Masoul (Harmony War Series Book 2) (48 page)

              They had done nothing but work on their control of the powered armor during every minute they hadn’t been planting bombs or inciting the resistance, and it showed.

              Jerome caught Zukic’s eye. Haas was watching them leave; not many would see the tension in his jaw or the emotions that Haas tried to hide, but Jerome knew the man almost better than he knew himself. He could see the pain that lay there, the apprehension at sending two people he respected and cared for deeply, out into the madness that had consumed Landing City.

              “Gather in,” Zukic said to the rest of the troopers watching the exchange. They finished off what they were doing and huddled around Zukic and Haas.

              “Moretti’s going to head up to the command center Harper is holed up in, get us a better read of the situation. Holm and Sasaki are going to act as protection,” Haas said, looking at them all.

              “Now get back to work, that powered armor ain’t gonna reinforce itself,” Zukic said, his look telling them he would brook no argument.

              “Only two to go, for us at least. Shall we up armor the others in case we can get some more troopers down here?” Yu asked. He was technically a higher rank than Haas, but he was a combat shuttle pilot, no trooper, and he was a smart dude. Bit of an adrenaline junkie, but a good dude.

              Jerome would take his shuttle any day of the week, but here on the ground, those smarts turned to common sense as he looked to Holm for guidance.

              “I can see what you’re saying, but no, can’t leave the risk of the enemy getting them and using them against us when we get out of here. I want them stored in one of the armories; if we can, we’ll grab them afterwards. Booby-trap the place so only we can get in there,” Holm said, looking to Yu.

              Yu nodded in understanding. He might not have been a trooper, but he could understand their line of thinking.

              “Now git! Damn lazy bastards!” Zukic said, effecting a sour mood, but the smile that showed through took the bite out of his words.

              They grinned and talked in their groups, moving back to their projects.

              “Need a hand?” Mark asked, coming over to Jerome.

              “Sure, I’m pretty beat,” Jerome admitted.

              “You look it. After you up-armor Niemi’s, get some sleep. We need you ten by ten,” Mark said, tapping Jerome on the shoulder.

              Mark didn’t show his feelings much, a tap here, a quiet smile there.

              It was why the two blades he’d given Jerome meant so much. It wasn’t just two weapons, it was an admission—Mark and Tyler were brothers by their actions, and they both wanted to add another brother to that mix, and sister, in the case of Alexis.

              “I will,” Jerome said, flashing a smile, but it didn’t last. His mind quickly turned to Alexis, who had become like a sister to him, and all of the other troopers he knew were fighting for their lives across Landing City.

***

              Close to twenty-five thousand troopers had been dropped on Landing City.

              In eight hours, they had secured the first seventeen floors before the Chosen either made a mistake or started rubbing brain cells together. They couldn’t see in the dark and electricity didn’t work, so they went caveman.

              They set fires to illuminate the floors in yellow flickering light. The troopers’ HUDs had to compensate for the flames, making it harder to see Chosen in contrast to the pure darkness, though they still held an advantage in that area.

              Alexis and her platoon were on floor nineteen; it looked to be an office area, with a large cafeteria in the center at some point.

              All paths led to the cafeteria, so they moved through the offices.

              Alexis opened a door slowly, throwing a sensor stick into the cafeteria.

              They hadn’t had them on Sacremon, but they’d proven their worth on Shipping Station and Masoul Actual already.

              Serving cubicles lay along the walls, and the center of the floor was filled with tables. Tables that had been ripped from the bolts in the floor and turned into a circle to create a crude defense.

              Flammable materials had been thrown outside the circle, illuminating the space. The heat was high, as was the carbon dioxide; without the air systems on, they were burning up their oxygen.

              Chosen were moving behind the barricades. Pallets of food had been used to bolster the defenses, and four of the large machine guns that were able to punch through trooper armor were facing down the corridors leading to the cafeteria.

              “I want a firing line across these offices. Ready murder hole charges,” Dang said to the entire platoon. Alexis let the door close slowly. Wiz took up a firing position behind it, lying down with his repulsor.

              The platoon spread down the length of the offices.

              Alexis saw the other platoons and companies with them moving into position in the offices they were in.

              She would have cleared the offices out, but the Chosen were ad-hoc fighters—lots of fanatics, not a lot of tactics.

              Alexis placed the small charge about the size of a pack of cards against the wall. Green lights showed her section was good to go; she relayed that to Dang.

              Everyone was doing their utmost to stop themselves from making noise. Once they were in position, they moved as if in molasses to avoid stepping on the broken glass or trash that littered the offices like the rest of the towers.

              “On my mark, blow the murder holes and open fire,” Nerva’s voice was calm and reassuring, as if reminding them that they’d done this tens, possibly hundreds of times in training. Here was no different. They knew what to do; they just had to trust themselves as he trusted them. “Three, two, one… mark,” he said, his voice never rising or lowering, just calm and collected.

             
That’s why he’s called Iceman,
Alexis thought as the murder hole charges went off across the offices. Her own blew out, giving her room to put her E-12 through.

              It seemed everyone had the same idea as grenade launchers fired.

              Cafeteria tables were made of aluminum sheet metal. They were pretty strong for everyday use; for barricades, they made good shrapnel.

              Shards of super-heated aluminum tables ripped through the Chosen. Their new armor stopped it where it could, but unprotected limbs and heads were ripped apart.

              Repulsors opened up and Chosen returned fire, ripping through the thin office walls. Troopers went down, but it wasn’t usually deadly.

              Machine guns let loose. Moving from side to side, cutting down troopers.

              A lucky grenade found its way into one heavy gun’s ammunition storage. Green tracers ripped through the Chosen around the gun; they shredded the defenses and mangled the gun.

              It was one gun of tens, maybe hundreds. Chosen filled the gap left and fired with their rifles, moving forwards.

              It made Alexis think of the fighters on Sacremon, advancing and pushing forward.

              A grenade landed next to Wiz; he jumped on it as everyone dove away.

              Nothing happened. After a moment, the troopers started to rise cautiously. Wiz grabbed it from under him and threw it out.

              “Fuck, must be dead from the EMP,” Wiz said, the fear and shakiness in his voice clear.

              “Lucky bastard!” someone called. Everyone started laughing as they got back to their positions. Alexis replaced her magazine, smirking in her helmet.

              Death had landed at their feet, and now here they were laughing at it.

              She wanted to pick Wiz up and hug his dumb ass. Without thought, he’d looked to saving them, even if it took his life.

              No one did or said anything else; to do so would have been to admit that they could have died. Thinking on that could drive a person crazy.

             
If you don’t laugh, you cry.
She slammed her fresh mag home and stood up in her murder hole, flicking to semi-auto, following Chosen halos and putting rounds into them.

              Pedro grunted. Alexis’ eyes flicked to her section’s status and saw that he was red.

              He’d taken a round in the leg, but someone was already with him, applying sealant and the necessary needles. A medic had already been called for, and her section was staying on task instead of focusing on Pedro.

              She decided to take a page from their book and got back to nailing targets.

              “Alexis, get your screamer into that thing,” Dang said in her ear.

              “Okay,” she said, clipping her rifle to her stomach and grabbing the tube on the right side of her pack. “Wiz, move! Blowing a screamer.”

              Wiz grabbed his gun and rolled sideways. He and his second got their blades out, making a new firing position on the wall as Alexis pulled the tabs off the front and back of the screamer’s tube, sent up an alert that she was firing, opened the tube, and checked into her back-blast.

              Before anyone had time to walk into her back-blast, she had the tube up on her shoulder. She was braced for impact and facing through the door she had opened originally; it was now hanging by one hinge and sported fist-sized holes through it.

              She sighted the defenses and pressed the firing stud. The screamer rocked and kept true to its moniker. An ungodly howl ripped through the air, drowning out the weapons’ fire making lines of light through the darkness. Air blasted back in its wake, washing over Alexis as she dropped the tube and saw the missile hit the defenses.

              The first charge went off. Tables and barricades were thrown aside, tumbling through the air as a hole opened up through the defenses. The area shook from the impact. The second-stage accelerated shrapnel was ejected from the missile’s body, and anything near the missile’s impact or in its path turned to a holed mess. Not even armor could stop the screamer’s wave of destruction.

              A section was moving to the hole. People stopped firing as they moved past; their weapons were up and ready, searching for targets.

              Red haloes appeared, and the assaulting section’s guns blazed.

              Weapons fire from the offices slowed down as two more sections joined the first. They moved steadily through the wreckage that had been the Chosen’s defenses. Bodies burned, and the fires they’d set before were everywhere; some offices were starting to go up in flames. Most fire suppression systems were broken, but a few still worked; they did what they could, but the troopers moved from the fire.

              “Clear!” a second lieutenant called from inside the defenses, the sections coming out as platoons and companies formed back up.

              “Good work, troopers. We have resistance fighters needing assistance on floor twenty-one,” Nerva said through all of the troopers’ helmets.

              “Ammo and buddy check,” Warrant Noel said.

              More than one person patted Wiz’s back for the earlier save. Pedro, Hiet, and Cho were with the medics; everyone else was good, although low on ammunition.

              “Okay, I’m sending up an ammo request. Boxer, till later notice, you’re my second. See what the ammo situation is. I’m going to check on floor twenty-one,” Alexis said, and then turned and left for the stairwell, trusting her team to follow orders without her there.

***

              Moretti didn’t want to have to leave the troopers and their powered armor, but he knew it would be suspicious if he spent more than eight hours down there. Fighting was raging all across Landing City and Chosen were everywhere.

              The resistance might have been a small group, but they were a small group with grenades in a pitch-black city that they knew better than those they were attacking. They could turn the city into a living hell. Moretti looked over the fires that made the already stale air thick with smoke. He could smell the sewage and the fires that were raging untouched by Chosen or anyone else.

              There was no order to Landing City; order was created with a gun, and power was given to those with a flashlight.

             
Interesting how the rules of power can change in an instant.

              Chosen ran at Moretti, their guns brandished.

              They didn’t even see the powered armor.

              “Put your fucking ha…” a repulsor from Moretti’s right went off. Sasaki lowered it; the three Chosen fighters hadn’t seen her in the shadows.

              Holm moved up, flames glancing off of his armor. What Moretti saw sent a chill down his spine.

              The blackened armor was framed by fire; it looked human enough, but its deadliness was clear, with armored plates, powerful servo motors, and scratches that showed use already.