“Affirmative. Fall back and draw the enemy to blocking position at second intersection. Bugging out.”
We check our weapons on the run. With most of a company bearing down on us, only some air support is going to keep us from ending up in a Chinese POW camp or a mass grave. I fire up my TacAir screen as I’m dashing from corner to corner, and once more check for air assets.
“Banshee Two-Five, this is Tailpipe Five. We have a counterattack coming our way, one platoon plus. Dust off and cover us from above, if you can.”
“Tailpipe Five, that’s a roger. We’re on the way. ETA two minutes.”
Our drop ship has used up most of its air-to-ground ordnance in the initial assault, and strafing runs with the guns are dangerous business, but without Banshee Two-Five’s automatic cannons, there may not be anyone left for them to ferry back to the carrier. On my helmet display, red “HOSTILE” symbols are popping up with increasing frequency as the troopers from Fourth Squad are spotting enemy troops, and the red symbols outnumber our blue ones at least four to one.
Fourth Squad is doing an orderly retreat, leapfrogging across intersections ahead of us. The main street going through the settlement is barely twenty yards wide and flanked by tight rows of prefabricated one-and two-story structures. We reach our target intersection just ahead of Fourth Squad and hastily set up firing positions to cover their retreat.
“Make ’em count,” the platoon sergeant says. “We cover Fourth Squad, let them pass through us, and leapfrog back to the town center if we have to.”
I check the seals of my armor, make sure for the twentieth time that my rifle has a round chambered, and kneel down behind a climate unit parked in front of what looks like a tea joint. The buildings out here are thin-walled, standard colonial living modules, just like our own colony settlements. The walls don’t stop fléchette rounds or shrapnel, but using them as cover is mentally more satisfying than duking it out in the open.
“Here they come. Watch your sectors,” the platoon sergeant says.
In front of us, three troopers from Fourth Squad come dashing around a corner not fifty yards away. I can’t see the squad of Chinese marines in pursuit, but my helmet display continuously updates with enemies spotted by other troops in my platoon, and the alley around that corner is lousy with red symbols. I switch the fire mode selector of my rifle to computer-controlled mode, and draw a bead on the intersection ahead.
“Grenades,” the lieutenant orders. “Air burst, twenty meters. Give me a volley over those rooftops to the right.”
With my extra comms gear, I don’t carry rifle grenades on my harness, but most of the platoon’s regular members do. Behind me, half a dozen grenade launchers belch out computer-fused forty-millimeter grenades that arc over the rooftops to our right. They explode above the adjacent alley in a series of low, muffled cracks. We hear shouts and screams as the Chinese marines fifty yards away get peppered with high-velocity shrapnel. In front of us, the second half of Fourth Squad comes sprinting around the corner, legs pumping to a soundtrack of automatic rifle fire from the unseen SRA marines. With our presence announced, only an idiot or a green recruit would come around the corner to shoot after our retreating squad, but a pair of Chinese marines does just that, and promptly gets drilled by fléchette bursts from ten different rifles. To our right, there’s a sound like someone throwing a bucket of nails onto a metal roof, as the remaining Chinese marines start firing at us through the thin walls of the houses.
“Fall back, in order,” the platoon sergeant shouts.
Half our number leave cover and follow the Fourth Squad troopers back up the road to take up new firing positions, away from our now compromised position. The rest of us stay put to cover their movement. In the alley just to my right, a door opens, and the muzzle of a rifle pokes out. The SRA marine fires a burst in my direction, and I duck behind my cover as the fléchettes scream past my corner and through the walls of the house across the alley. At the ranges dictated by these narrow streets, infantry combat turns into a shoot-out in a toilet stall.
“They’re cutting through the back walls,” I shout into the platoon channel, and return fire. My tactical computer switches the rifle to fully automatic suppression fire, and my ammo count is revised downward rapidly as my M-66 burps out twelve hundred fléchettes per minute, spraying the doorway and adjacent walls with tungsten penetrators.