She was thrown into the air as I jumped forward. I went to land a punch on her shoulder but she turned, grabbing my arm and planting her feet in my shoulder.
The change of weight made me stumble as I used the clamps on my boots, thankfully staying upright. I tried to curl the arm she was on but her legs fought me. Well, she got me into an arm bar. I grunted as my Mecha’s joints screeched at the pressure of being pulled apart and my arm felt as if it were going to snap from the pressure.
I jumped, landing on her, and used my free right hand to pound on her shoulders. Still, she held on like the hellcat she was. I could feel the muscles and bones in my arm straining as well as the actual armor of my Mecha and the exoskeleton underneath.
I felt something twist awkwardly and release as my world became blinding pain in my arm. I thought about tapping—for a second—and then pain-infused rage took over. I looked at Yasu. I could see that she’d felt my arm come out of its socket.
“You can stop,” she said over suit-to-suit communications.
“No,” I growled as I controlled my arm through my nerve ports. The exoskeleton acted as my own bone and muscle as I threw myself on my right. She still held on as I picked myself up. She applied more pressure. I tasted blood as I bit into my lip, rising to my feet. I squatted as I got low. She released her legs from around my arm and her hands off my own.
You’re not getting away that easily. I grabbed her collar as I jumped and wrenched her around. My shoulder was on fire; only Taleel’s constant use of the pain implants made me able to bear the pain. I flipped her, my full weight falling on her.
I took a few breaths. Idiot. Pulling her apart in hand-to-hands. Stupid. You need her to train the others. I rolled off her before taking a knee and tapping the ground. I bowed to her, as she did too, getting out of her fighting stance. I didn’t see whether she’d completed it as I opened my visor.
“And that is how you get out of an arm bar. Arm bars are good for any race as enough pressure and that arm is useless unless they can use their nerve ports properly. Something all of you should focus on.” I looked around, getting some nods back as I grinned.
“Well then, I need to go and check on the weapons training.” Slowly, I grabbed the battle rattle I’d put on the ground, thankful for the exoskeleton and nerve ports. Without them, then the others would see the extent of my injuries. I moved my arm, trying to get a feel for how bad it was. YEAH! Definitely dislocated. I winced as I jarred it.
I did as I said and looked in on the troops working with the weapons team. I was thankful I’d put two teams of them in each squad, not only giving us shooters we could rely on but also the ability to train at any point in time. They were worth their weight in gold; I watched as they went through FISEH. It was pronounced fish but stood for “fighting in someone else’s house.” When I first heard the term explained, more than one person had broken out grinning.
“Are you interested in having a go, Commander?” one of the trainers asked as I watched.
I wanted to say no and that I was in need of relocating my damned shoulder. Instead, my mouth worked before I could think.
“If you’ve got room for me.” A grin spread over my face. Cocky asshole—this trying to look like a leader thing is for the dogs. I groaned inwardly, hoping that the trainer would say they didn’t.
“Always, Commander. The stack going in could use another man.” He pointed to them.
I nodded to him as I slapped my rifle into the dislocated arm’s hand. Jarring pain traveled up my arm. I hid my wince as I thought about the stupid situations my big mouth had gotten me into. I dreaded how much work would pile up as I was working on my fighting skills.
I wanted to be a damned good soldier, but a leader had to learn how to look at the overall strategy, not just develop their personal skills. I was good with my soldiering, but I was only used to commanding three others, not twenty thousand.
I tagged onto the back of a stack with nothing much else to do until someone had an urgent emergency.
I found a quiet corner that I slumped in after I’d been training for three hours of FISEH. No sooner had my ass hit the ground than Yasu walked in. I made to stand up as she put a finger to my chest, stopping me.
“Out of your Mecha, now.”
“I don’t think now is the time—”
“Armor off, now.” Her tone brooked no argument.
I grunted as I pulled my helmet off. My grunts quickly turned to gasps as I tried to undo the straps that connected my shoulders to the Mecha.
“You dislocated your shoulder, didn’t you?”
I didn’t reply, lying there trying to ease the pain.
“Then you felt it was a great idea to go and do FISEH for three hours!” She tossed her hands up in the air as she threw off her gauntlets and helmet, squatting in front of me and removing the straps of my Mecha, freeing my arm.
I could feel it swell as she released them.
“For someone who’s ten steps ahead of everyone, you really are an idiot sometimes.” She pulled my arm out of the Mecha as I breathed angrily at the pain. “This is going to hurt.”
“Wait, whaAAAAAAAT!” I yelled as she put my shoulder back into place with a painful click.
“Please, never do anything like that again.” She produced a needle and stuck it in my shoulder.
“What did I just say?” A burning sensation spread through my arm as she pulled the needle out.
“That’s Hellfire; you should be good in a few minutes.”
“Feels like someone stuck a hot poker in my arm!” I grit my teeth at the pain as I tried to find consolation in the ceiling.
“Interesting,” she said, a smile on her lips.
I looked at her sourly, trying to look annoyed as I let a little laugh go. The pain increased as she left. After a few minutes, it died down to a throb and then nothing. I moved my arm, feeling as if nothing had changed. I got back into my Mecha, thinking of her smile as I walked around the station.
We continued training for the next few days until one day I was jerked awake by a red flashing of my HUD.
I opened the emergency channel without thought, my body already moving as I checked my rifle and walked outside. Everyone was scrambling for defensive positions.
“What is it?” I demanded as I reached the watch commander.
“We have an incoming craft from the population centers, as well as land vehicles.”
“Major, the fuck do you think you’re doing!” I demanded.
“This is General Carsickle. With whom am I speaking?”
“Commander Salchar. Now turn your crap around.” I jumped onto the top of the shuttle in a single bound to get a better look of the situation, dialing in my visor’s magnification to see the dust plumes of the advancing vehicles.
“Commander, you and your force will surrender to my forces or I will kill you.” Surety rang through his voice.
I looked at the incoming craft with my sensors as the building thrum of engines warmed up beneath me.
“I can’t stop anyone from shooting you if you attack us and if you kill me, no one will surrender. They will rip you apart and move onto your population centers. By now you should know of our assets both orbiting your planet and the actual weaponized systems we wear and use. All of which will destroy you the minute I’m dead. If I’m not dead and you kill one of my own, even then I will use everything in my power to make this planet burn. So, your options are to step down or have your name on a plaque I will put on your planet as the man who led to its destruction.”
Don’t turn me into a Sarenmenti. I don’t want to kill you, you bastard.
“Get your people to stand down or we will destroy you.”
I wish I could see his face to get some read on him.
Officer Turek jumped on top of the shuttle, unlimbering his rifle. I couldn’t say anything that would get me unwanted attention from the Sarenmenti.
“You have invaded our perimeter. Anyone inside in the next minute will be
terminated with extreme prejudice,” Turek said through all of our external speakers.
I brought my own rifle up, changing magazines to live ones instead of stun. I changed to the private command channel.
“Commander, what do we do?” Henry asked, his voice calm, ready to do what needed to be done. I wish I had the surety that he had.
“Have sharpshooters take out vehicles. Then have secondary shooters hit those who come from the vehicles with stun rounds.”
A speaker crackled to life from the ground vehicles. General Carsickle’s voice came from it. “Surrender and you will be tried in a court of law. If you don’t, you will be killed by our forces.”
“Operate as you see fit. I will contact if situation changes,” I said, cutting the command channel
“Turn back or you will be destroyed. Even if you kill me and my people here on the ground, those above us will not hesitate to bombard you into oblivion.” Turek lowered himself, beckoning me to do the same as he raised his rifle sight to his eye.
“I doubt that, Commander. If they wanted us dead, they would’ve killed us off. The Syndicate enslaves the population of a planet to do their bidding, much as they have probably done to your planet, and makes them do whatever they want to gain more wealth. In our case, they’re probably after our harvests and our raw materials. Neither of which we are inclined to give to them without a fight.”
I knew that if the roles were reversed that I would be doing exactly what Carsickle was doing. Now I needed to keep my people alive, this planet alive, and inspire a revolt. When did my life get so damned difficult!
“Minute up.” Turek shook his head as he crunched in on his rifle, lining up his shot. “Fire!”
“Take out their drives; stun those who are out of the vehicles.” Leaders flashed their acknowledgment as their people were firing.
I had been sighting on a floating craft, hoping they worked like a gravity cart as I fired into where the gravity drives should be. For a minute, my heart was in my throat as I saw the menacing ordinance tip forward with the craft, as if coming in for an attack run. Then the ship continued to buck in every direction. It became clear it couldn’t support its own weight as it tried to pull back in the direction it had come.
I switched targets, the extra training coming to the fore as I sighted another armored vehicle driving toward us; with an exhale and a stroke of the trigger, the vehicle looked as if it had met a wall as the kinetic forces of the round pulverized the forward section. I had no time to think of my actions as I changed targets. The machine gun teams kept anyone who jumped out of the vehicles down. Sharpshooters stopped the vehicles in their tracks, trying to disable rather than kill. The others dropped the aggressive Chaleelians who seemed determined to rush forward with stun rounds.
“They’re retreating,” a gun team called out; other reports of the enemy running away came in.
“Officer Turek, I propose we have a small force advance on them, attacking them and pushing them back and also capable of taking prisoners. It seems that our act of goodwill has been overlooked.”
“Salchar, how are our forces going to advance? They’ll get picked off.”
“We have a tactic for that.”
He studied me as if he could see through my polarized visor. “All right, go for it. No more than twenty-five percent casualties.” After reading Min Hae’s reports on what the personal crew said of the troops, this kind of callous talk was the norm. It still made me think how badly the past troops had fared that such casualty percentages were common on the front lines.
“Yes, sir,” I said, shaking the thought free. Time for that later.
“Reserve leader!”
“Yes, sir?”
“We’re going to advance on them by leap frog. Should be fine as we can get cover from the gunners. Questions?”
“Are we using live or stun?”
“Stun.”
“Sir.” Then, without missing a beat, “Everyone, change to stun and hold those mags high for inspection. Section commanders check.” I heard the squad commander’s order as I changed channel again.
“Yasu, we’re going out.”
“I’ll be there momentarily,” she said.
I launched myself backward with my arms. I tucked into a roll, landing on the ground between the shuttle and the plant. Yasu dropped from the power plant’s roof. The reserve piled out of where they’d been waiting in the building and gathered around us.
The Mechas’ armor plating scratched and groaned with the accompanied noises of gears moving and the pneumatics and hydraulics of the exoskeleton. They don’t just look deadly; they sound like it too.
And they did look deadly—the added armor made us look like giants. The bulky shoulders, which were extended for the exoskeleton so they were level with our head, made us all look like ominous linebackers.
I changed magazines for stun as I studied the scared and nervous faces of those hidden behind their visors.
“Let’s snag us some aliens!” I said in a hillbilly accent, eliciting a few grins and nervous laughs as I saw them visibly relax.
“You know what to do, people—spread out. Arrowhead formation.” It took them some time to get set up in a satisfactory way with me mentally reminding myself that most of these people hadn’t even used a real weapon until today, having only simulated with it for a few days.
I foresaw more training in the future—if I was alive to see it—as I took my own place in the formation.
“All right, move in sections and then by teams. If it goes to shit, I’ll tell you to do individually.” I looked over everyone, seeing nods. I changed to the reserves leader’s channel.
“It’s your show. I’m just here for the ride.”
“Uh... Yes, thank you, sir.”
“Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be a leader unless I had faith in you.”
“Yes, sir!” he said, more confident as he talked to the support leader, coordinating a fire plan. As we moved forward, every Mecha scanned for enemy.
Some—the brave, stupid, stunned or scared—were still huddled around the vehicles. Dust flew up around us as we dove for the ground. Support replied in kind with their hammering fire.
“Move in sections!” the reserves leader barked as training took over. In sections, people fired as the others launched themselves forward. With the Mecha’s power, we didn’t have to stand to move forward—just bunch our legs under us and hurl ourselves forward in one explosive push. We looked more like dogs as we lay down, firing as the other section moved; then, once they were in position, we lurched forward, no higher than a few feet. It had been Henry’s idea when we’d been discussing the power amplification of the Mechas, though it was even more tiring than normal leap frogging.
We’d been going for five minutes when I saw people starting to get complacent. Some were still popping their heads up like lemmings—in an attempt to find the enemy.
“Pick your targets, people. Two section, stay down! This is not a fucking drill!” the squad leader said as more than one had taken a knee to get more power, their legs getting fatigued.
I was feeling drained as I knew everyone else was. We were just fifty meters now from the disabled trucks. I heard an engine roar as a transport jumped from its hiding place behind a sand dune less than fifteen meters in front of me.
I dropped my rifle loaded with a magazine of stun rounds as I pulled the pistol and stroked two rounds into the engine block. The front of the truck flattened as if hit by an invisible wall, its inertia so much that the back end of the transport flipped into the air, shuddering as it came back down. Instead of facing us, it was now turned away at an angle.
“Team five and six, take the transport. Everyone else, clear your area and get some cover,” the leader said as two teams picked themselves up, covering the distance in seconds.
“One team cover, the other search,” I suggested on private channels to them as they stood at the back of the truck.
“Squad leader, we have t
roops here.”
“Stun them!” I said. As they quickly raised their rifles, I could hear the automatic chatter of rail gun rounds as I holstered my pistol and grabbed my rifle. “Sorry, squad leader.”
“No problem, sir. Would’ve been my call anyway. Could you look after that transport? I’ll give you one section and provide cover and security.”
“Good thinking.”
We changed channels, dealing with our separate squads.
“Move to the mid-section of the transport. Third team clears the crew cabin,” I said to the remainder of my squad not at the rear of the transport.
“Yes, Commander Salchar!” They rushed to the cabin.
“How are the ones in the rear?”
“Stunned. We’re removing weapons of any kind and binding them.”
“Good. Make sure that they don’t die.”
“Commander, this is the team in the crew cabin. The two up front are alive but badly wounded.”
“Shit. Are they able to move?”
“No, sir. I would say that without medical assistance, they’ll die.”
“Fucking brilliant,” I muttered to myself.
“What was that, sir?”
“Nothing.” I looked at the transport, thinking. “I have an idea. Two section, get behind the transport. Squad leader, can you have your people create a line off the transport?”
“Sir.” He moved to do so, barking orders as he got people in position quickly.
I changed to the commander I put in charge of the people at the power plant. “We’re going to use this transport as cover, pushing it ahead of us and piling the unconscious and wounded in.”
“Understood, Commander. We’ll give you the best possible covering fire.”
I cut the channel as I fired off orders to collect all wounded and stunned.
They did so as stunned natives were unceremoniously dumped into the back end of the transport. I wrote a message in the sand, people glancing at it as they came by. Keep as many pistols as possible. I didn’t know how linked-in the Sarenmenti officers were and I didn’t need them to know about our extra weaponry.
Free Fleet Box Set 1 Page 24