‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ Okonkwo screamed.
I shook my head in bewilderment. Who answered a lance corporal that way? What on earth was wrong with these people? My blood boiled, and finally it boiled over.
‘You stupid belter!’ I hollered, ‘Grow a set!’
I brought my rifle up to the aim and fired a string of shots into the enemy firing points, ‘Jackson, get me that gun up here!’
‘What about Pat?’
‘Don’t worry about Pat, get me that gun up here, NOW!’
Jackson scrambled up the stairs as I fired as fast as my weapon’s recoil allowed me to correct my aim. I put dart after dart into the red crosshairs that sporadically flickered across my visor display.
Taking up a position beside me, Jackson placed the barrel of the mammoth on top of the stairwell banister for support, corrected his aim and let rip.
The mammoth was more than a machine gun. It could punch through walls like they were made of paper, its recoil dampened so much that it could fire at a devastating rate without the loss of accuracy. Its magnets shrieked like some horrible beast as they unleashed indiscriminate fury into the open windows used by the enemy.
‘Okonkwo!’ I yelled over the din, ‘You get out and you fire, you coward!’
Okonkwo snapped out of his funk with a jolt. There were few words that could really hurt a man in the infantry, where insults were exchanged for fun. The word ‘jack’ on its own meant a trooper was idle, and didn’t help his mates when they needed him, ‘crow’ meant that he was new, an unwanted replacement for somebody better than him. But ‘coward’- now that was a dirty word.
‘I ain’t no coward!’ He roared, and emerged from cover to fire into the enemy.
I didn’t care if I had insulted the massive senior trooper, he was back in the fight, and that was all that mattered.
‘Grenades, Okonkwo! Give me HE!’ I didn’t care what Okonkwo hit, I just wanted to do to the enemy what he had done to us. I wanted to shock him.
Okonkwo obeyed, switching his launcher to high explosive rounds. With a dull thump, his under-slung grenade launcher hurled a string of grenades into the air, each of which almost appeared to hang in the air for a second before darting like a little rocket into a target picked by his visor. The buildings above us rocked with the detonations, hurling great chunks of marble plating across the street that clattered to the ground.
I had no idea what Konny was up to, but so far he didn’t appear to have done anything. There was only one thing for it, I wasn’t going to wait to die, hoping for my section commander to do something.
‘Section!’ I screamed the order for everyone to hear, ‘Enemy to your front… Prepare for rapid…’ I heard the message repeated up the street over the noise, ‘Rapid… FIRE!’
‘Rapid fire!’
The section shouldn’t need the order for rapid fire in an ambush situation, it should be an instant response. A trooper wouldn’t wait for the ‘Okay’ to fight back if a man was coming at him with a knife. But even in such close quarters, where a target indication was unnecessary, a fire control order could still be critical. It was so much more than a way to control rates of fire - it said something to the troopers in the section – ‘We are in control. Now kill.’
Those troopers who had taken cover and hidden were suddenly inspired again to fight. They emerged from their cover and they gave the enemy hell. More chunks of marble and concrete flicked through the air as darts hacked at the buildings towering above us with a ferocity that overwhelmed our foe, and for the first time since the fire fight had begun there were no more red crosshairs flickering on and off on my visor display.
‘Jackson, how’s Patterson?’
Jackson spoke in between bursts, ‘He’s out cold. He took a lot of shrapnel, but life signs are okay! I’ve patched up some of his wounds and his armour’s auto treatment did a lot of the rest!’
‘Okay,’ I thought about what to do next. We needed to link up with the platoon, as long as we remained separated we were extremely vulnerable, especially from the flanks, where we had no protection.
‘Okonkwo!’
‘Yeah!’
‘I’m gonna move a casualty up the line and try to get a face-to-face with Konny!’
‘Roger!’
I drew a phosphorus grenade from its pouch about my waist and then looked around to Jackson, ‘Bring up Patterson, mate. We’re getting out of here!’
Jackson needed no encouragement, he leapt down the stairwell and grasped the injured trooper. With a series of grunts he pulled Patterson back up the stairs, ‘Good to go.’
I looked down at Patterson. His armour had purposefully swollen around several of his wounds to stop the bleeding, and I knew that his combats would have detected his injuries and released a clotting agent as well. Jackson had used quick-clot foam wherever the gel armour hadn’t worked its magic. It looked like a messy job carried out in haste but it would have to do, because we would all be dead if we didn’t get moving.
I set my grenade for two seconds, ‘Okonkwo, give me smoke on those enemy firing points!’
‘On it now!’ Okonkwo took up aim and fired. I hurled my smoke grenade at the same time.
The smoke grenades exploded against the buildings with a shower of burning phosphor, and the resulting cloud quickly fell upon the street, enveloping us like a thick morning fog.
I coughed, my respirator was struggling to keep the smoke out. I remembered that I had broken my seal.
Quickly correcting the seal again with my free arm, I blew out hard to help the motors force out the bad air. I looked at Jackson, ‘Ready?’
‘Yeah,’ he had moved himself up beside me.
I took a grasp of Patterson’s daysack strap again, ‘Let’s go!’
We dragged Patterson out of the stairwell and along the street, behind Okonkwo who still fired darts into the smoke from behind the pillars.
‘You got eyes on the rest of the section?’ I panted as we passed him.
‘Yeah,’ Okonkwo pointed through the smoke, and I identified another trooper crouched behind a low wall ten or so metres away.
‘Stay there, mate.’
Okonkwo looked at me and frowned, ‘I ain’t going nowhere!’
We managed to move Patterson another twenty metres before the smoke began to clear and the enemy opened fire again. Darts cracked over our heads, forcing us to duck behind a large pillar.
Jackson let go of Patterson and fired another burst from his mammoth into the buildings above.
‘Konny!’ I called out, just as something exploded on the other side of the pillar. I could just see a helmet through the smoke which my visor identified as our section commander. There was no way he couldn’t hear me, even with the section net down, his headset would still cut out the sounds of the battle and amplify more important sounds like me shouting at him.
‘What the hell is he playing at?’ I asked myself aloud. Jackson stayed busy firing, as did the rest of the section.
We were in serious danger. The rebel’s would-be ambush had been unsuccessful, mostly due to the relatively low effectiveness of the roadside bomb that had initiated it. It had now turned into a shoot-out, but it wasn’t going to stay that way. I knew that if our enemy had any kind of sense, he would see the advantage in us being fixed in position and attempt to attack us before we managed to link up with the conscripts or our own platoon, both of which could be in contact also.
‘Konny!’ I screamed again, but Konny’s helmet didn’t move. I tried to make out what he was doing or if he was injured, but it was impossible to tell without the section net. There was nothing for it.
‘Rapid fire in five seconds!’ I shouted, and Jackson passed the message back along the section. The warning gave the men adequate time to change magazines if necessary, and prepare themselves to increase their weight of fire in order to allow me to move.
‘Rapid…’ I braced myself, ‘FIRE!’
I ran, keeping my head and
upper body as low as I possibly could as I leapt over low walls and crashed through flowerbeds. I ignored pieces of rubble bouncing off my helmet, which I assumed were chips of marble being hacked away by our weapons from the walls of the buildings on the other side of the street. I didn’t have time to look, I just kept running. Konny was only ten metres away, but those ten metres felt like the length of a football pitch on Earth.
Konny was sat with his back to a wall, clutching at his upper arm. He looked up at me wild-eyed, ‘I’ve been hit!’
I knelt over him and read his datapad. It was a very minor flesh wound, and a quick inspection of his arm confirmed it. There was a large amount of blood, but his gel armour had swollen around the wound automatically to stem the flow. According to his datapad his combats had administered their clotting agent and it was happy that the bleeding had stopped.
I brought my visor close to his and looked directly into his eyes. They were so wide I thought they might pop out of his head.
‘Konny, it’s a minor wound. You’re fine.’
‘I’m bleeding,’ he insisted. There was another explosion, not too close this time. I glanced up and realised that Geany had fired a grenade from nearby into one of the buildings.
‘You were,’ I said firmly, ‘But not anymore. We need to move the section. Do you understand?’
Konny shook his head, ‘We need to wait for the platoon.’
‘No!’ I snapped, ‘We need to move NOW!’
Konny’s eyes suddenly burned with anger, and he punched the ground with his good arm, ‘What makes you suddenly think you’re in charge? You…’
Konny’s rant was cut short by me grasping him by the throat, ‘You want to compare length now, you stroker? Listen to me! We don’t know the platoon are coming for us! We are sat in the middle of an ambush waiting to die, the very fact that we haven’t taken more casualties is a miracle! Now, I am going to order the section to peel left, you either take charge from there, or I will relieve you. Your choice!’
I released my grip and lifted my head above the wall, ‘Section will peel left!’
The warning message was passed. Konny stared up at me in a daze, still trying to understand what had just happened.
‘Geany, give me HE!’
‘Roger!’ I think that was the first time I had heard Geany respond to a command like a trooper ought to. The grenades went up almost instantly.
‘Peel left!’ I threw two more of my smoke grenades across the street as the section began to peel.
Peeling was a simple manoeuvre that allowed a section to move across an enemies frontage whilst still maintaining an effective fire base. Upon peeling left, the furthest right-hand trooper would move, on his own, running all the way along the section line - behind his comrades (so that he didn’t get shot!) - until he could take up a position on the left side of the section. As he did so, he would tap or kick the first trooper he passed, thus informing that trooper that he was now the next man who needed to move. No more than an absolute maximum of two troopers would ever be moving at once, so that there were always several others continuing the fire fight. The action of peeling could continue for as long as the section commander wanted.
Okonkwo, who had been on the right end of the section line, bounded past us as the rate of fire from the section intensified. The blokes didn’t need to be told to give the enemy all they had, they knew how much they wanted covering fire when it was their turn to move.
Leaman, a trooper from Konny’s fire team, was next to run past. Behind him came Jackson, who had managed to strap Patterson onto the lightweight stretcher that he carried alongside his medical kit, designed to allow a casualty to be dragged without making the injuries worse, they were invaluable.
Jackson was clearly exhausted from the effort. I would have taken more men from the section to assist him in the extraction of the casualty, but I knew that every man I re-tasked took valuable firepower away from the section. Firepower was the only thing keeping us alive.
‘Bring him here, Jackson!’ I called, and Jackson obeyed, lifting Patterson over a low wall with a grunt and dragging him the final few metres before near enough collapsing at our feet.
‘I’m knackered,’ he panted heavily, and I patted his helmet in recognition of his hard work.
‘Well done, mate. Not finished yet.’
I felt Konny watching me as I checked Patterson’s datapad, ignoring the fire fight raging around me. I didn’t have time to read the full diagnosis, however, I could see that his pulse and breathing rate were reasonable, if a little low. What worried me was that he was bleeding internally, and so he needed proper medical treatment - more than I was able to give him. We needed to get him out.
‘Konny, I’m gonna be moving with the casualty. Shout if you need me, alright?’
Still slightly dazed by my outburst, Konny nodded.
‘Jackson, let’s go,’ I grasped the stretcher by the handles and Jackson, relieved to no longer need to drag the casualty alone, did likewise. We lifted Patterson and we ran.
Patterson weighed a ton, despite his equipment being made from the most advanced lightweight materials known to man. Movement was slowed by the speed at which the section could peel, and all the while I was worried that we were unable to defend ourselves whilst we carried the stretcher. I eyed every doorway we passed warily, waiting for a gunman to emerge. Surely the enemy would want to take advantage of the section’s focus to only one side of the street, I told myself.
Fortunately he never had the chance to do so, because Konny, now leading the section as he should, noticed an alleyway running between two buildings and ordered the section into it. With a final hail of grenades fired by Geany and Okonkwo, the section broke contact and ran into the relative safety of the alleyway.
‘Okonkwo, swap on the stretcher,’ I ordered as the section hurried along the alleyway, and Okonkwo quickly came to take the handles from me.
‘Not me, relieve Jackson!’
Without allowing the pace to drop, Okonkwo and Jackson swapped.
‘Thanks,’ Jackson said to me and shook the blood back into his hands.
‘I’m not doing you a favour, mate,’ I snapped harshly, ‘Get behind us and protect the rear of the section! I want that gun where I can use it!’
Whether Jackson was hurt I couldn’t see, but he quickly dropped back behind us to take up the rear of the section as he had before we were contacted.
From my position with the stretcher at the rear I could see that the section were complete, nobody had been left behind. I quickly shouted out the fact to Konny so that he didn’t stop to count the men. We needed to move fast, so that by the time the enemy lifted his head from the rubble and realised we were gone, he didn’t have time to outflank us.
The section ran as fast as it could, with the laden stretcher setting the pace. Weapons scanned the walls of the two buildings as we ran between them, searching for windows from which the enemy might fire down into the alleyway.
Above the buildings the sky was brightening, almost like it might on Earth, but with a strange green tinge that I knew would eventually turn turquoise.
There was still the sound of gunfire nearby, I realised. The enclosed space of the alleyway made it almost impossible to tell where the noise was coming from, but there was definitely another battle taking place somewhere not far from us.
The alleyway came to a T-Junction, where a wall at least five metres high ran along the back of the two buildings. Twenty metres or so beyond that more buildings towered, each with of blacked out windows. I figured that normally the lights would be on by now, but the people of Nieuwe Poort weren’t stupid enough to make targets of themselves.
We turned right at the junction, in the direction of our platoon, or at least where we hoped to find them. With our communication network shut down by rebel hackers, it was impossible to talk to them. The alleyway ran for a good two hundred metres and had several junctions along its length to worry about, but it afforded good protect
ion - so long as the enemy didn’t have enough time to get up into the buildings and hail darts down onto our heads.
‘Keep your heads up,’ I hissed at the troopers in front of me, seeing the danger.
I realised the alleyway clearly ended just off the junction where our platoon had been placed originally, and my spirits lifted. I willed us ever closer, and for the rebels not to reach us before we made it to safety.
They did reach us.
‘Contact!’ Geany yelled as he passed one of the junctions. He fired two shots at an unseen foe and then fired a grenade, almost falling over onto his backside as he did so.
Okonkwo and I placed down the stretcher and we each took a knee, scanning the windows above us. I cursed our bad luck as I waited for battle to recommence, but nothing happened.
‘Jesus…’ Geany stared down the alleyway in disbelief as Konny and his fire team closed in to help.
‘What is it?’ I shouted.
Konny peered around the corner of the alleyway, ‘They’re all dead!’
‘Well let’s get going, then!’
We ran on, and as I passed the junction I looked to see what had happened. A horrible bloody pile of bodies lay halfway up the new alleyway, blown to smithereens by Geany’s grenade. How many enemy had been there was hard to say - I didn’t have time to count body parts.
‘Good shooting,’ Okonkwo remarked respectfully. I decided not to point out that the grenades were guided and that Geany was lucky he hadn’t died himself at such close range.
As we reached the end of the alleyway the sound of battle grew louder. I braced myself for more combat. I had Patterson placed down again and made my way to the front of the section, where Konny had taken a knee and was peering out onto the street.
‘See anything?’ I asked hopefully.
LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Page 7