolted himself into a dead run, ducking and dodging the metal struts, still sloughing off bits of cooked flesh on the floor. He jumped across the nonexistent stairwell, catching one that had been spared more than a meter up. Kicking his feet to kip himself up, he wiggled into a better grip on his way to climbing up to the next level.
“Drone feed!” Ares shouted into the com.
The feed popped into Marco's helmet, just in time for him to see four locals on the roof aiming blasters at him. “Really?”
A quick hand over hand shifted him out of the direct line of fire, mere centimeters from the bolts flying by him. Puffs of smoke encrusted dust wafted into the shaft from impact strikes against the stone facade. Shifting to another drone, Marco saw a militiaman running from the roof, probably to get a better vantage point from which to put more shots down.
“Never easy.” Marco growled. “Jax, you got your second ADA site secure?”
The war horse croaked into the net. “I'm working on the third now, Marco.”
“What's that noise in the background?”
“Soft skins are shooting at me.” A heavy crackle of static fritzed out the signal for a moment before reverting to normal. “Third module's out. This unit is down. I'm on my way to you.”
“Thank you, brother. I should be...” Marco turned in time to see the Scorpion tank had righted itself. The sensor eyes on the front of the beast was staring straight at him. He released his grip, plummeting through the ruptured staircase to the floor below, as the rotary cannon rended the step he was holding into pulp. He fell two levels, using the Crucible to soften his landing. He crouched close to the floor, bringing up his shield in the mech's direction. He turned his head slightly, noticing a family of four hiding under the reinforced scaffolding at the bottom of the stairs.
“Come out of there and move to the back of the building. It's not safe here!” Marco said firmly. The family stared away from him, their father presenting a hold out pistol in a shaking hand.
“It is not safe there. The bullets are going through the walls. We stay.”
“You need to get to the back of the building until the tank leaves! I don't have time to argue with you.” Marco grabbed the man's wrist, pushing the pistol away from anything it could damage. He squeezed both triggers, burning gaping holes into the stone across from the stairs. As tiny as it was, he'd set the pistol to deliver two shots that used half a magazine each. That was probably enough to burn a hole right through his armor. Not waiting to see what else the man had by way of defense, he threw him into the adjoining hall. A mother holding a child went next, easily caught by her husband. An elderly woman, most likely a grandmother, hid in the back of the spandrel. She was turned away from him, slapping backward at his hands to keep him from grabbing her.
A quick flash across the HUD brought Marco's attention to the wall. He pushed against her, stretching out his hand while bringing up his shield in the other. The rotary cannon tore through the structure, blasting out the stone like a rhinosaur charging its way through a forest. The Hells storm went on, turning the barrels a glowing red as they punched through the stairs, cracking the Marshal's defenses. The cannon ground to a halt, draping the street in silence with enemy and ally alike wondering what the tank was shooting at.
The father looked up from the hall, peering through the smoke wafting from where he last saw his mother. Their nana ran from the dust, clasping her arms around her son. Frantic sorrowful wails turned to cries of joy in her smothering hug. She dragged the other two members of the family in an embrace that occurred when death had been truly and soundly cheated.
“Help me,” she whispered.
They dragged Marco from the stairwell, unconscious. Four smoking craters covered the front of his armor, with blood seeping from two of them.
“I can't tell if he's breathing.”
They removed his helmet, placing it respectfully by his head. The man felt for a pulse while Nana held his hand. “I'm sorry I slapped you. We didn't know you were trying to help. Son, find Arimon, he'll know...”
The power of the Crucible flowed into her hand, making Nana's eyes drink in all avai
lable light. Kneeling next to him was a woman wrapped in ornate armor. The ghostly warrior was whispering into his ear. Although she couldn't make out what was being said, she could tell it wasn't a single voice. It was hundreds, perhaps thousands of voices all working together to weave a chant as ancient as mankind. The sound echoed into the ether, ordering the fabric of the universe to obey its command. The woman looked into Nana's eyes, seeing promise and hope as she translated the chant.
“For in the Crucible, we may forge a pattern so enduring, that not even death may break what is wrought. For in this, the Way is my will...”
“And my will is the Way.” Marco whispered, rising to his knees, taking the place of the ghost who called him back. Staring into Nana's eyes, he showed her the breadth of his adventures, his life, his love, all leading him to this point. “This is my Path. I know the Way.”
He gathered his helmet, waiting for the HUD to come back online. The image of the Scorpion's rocket launcher firing another salvo greeted him.
“Twin Hells!” He growled .
Corvin was flat on her back looking up at the sky. It was the most crystal blue she could ever remember seeing. It would be perfect if the constant ringing in her ears wasn’t so constant. She licked her lips, trying to clear the taste of blood and dust. That was a heavy hit they all just took.
Kathunk, chick chick chick. Kathunk.
That was the spider tank, or scorpion or, whatever. It had a missile launcher tail, so definitely a scorpion. What had her old squad leader called it? Dirty something. Six rockets had come straight out of that coax and right down their throats and that sound she was hearing, the thumping, that was the thing coming to finish them off. Looking to one side, she saw Croix trying to dig out his gunner with one arm. Looking through the other building, Harlan was pushing debris out of the way to free a caught trooper. Other soldiers were trying to find footing or shaking members of either squad, hoping that death hadn’t come to collect the rent.
The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3) Page 8
