Soldiers clad in EXO:B-039s poured out of the vehicles.
“They’re spreading out!” Pedro shouted.
“They want to get around us!” I said.
“Don’t let ‘em through!” Rocky commanded.
Cracks from .50 cals and 30 mm guns filled the air as the forty-eights engaged the CSA soldiers. I got up, finding a few of the unsuited people hiding behind trees and firing at the remaining APC:B-021s.
An RPG exploded, sending me sailing through the air and landing on the shoulder of my exo. I stumbled back to my feet, bullets hitting the ground around me. Someone screamed as another RPG decimated their cover, wood chips and blood spraying against my suit. I scrambled for cover, launching another grenade at the vehicles but missing, the trail going off to the other side of the road and exploding. People in EXO:B-009s piled out from the supply transports, scurrying to get behind the armored personnel carriers, firing .45 calibers up the hill.
Bullets riddled the ground around me, some ricocheting off my suit as I ran back up the hill, getting behind a large pine. All around was chaos as bullets tore through wood, splashed into dirt, and occasionally found fleshy targets. I spotted Victor’s strangely decorated suit running up the hill, pursuing a soldier.
“Don’t let ‘em up!” Rocky repeated “Sachi’s on the way!”
I ran from behind the tree and started after the soldier Victor was pursuing. I lifted my right arm, locking the crosshair for the 30 mm on Victor’s target. Before I fired, the soldier was engulfed in flame from Victor’s flamethrowers, the orange and red inferno seeming to wash over the forest around him.
I caught up just as the deluge of fire ended, finding the soldier writhing on the ground, trying desperately to remove the helmet as the bulletproof polymer of his suit melted around him.
Victor didn’t spend any time gloating over his victim, already running back down the hill as I skidded to a stop, seeing that the soldier’s helmet was fused to the rest of his suit. I turned and ran back down after Victor, finding LoC people without exoskeletons fleeing back up the hill.
The soldiers in B-009s were pushing forward into the woods now that the forty-eights were engaged with the B-039 soldiers. The .50 cals from the five remaining APC:B-021s laid down cover fire in front of them in a creeping barrage.
Victor and I both jumped behind trees. I looked around for anyone else, finding only Olivia with us about a hundred feet away. The radio conversation was a confusion of shouts, the LoC Security people now engaging with CSA soldiers as they neared the main group.
“Go!” Victor shouted to Olivia and me.
The three of us peered out from our cover and started firing. I raised both arms, firing a grenade at an APC:B-021 as I shot my 30 mm at the approaching line of soldiers. The grenade exploded in front of a vehicle, blasting shrapnel into its radiator as my 30 mm lifted a soldier off his feet and sent him tumbling back down the hill.
Victor fired as he ran toward them, getting close enough before letting his flamethrowers devour the B-009 clad soldiers with roiling tongues of fire. Olivia and a handful of people without exos converged on our position, firing at the soldiers on the mounted .50 cals atop the APC:B-021s. I sprayed bursts from my .50 cal at the soldiers out of Victor’s flamethrower range.
Two of the APC:B-021s took off, heading north. Olivia ran out onto the road and started chasing them. Victor and I following after her. The .50 cals on top fired at us, bullets wildly missing as the vehicles bounced down the road. After a hundred yards, the two vehicles screeched to a stop, gunfire ceasing, soldiers jumping from the vehicles with hands raised. In front of them was a company of forty-eights, led by Savita.
“Get away from the fucking vehicles!” Savita shouted, her voice magnified by the suit.
The nine CSA soldiers obliged, lining up on the side of the road and getting on their knees, hands behind their heads. Savita sent two people to go look through the APC:B-021s as the rest of us walked up behind the surrendered soldiers. Without missing a beat, Savita opened fire on them, shooting them in the back with her .50 cal. Victor followed suit with the searing embrace of his flamethrowers, the hostages rolling onto the road as their flesh cooked, screaming.
Once all of them were dispatched, Savita started running up the hill, the rest of us behind her. From the radio traffic I could already tell that the action was winding down.
“Should we search the transports?” Rocky asked.
“No. We have to start moving now,” Sachi said as I dodged through the trees, “get whatever wounded who look like they might live and go.”
As we ran up the hill, I passed by a few bodies, but none of them looked alive. I didn’t figure I would be taking any wounded with me, anyway.
“I’m heading back to the front,” Savita said, her company turning left.
Olivia, Victor and I continued up the hill, finally running into the fleeing column of people. CSA soldiers in exoskeletons lay dead on the ground alongside a few exo clad forty-eights and LoC Security agents only a hundred feet from the panicked civilians. About a dozen of them lay dead on the ground, too. None of them were anyone I knew.
“I think we lost eleven,” Sachi said.
“We lost some down the hill, too,” I said, “maybe another ten.”
“We have two injured,” Major Ellison said.
“We have one injured,” Sachi said.
“A mere flesh wound,” César said.
I could see him moving along behind the disorderly column favoring his right arm. But that wasn’t any indication of how bad the wound was when it was possible to walk on a freshly amputated leg with only a slight asymmetry to one’s gait.
The retreat stayed at an urgent pace for only about fifteen minutes before everyone grew tired of jogging through the difficult terrain and fell to a slogging walk.
“I’m calling a halt,” Colonel Riviera said over the radio.
“We have to keep going,” Sachi said, still in the rearguard with us.
“We have to tend to the injured and rest,” Riviera said, “we’re stopping.”
The group responded to this almost immediately. Even if Sachi had wanted to argue the point, nobody was going to listen to her. She took off her helmet and started pacing, jaw clenched.
“She’s probably right,” I said, approaching Sachi as she suppressed her anger.
“I know,” she said in a low voice.
“We might be better off staying still a while, anyway,” I said, glancing down the hill toward the road, “our movement is easy to see from down there.”
“I don’t need you to justify this for her,” Sachi snapped.
I lifted my hands, turned around and walked away. Sachi sighed, but didn’t stop me. I walked over to where César was being examined by a woman with brunette hair. He had the right arm of his exo off, the shirt sleeve underneath red with blood. The brunette woman had a first aid kit out, using the jawed dispenser to close the wound with antibacterial organic polymer. Doctor Taylor and a few of the other medical staff from the Cortez hospital were there looking after the other injured.
Behind the triage, up the hill a ways, I spotted Akira once again sitting on the ground leaning against a tree. She stared down the hill with glazed eyes, almost as if she wasn’t even aware that anything had happened. I made my way around the triage and up the hill toward her.
“Where’s Yukiko?” I asked, looking around.
Akira raised her eyes to me, looking confused for a moment before panic overtook her. She sprung to her feet, trying to say something, but only managing a high-pitched squeal of despair. Akira clambered over to me, falling pitifully into the arms of my exoskeleton, crying and jabbering.
“She’s there,” someone said.
I turned back to the triage, still supporting Akira, and found Doctor Taylor looking up at us. She was pointing to Aveena, who had a sobbing Yukiko wrapped in her arms about a hundred feet away. I lifted Akira up and started carrying the prating mother toward her daughter
.
Aveena stood up straight when she saw us coming.
“I tried to get her to follow me,” Aveena said as I set Akira down on the ground, “she wasn’t responding, so I just grabbed Yuki and ran.”
“It’s her brain implants,” I said, watching Akira wrap her trembling arms around Yukiko, who let out a short scream when Akira bumped her broken arm.
“Is she going to be okay?” Aveena asked, kneeling down and draping Yukiko’s blanket over her and Akira, both of them crying.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think both of them would be better off if Yukiko was being cared for by someone else.”
Aveena’s eyes went wide, “you mean, like, me? I dunno anything about-”
“You, or someone else,” I said, “It doesn’t matter. But Akira’s in no shape to care for her.”
Akira looked up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, a look of comprehension in her eyes. She said nothing, holding Yukiko’s face against her shoulder, but I could tell that she agreed with my assessment.
Afternoon started to dim away into evening as the temperature began to drop, going below freezing. The official casualty count was twenty-one people dead and thirty-three injured, with nine of the injured having their mobility reduced.
I’d been able to pawn Yukiko off on Doctor Taylor’s family, with Akira trying to stay with them, but finding the crowd of people overwhelming. She had tried explaining to me what was actually going on with her brain implants and how it actually felt, but she wasn’t able to stay on subject for long enough to explain it coherently.
“The self-repair code,” she said, “screws up…normal brain patterns. It…controls the path of the architecture.”
“Is it at least something that will go away eventually?” I asked.
She sat quiet for a moment, once again up the hill a ways from the rest of the crowd, before saying, “patched, but not fixed.”
“What do you mean?”
She inhaled slowly and then exhaled, “I could hook up…something else. Something that would automatically correct the code for me. Something that could maintain normal brain function.”
“And that would put you back to normal?”
“Normal,” she smirked and chuckled, “I haven’t been normal in years. Never normal, really.”
I nodded, “I know how that is.”
Sachi whispered from down the hill, “Eshe, can I talk with you?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking back to Akira, “you going to be alright?”
She nodded slowly, but kept quiet, staring off into space again. I started down the hill, Sachi waiting for me with her helmet off, expression stern.
“We’re probably going to be moving slower now,” she said, turning to stand by my side when I stopped next to her, both of us looking down the hill. “I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to beat this fucking snowstorm.”
“And you’re expecting more losses,” I said.
“Almost certainly,” she said, “how’s Akira?”
I shook my head, “I imagine she’ll be amongst those that don’t make it.”
Sachi exhaled slowly, “sorry about how I acted earlier.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“I saw you chatting with Riviera the other day,” she said, “was she bitching about me?”
“Is that what this is about?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “sorry…again. It just irritates the shit out of me. So much bickering in the front guard about who gets to lead this fucking circus.”
“Between you and Riviera?” I asked.
She shook her head, “not her as much as her fucking people. And the other gang leaders. Christ. I’m not even sure she wants to be leading. But it doesn’t stop every fucking one of them from being contrarian to every goddamn thing I say.”
“Have you given them a reason to follow you?”
“I’ve gotten them this far,” Sachi said, “in spite of all their hand-wringing over every little thing and second guessing about every word that comes out of my fucking mouth.”
“Just let them lead,” I said, “they’ll either just do what you would’ve had them do anyway, or they’ll fuck it up and then you can have your sweet ‘I told you so’ moment.”
Sachi laughed at this, “I would’ve expected something like that from Savita, but not from you.”
“I haven’t been myself lately.”
“Well, whoever you are lately, I can count on you to back me up, can’t I?”
“You mean against LoC Security?” I asked.
“Or whatever else,” she said, “like I said, you’re the only other person here I know who’s had to have been through worse than this before. I trust my people a lot, but it’s difficult to know a person’s threshold until you’ve seen it break.”
“I wish I could-”
“They’re back!” someone shouted in panic.
More cries rang out in the forest. Sachi and I threw our helmets on and rushed down to the camp where the forty-eights were getting into defensive positions and the LoC Security people were attempting to keep everyone calm. The woods fell quiet, only heavy breathing and a few frightened whimpers escaping the refugees.
“The road looks clear,” Rocky whispered over the radio.
Everyone stood silent again, peering out from behind their trees down to the road. A minute passed, but there was no sign of anyone.
“False alarm?” Emma asked.
“Who sounded it?” Savita asked over the radio.
And then someone came crashing into the camp from uphill, everyone turning to see the invader. Two more came after them. And then more, all of them skidding to a stop on the frozen ground.
“Fuckin’ refugees,” Rocky said, taking his helmet off, “what the hell are you-”
“Run!” one of them said.
“Run from-”
The answer came in the sound of a surging hum. There was barely enough time to respond before the earsplitting crack of the rail gun sounded, an avalanche of dirt and wood splinters spraying down from the hill, bodies landing amongst the refugees. Everyone screamed and started stampeding in every direction, the LoC Security people trying in vain to maintain order.
The crescendo another hum loomed above us, the screams of panicked refugees growing louder to meet it. The explosion that rocked the hillside was closer this time, spraying mud and blood over the stunned forty-eights.
“There’s two!” a refugee shrieked, firing their weapon wildly into the air.
“Fire at them just after they launch the rail gun!” I shouted over the radio, trying to follow their flight as they came looping back around, “firing it slows them down!”
Everyone stood in a loose defensive formation, not sure which direction the attack was going to come from next. More haggard people poured down the hill like a landslide, many of them wounded.
Major Ellison pointed to the south, “The first one’s comin’ back from-”
Automatic gunfire opened up, bullets whizzing down the hill.
“Are these fucking people shooting at us?” Manny asked.
“Soldiers in exos,” agent Brie said, “coming from up the hill!”
Fanned out behind the landslide of refugees were CSA soldiers in exoskeletons firing down at them. They didn’t know we were here.
Everyone started up the hill toward the soldiers just as the sound of the charging rail gun thrummed across the sky again, followed by the explosion further down the hill, people screaming. I fired my 30 mm at the UAV as it swooped down, using the momentum to regain its speed. The bullet connected, rocking the UAV, but didn’t stop it from pulling back up.
CSA soldiers engaged us, taking cover behind trees. They had the high ground. I jumped behind a tree, seeing Sachi’s people zigzagging up the hill. Benito ran behind a tree near me, him being the only one without an exoskeleton, his grizzled face sneering.
I ran to another tree a little further up, firing the .50 cal on my left arm as I ra
n. A bullet bounced off the abdomen of my exo, knocking the wind out of me as I fell to the ground. Benito ran up the hill, helping me to my feet with his bionic arms and then zigzagged past me to tree further up, shooting his M16 up the hill.
The forest lit up as Victor sprayed flame over one of the soldiers just as the hum of a UAV flared up again. I looked to the sky, seeing it come right for us. The barrel of the rail gun flashed simultaneously with the thundering explosion up the hill, close enough the shock wave lifted me in the air, tossing me back down the hill. I tumbled and slid into one of the refugees before scrambling to my feet, ears ringing, just in time to see the UAV go crashing into the ground five hundred feet to my left.
“He fucking got it!” Pedro shouted in a high-pitched tone.
“Where is he!” Olivia shrieked, “where is he!”
I ran back up the hill, finding the tree where Benito had been hiding completely decimated. Another bullet ricocheted off my shoulder as I continued up, seeing Olivia running back down.
“Where is he!” she said without the radio as she ran past me to where Benito had been. “Fucking pieces of shit!” she turned back up the hill and ran beside me to where Álvarez was taking cover from two soldiers fanning around both sides of his tree.
I fired my 30 mm at the one on the left, Olivia going for the right. Álvarez stepped out from behind the tree, his arm mounted 30 mm aimed point blank at the soldier’s visor as he stumbled to a halt. Álvarez’s gun cracked, the soldier’s helmet exploding with brains and shards of exoskeleton.
“Here it comes!” Rocky shouted over the radio as the second UAV’s rail gun charged.
Olivia had the other solder wounded on the ground, groping at his helmet to try and take it off, holding the soldier’s good arm down.
“Let me see your fucking face,” she shrieked, “I want to see your fucking face!”
Álvarez calmly walked over as the rail gun fired, the ground shaking as the explosion blossomed further down the hill. I fired my 30 mm at the UAV, once again hitting it but not taking it down. Álvarez bent down, holding his knife, and cut through the clips holding the helmet of Olivia’s victim. He sheathed the knife and then started back up the hill.
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