“About time,” Sergeant Fallon says when I leap over the low barrier and land next to her. “I was wondering if you were planning to take on those jarheads all by yourself.”
“Right,” I say. “And get two to the spleen again.”
The deployment pattern of our HD platoon fully anticipated a textbook four-pronged airborne assault from precisely those intersections. When the SI troops round the corners of the last block across the intersection, they’re faced with mutually supporting firing positions, and autocannons sheltered by concrete. On all four corners, fléchette rifles start chattering as the SI troops start a leapfrogging assault. On all four corners, the rifle fire is instantly answered by much more authoritative autocannon reports. The SI assault elements abandon their mad dash for the admin building and seek cover in doorways and behind garbage containers. Smoke rolls across the street as the SI troopers deploy smoke grenades, even though they have to be aware that our own helmet sensors can see right through most of it.
“Side alley, eleven o’clock, fifty,” Sergeant Fallon calls out over the din. I adjust my aim and see four SI troopers taking up firing positions in the mouth of a narrow alley between two housing units. The lead trooper is readying his rifle’s grenade launcher. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s preparing a smoke grenade or a proximity-fused frag grenade. Sergeant Fallon rasps out a burst with her rifle. The fléchettes tear the weapon from the SI trooper’s hands and send him sprawling backwards. His comrades drag him out of sight, firing at us as they do.
“Keep an eye on those drop ships,” Sergeant Fallon shouts.
My tactical plot is a mess of blue and red icons, five platoons of fighting troops duking it out in a four-block area around the admin center. The fleet Wasps are circling high above the fray, out of missile range, waiting for the close air support calls from their charges on the ground. All around me, I hear the din of rifle fire and the chest-pounding low staccato of the autocannons firing sporadic bursts.
More blue icons show up on the plot as one of our HD companies moves in and engages the SI troops from the rear. Now the attackers are sandwiched between two groups of defenders, caught between a hammer and anvil. I only have to look at my plot to know that the SI troops alone won’t be able to take the admin center away from us, not while having to defend 360 degrees just a few minutes into the assault. Without our autocannons, it would be a close call. With each of the building’s corners defended by a pair of them, the SI troops are in a very bad spot.
“Fast mover, bearing in from two-eight-zero true,” Rogue Four warns. “He’s making a gun run, the nutcase.”
In the distance, I hear the familiar banshee wail of a Shrike at full throttle. Then the first high-velocity cannon shells pepper the area around the squad fortification to our left. The small-arms fire all around us is drowned out by the thunderclaps of exploding dual-purpose shells. In just a second or two, the squad position on the southwest corner of the admin center is obscured by a cloud of frozen soil and pulverized concrete. Then the Shrike thunders past overhead, low enough for me to make out the markings on the armored fuselage. For a moment, there’s a lull in the shooting on the ground. When the smoke clears, half the concrete barriers on that corner of the building are gone, and there are a dozen impact craters the size of mule wheels in the thick concrete of the admin center’s wall.
“Those damn things are murder,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Another run like that, and we can pack it in.”
The SI troops at that end of the building pop smoke in front of the ruined position and come charging across the street. There’s return fire from the squad position, but it’s from just a rifle or two at the most. I slap down the face shield of my helmet, switch sensor mode to multispectral, and dump a whole magazine in fully automatic mode at the outlines of SI troops rushing through the smoke. Next to me, some of the HD troopers shift their fire as well, and the SI assault falters halfway across the intersection. Several of the SI troops go down, and the rest retreat to the cover of the buildings behind them.
“They’re not going anywhere,” one of the HD troopers says.
“If that Shrike makes a few more passes, they won’t have to,” I reply. “They can just wait and then stroll in to mop up our bits and pieces.”
“Keep that attack bird off our asses,” Sergeant Fallon tells the Rogue Dragonflies. “We just lost most of a squad. Don’t let him get in another one of those gun runs.”