“Sir,” Baashir passed his instructions on as Fusaro watched.
There was little else he could do. They would lose Chosen, but they’d get inside.
Chosen were welding massive bands of metal to the zip lines that were attached to the barricades, securing them completely.
Fusaro looked at his reports. Half of his forces were shooting at the Troopers or deployed against the barricade.
Seven minutes. Fusaro shook himself, trying to relieve some of the adrenaline rushing through his body to focus his thoughts.
Here and there, PACs were opening up the barricades, or cutting them open.
Counter measures started failing and vehicles were raked with Repulsor fire. Anything that was standing and not against the barricades was cut down.
“Hold the reinforcements! Pull the walls down!” Fusaro ordered.
He heard the vehicle some two stories above him rev its engine and strain against something.
Seconds later there was a groan, and the sound of something falling. Things on the second floor broke and what sounded like the universe’s largest guitar string twanged. The dumpster full of metal held there for a few moments before slowly dropping. The armored barricade that it was attached to, couldn’t take it as the dumpster crashed into the ground. Fusaro jumped sideways as the attached armored barricade came free of the citadel’s defenses and crashed into the tower.
The vehicle was straining against another welded mass. Fusaro went back to the larger hole that looked out over the battlefield.
Chosen were flooding into the citadel. The barricades looked like someone who’d had their teeth ripped out. The memory sent a shiver down Fusaro’s back. Repulsor fire across the barricades slackened, and the Heavies started shooting deeper into the citadel, trying to not shoot their own while keeping the Troopers’ heads down.
“Move it! Get in there, kill the Troopers!” Baashir yelled into his headset.
Fusaro watched as all the remaining Chosen charged forward. Fusaro wanted to tear the man a new one, but that dangerous glint was in his eyes as he looked at the citadel.
Fusaro was not about to get in Baashir’s way.
“Baashir, lead the charge,” Fusaro said.
“For the sake of Harmony!” Baashir charged off, with the other Chosen repeating his war cry.
Fusaro quickly found himself the only person behind the towers, so he took a deep breath and started running after them.
It was a terrifying experience. The Heavies’ shifted fire meant that the Troopers on the upper floors weren’t being pinned down as effectively.
A Chosen was blown up with a direct hit from a Screamer. Another was torn apart by Repulsor fire. Fusaro could see the tracers in their armor as he sprinted as quickly as possible.
An unlucky Chosen was torn in two by a mine that no one before them had found. Then Fusaro was at the barricade, and he’d never felt so alive, so scared, and so exhilarated all at the same time.
Though he wasn’t about to charge the Troopers inside the citadel; he might be a general but he wasn’t really a fighter.
Chapter 85
EMFC Fearless
8/3349
“Chosen have breached the citadel’s barricades. The Troopers are holding at their secondary line,” Rasalov reported.
“Ortiz thinks that they’ll overcome his defenses and they’ll be fighting hand to hand shortly. He can delay for maybe a day,” Guy said.
“Yeltsin, get us moving faster!” Hall demanded.
“Sir, with all of our plans, we’re going to take another two days…” Yeltsin’s voice was pained. He wanted to go faster.
“We use the atmosphere,” Hall said.
Yeltsin’s eyes went wide.
No one would have even thought of that in the old EMF. The cost for repairs would be astronomical. It would make Nivad’s bean counters come down on you like an orbital strike.
I don’t think that they’ll be caring about the cost too much, as long as they’re alive.
“If we use the Moon’s small atmosphere and gravity, then Earth’s atmosphere, we can shave off, maybe six hours,” Yeltsin said, shaking his hand as he looked at his console, inputting numbers.
“What if we had our sails deployed?” Hall asked.
“I do not want to be the person paying for that,” Yeltsin objected.
“Celik, Guy, get talking to engineering, how much mass can we eject? Have Big Bertha or Indomitable grab it,” Hall said. “Anything we think that can save us minutes, we do it.”
There was a chorus of ‘Yes, sirs’ while Yeltsin bent his head over his console. Celik and Guy started talking to their people, and Rasalov kept updating the forward screen with the feed coming direct from the citadel.
“Yeltsin, how much damage are we looking at?” Hall asked.
“It might be an idea to lose some of our mass through the escape pods,” Yeltsin didn’t sound like he was joking.
“Guy, Rasalov, schedule a drill on escape pods,” Hall said. Everyone else was stuck too deep in their work.
“Yes, sir.”
SNAFU.
Chapter 86
Citadel
Earth, Sol System
8/3349
“Will. You. Fuck. Off?!” Tyler said, his AMR firing with every word.
He didn’t even need to try to control his breathing.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. If the fish were trying to kill you with guns, and had armor and explosive fucking vests.
He was lying on an open stairwell that looked over the lobby, to make it look like the EMF was always moving and important to the new recruits who used to walk through its doors.
Four Troopers surrounded Tyler, all of them firing or reloading. It was barely making a dent in the Chosen. Not even taking out the leaders eased the Chosen’s forward push.
The first barricades were down. There were Troopers fighting in pockets. The Repulsors in the second barricade wall, where the lobby’s tables had been, were firing point-blank into the Chosen. It hadn’t taken the Chosen long to advance.
Some crafty son of a bitch had given the forward Chosen the rest of the flares. They tossed them in, fucking up the Troopers’ helmets, and rushed in.
They’d been fighting for hours. Troopers on the upper floors were just keeping watch. The majority were moving down to support their brothers and sisters on the first floor.
The Chosen were shooting, hitting, cutting, and tossing grenades around the barricades.
It was a bloody to and fro. Troopers were shooting and throwing grenades back, and the losses on both sides were terrible.
The first barricades had been torn apart or cut apart with plasma torches.
Chosen and Troopers lay from the first barricade to the second. Tracers fired through any open hole in the second barricades, back and forth. Both sides were fighting with everything they had.
More PACs were pushing into the citadel, like a black armored wave.
Tyler kept shooting, barely needing to aim. Every time a PAC went down, another replaced them.
Troopers held the line as their reinforcements and the EMF personnel-turned-Troopers built up the third line, passing supplies forward and carrying wounded backwards.
Medics were working right behind the third line, the number of dead mounting. If something got into your Powered Armor, you usually didn’t get back up.
It looked like an old rice paddy, with the first barricades lower than the second, which were lower than the third. It was fucking hell.
A Trooper grunted next to Tyler, and he could tell the man had taken a round.
Tyler fired at where the round sounded like it had come from. Another Trooper, higher, fired a Screamer into the Chosen mass. It left a hole for about a second before more PACs moved in and started firing back.
Someone had got a Repulsor turret from upstairs online, and they fired back down.
“Let’s move ladies and gents, let the Repulsors fight it out,” Tyler said, grabbi
ng his ammo box and running for the offices that looked over the lobby.
Being in the middle of a firefight wasn’t the role of a sniper.
The other AMR gunners followed him as Repulsor turrets from the upper floors were slapped down in their positions, firing at the PACs.
Tyler cleared off a table, pushing it against the office windows. Troopers followed his example as a tech ran by, threw ammunition boxes into the room and rushed off.
Tyler got on the desk and fired at the Chosen. Then he saw it.
Enough time fighting battles and leading Troopers had allowed him to learn a ‘shit factor sense’. While it was currently off of the scale, something made him look at an area of the barricade where a plasma torch had just stopped.
“Ortiz, they’re coming through in less than five seconds,” Tyler said, firing on the group behind the barricade. He couldn’t kill them fast enough.
Officers and leadership corralled their Troopers back, throwing their last grenades and running for the third line.
The PACs broke through the second barrier, running after the Troopers that were back at the third barricades. The Repulsors opened up. Troopers turned, protecting their brothers’ rears.
Even through all of the firing and the explosions, Tyler heard a voice.
“Let’s show these Chosen fucks what Troopers are made of! You with me, Troopers?” An officer yelled, pulling her vibra-blade, and making a play to buy the other Troopers time to get through the small openings in the barricades.
The Troopers with the officer yelled their war cries, advancing and shooting their Repulsors. As the Chosen got within ten feet, their vibra-blades came out.
They held their ground, but there were too few of them and too many of the PACs. The Troopers cut down dozens of the PACs, but they were overrun. The last of the Troopers they’d been protecting made it through the barricades which were pushed back into place and sealed.
The officer was hit with spears, her arms and leg useless.
The Chosen grabbed her, pulling her armor off.
“Kill me!” she yelled. No, pleaded.
Tyler’s face hardened as he let out a breath, and his mind went to Ko and the other Troopers the Chosen had tortured. His augments ramped up as he opened his trigger hand and wrapped it back around the grip, taking in a deep breath.
The world seemed to slow as he let out his breath through his nose. He fired, hitting the Trooper. His aim shifted.
Head, shoulder, neck, torso, head, armpit. Reload. Tyler worked like a machine, identifying the best shot and taking it in almost the same thought.
He didn’t take his eyes off the Trooper officer and the dead PACs around her. The bolt slammed home and he continued firing. Any PACs surrounding the fallen Troopers were cut down.
All of the AMR gunners seemed to have the same idea, as the PACs were slain with brutal efficiency.
Repulsors were firing into their midst.
They fell back to the second barricades. Tyler kept firing and following them. He knew that if he didn’t kill them here, then they would just be one more PAC trying to kill his people. They’d attack the third barricade soon enough.
Chapter 87
Mega City
Earth, Sol System
8/3349
The Chosen and Troopers were still fighting. Artillery was raining down, but barricades and trucks had been stacked together to give overhead cover.
The trenches had been dug out.
Food and supplies were being funneled from the towers to the citadel.
Chosen were eating and resting. Fusaro didn’t want them tiring out as they fired on the Troopers.
It seemed like the Troopers didn’t need sleep. Fusaro was going to have to make a push with everything he had against the Troopers.
Alexandria was dismantling her Heavies. The air-cars they’d used to lift the vehicles up to push the weights off the towers were lowering the rigs to the ground.
Vibra-blades had been pulled from the Troopers’ dead, and used to arm the best units.
Preparing for the last battle.
Fusaro knew, that one way or another, they would either overtake the Troopers, fighting them to the death, or they would die trying. It might take hours or days, but one Force wasn’t making it out of this battle alive.
Chapter 88
Citadel
Earth, Sol System
8/3349
“This is it,” Jerome said.
“Yeah,” Hughes agreed. Mark had introduced the man, and he’d quickly become friends with Tyler and Mark’s leadership. His section and platoon was gone. Distinctions between units was minimal now. They were all just Troopers, fighting to stay alive.
Jerome looked at Mark, Dominguez, and Alexis. All of them were doing what they could to stretch or ready themselves for what was about to come. Tyler was still in his perch with a dozen other Troopers, trying to weed out the leadership.
Mark twirled his two blades.
Alexis checked her pistols and Dominguez rolled her shoulders.
“Well, once more right into the fight,” Ortiz said, his security detail moving out of his way.
“Good to see you,” Mark said, tapping Ortiz’s arm.
“Lead from the front, not from a Carrier. That Nerva was full of lessons,” Ortiz laughed.
Jerome smiled. They might be at death’s door, and his nerves were tearing his insides apart with anxious acid. He wanted to go and hide in the deepest hole he could find.
Instead, he checked his Repulsor again and stretched as much as his Powered Armor allowed.
“Watch it there, sleepyhead, you just wake up?” Ortiz asked.
“Sleeping in this thing is a cold bitch,” Jerome complained.
“Yeah, cold iron bitch,” Ortiz agreed.
“Why is it that you two are always on the lines together?” Alexis asked.
“Started on what, Masoul?” Jerome asked.
“Yeah,” Ortiz said. “Fuck, I’m getting old.”
“Well the general here didn’t like being stuck in the rear with the gear. So he decided to come and jump into the front line. Bribed me with chew to shut up and not tell the sergeant major,” Jerome laughed.
“Oh yeah, almost forgot,” Ortiz said, pulling out a tin of chew and tossing it to Jerome.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Jerome laughed, trying to distract from how touched he was by Ortiz’s gesture and the history that had started Ortiz running away from his command staff to get on the front lines with his Troopers.
Jerome looked at the tin, memories, a lifetime of them, passing behind his eyes.
“It’s not going to pack itself boy, and those fuckers look like they’re going to try something soon,” Ortiz’s dark voice cut into his thoughts.
Jerome opened his helmet and arm, his eyes itchy as he put in a chew.
“Thanks, Ortiz,” Jerome said, thanking him for so much more than just the chew.
“You’re welcome, my boy,” Ortiz said, tapping him on the shoulder and smiling. “Best damned thing I did was teaching you lot.” Ortiz looked at them all and shook his head, looking years older as he scratched his watery eyes.
Mark opened his helmet and pulled out a tin.
“Ahhh, you dick, you told me you didn’t have any!” Jerome said, spitting and closing his tin.
“Well, I knew that you were going to steal it, didn’t I? Never could ration out your cigs and chew,” Mark smiled and packed a lip.
Ortiz laughed. “You two blockheads.”
Heavies opened fire.
Helmets closed and tins disappeared.
Repulsors, up high and along the last barricade line, fired. A truck roared and blew up, a hole opening in the barricades. Troopers plugged the gap, firing at the Chosen and trying to seal the breach with debris and spray-ite.
Another vehicle detonated.
Screamers fired on both sides. The Chosen’s hit the barricades, the Troopers’ aimed for vehicles and Heavies.
Jero
me checked his blade again. All of them were waiting and watching for a breach in the area they’d chosen to cover.
Chapter 89
EMFC Fearless
8/3349
The flight deck’s doors were open as they skimmed over Moon City.
People were calling them with all kinds of shit; complaining about the debris, the low flyby.
The security people were losing their shit. Hall had not so politely told them where to fuck off to, and what to do with their useless fucking complaints.
The solar sails were open fully as Fearless and Justice followed one another in the universe’s version of tag.
Hall felt gravities he had never experienced before crushing on his body.
None of them could move as the extra gravities made breathing hard.
I really hope Yeltsin is as good with those computers as he seems to think he is, Hall thought as they dove into Earth’s upper atmosphere, engines first.
Fearless was torn at by gravity, inertia, atmosphere, and all of the joys that came with it.
The flight decks were torn apart with the winds and pressures.
“Hangars,” Hall grunted, trying to press the button that would move the loaded Combat Shuttles from their holding place to the hangars.
They and the flight deck had been left open as the doors might weld shut with the friction-turned-heat they were being pummeled with.
The flight deck was in worse shape than they thought, so it left just the hangars for the Combat Shuttles and their Fighters to escape with.
He got the button before anyone else.
I think I broke the fucking thing.
Combat Shuttles were dropped to the hangars and the launch system, that was rarely used, tossed them free of Fearless.
Hall watched as the Combat Shuttles and their Fighters pushed free of the Carrier and deeper into Earth’s atmosphere.
The Fighters had been attached to the Combat Shuttles, two big ass fucking booster rockets to get them where they needed to go.
Right in those fucking Harmony fucktards’ backsides.
The Carrier came out of Earth’s atmosphere, trailing debris, missing armor and weapons that had been torn off.
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