Make Them Pay.
Make Them Pay.
...
Make Them Pay.
Something erupted nearby, exploding outwards in a great fiery ball of shrapnel death.
'Gunny' Sergeant Rickert took a metal chunk the size of my arm across his stomach. It hit with such force that his body separated in a violent splash of blood and rope like intestines. He didn't stop firing until the clip ran out. The bastard lived long enough to to drag his upper body to a startled marine and try and yank a new clip from him.
Moments later, Medic Rayleigh took a 'tag, the grenades that remained on his chest harness, and rifled through the Gunny's pack for anything we might need in the engagement. A few adrenal stimulants, MREs, and a mostly full pack of REAL tobacco cigarettes.
I didn't even want to think how he smuggled those onto the Marine Command Frigate.
Flame trooper Nicholson was having trouble removing a huge splinter of wood from an oddly bent knee. I leaned over and pressed a syringe to some exposed skin and thumbed the release lever, then gripped the wooden shaft with both hands, and yanked. Nicholson screamed like the girl she was, sobbed twice more, then got up, sobbing thankfuly as the pain reliever took hold.
'Go see Doc Dobrescau, Nikky, you look like shit on a stick!' I yelled, waving behind me in the general direction of where the Doc was.
'Yes, sir!'
'And take the Gunny with you! We gotta Bag and Burn 'em this round! And tell McCoy to find his legs! They're around here somewhere!'
'Will do, sir!' she bawled, barely audible over the falling artillery. She limped over to the Gunny's torso, and started dragging.
I turned back to the conflict at hand.
'This had better be where the 19th is supposed to be!' I yelled at Yutino, who was scanning a battle map.
*************
We had stormed The City about four hours before, and lost a sizable chunk of our troops to suicide Resistance members.
376th Heavy Troop Brigade, 6th cluster, 13th platoon, us, had been the the sledgehammer, moving here and there, slamming home pincer movement after flanking maneuver like it was a simulation.
The LT. had bought it the second we touched ground. Some luck-fucker had shot a bouncer right into the front door of the drop ship, and he had jumped on that sucker like it was a pile of women.
The LT. had been a good man, but now he was just a pair of 'tags, a bloody smear on the inside of DS-one-oh-one-five, and a fast forgotten moment of gratitude.
With the LT.'s death, leadership was dropped right into my lap, and that was exactly where I didn't want it. I had enough trouble coordinating the hapless fucking infantry under myself to bother with having to give the real orders.
But, be that as it may, I still had to ride the troops collective asses to safety.
Jennings, the Brigades best marks woman, and best ass to boot, had been the second to go. A suicide bomber had ran into a group of techies that were trying to salvage a gun drone, and she had been too near a wall when he went off.
The resulting explosion pushed about three tons of rubble onto her, all as a solid wall of mass. She had had time to whimper before being crushed; One moment she was standing there, the next all you could see was a boot, and a spreading pool of blood.
Corporal Thompson, her latest fling, had winced slightly, then got over it.
That was all that could be done, so we moved on.
Next to die was CommOp Ferdy, who had been busy talking to TacComm, before a glancing blow had ricochet off a wall and caught the edge of his eye. He had jumped up like a rocket, clutching his face, before a heavy turret lit him to pieces.
The communicator pack went down with him, which sucked, because then we had to hook into the main chat net, which was as unorganized as ever, to get our commands. After three minutes of regurgitated inquiries, I asked around if anyone had heard anything.
The last anyone remembered Ferdy saying was we had to reinforce 19th platoon's position, then hold for a few.
We ran into a few ambushes on the way to the building 19th had last reported being in, losing more friends in the thick of it. They weren't there, so we decided to check a few more blocks up.
*************
Eventually, we found 19th hiding in a bombed out square. I had hoped to god the 19th's LT. had survived, but the asshole had just leaked the last of his blood out onto the dusty ground as we got to him, and apparently his second in command was a nice pair of charred boots we had passed up not minutess before, prey to a friendly mortar strike that had gone straight down through him to explode in his stomach.
The upside to that sorry little episode was that now we were back to full strength, and we had a new Comm. pack.
After I was done some visualizing of myself beating the ex-LT.'s little tan head in, then cursing his lineage with as much anger as I could muster, I had Staff Sergeant Molley cannibalize the 19th into our own ranks.
The new CommOp, Jorgenson if his dusty BDU's could be trusted, sent word up the line to me that TacComm said we needed to take the remaining streets between us and the rest of 6th cluster, 'with utmost possible haste'.
I told him to tell TacComm to go fuck themselves, we weren't moving till we got fire support.
He relayed that in a bit more diplomatically, then waited a few seconds, listening intently. He put the communications gear back into its holder, then looked me square in the face. He then said what I had hoped he wouldn't say.
'Sir, we are fucked in a Bucket!'
'Goddammit!' I screamed, voice echoing in the incrasinly less-abandoned building. We weren't going to get that arty.
'TacComm says the boom tubes are all in service, sir! We're gonna have to fight our way there!'
'You fuckin' think? We back in Basic? You think I don't know what the hell this means? Get back on the air and call on line...' I pulled out a piece of paper, scanned it till I found the right frequency, then showed him the call sign, tapping it lightly. 'Call on this line, ask for a Red Cherry Please, and then give them the coordinates for that housing complex over there!' I pointed out the shattered windows at some small houses that were pumping out some pretty heavy fire.
While Jorgenson called in some friends at arty command, I had the boys and girls load explosives into their launchers and blow out the bottom three stories to the building adjacent to us that wouldn't stop spitting automatic fire at us, like they didn't appreciate our landscaping efforts.
The building exploded like something that, well, explodes really well, then collapsed in on itself. We ran under the cover of smoke and dust to the rubble, taking cover in any available nooks.
Seconds later the previously designated Housing complex went up into flames as napalm arty hit the roofs. There was a sound that might have been screaming, and then the buildings crumbled and melted to the ground.
'I want suppressive fire on those buildings!' I yelled with a sweep of my arm in the general direction of the enemy. 'Delacruz!!!' I bawled.
'Yes, sir!' he yelled from the other side of a wall.
'You got any more run-a-bombs?!'
'Yes, sir! Three flash and a frag! I can make a HE, but it'll take all the flash powder to make it!'
'Do it! I want that thing rollable in 2! That building on my mark!' I pointed at a sky scraper that was pumping out a lot of heavy fire. 'Jorgenson! Let the Brass know that we're toppling the... well, that one!' Again I pointed at the same sky scraper.
Jorgenson put the receiver to his mouth and started yelling in the update. 'Sir, TacComm says negatory on building 255-1a!' he replied, looking up from his field map.
'Well tell them that its got at least an Oscar-Oscar-Lima threat level!'
'I already did, sir!' This man was after my own heart. An OOL-TL was generally called a fortified bunker, and although this building wasn't anything like that, it sure was acting like it. Still, I like to overestimate and be safe, rather than sorry. Jorgenson obviously had the same priorities as myself.
'Well... Fuck!' I cleared my throat and spat. It was sore from yelling for an hour on end. 'Alright, new plan!'
I popped my head around the wall. 'Delacruz!' He nearly jumped out of his skin, and yanked the wire cutters back from the explosives he was tinkering with.
'Sir!'
'I want that thing in that building in...' I checked my service watch that was hooked onto my under jacket. '45 seconds!'
'Sir, it'll take at least a minute and a half to roll it there!' he said, holding up the partially finished IED.
'Then throw that sucker! You want me to hold your dick when you take a piss, too?' That got a few chuckles from the ladies.
'But it might be a bad line connection!'
'I don't care! You get that thing in there if you have to run it in yourself!'
Delacruz mumbled something out the side of his mouth, but my attention was drawn elsewhere when some armor piercing fire strafed through the rubble we were hiding in. It caught a trooper from the 19th in the leg, and severed it messily in half. I grabbed her thigh, trying to stop as much blood as possible. 'Medic!!' I yelled.
She was so fucked it wasn't funny. Her femur had been snapped out of socket, pulled with the rest of the leg, and an exposed artery was pumping blood out like a faucet. Red was everywhere.
'There ain't nothing you can do, sir!' she growled between grinding teeth. I saw the front of her tongue, barely hanging by a bit of skin through her canines.
I pulled a heavy sedative applier and looked into her eyes. She nodded jerkily, so I dialed up an overdose, then administered it to her. She shook a few more times in shock, then slumped back, sliding to a resting position on her side. I saw the life leave her eyes as they dilated from the sedative, and then she was gone. When Doc got to me, I said, 'Bag and Burn, you know the drill.'
I jogged to the cover where Jorgenson as listening intently to the Comm, ballistics whining and zinging around me.
'Jorgenson, our Comm. line is 14j-9.' I pulled my face guard down, then latched the breathing apparatus over it. Those around me that saw this did the same. The action set a wave off, and in moments, the whole platoon was completely covered. We looked like dark patrons from another world; Black armor, black BDU's, red, glowing eyes.
'Is everyone ready?' I asked quietly over the net. I heard the numbers check out.
The fully encasing head gear provided buffered sounds, so that one could better hear ordered commands and tactical data at the expense of better area presence intake.
'These dumn fucking guys have fucked with us for the last time. Jorgenson, tell TacComm to go fuck itself, and code open: W.A.I.C., I repeat, We Are In Command. Break.'
'Yes sir.' Came his hungry growl.
'Delacruz, tell me that our little friend is where it needs to be?'
'Been waiting for about 30 seconds now, sir.' I could here the feral tinge to his tone.
'Good. Everyone, stim up, we're taking this city by tonight!' A few whoops proceeded grunts of pain, pleasure, and the feral need to kill. The stims hurt, but they made you feel damn better too, and they sent our bodies on overdrive. 'Delacruz, blow the building.' Everyone ducked behind cover, except me. I wanted to see them burn.
'With pleasure, sir.' He popped the safety top from the firing stub, and thumbed the detonator.
The bomb blew the whole sky scraper up about five feet, glass shattering prettily, and the repercussion blasted me into the wall some 20 feet behind me. It felt like a damn semi-truck had hit me full on. My left goggle lens was spider webbed with micro cracks, and as I stood up my vision blurred for a second before the stimulants cleared the pain.
I took in a deep breath, leaned back, and howled my rage in the best scary sound my human vocal chords could make. Around me, the combined men and women of the 13th and 19th platoons let loose their own howls, screeches, brays and nays, and hisses, all mingling in the most terrifying way, sending our blood into heated frenzy.
Left hand pointing at enemy terrirory, I yelled the charge command at the top of my abused voice. As one we rose from the rubbled building we had taken cover in. With yells of rage and fury we stormed the lines of the thrice damned enemy, boots thumping at a full tilt run.
We slaughtered anything that moved in our red clouded vision, our guns bright blue-white flashes of cleansing flames. There was explosion after explosion, tracers everywhere, and we stopped for nothing as we pounded into their lines, belt-fed machine guns rolling through ammunition, flame throwers spewing noxious flammable gelly propellant, and rockets trailing on streamers of fire as if sent from Gaea herself, annihilating all that opposed our dominance.
I was at the front of the charge when a phalanx of suicide runners rushed our flank, firing their small arms, swinging knives and clubs, even a sword or two here and there. As we made a firing line, I noticed they made the ground rumble as they pounded along it.
And then we met them wit the furious fire only the Heavy Troop Brigades could pull off. I saw hundreds fall, maybe even thousands, and still they charged on. Soon even the flamers were wetting the ground to make a fiery obstacle in desperation. But even that wasn't enough; though fear was in their eyes, the fanatics still ran on, soaking up everything we sent their way. Finally the resisters broke the fire line and ran into our midst.
'TO ME, MY BROTHER AND SISTERS!' I called, turning on the beginning swinging segments of Chlorentine the 5th's opening opera, and our morale heightened to the music. 'CHAAAAARGE!!!' I bellowed, swinging the butt of my rifle into the face of the nearest fanatic, slamming his muzzle back into his brain; it made a solid crack that was barely audible over the tumult surrounding me.
The barrel was hot, and my arms ached with fatigue, but the opera of battle was going full tilt, and it supported me, helping me swing with a quickness that belied my need of rest.
We surged into the oncoming mass, goggles blazing reflected light, guns firing, swinging, and chopping into the unarmored fools. I started firing again, point-blank, not remembering where I had gotten the fresh clip from. It didn't matter. They soaked it up all the same.
Suddenly something clubbed me in the back of the head, blasting stars into my vision, and blood splashing the inside of my helmet. I fell to the ground, seemingly in slow motion, watching as my family fought with tenacity rivaled only by the gods of lore. Thousands were shredded, but still the enemy came, eventually overwhelming them.
Delacruz unlatched a grenade as he fell, and took out a swath of at least fifty, forcing hundreds more to stumble from the force of the explosion.
I saw Jorgenson get back up, pulling Katie Lanker with him, and they both started ripping away with their chain guns, firing from the hip. The chain guns stammered with deafening whines, and bodies flew; shells jingled merrily as they hit one another, pumped from the chambers at amazingly high rates.
They had a dozen bleeding places along their bodies, and soon their images were covered by more bodies. They kept firing, and the tracers ripped out and up, spitting ammo until they were out.
They died long before the ammo ran dry.
MkNolland, our best burner, crazy as only a flame trooper could be, was laughing over the net, his cackling interupted constantly by the steady *SPFWOOOOSH!* of his weapon. Even with the sound dampening equipment sealed, the screams of his burning victoms reached the reciever, and sent chills of joy down my spine.
MkNolland's laughter was cut short by a huge explosion that swept me off my side, rolling my a few times to rest upon my back. Something had penetrated his heavily reinforced feul pack, ending his killing spree.
I tried rising again, slowly pushing myself back up into a sitting position. I tried to demand a sitrep over the Comm., but all I could do was slur my broken mouth. I could taste my coppery blood, and as it filled up my mask, the sunction vent pulled it out, expelling it across my chest, where it mixed with blood from dozens of others'.
I looked around. Everything was going so slow suddenly, even slower than the usual adrenalin enhanced slowness. I blinked a few times, but I kept losing focus. I squeezed them shut hard, the opened them, but it didn't help. I couldn't focus, and eveything became so blurry the back of my eyes hurt.
Somebody fell on me, punching my head, but it felt odd, as if it was happenning a million miles away, filtered through a dream. The armor took the blows as if they weren't happening, but the scrabbling hands started to unlatch them.
As the faceplate was torn away, I was able to focus again. It was a kid, probaly not even 12 yet, and she was crying, sobbing something in a language I couldn't understand.
'Ellie,' I gurgled. 'Ellie, what are you doing here...? Where is mommy to help you home...?'
I fell backwards and stared into space, and the girl kept punching my for a while longer, the drugs in my veins blocking the pain. I felt her hands grapple my rifle, pulling at it and trying to get the strap from around my neck. When she pulled away from me,she nearly fell over from its weight.
With eyes of ice and trauma, she leveled the giant weapon at my face. And that's when it clicked. I realised that Ellie had been dead for a long time, and mommy not long after.
I swung my arm up, bashing the little girl in the face. The retractable wristblade swung out and thunked into her skull, splashing more blood onto this foresaken land. My arm was weary, so I dropped it back to my side, pulling the girl down with it.
As she fell, the blade unhooked from her head, and she landed in the crook of my arm, her arm over the rifle as if it was a pet.
I looked at her, tilting my head to the side, blood dripping from my face onto her fine blonde hair. She looked like she was sleeping. Completely at peace, resting in our blood.
I was so tired.
I looked back up at the sky, wishing I had never come here, and the senses of battle rushed back to me.
Explosions, the pounding of feet, commanding yells, screams of pain. I could hear the Comm. in my ear, crackling as voices demanded information.
The air smelled of burning rock medal and wood. It smelled of blood, charred flesh, bile, shit and piss. It smelled of fear and hate.
My body ached like I hadn't slept in years, and it vibrated from the consant artillary barrages. A luck-fucking bullet found a slightly less armored spot in my leg. It didn't hurt, but there was a slight pressure there nonetheless. My eyes were caked in the fine grit of broken rubble, exploded dirt, and chemical residue from fired weapons.
I gripped tight the dead girls body to me, and cried as I hadn't in years.
Not too long later, I fell into a blessed sleep, dreaming of my pack family, our memories, and all things important to me.
******
Thus closes the first part of Lock and Load, brought to you by boredom of writing other story lines.
Side note: I edited this, adding a little more, and correcting a few mistakes from earlier, tell me if I misspelled anything, or where I messed up grammatically, 'cause I did it at 12 freaking AM, and though I don't feel tired, I know I am. The fact that I keep forgetting a word or two every one in a while kinda tipped me off...
Go check out my other works if these stories of different interests entertain you!