It was the least he could do to walk the lines.
“Alright Clarence, let’s go and say hi to our people,” Ando said rolling his shoulders and stepping into his powered armor.
It was the least he could do to try and comfort the Chosen that fought for Harmony’s cause.
****
Tyler hadn’t seen Mark in a while. After they had got a few days’ rest, they had been working on getting together people who were capable of going into what was no-man’s land to hit the Chosen.
That was still ongoing, but Ortiz had come up with a mission for Mark and Tyler.
There was some kind of commander checking out defenses in an area. Ortiz wanted him taken out; Tyler was the best shot and Mark was the best at close quarters.
He’d been hesitant, but the brothers had caught wind of the operation and he’d given it to them.
Now they were moving across catwalks as the lines raged below. Heavy machine guns sounded like they were miles away instead of right below as they stepped over broken Sections of the walkway.
Mark slung his rifle and grabbed the catwalk’s railing and ambled over to the other side of the walkway. He pulled himself up and brought his rifle around.
“Seems that our times fucking about trying to get recon on gangs’ strongholds are coming in useful,” Tyler said, using the catwalk railing hand over hand to get to the other side. If he let go, it was a hundred-and-fifty-foot drop to the war-torn landscape below. Explosions showered dirt that hadn’t been seen in decades underneath the factories, sending cermite ships everywhere.
“Just a bigger game,” Mark said moving forward. He was silent and watchful, looking out for anything and everything that might be a threat.
“Do you ever wish we stayed?” Tyler asked as they entered a broken pipe and Mark picked up his pace. His AMR was up and ready, but still silent.
“Sometimes, but no. I would never let go of this life for the existence in the slums. We might still be fighting and killing, but we have a family here, even if too many of them have died.” Mark couldn’t hide the harsh tone in his voice. “Yet, we have a life here; on Earth we would have simply existed. As fucked as this sounds, I’m happy that we have Harmony to fight. I can feel good about killing these people. On Sacremon, I just felt dirty. Those people were fighting for their freedom, these people are just fighting for a new kind of slavery.” Mark waved his arm at the Chosen below, his trigger hand never leaving the gun.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Tyler said. “For a time I thought I’d lost you to the anger.”
“I nearly was. Only you, Alexis, Jerome, the Triple-Twos and now the Dogs kept me from going over the edge.” Mark paused, and Tyler could see the muscles in his back moving his armor as they flexed and relaxed. “That isn’t saying that I’m not looking forward to killing every last Chosen. I’m going to enjoy killing those bastards. I might have nightmares from those that I’ve lost, and I’ll have nightmares of the battles to come, but killing the Chosen, I will never regret that.”
Mark continued moving faster than before. Tyler didn’t try to change his mind. No, he thought instead of what he would do if someone took Alexis, skinned her, was about to rape her before they had been married. Even then, without any of the experiences he’d had since, he knew that he might not be able to control himself. Mark was a stronger man than him in many ways, but he was also the angriest bastard. He loved him and admired his self-control. He also feared the day that self-control snapped.
“Let’s go find that commander fucker; you want his lackeys?”
“I’d be happy to.”
***
“You see him?” Mark asked.
“Of course I see him. I also see the twenty or so bastards crowding around him like he’s just hit retirement and he went to a goddamn brothel,” Tyler said.
“A simple yes would’ve done.”
Tyler hit his brother in the shoulder and Mark laughed,
“You’re a real pain in the ass,” Tyler said, feeling the tension he hadn’t known was creeping in, fall away. It seemed that Mark had seen it.
“Should have figured that out by now bro.”
They were in some kind of office, and Tyler was lying on a table three feet from the window. Mark was next to him, using some kind of console to steady his aim.
“Did you get the diversion ready?” Tyler asked.
“Yes…” Something in the slow way Mark said it made Tyler want to look at his brother.
“Anything I should know?”
“I hope you have your running shoes.”
Mark had taken seven hours to figure out his ‘diversion’, and set it up.
“Okay,” Tyler said, taking an extra breath as the commander started moving away from the rallied Chosen.
“They look pretty good in those uniforms, eh?” Mark said.
“Yeah, better than our dull gray asses,” Tyler said, knowing that Mark was talking to cut off their nerves.
“You got a shot?”
“Nearly,” Tyler said, the word sub-vocal as he circulated air through his lungs slowly and carefully, lowering his heartbeat. The shot was a kilometer away. They had been waiting five days, watching a ten kilometer stretch of defensive works and factories that had been opened by indirect fire. A few times they’d nearly been hit by their own people.
They’d carefully mapped all of the enemy positions, and Moretti was holding onto them.
“Ready,” Tyler said.
“Good to go.” Mark’s conversational tone cooled, his own breathing becoming slow and rhythmic.
Tyler let out his breath, his heartrate so low his vision was dimming, and his finger pulled on the trigger, slowly, as his heart paused between beats.
The gun bucked into his shoulder and he rode the recoil, the muzzle brake throwing dust and debris back in a cone. The free floating barrel came back with the force of a battering ram, and the air ejected from him in a slow breath. He registered the casing ejected from his gun and he saw its round smash into the commander’s neck. The helmet came off in a spray of blood.
“That’s my brother!” Mark cried, and he fired, twisting his point of aim and firing again. Tyler looked for new targets; they’d each marked their own victims. Tyler sent rounds down range as Mark slapped in a new magazine and reloaded. Mark wasn’t as skilled, but he could hit someone closer than eight hundred meters with decent accuracy. Tyler took out the further targets.
The area turned to chaos as people started running for cover, their peace and safety shattered as their leader’s armor was punctured and torn apart. Tyler slotted in a new magazine and saw people looking in their direction.
“Time to move!”
“Moretti, send those fucking fire orders!” Mark barked, pulling Tyler off of the table. Tyler got his feet under him as rounds started hitting the office. They moved like the slum dwellers they were, jumping over obstacles, falling and rolling to their feet as tracer fire ripped around them. Mark dropped and turned as someone got on the catwalks and three rounds boomed as they went flailing back into their buddies. Tyler ran on as Mark ran to catch up.
“Move into position, and run you dumb bastards, you’re still in the fucking impact area!” Moretti hissed, his voice pitched low for wherever he was, but his feelings were clear.
“We’re fucking trying!”
Tyler grabbed his rifle in one hand, vaulting over a pipe with the other, and explosions went off behind them as mines slowed down their pursuers.
“That your distraction?” Tyler asked.
“Oh, not yet,” Mark said, sounding rather pleased with himself.
“You going to activate it any time soon?” Powered armor was moving underneath their catwalks to fire on them.
“Nope, roof!” Mark said, grunting. He showed red; he’d been hit by the tracers ripping up into the catwalks.
They came to an open Section of factory roofing, and Tyler jumped. He hadn’t used his full strength in months, and he felt like a God as
he was thrown out into the Blue Moon’s sky. He used his mag-cord to bring himself back down.
“Incoming,” Moretti warned as a Carrier’s hulk moved over the two of them.
Tyler waved at the Carrier and Mark jumped past him, his cord coming out of his belt and slapping a roof, pulling him back down. So they moved, jumping forward across the roofs and using their mag-cords to pull them back down.
The rail gun rounds shimmered, entering the Blue Moon’s slight atmosphere, and they crashed into the defenses Mark and Tyler had recorded. At first it was the small rail cannon, then the large ones came down. They didn’t simply rip into factories, they tore them apart, they disappeared, and their contents exploded upwards and away from the small planet.
“Watch this,” Mark said, sounding pleased with himself even with the wet noise of his breathing. He’d been hit in the leg, so they paused on the roof tops and Tyler sprayed Mark’s wounds.
“Polarize those lenses,” Mark said.
“I can’t see, dick,” Tyler said, putting the sealant away by feel.
Seconds later, an explosion the likes of which Tyler had never seen before made several factories simply evaporate in a ball of fire. The air around them, even as thin as it was, whipped at them as it was sucked in and then thrown out.
“Shit, for the record I blame you,” Mark said, jumping the hell away.
“What?! I never told you to make a fucking nuke!”
“You never told me to not make a nuke,” Mark replied.
“How the hell did you do it? Why did you do it??”
“I turned it back on with command controls, then I used some of the explosives and a few armor plates, and shaped charge right through the heavy water lines. Seems the Chosen knew that the companies shut down reactors. They didn’t fucking think we’d turn it back on. That was some kind of command center. I tracked our commander dude to it.”
“Fuck sakes.” Tyler glanced at the destruction that had been left behind by the nuke. There had to be some twenty square kilometers cut out of the surface of the planet.
“Mark, did you have something to do with that nuclear blast?” Ortiz asked through the channel, sounding as if he knew it was Mark, but he was waiting for his petulant child to admit it.
“Sir, I have it on good authority that the Chosen are going to be rattled in their fucking cages right now. Tyler took that commander out,” Mark sidestepped the whole nuke thing.
“Tyler, you agree?” Ortiz asked.
“Yeah, they’re pretty screwed up, we’ve got all of them in that area pretty rattled right now. Might have just eviscerated their command and control,” Tyler said, switching from being Mark Victor’s brother to his fellow lieutenant. They needed every advantage possible, and this was a biggie.
“Mark said as much before, the Troopers are ready. Dogs are taking the center, hurry it up!” Ortiz said.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you told Ortiz to assault right after we took the shot?” Tyler said.
“Didn’t want you to start thinking about it,” Mark said, his voice sincere.
Tyler knew that he would have been wrapped up in his own head if he’d known, and thinking about whether his people were ready, instead of taking the shot. Or thinking about the nuke his brother had made. Mark didn’t lie to him normally, but if he did then he had damn good reasons. “Thanks, bro.”
“Nah worries SWAS,” Mark said, dropping through a hole in the roof. They just needed to make it through the pipes and they’d be back in safe territory.
Tyler looked at his HUD. It looked like the festivities had already been kicked off; the line was a ragged mess of tracers, and Combat Shuttles were coming in closer than was healthy, laying cannon and auto-turret fire into the bastards.
Chapter 36
EMFC Fearless
Fernix Prime’s Orbit, Fernix System
10/3294
Moretti watched as the Victor brothers escaped the possible impact area of the incoming Carrier’s rounds. That calm was replaced with shock as a nuclear explosion ripped through factories, throwing what was left of them into the atmosphere or outwards into other factories. The destruction was brilliant and quick. Debris shone in starlight as they tumbled away from Blue Moon’s low gravity.
Moretti sighed and rubbed his face.
“Something the matter?” Captain Hall asked.
“No, captain,” Moretti said, his head coming up as he looked at the big crater in Blue Moon.
“Those Trooper boys seem to be having a lot of fun down there wrecking shit,” Captain Hall observed.
“That they do,” Moretti agreed.
Hall’s eyes unfocused as he accessed something on his implants. “Well it looks like we’re on close support for a rush. Our people are going to use the Chosen’s unfortunate disorganization to attack them. Get all of the Combat Shuttles on standby crewed. Have the guns run out and ready to fire.”
“We’re still low on ammunition, captain,” Celik at weapons said.
“Guy, make sure that we have one of the Carriers over this place at all times. I want the Carrier with the most ammunition overhead after us. They’re to level targets with prejudice,” Hall said.
“On it.”
“I think I’m going to go to the Trooper command center,” Moretti said.
“Certainly, M,” Hall said bowing his head to Moretti. Moretti bowed his head back and left the storage room. He needed to make sure that Fearless’s Troopers weren’t the only ones making advantage of whatever Mark had done.
Sure as hell wasn’t Tyler that made a nuke, Moretti thought, keeping himself from shaking his head and sighing around the other people in the Carrier.
Chapter 37
Factory Complex Three
Blue Moon, Fernix System
10/3294
Mark barely touched the tube, kicking off it and throwing himself forward. He checked his HUD and saw that the ships that were moving into position already.
More strikes were coming in as the sensor sticks that the scouting parties had put out identified Chosen targets.
Combat Shuttles rolled low and dangerous, their thrust making the factories shake, their auto-turrets and cannons stitching lines of tracer through the thin cover that the factories offered.
Missiles sent out short-lived fireballs.
Mark got to the end of the tunnel and Tyler was right behind him.
“How are you?” Tyler asked.
“Just a bit of shrapnel,” Mark said, his words belying his injury.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the injuries he’d had, and he could keep going. He wasn’t going to let his Company out into the field without their lieutenant.
Mark jumped over a railing and pushed against it with his legs. “Incoming devil dogs!” They came in from forty feet above, and the gravity was low as all hell. He used catwalks and machines to slow his descent, coming out over the dogs’ lines. They were all formed up and ready, while techs and armorers rushed around to make sure that they were functional.
“Bout damn time!” Haas yelled.
Mark and Tyler laughed as they shot their lines out of their armor, being pulled towards where their powered armor was being stored. Mark dropped and rolled, releasing the cable. A dust cloud rose around him as he pushed off for the armory bunker. His armor was next to Tyler’s, ten feet away, but he turned around and pushed against the wall. Techs and armorers got out of his way as he flew backwards and landed in his armor. A tech put a hand on his chest to keep him in it instead of flying off. Mark pulled off his AMR and slapped it into his ammunition pack’s clips.
A tech attached AMR ammunition to the outside of his powered armor, and an armorer checked the readings.
“How we looking?” Mark asked, opening a channel to the armorer as he looped his fingers into the powered armor’s hands.
“Good to go,” he said, pulling out their cords from the powered armor’s internals.
“Ammo? Power?” Mark asked. Tyler was putting his
AMR on his pack next to him.
“Good on both counts, got an emergency face mask in there too,” the armorer said.
“Good, can you take my helmet off before I seal up fully?” Mark asked, his armor sealing and locking around him.
“You Devil Dogs are fucking insane,” the armorer said, though he didn’t say no as he put his leads and surface away, ready.
“Well this is going to suck,” Tyler said, his armor closing around his arms and chest.
“You know it,” Mark replied, his armor all sealed up except for his helmet.
He grabbed his Repulsor from its rack beside the powered armor, stepping out of the charger. The power leads disconnected and took a knee so that his head was chest height with the armorer.
“Ready?” Mark asked.
“Fuck no.” The armorer held onto the sides of his helmet.
“Three, two, one.” Mark closed his mouth and eyes, breathing out of his nose. His helmet came off, and he used the implant screen he saw on the inside of his eyelids to close his powered armor’s integrated helmet.
It closed and locked with a loud metal on metal sound in barely a second.
Fresh air filled Mark’s breathing area, and heat flowed in as well. He opened his eyes; they hurt from the cold and his nose felt like he’d sniffed napalm.
Mark’s HUD was coming online, showing the armory, and he was green on all of his systems.
“Next time you have a brilliant idea, please remind me to knock you out,” Tyler said.
“Please do.” Mark was not having the best record for great plans today. He moved for the armory entrance, and people moved out of the way; obstructing powered armor was a quick way to have a shitty day.
None of them could see the smile on his face as he thought of the nuke he’d made, or the fifteen kilometers of destruction it had left in its wake.
Mark jumped once he was clear of the armory, and with a few long bounds he got to the Devil Dogs that were ready and waiting.
“Good luck and watch your back, Tyler,” Mark said.
“You too,” Tyler said. Neither of their words were empty. They couldn’t directly watch one another’s back, like they had just minutes ago, yet they trusted that one another’s Troopers would do the job. That kind of trust wasn’t given out every day.
Fernix (Harmony War Book 4) Page 13