‘APC turret!’ I screamed, hoping that Merle’s aural filter would pick me up through the gunfire.
I fired at a small group of infantry trying to conduct an overoptimistic fire-and-manoeuvre drill to get closer to us. Three of them died; the fourth might have lived. He was diving for cover when one of the saboted rounds penetrated his cheap leg armour and exploded. Hydrostatic shock blew his leg off, sending it spinning away in the opposite direction from the rest of him. I could hear him screaming. The filters never seem to drown that out. As I was firing, Merle put two plasma rounds into the APC’s turret, turning it to slag.
Behind me I could hear grenade after grenade detonating against the other Walker’s armour and its returning railgun fire. Merle fired at the APC behind us, another two rounds destroying its railgun turret, and then the building above me exploded as the remaining Walker fired at Merle’s position. The concussion wave knocked me to the ground so hard I felt the subcutaneous armour in my face give. The impact felt like it had powdered bone. Fire and rubble covered me again. Red warnings appeared all across my IVD. My face felt liked pulped meat with jagged shards of ceramic armour stabbing through my nerve endings. Painkillers from my internal reserves kicked in and then a stim to counteract the painkillers’ downer side effects. I practically bounced back to my feet.
Morag appeared behind me.
‘Reloading!’ she shouted, ejected the battery from her laser carbine and rammed another one home. There was blood all over her face and I could see marks on her arm, leg and side from what I guessed were superficial hits. Still she wasn’t built like us. I was impressed she was still on her feet.
I fired back the way she’d just come, forcing some of the dismounted infantry to keep their heads down. I caught a glimpse of the remaining Walker. It was limping, its body smoking from the Laa-Laas and repeated hits from high-explosive, armour-piercing grenades.
Glancing up the alleyway I could see the rear of Dog Face’s truck disappearing into the distance. I watched as Tailgunner jumped from one rooftop across the alley to the other side and disappeared from view. He had the right idea. We needed to fall back.
Pagan had joined Mudge on the other side of the thoroughfare and was firing controlled bursts back down the way he’d come.
‘Morag, cover!’ I shouted. She nodded, loading a grenade into the underslung launcher of her carbine. ‘Pagan, Mudge!’ They didn’t hear; they were both too busy firing. Fucking running without comms. ‘Pagan! Mudge!’ Mudge was used to me shouting at him. He glanced over. ‘To me now!’ I shouted. Mudge nodded and signalled Pagan to follow him. Morag and I leaned around the corner and fired at anything we could see.
Just as Mudge and Pagan broke cover the mouth of the alley exploded, throwing both of them into the air. It had been a missile fired by the remaining Walker. A cloud of dust engulfed them.
Morag burned through a battery with a long burst from the laser carbine, the red light firing in a rapid strobe, superheated air exploding in its wake. I felt a bullet tug at the sleeve of my armoured combat jacket, then something slammed into my shoulder, spinning me around. I felt burning and more warning signs appeared on my IVD.
Mudge and Pagan emerged from the cloud of dust, half running, half staggering. The ground around them seemed to throw itself up into the air as railgun fire from the Walker impacted all around them. I’m not sure if a round glanced against Pagan or he caught a ricochet but his arse disintegrated in a spray of flesh, the impact too quick for much blood. He was thrown into the air and spun around. He landed on his face.
I heard four grenades fired from a launcher explode against the Walker. It had to be Cat on a rooftop. She bought Mudge just enough time to grab Pagan by the scruff of his neck and drag him into our alley. Cat had saved Pagan’s life. I heard another missile hit and a long burst of railgun fire.
Further up the thoroughfare, a lone soldier made a run from the back of the APC for cover. I led him with the shotgun and fired a three-round burst. A spray of red, he staggered and almost lost his balance, but kept running and made it into the alley he was heading for. That wasn’t right. He should have gone down.
‘Jake, move!’ Morag screamed as she pulled me back down the alley after Mudge, who was still dragging a screaming Pagan.
I actually saw the contrail of the missile as it hit where I’d been standing moments ago. I watched the explosion blossom, pushing powdered stone out as razor-sharp fragments. This was the glory of being wired as high as I was. You got to see your own death. You also had the time to do dumb things like move between the blast and Morag. It went black.
My internal medical systems flooded my body with stims, waking me up immediately. I felt something moving under me. I was rolled over onto my face. If I still had one – a face, that is. There was shouting. There nearly always is.
I opened my eyes to pain but a perfectly working IVD, though my vision was full of red warning icons. I was being told electronically what my body already knew. My world was pain. The fact that my IVD was still working so well gave me the clarity to see just how fucked we were. That was once the internal pain management systems and a fuck of a lot of painkillers and stims from my rapidly depleting internal drugs reservoirs made me capable of functioning again.
My entire front was black from scorch marks and high-velocity embedded rock grit. I don’t think I had any skin left on my face. It had effectively been sandblasted off. Diagnostics were showing that shrapnel had pierced my subcutaneous armour in several places. The worst was a stomach wound that would need attention soon. Another piece of stone and metal had gone through my armoured skull and fractured it. That was bleeding badly over my lenses.
Morag was on all fours next to me, having managed to roll me off her. She was gasping for breath like she’d been badly winded. Blood was pissing out of her nose but otherwise she seemed not much worse than she had moments before.
‘C’mon!’ Mudge screamed at me. He was trying to get a screaming Pagan over his shoulder so he could carry him.
Still dazed, I looked up to see Tailgunner and Cat on opposite rooftops firing back towards the main thoroughfare. I looked down the alleyway and saw the remaining Walker limp into the mouth of the alley. The multiple barrels of its rapid-firing railgun were already rotating up to speed. We were dead.
This was what Merle had been waiting for. The building hewn out of the rock on the corner of the alley had been blown open by missile fire. Merle appeared on the first floor, now open to the air, his plasma rifle at his shoulder, and fired it at almost point-blank range. He squeezed the trigger on the semi-automatic weapon again and again, firing the whole magazine into the mech. The plasma gun’s barrel glowed white hot. The front of the mech was wreathed in white fire that ate through armour plate. I think I saw Merle turn and run. I grabbed Morag and forced her to the ground and fell on top of her. Mudge dropped Pagan and threw himself on top of the screaming hacker. The mech blew.
‘That was fucking stupid,’ I heard Mudge say and start coughing. ‘He was in the army. He’s got more armour than me.’
This time I saw all black because we were buried. I felt like all the weight of the planet’s heavy G was bearing down on me. It seemed like the stone ceiling that replaced the sky in the cavern had landed on me. Boosted muscle, metal and a bit of screaming, and I managed to push myself up through the rubble. I saw light again. I spat dirt, blood and gravel out of my mouth and glanced behind me. The mouth of the alleyway was gone.
I reached down and dragged Morag’s limp body out of the debris. She was unconscious. My back felt like a whole load of stone had landed on it. Funny that. I overrode all the warning signs in my IVD so I could see better.
‘Move! We’ll cover you!’ Cat, from the roof. Christ, she was keen. Still she hadn’t just been blown up. She was right. The mechs were gone but the infantry would be in the alleys, trying to flank us.
The trucks were gone. Good, that was what this was about. Still, I didn’t want to die for a bit of food. I put a stim on Morag’s neck. She cried out as she was rudely pulled out of unconsciousness by the drug.
‘On your feet,’ I said.
There was just a little look of resentment from her before she realised where she was.
I retrieved my shotgun. Ejected the magazine, replaced it, ran a quick diagnostic. It was still working.
Morag staggered to her feet. Pagan was unconscious. I looked at Mudge’s blackened face.
‘I had to sedate him,’ he told me.
I helped sling Pagan across his shoulders.
‘C’mon!’ Cat shouted from above. She sounded worried but not rattled.
