“It is just rumour, Ma’am. We never knew much but what we were ordered.”
“Alright, well I hope you’re right. Jackson should hopefully be making good progress, so let’s be sure to keep up.”
They turned and continued on throughout the vast access tunnel. It was broad enough for them to walk twelve wide and with a sizeable space between each other. They made it a hundred metres without any contact of any kind when Chandra broke the silence.
“You really believe what he is saying?”
“I think there’s a damn good chance, yes. It’s not winning this battle that concerns me, for I know we can. It’s what we may have to face after it.”
They took a bend up ahead and the corridor lit up as five pulses rushed towards them. Taylor leapt aside, shoving Chandra out of harm’s way. They both tumbled aside and landed hard against the metal interior.
“Guess they aren’t quite finished yet!” she yelled.
The pulses died down after a moment, and the Colonel leant around just enough to get a view of what they faced.
“Fuck, I can see at least twenty Mechs dug in.”
“Then we take the tunnels.”
Chandra looked back at Taylor with her eyes wide open.
“I know you don’t like it, but Kelly and his people made good use of them.”
“Bullshit, we don’t have time.”
She looked back at the enemy defences that were a hundred metres around the corner. She turned back to the troops.
“Hall! Get me a runner! Tell Jackson to swing around our way and give us a hand!”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
They sent the runner and waited out for five minutes. Chandra grew impatient, and she stood up tall and bellowed her orders.
“Up! Now! We’ve got a job to do. Everyone is relying on us to get this done rapidly. Any delay and we risk the entire mission! Ready your weapons, and be ready on my go!”
“What are you doing?” Taylor demanded.
“We have superior numbers and firepower but limited time. We can take this position with a frontal assault.”
“Frontal assault?” he responded in shock.
“We have no choice. Let’s get in there and do our jobs!”
Taylor edged around to the corner and could see there was no cover down the long spartan corridor.
“God damn, we could have used the shields for this!”
“Well, when Reiter finishes his changes, and gets them back to us, you’ll be the first to have one,” replied Chandra.
She got up and beckoned for the troops near her to come in close.
“This plan relies on speed. We must overcome that position with all haste. We have enough numbers that a quick rush could overwhelm them with minimal casualties. Are you with me?”
She could see that none were keen, but they all nodded in agreement.
“Alright, ready yourselves, on three. We do not stop until this is over. Three, two, one!”
Chandra leapt out into the corridor, and another dozen of their troops were in the corridor when she’d fired off her first round. Just as she pulled the trigger, the first two pulses rushed down the corridor, narrowly missing them all. They knew they would not be so lucky a second time. They flooded into the tunnel as ordered, and those at the front fired rapidly to try and give some cover.
Chandra gasped as the Mechs ahead lifted a heavy weapon up onto the barricade and were about to fire when their position was lit up by gunfire, and shots echoed out from the other side of their position. The heavy weapon team quickly abandoned their weapon and turned to take on a new threat.
“This is our chance!” she shouted.
They were already running, but she and Taylor increased to a sprint, and their suits allowed a rapid pace to cover the distance. They leapt up onto the defensive line to find only two Mechs still alive and fighting. They blasted them from their high position and looked up to see their saviours. Captain Jackson stood at the head of his Company with the barrel of his gun smoking violently.
“Hell of a good timing there, Captain,” Chandra said.
He didn’t respond but only marvelled at his work.
Taylor was relieved as he looked around to see only one of theirs had been clipped on the way in but was still breathing. He look to Chandra and shook his head in disbelief.
“Alright, let’s move on.”
They readied their weapons and continued on as intended. As they closed the distance to the Parliament buildings, they could hear the sound of gunfire. Its intensity rapidly increasing as they grew nearer.
“Kelly must have got there ahead of us, Mitch!” shouted Chandra.
“Then he can’t have met much opposition.”
Taylor recognised their location and knew they were coming up on the broad atrium that marked the entrance to the Parliament. Kelly had told him of the battle they had fought there when they tried to break out onto the surface months before, and he expected to find it littered with bodies and debris. The hall ahead was opening out to the atrium. They could already make out the shape of a strong defensive position, and dozens of Mechs firing from the top.
“Of all the places they could defend, they chose here?” asked Taylor.
Jafar stepped forward to answer.
“They knew it was strategically important to you. That’s makes it important to them.”
“Well it looks like Kelly has got stuck in already. If we can bring enough fire to bear on this flank, we should be able to end this.”
“There’s a balcony overlooking that position just above us.” Taylor pointed up.
“Good, take a platoon and get up there, and start laying down some fire ASAP!” Chandra shouted.
Taylor turned back, and the two aliens immediately followed him without hesitation.
“I need a platoon, Lieutenant,” he asked of Ota.
She signalled to one of her 2nd Lieutenants.
“This is Sergeant Rios, formerly of the Rangers.”
A sergeant leading the platoon and a 2nd Lieutenant in charge of a company, they have taken a beating.
“Follow me,” said Taylor.
Mitch led them back to a corridor and then east to a stairway. The two aliens were at the front of the column and still glued to his side. The hulking armoured creatures gave him some comfort, to know that they were on his side. The way up the stairs was quiet.
“We’re in luck,” he whispered.
They continued quickly on at a quiet jogging pace and up to the next level. Taylor stopped them at the top of the stairs. He was still astonished they had made it without opposition.
“They must be running pretty thin on troops.”
“Yes, I’d have expected a much harder fight,” Tsengal answered.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.”
They stepped out onto the empty balcony and crept to the far wall as the battle raged below. They could hear fire now from directly below their feet where Chandra had joined the fight. He pulled himself up just enough to peer over the edge of the small wall he was knelt beside. Mitch smiled as he saw an almost completely clear view of the creatures below. He turned and gestured for the rest of the platoon to join them.
The second the rest of the troop was in position, he shot up to a standing position and threw the barrel of his rifle over the wall.
“Fire!”
The opening volley was almost perfectly in sequence and killed six of the Mechs instantly. A few tried to lift their weapons to respond, but there was little they could do. The automatic fire tore apart the enemy’s position. He could hear a few of the Rangers shouting insults as they blazed away, but there was too much noise from the intense fire to understand what they said.
Muzzle flashes lit up below them as the troops on the level below rushed up to the enemy positions and jumped up onto the enemy wall to join in the slaughter. Even after all the Mechs were dead, they continued to fire into them, enjoying the utter destruction of their foes.
“Hold fire!” Taylor ordered.
A few moments later the Commander leapt into the middle of the bloodshed and looked up to where Taylor was still surveying the scene. He looked back down at the results of their work and then back up to Taylor with a smile.
“That’s some damn fine work, Major!”
Taylor leapt over the wall and used minimal boost to land down on the floor a few metres away from the Commander.
“Sir, I’d have expected a lot more opposition. How are the rest of our forces doing?”
“Last contact we had was from Chen, and it seems it’s like this all over.”
Taylor shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“We are getting our homes back, Major. I’m not going to complain about it being too easy, and I’d like there to be something left by the time this war is over.”
Chandra arrived as Kelly finished his last words, and she was about to join the conversation when a call rang out.
“Colonel! Colonel!”
She snapped around at the distraught call. It was Captain Jackson, and he looked panicked.
“Ma’am, we’ve got incoming. I counted at least a hundred infantry en route.”
“Shit, they obviously know where we are and are diverting reinforcements to the breaches,” replied Kelly.
“Sir, we’ll hold this position. You have to continue on to re-claim this seat of government,” Chandra said quietly.
“You sure?”
“We’ve taken on much worse.”
“Alright, Captain Morris, I want all stairs covered. We clear this building one floor at a time!”
Kelly moved away to see to his people, and Chandra turned back to the Inter-Allied troops she had. She looked up to where the Rangers Taylor had led were still watching from the balcony above.
“I want another platoon on that balcony. Ota you can handle that? Captain Jackson, have your troops take up position here. Expand these defences as quickly as you can.”
“We’ll be packed in pretty tight here,” he replied.
“I know, but it’s not a bad thing. Nobody is risking explosives here. We need as concentrated fire as we can possibly make. Not a single one of those bastards gets past us!”
“Thank you, Colonel!” Kelly shouted.
He rushed from the scene to continue the sweep through the building. The feeling of taking back what was rightfully theirs overwhelmed him, and he could not help but smile to be home and clawing back their lands, one shot at a time. He led one of the platoons up the nearest staircase and onto the first floor. It was an open plan conference centre. He could see several Mechs step into view to confront them; his smile only widened as he lifted his rifle, and Morris burst into the room on the far side.
* * *
“Come on you bastards!” shouted Chandra, and she fired rapidly into the advancing Mechs.
The creatures were rushing down the hallway up ahead, just as they had done only twenty minutes earlier, but they were meeting a far different defence. Volleys of fire rang out from the fifty troops who had a view of the area, and the lines of creatures were being smashed down. The Mechs continued to pour into the corridor, rushing over their fallen comrades in a desperate bid to take back the Parliament building.
Pulses rushed overhead, and several struck into the defensive wall the enemy themselves had constructed. It was made of some form of resin and seemed almost impervious to the pulses that they fired. Taylor felt the burn of a pulse smash into his position, and it struck Lam with full force. He was thrown back off the wall and onto the floor behind.
Taylor turned, leaping down to check on his comrade, but by the time he’d got to the man, he was already dead. Chandra stepped down to join him. Their attention quickly turned to the eastern perimeter when they realised they didn’t have the time to mourn anyone while the battle raged. They rushed over to Jackson’s position to find three of his Company dead and five others wounded, but the rest were fighting hard to hold the enemy back. Chandra stepped up to the Captain to look over the defences and could see the creatures pouring into the hallway as far as she could see. She jumped back down next to Taylor as a pulse raced past her head. It melted the edge of her helmet.
“God, they’re giving us hell!”
“They must be diverting a lot of their strength to this place. If we can just hold long enough, we could break their armies here,” replied Taylor.
“Yes, but we must make sure Kelly succeeds. Take Parker and her section, and go to him. Make sure he raises that flag. It may be vital to our survival!”
Taylor nodded in agreement and rushed off, grabbing Eli from the perimeter. They hurried to the stairway where Kelly had last been seen.
“We need to find the Commander and make sure he gets through this, okay?”
Before they could respond, Jafar and Tsengal stepped up to join them. Taylor could see Eli was as uncomfortable as ever with their presence, but he knew they could be useful.
“Okay, let’s do this!”
Taylor quickly followed in Kelly’s footsteps. Within a minute, they were in the broad conference hall the Commander had so recently passed through. Over twenty Mechs lay scattered and dead, as well as two MDF soldiers. Another wounded soldier of Kelly’s force lay resting against a sidewall with his rifle in hand. A pulse had struck his leg, and he was unable to stand.
“The Commander, where is he?” asked Taylor.
“He carried on to the next floor.”
Mitch turned and led his team back to the stairs and up. They were getting further and further from the ground floor and fighting to the extent that it was just a background noise, yet they could still not hear any gunfire from above.
“Kelly must have covered some ground!”
They continued up another three floors until finally they could hear the familiar sound of the Reiter rifles firing rapidly. They reached the floor where the action was taking place and burst out from the stairs to see Kelly up ahead reloading his rifle.
“Kelly!” Taylor shouted.
The Commander slammed in his magazine and quickly lifted his rifle at the sound of his name, but he relaxed when he saw Taylor. Behind him a dozen of his troops continued to battle around a bend on the hallway.
“Where are the rest of your people?”
“We’re scattered a little thin, Major. This floor is infested with the bastards!”
“The Colonel is under heavy attack, Sir. We need to turn this around, and we need to show everyone that we have secured this building.”
Kelly nodded in agreement. He put down his rifle and pack and lifted out a flag, the blue and white spot flag of the Lunar colony. He flicked out a telescopic pole and clipped on the flag.
“This second we lift this flag over Parliament, it will change everything. The enemy clearly have eyes on this place.”
“Let’s do it!”
“On me!” Kelly ordered.
The twelve MDF troops followed Kelly and Taylor’s unit to the stairs and continued upwards through the structure. They passed two other floors of fighting where Morris had engaged the enemy. They finally reached the top and rushed out from the stairwell. As they did so, an explosion erupted behind them, and the stairwell collapsed. Taylor turned back in horror to see Parker and the others fall through the breach.
“Eli!” he screamed.
Pulses ripped into their position, and he was suddenly hauled with immense force into a side room. He tumbled in against a desk and looked back to see Jafar had thrown him inside. Only Taylor, Kelly, Jafar and two of the MDF soldiers had made it. Kelly looked horrified and in utter shock.
“We have to go back. We have to go back for them,” he muttered.
Taylor gritted his teeth. He wanted to go to Parker’s aid more than anything, but he also knew they had a job to do that would save many more lives.
“Sir, this is on us. We have to do this!” Taylor shouted.
“With five soldiers? How?”
“Sir, do you want the Moon
back or not? I didn’t come here to die!”
He got to his feet and pulled the Commander up.
“How far is it to the roof access?”
Kelly mumbled a little until he regained his composure and could see Taylor was serious.
“It’s about fifty metres from here.”
“Alright, we have fought our way across a world, a space station, and onto this rock you call a home. We can make it fifty metres!”
He rushed over to a door at the far side and saw a Mech peering through the glass. He quickly lifted his rifle and fired five shots into its head, sending it tumbling to the floor the other side.
“One down!”
He ripped open the door and fired another few shots into the nearest Mech. He looked back to the others with a look of bloodthirsty frenzy. Kelly could see that in that moment, the Major was unstoppable. It gave him a new sense of hope, and he leapt into action, carrying the flag in one hand and lifting his rifle into the other.
The five of them passed quickly through the burnt doorway and over the body of the Mech whose fresh blood spewed out across the hard floor. They got to the end of the hallway when a door beside them burst from its mounts, and the wall at its side it collapsed. Five Mechs burst through into the hall and were already firing before Taylor could respond. The two MDF soldiers were killed instantly, and a pulse smashed into Taylor’s rifle that split it in half and continued on to smash into his torso plate.
The power of the pulse launched Taylor into the far wall, and he crumpled down to the ground. He coughed out blood as he turned onto his side. Kelly lifted his rifle, but it was smashed aside by one of the creatures who proceeded to smash a hard strike into his flank. It caused his armour to buckle. It hit him again which launched him down the corridor and onto his back.
Jafar leapt nimbly into action and dodged a pulse and fired rapidly into the first creature. Taylor looked up to see him duck under another strike and thrust a blade into the beast’s faceplate that Taylor had not previously seen. He drew his Assegai in one hand and pistol into the other and stumbled to his feet. He rushed forwards firing rapidly. The pistol had a lower calibre version of Reiter’s ammunition, but it still needed ten shots to take down the creature.
Battle Earth IV Page 20