by Thomas Webb
“I’m fine,” Hale snapped.
He scolded himself. His first response didn’t always have to be to go on the offensive.
He could see by her eye roll that Zombie was not convinced he was fine. “That was our fifth run today, Hale. And you wanted to make it a sixth? We should be over in Sao Paulo, partying our asses off at one of the biggest festivals on the planet right now… why you pushing so hard on this one?”
Hale had no desire to share the real reason he was on edge. A reason named Anesu Chewasa. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.
“Look boss,” Zombie said. She held the shoot house door open for him. They stepped into the late afternoon Sao Paulo sun. “I’m not great at the touchy-feel shit. That’s Shane’s department, but. . . I think you should maybe talk to somebody. You know—about whatever it is that’s eating you.”
Hale stopped. He hadn’t considered it before, but could it really hurt? Anything to get his head straight.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. A funny thought occurred to him. “Wait—am I actually considering taking mental health advice. . . from you?”
“Don’t look at me. I’m just as surprised as you are.”
Zombie laughed at her own joke. Hale was surprised to find himself laughing along with her. It felt good.
“Razor Team this is the TOC.”
Hale wondered why the old man didn’t at least give them time to get to the armory and get their gear stowed. Weird. “We’ll be up in a second, TOC. Whatever it is, can’t it wait five minutes?”
“We have movement at the perimeter.”
Hale and the team exchanged looks.
“Movement?” Hale asked. “Is this part of the training exercise, TOC?”
“Negative, Razor One. I wish it were. We are seeing multiple fighting age combatants, human and off-worlder with android backup. They are cutting through the main gate now. X37 is sending perimeter feeds to your HUD’s.”
Hale and the rest of the team donned their helmets. The feeds came through immediately. A sizeable force was working its way through the jungle to the front gates. They would be on the abandoned airfield tarmac in minutes.
“Switch over to feed three,” Zombie said. “Looks like another team cutting through the fencing.”
They all switched views. Hale heard Kris’nac swear in Tauranian.
“It appears they are approaching from the east,” Lima said. “If they breach there, they will be between you and the armory. You will be cut off.”
“Shit,” Hale said. Now it was his turn to swear.
His mind raced. Their pulse rifles were loaded with training rounds-holographic only. All they had were side arms and Lash’s breaching shotgun. Hale made the ‘hurry up’ signal, and he and his team took off toward the armory. “How long ‘til they breach?” Hale asked, already sprinting.
“Not long, Staff Sergeant,” X37 said. “In fact—“
The AI’s sentence was drowned out by the sound of pulse fire.
“Contact left!” Kris hissed, the closest she’d come to a shout since Hale met her. She already had her pulse pistol out, covering their flank as best she could with only the sidearm. The first of the unknown assault force appeared. Armored soldiers and androids.
“All Razor elements!” Hale shouted. “Get your asses to that armory!”
Hale drew his pulse pistol on the run, sighted in, and squeezed. One of the enemy soldiers took it in the armor, the round only knocking him down. The fighter leapt back to his feet, aided by the armor’s gyros and anti-grav.
Dammit! Hale swore to himself.
He sent two more rounds into the soldier’s blacked out face shield, putting him down for good this time. Six more followed immediately behind him and took his place.
The next minutes consisted of the barely-restrained controlled chaos of combat. They faded into a blur of shoot, move, communicate, and repeat as Hale and his team worked through a full-on, blindside ambush.
Hale dashed behind a duracrete storage hut and took a knee. He dropped his pulse mag, executing a combat reload and slamming a second magazine home. He charged the weapon and got back in the fight.
“Status, TOC?” Hale asked between shooting breaths.
“They are still working on the main gate. The bulk of their force appears to be mustered there. The second team is on you, even though they are down two. I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but we also have a third team breaching the fence. They are approaching from the west.”
When this was all over, Hale planned to aggressively petition Lima to get a better perimeter fence. “Copy TOC. How you holding up?”
“We are preparing,” Lima said. “Just get yourselves to the armory, then we will get you inside.”
“How the hell did they find us?” Zombie asked.
Hale saw her several meters away. She and Lash had taken cover and were shooting back. They were holding the assailants at bay, but just barely.
“I am not sure,” Lima replied. Hale imagined X37 and the old man up in the hangar gearing up to fight. “But I will find out.”
“Attention all Razor elements,” X37 said. “Be advised—enemy combatants have breached the gate.”
“Burn the TOC and evac, Lima,” Hale said. “You have to go now. Before you’re fully compromised.”
“Negative, Razor One. Get to the armory. We can take care of ourselves here.”
Dammit. Stubborn. “Copy, TOC.”
“Acknowledged,” Lima said. The old man’s voice hardened. “X37—initiate siege protocol.”
“Right away, Mr. Lima. Initiating siege protocol now.”
Several hidden gun placements popped from the tarmac and began laying down intersecting fields of fire. Peristeel blast doors dropped down to cover the entrances to the hangar bay. Both those things would help, but none of it was designed to repel an organized force of this size. At most, it would delay them. It might buy them a few minutes, maybe. Hale hoped it would be enough.
“How far are you from that armory?” Lima asked.
Hale kept firing his pistol until he ran dry, before sparing a glance toward the armory about twenty meters away. “Thirty seconds out,” he said.
Hale watched as Lash blasted an attacker with the breaching shotgun, the berracite spray blowing a hole in the attacker’s armor and the Andarian inside.
An Andarian? Hale thought. Who was attacking them? Was it ULS? The Separatists? Or both?
If it was the Separatists, then Ramsey probably wasn’t far behind. No way would he miss out on something like this. Hale wouldn’t, if the boot was on the other foot.
Lash had put the Andarian down, but he paid for it as a second attacker opened fire. Lash took a direct blast to the chest, propelling him backward.
“Lash!” Hale shouted.
Hale sprang into action, reloading with practiced speed and slow walking rounds up the attacker’s armor, ending the barrage by drilling three into his face shield. Kris appeared and laid down covering fire while Hale and Zombie swooped in. Each grabbed a Salayan arm, and together the two of them dragged Lash’s tremendous bulk the last few meters to the armory door.
Then they heard the sound every combat trooper dreaded—the empty whine of a depleted pulse magazine.
“I’m out!” Kris’nac hissed.
Hale drew his pistol with his free hand and tossed it as they fell back into the entryway. Kris caught it, took a knee, and resumed fire.
“Razor team, be advised,” Lima said. “Combatants are flooding the airfield. Holo feeds show the enemy has SFC’s and heavy weapons. They appear to have—standby Razor One. TOC has incoming.”
Hale stood inside the armory entryway, stabbing the code into the keys that would allow them inside. “What was that, TOC? Say again your last? Over.”
“Enemy has breached the hangar, Razor One. We—“
The wave went dead. The armory doors slid open.
Hale looked on as Kris continued to fire from behind cover. He looked do
wn at Lash. The Salayan wasn’t moving. He looked up, and his eyes met Zombie’s. Her stare was hard and even.
“I think the TOC just fell,” she said.
-7-
The terminal glowed from red to green. The armory door slid open, much too slowly for Hale’s liking. Hale and Zombie each grabbed hold Lash’s shoulders and dragged him, grunting their way inside. In his peripheral, Hale watched Kris’nac rush in behind them. True to form, she went right for the big guns.
Hale popped Lash’s helmet and shook the big mercenary to wake him. He breathed a sigh of relief when the Salayan’s eye coverings fluttered open.
“How you holding up, big guy?” Hale asked.
Lash grimaced as the pain hit him. “Merely a flesh wound,” he said through clenched lips.
Hale took a look at the wound. The shot had blown part of the back of Lash’s armor off. The flesh underneath was scored and seared, and was leaking fluid. Lash fought to stay conscious. After a hit like that, he was lucky to still be breathing.
Hale broke out his trauma kit, grabbing a can of foam flesh sealant.
“Bear down,” Hale warned Lash. “This isn’t going to feel good.”
Lash nodded and braced himself, and Hale applied a liberal spray of the medicated foam sealant. It sizzled as it hit flesh, eliciting a groan from Lash. But it did its job, stopping the leakage from Lash’s wound. Hale jammed a stim-booster hypo into the Salayan’s neck.
“Better?” Hale asked.
“Much,” Lash said, standing to his feet.
Hale figured they had about thirty minutes before that stim booster an its pain suppressant wore off. Better make them count.
“Gear up, people,” Hale said. “Grab what you can.”
Kris had already selected a STAR pulse rifle and mag-locked it onto the back of her armor. Hale was glad to see her second choice was the Jarret plasma rifle.
The Jarret anti-materiel plasma rifle was capable of delivering a specially designed payload out to an effective range of 3,600 meters. It would deal serious damage to most enemy war material, to include comm equipment, vehicles, ships, and heavy weapons. Hale hoped it would help even the odds against the enemy’s superior numbers. Kris was surgeon with the long rifle, and the best shot on the team by far. In her capable hands, the Jarret weapons system would be used to devastating effect.
Lash picked up his beloved 267, loading up with as many AP, or Armor Piercing, pulse rounds as he could carry. When he had a sufficient supply of ammunition, Lash limped over to a table set up in the center of the armory. With a painful grunt, he hefted the 267 with its under-mounted ammo box onto the table’s surface.
Zombie took a second STAR rifle, and grabbed several long-range anti-armor LAW rounds and a launcher. Hale took a STAR pulse rife from the shelf, along with as many mags as he could jam into his armor’s ammo compartments. He also scooped up an armful of plasma frags and some antipersonnel mines, shoving them into a specially designed armor pack. Outside the armory walls, the overwhelmed perimeter defenses engaged their attackers. It sounded like a war out there.
“TOC this is Razor One,” Hale said, trying to raise Lima and X37. “Come in, TOC.”
Nothing.
“I’m thinking they took out our comms,” Zombie said.
“A wave blocker,” Kris said.
“Cutting communications,” Lash said. The over-talkative Salayan couldn’t stay out of a conversation, even when he was wounded. “A classic tactic. That reminds me of a story from Salayan history. There was once an ancient empire called—“
A subtle shake of Kris’ head was all it took to quiet him. “This is not the time, Lash,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. “Sorry.”
“We’ve got to get to the TOC, boss,” Zombie said.
Hale nodded. “Agreed. We need to make sure the old man and X37 are good. Plus that command center is the most defensible space we have.”
Lash hissed loudly behind them. The sound was the closest to an exclamation of pain as Salayans got.
“Apologies,” Kris said.
She’d grabbed some more foam coagulant and applied it to Lash’s wounds. The canister in her hand boasted a new formula. Now with more pain suppression! it read.
Sounded to Hale like the ‘pain suppression’ part wasn’t working quite as advertised. He put a hand on Lash’s shoulder. “You good to move?”
Lash had taken a seat on a bench, cradling the 267 in his arms. “Affirmative.”
“You good to fight?” Hale asked.
The Salayan hissed again, only it was laughter this time, not pain. Lash grinned. “Always.”
Hale peered down into his helmet’s HUD like a hand-held holo screen. He called up the air and space fields security feeds. “Ok,” he began. He pointed to the moving images floating above his helmet. “Looks like we got several squads of enemy moving onto the airfield. An unknown number of standard armored troops stands between us and the hanger, plus these other heavy armored elements working to breach the front.” Hale spent the next two minutes laying out the plan.
“Everyone clear?” he asked when he was done.
“So kill everything between us and our objective and don’t die in the process?” Zombie asked. “Sounds like a pretty simple plan to me.”
“Those are the best kind.” Hale checked his helmet’s feeds again. “They’re regrouping. We need to move now.”
The team donned their FAST helmets and locked in. Lucky they’d been training in the heavier FAST armor, and not with the lighter standard combat armor, or just ‘slick’ with only modular body armor, helmets, and clothing. Lash got to his feet. His color was a paler shade of green than normal, and his skin looked dry. Kris seemed to be at a hundred percent. And Zombie, snake eater that she was, was raring to go.
They stacked on the door, Hale moving to take the lead. He punched the keys and the blast door slid open. The smell of burnt duracrete greeted him as fire opened up from the outside. Hale spared a second to set the armory door to secure on a delay, then the mag lock switched from green to flashing red—thirty seconds to get through before it shut and sealed. No reason to allow the enemy an easy supply of fresh weapons and ammunition.
“On my go!” Hale shouted.
He gave the order.
Lash, still wounded, opened up with the 267 from the rear, the steady staccato of his heavy pulse weapon laying down the law. “Covering!” Lash bellowed.
“Moving!” Hale shouted. He and Zombie sprinted from the armory, racing for the nearest cover. An airfield shed up ahead served as the first point. Zombie and Hale got in tight behind it, positioning themselves at each corner and opening up.
Hale signaled to Kris behind them that she was a go.
Kris nac’ moved like a Salusian night cat, joining Zombie on the left of the duracrete structure. Hale turned back toward the armory where Lash sheltered in the door. Now you, big guy. Zombie directed her fire toward covering Lash, while Kris maintained the front. Hale gave the signal for Lash to move.
The Salayan began to lumber forward, a half-step slower than normal. Hale got in his sights, covering Lash as the big mercenary shuffled forward as quickly as his wounds and the weight of the 267 would allow.
Hale sighted and squeezed, sighted and squeezed, aiming for the armored attackers covering behind a duracrete block at the edge of the airfield. One of them mis-timed his pop up and paid for it when Hale dropped him. Two more fell to Kris and Zombie’s fire. But it seemed that for every one they took out, two more moved up to take their place.
“Hale!” Zombie shouted, getting his attention. She indicated he was clear to advance to the next point of cover—a Conex box where they kept spare parts for the ships.
“Moving!” Hale yelled.
“Move!” came the reply.
Hale raced toward the Conex, pulse fire licking at his heels. He came in hot, slamming into the side of the storage box. In a flash he’d dropped his empty pulse mag and smacked a full one home.
Then it was back to the fight, covering Zombie as she started toward his position. He checked the perimeter visual feeds—suddenly they blinked and went dark.
“Shit,” he growled.
Zombie came in next to him, taking the opportunity to switch out her own mags.
“My feeds just went dark,” Hale said. “I need a Sitrep.”
Zombie took a second to pull up her own feed while Hale covered Kris’ movement. “Enemy activity at the gate,” she said. “Looks like the main force is setting up to advance. That’s a shitload of enemy out there, Hale.”
“Copy,” Hale replied. “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em,” he joked.
Incoming pulse fire cut their exchange short. Kris came in and slid to a knee, switching smoothly from the STAR to the Jarret. She flipped the Jarret’s bipod down and got prone, cutting the angle of cover for a good shooting position. Kris sighted in and pulled. The enhanced plasma round streaked through the late afternoon atmosphere. The round snapped through the duracrete stanchions the enemy had covered behind, blasting through barrier and armor to take out one more fighter. The enemy fire ceased.
“Splash one tango,” Kris whispered.
“That oughta give ‘em something think about,” Zombie said.
Lash used the opportunity provided by the lull to rush across the tarmac and join the rest of the team.
Hale looked his people over, not liking Lash’s new ash-grey color. Everyone else seemed relatively unscathed. “You good?” he asked Lash.
“I am,” Lash replied.
Hale wasn’t too sure, but they’d have to worry about him later. “We’re going to need to get that 267 working,” Hale said.
Lash simply nodded.
“Good man. We got a hundred-meter sprint to get to the hangar,” Hale said. “Then we’ll have to enter our codes to get inside the siege protocol blast doors. We’ll worry about the teams at the front gate when we get there. Kris can head out first.”
“I’ll lay down cover fire,” Lash said.
“No shit, big boy,” Zombie laughed, breaking some of the tension. “I got these LAW rounds I’m itching to use,” she added. “Now might be a good time.”