Facing threats to his front and rear, Reyn knew that the most critical had to be tackled first, and that was the tear inside the atmosphere the ship had created when it jumped. Shifting quickly, Reyn turned around towards the invisible rip in the universe that was undetectable to the naked eye, which he could sense. Closing his eyes, Reyn froze the twenty missiles mid-flight, then brought his arms up, opened his fingers and sent an energy shockwave towards the sky.
The power surging from Reyn raced away from his body in an invisible wave, striking the slowly growing hole in the time-space continuum, quickly sealing it, washing away the cosmic disturbance.
Wheeling around, Reyn redirected his attention back towards the twenty missiles, and instead of reducing them to mere atoms, he decided it was time to end the current state of affairs between himself and the Coalition forces. With just the slightest flick of his finger towards the sky, Reyn turned the missiles around and sent them back to where they came from.
It didn’t take long for the missiles to reach their points of origin. When they slammed back into their launchers, they unleashed the full fury of their six-hundred-kilo warheads, destroying everything within a space of five hundred metres, killing or severely wounding close to one hundred Coalition troops, and destroying a good number of vehicles, mecha and other war machines. The dirt, debris, bodies, and shredded pieces of metal and material were sent skyward with the explosions that were visible citywide.
When Reyn reached the almost utterly deserted landing field at the rear of the spaceport, he found a single ship still on the ground, and a group of eight operators in red and blue armour standing line-abreast twenty metres in front of it. The team was made up entirely of Sey clones from the planet Sey.
“You should have bugged out.” Reyn said to the team leader.
The clone flipped up the blast shield on his helmet to reveal a face that looked like every other Sey from the seventeen generations of clones that made the species so unique. His skin was dark brown, like Reyn’s. He had a thick beard and a grin on his face.
“I have a drone at fifty metres. There is a wave of enemy forces rushing the spaceport as we speak.” He looked at the ship that Reyn was going to take. “You’ll never get off the ground unless we cover your rear.”
Reyn looked back to the space-port, then to the ship. The Sey might have been right. Reaching forward, he put his gloved hand on the shoulder of the warrior he was facing, flipped up his blast shield, and uttered his final instructions for Area of Operations Sky.
“Hold the line.” Reyn said.
The clone nodded and lowered his blue and red blast shield.
“Sey, online! Shields up!”
The seven other operators that had dropped into AO Throne at the beginning of the attack spread themselves out along a firing line and powered up their unique blue coloured energy shields that were distinct to the planet Sey. The shields gave off a loud crack and hiss as they expanded from a simple silver rod to produce a shield that was one metre high and half a metre wide.
From the cockpit of the ship, Reyn could see the eight operators ready themselves for the onrush that was coming. He could sense a wave of hate and fury about to scream out onto the landing pads at the rear of the spaceport. As the ship started to pull up off the ground, he could see the first elements of the attacking wave spill out of the building unleashing a torrent of weapons fire.
“Hold the line!”
Reyn could hear the clone leader scream into the open communications channel.
“Hold the line!”
71
The Past
Qera
Almost eight kilometres away, Standish and Bender were fortifying themselves for the assault that was to come. They knew that the Coalition wasn’t going to let them slip away quietly, and after taking a neuro-toxin injection that one of the remaining operators had in their kit-bag, Standish felt much better, the effects of the tungsten shell almost entirely gone, at least good enough for her to transfer her rifle back to her rifle hand.
It took several minutes for the mono-rail to zip down to the far end of the building and return, and in that time, Bender started getting the foyer where they were held up ready to repel the inevitable attack from the Coalition forces.
“Wire every lift with motion sensor charges.” He was directing the activities of the surviving operators as if it was a training exercise, with a calm, cold refrain.
“What about civilians?” An operator asked, clad in his vivid red, white and blue armour.
“Make sure the charges are all set to give off a warning signal.” Bender ordered.
They hadn’t encountered any civilians in the building yet, but they were all painfully aware that they were in a residential building, and that they could encounter non-combatants at any moment.
When the mono-rail car finally returned, the second batch of operators jumped inside, and disappeared off towards the far side of the building, and at that point, Bender knew that sitting, waiting for the car to return wasn’t the best option available to them under the circumstances, and decided that it was best to finally take advantage of the stairs, and climb to the next level that had a monorail, and take it to the far side of the building.
“Standish, which floor is the next mono-rail on?”
“Eight.” She replied quickly.
“Right.” Bender looked over the operator in the red, white, and blue armour. “Take point.” Bender instructed. “Watch your background if you engage. Don’t want to waste any civilians.”
The operator checked his weapon was ready, then moved down the massive hallway that had the monorail in the middle of it until he reached a grey door, and pushed it open, leading to a staircase.
“Standish, stay in the middle of the stack.” Bender instructed.
Just as she was about to acknowledge his orders, one of the lifts opened and outraced a pair of armoured infanteers, who not only triggered the explosive charges set by that particular lift doors but also attracted a swift amount of accurate weapons fire from the operators still standing in the lobby.
The two combatants crashed to the ground, dead.
“Move!” Standish yelled, dropping to one knee, she swivelled from left to right, scanning the remaining lifts, waiting for the next assault. The order of march was fucked now, she was in a position to provide rear cover, and as the rest of the operators started to peel away towards the staircase, Standish inched herself very slowly backwards, making sure that she had all the lifts covered as the rest of her teammates made their escape to the stairwell.
Inching herself backwards ever so carefully using the toe of her boot, Standish kept her rifle sweeping back and forth between the lift doors, waiting for one of them to open and disgorge troops onto the lobby of the second floor.
“Standish, we are leaving.”
It was Bender. Standish quickly switched to her rear-view camera and spotted the senior operator standing in the middle of the doorway to the staircase, his weapon scanning the same arch as hers, ready to repel the next threat.
Slowly rising to her feet, Standish started walking backwards hunched over, and just as she was about to reach the stairwell entrance, a shout came from her rear.
“Fighters advancing up the stairs!”
Spinning quickly, Standish stepped into the stairwell and took up a position where she could see the landing just below the second level.
“Set!” She yelled.
“Frag out.” Bender said with a casual voice and dropped a grenade down the stairwell. “Everyone, start moving to level eight.” He took a few steps up the stairs. “You good to protect our six?” He asked.
“Affirmative.” Standish replied.
The grenade exploded seconds later, letting off a deafening roar inside the confined concrete stairwell. Standish doubted that it had done any real damage to their pursuers, but it would have at least given them a moment of pause in their race to catch the fleeing Alliance troops.
Standish t
hought back to the last time she had been in contact in a stairwell. Back on Vistor III with Lovia. This time they had the high ground, and she wasn’t about to let the fuckers below her get the upper hand.
As the rest of the team sprinted up the stairs, Standish moved up each stair with precision and care, taking her time, only joining in the dash upwards once there was a floor separating her and the next operator. She knew that it wouldn’t take long to climb the floors to level eight with its monorail.
Reaching the landing at the third level, Standish knew she had five more to climb, but before she could press up the stairs, the door burst open and a pair of armoured Coalition soldiers burst into the stairwell. The lead soldier started to move up the stairs, but the second soldier spotted Standish immediately and kicked her weapon out of her hands while bringing the barrel of his laser rifle to bear on her chest.
Standish reacted quickly, letting her rifle drop as she closed down the distance to the attacker, who was less than a meter away. Reaching out, she grabbed the barrel of the soldier's rifle and pointed it upwards while simultaneously grabbing her fighting knife from her hip, and bringing it forward, striking the enemy in the side. The blade cut through the armour but didn’t cause injury. Releasing her grip on the knife for just a moment, she reversed her grip, pulled the blade out, then slammed the knife into the face of the soldier. The blade cut through the face-plate on the helmet with ease, and after a twitch, the trooper dropped to the ground.
By the time the body hit the ground, the second soldier had realised the folly of charging up the stairs without checking the area behind them was clear, and quickly fired at Standish. The first shot struck her black and red armour on the chest, but the armour absorbed the blaster fire without taking severe damage. Not wanting to take a second hit, Standish charged up the stairs, bloodied knife in one hand, and swatted the barrel of the weapon out of her way, swiped the knife towards the troopers head. Her blade just glanced the side of the helmet, forcing it flying off into the air, revealing the face of a Qeran female.
With the enemy combatant still in shock, Standish maintained her attack, pulling her arm back, then plunging the knife it into the face of the startled female who was staring back at her. The woman let out a scream before going limp, dropping her rifle to the ground, then collapsing to the ground when Standish pulled her knife out. Bending down, Standish picked up the rifle, and snapped it over her knee, then tossed the pieces away.
She put her blade back in her sheath, recovered her rifle, then started climbing back up the steps after the rest of her team, moving as quickly as her legs and armour would take her. She could hear soldiers below her, but she wasn’t sure how many levels down they were.
When she reached level eight, she burst out of the stairwell and was surprised to see Bender and the rest of the operators already in the monorail car. Bender was at the rear, his white armour easy to spot amongst the more colourful sets. He waved to Standish with his left hand, almost beckoning her to the transport, and as a smile came across her face, the car shot off.
The operational leader was quickly on the comms. “Standish!”
“Fuck!” She screamed.
Standish sunk down onto her heels, dropping her rifle to her front, and brought her hands up to her helmet. She was fucked. She knew she was fucked. If the two soldiers in the stairwell were any indication of what was to come, then there was going to be a stream of enemy fighters storming up to where she was in a matter of moments, and they were going to kill her.
Pulling herself together, Standish quickly took in her surroundings. Four lifts reached the level, along with the stairwell. That meant five points that Standish needed to be aware of. Unfortunately, there was very little in the way of cover and concealment in the immediate vicinity, and looking down towards the end of the building, it was clear that there was no chance of making a dash along the same path as the monorail. She was trapped. In a small box with lots of doors and the only things coming out of them wanted to kill her.
Standish shook herself out of the shock of watching her ride disappear and took a few deep breaths for her to compose herself.
“Go.” Standish said in a frustrated tone.
“Sit tight. I shall return.” Bender replied.
Standish rose to her feet, checked her weapon. There was half a charge left in the clip. After that, she was dry. She glanced down at her pistol on her right midsection. She hadn’t used it yet, and it had a full charge plus two spare clips. After that, it was her fighting knife, then her armoured fists. This was where she was going to make her stand. This was where she was going to die. She knew that the mono-rail car wasn’t going to get back in time to rescue her. She was going to be over-run by the local infantry, and that was going to be it. Well, if that was the case, she was going to make them earn it.
No matter. It was time to go to work.
Standish walked over to the buttress that was just on the inside of where the mono-rail stopped and took a knee. It was a position where she had a line of sight of all the ingress avenues that the Coalition troops could make, and it was as good a place as any to make her stand.
Standish checked that her primary weapon was ready to go, and then checked that her suit was operating at maximum efficiency. Trying to calm herself, Standish focused on the grey concrete wall across from where she was kneeling and took a deep breath.
It was time to focus all her skills and training into one perfect moment. And before she could give it another thought, two of the lift doors opened and outraced the first wave of the attack.
The rifle popped up without her having to think about it. Under the circumstances, Standish didn’t have time to think, she just had to react, and maybe, if she got lucky, she’d walk away alive.
Her first shots were on target, hitting centre mass on both the troopers to dash out of the first lift on her right. They dropped forward onto the large foyer with clean burns through their torsos. But that wasn’t going to be it. That was just the beginning, and as the other lifts opened, at the same time, the door to the stairs burst open, and the flood started.
Standish had to go into survival mode.
The shots from her rifle were blasting out quickly and with deadly purpose. Every time she pulled the trigger, a hit was scored, and that almost always meant another corpse littering the floor of the eighth level elevator lobby, but there was always a target that required a second round to put down, and as more and more troops arrived, her rifle finally ran dry. After firing off its final blast, Standish pulled the trigger, and nothing happened.
She knew the end was near.
Letting her rifle go, Standish dropped her right hand down to her pistol, pulled it from its holster, and quickly brought the barrel level with the ground, found the closest target, a trooper just out of the stairwell, and fired off a blast. Another enemy fighter went down, but even though she had killed everyone that arrived in the first wave, the sheer weight of soldiers coming was becoming unmanageable.
Diving to her left, Standish rolled to a position where she’d have a slightly better firing angle on anyone coming out of the stairwell, but the moment she got back into her firing position, a fury of laser fire raced out of the stairs accompanied by more troops. The first few blasts she avoided, but then the inevitable happened, and series of three shots hit her, running from her left hip, across her midsection, then to her right shoulder; already wounded from the tungsten round.
The three hits cut cleanly through her armour, and out the far side, leaving small holes in her body. The pain was excruciating, and Standish let out a scream of pain, slumping backwards, firing her pistol wildly as she fell back into the grey concrete wall behind her.
As Standish’s survival instincts kicked into high gear, her suit did just the same. The armour’s medical nano-bots were starting to work as best they could to keep her alive, and as the suit was about to run the juicer program, a fourth shot slammed into Standish’s right forearm, boring another hole through he
r, and destroying her data-pad, stopping the initiation sequence for the lethal cocktail of chemicals that would have given her a fighting chance, even if they would have eventually killed her.
With her vision starting to fade, Standish dropped her arm. The pistol now too heavy to hold. Her field of view was taken up by on-rushing Coalition troops who were racing towards her, perhaps with the intention of taking her alive, and just as they reached the middle of the lift area, a wave of automatic weapons fire poured in from her right, coming from the direction of the mono-rail, shredding the troops that were out in the open, and as their decimated bodies fell to the ground, Standish glanced over to her right, spotting a single figure in all white standing up in the middle of the mono-rail car holding a heavy energy cannon.
Standish continued to slow her breathing as she watched the figure jump off the mono-rail car and move towards her. Turning her head back to the front, she could tell that there was no more movement from the stairwell or the lifts. Either her rescuer had killed everyone, or they were reorganising for another attack. It didn’t matter, she was out of the fight, and she knew it.
When the figure in white finally reached Standish, they bent down and flipped up their helmet’s blast shield. It was Bender.
“You alright, Standish?” He asked, a forced smile on his face. “We need to get you out of here.” He released his grip on the heavy cannon, setting it down next to Standish, then carefully picked her up, and carried her over to the monorail car. “Reyn is inbound with transport, we’re getting out of here.”
Standish couldn’t respond. She was too weak and starting to fade. She just looked up at the ceiling of grey concrete as Bender carried her to the monorail. Setting her down on the rear bench, she felt drowsy but noticed that they were starting to move. She didn’t feel the Prime-level medical nano-bot injection that Bender jabbed into one of her open wounds.
Closing her eyes, Standish suddenly felt her body grow warm as the nano-bots surged through her system. Her thoughts were clouded, and her vision was still blurry as the car raced up to one hundred and forty kilometres per hour, covering the distance to the far side of the massive structure in only six minutes.
Standish Page 56