“We’ll be packed in pretty tight here,” he replied.
“I know, but it’s not a bad thing. Nobody is risking explosives here. We need as concentrated fire as we can possibly make. Not a single one of those bastards gets past us!”
“Thank you, Colonel!” Kelly shouted.
He rushed from the scene to continue the sweep through the building. The feeling of taking back what was rightfully theirs overwhelmed him, and he could not help but smile to be home and clawing back their lands, one shot at a time. He led one of the platoons up the nearest staircase and onto the first floor. It was an open plan conference centre. He could see several Mechs step into view to confront them; his smile only widened as he lifted his rifle, and Morris burst into the room on the far side.
“Come on you bastards!” shouted Chandra, and she fired rapidly into the advancing Mechs.
The creatures were rushing down the hallway up ahead, just as they had done only twenty minutes earlier, but they were meeting a far different defence. Volleys of fire rang out from the fifty troops who had a view of the area, and the lines of creatures were being smashed down. The Mechs continued to pour into the corridor, rushing over their fallen comrades in a desperate bid to take back the Parliament building.
Pulses rushed overhead, and several struck into the defensive wall the enemy themselves had constructed. It was made of some form of resin and seemed almost impervious to the pulses that they fired. Taylor felt the burn of a pulse smash into his position, and it struck Lam with full force. He was thrown back off the wall and onto the floor behind.
Taylor turned, leaping down to check on his comrade, but by the time he’d got to the man, he was already dead. Chandra stepped down to join him. Their attention quickly turned to the eastern perimeter when they realised they didn’t have the time to mourn anyone while the battle raged. They rushed over to Jackson’s position to find three of his Company dead and five others wounded, but the rest were fighting hard to hold the enemy back. Chandra stepped up to the Captain to look over the defences and could see the creatures pouring into the hallway as far as she could see. She jumped back down next to Taylor as a pulse raced past her head. It melted the edge of her helmet.
“God, they’re giving us hell!”
“They must be diverting a lot of their strength to this place. If we can just hold long enough, we could break their armies here,” replied Taylor.
“Yes, but we must make sure Kelly succeeds. Take Parker and her section, and go to him. Make sure he raises that flag. It may be vital to our survival!”
Taylor nodded in agreement and rushed off, grabbing Eli from the perimeter. They hurried to the stairway where Kelly had last been seen.
“We need to find the Commander and make sure he gets through this, okay?”
Before they could respond, Jafar and Tsengal stepped up to join them. Taylor could see Eli was as uncomfortable as ever with their presence, but he knew they could be useful.
“Okay, let’s do this!”
Taylor quickly followed in Kelly’s footsteps. Within a minute, they were in the broad conference hall the Commander had so recently passed through. Over twenty Mechs lay scattered and dead, as well as two MDF soldiers. Another wounded soldier of Kelly’s force lay resting against a sidewall with his rifle in hand. A pulse had struck his leg, and he was unable to stand.
“The Commander, where is he?” asked Taylor.
“He carried on to the next floor.”
Mitch turned and led his team back to the stairs and up. They were getting further and further from the ground floor and fighting to the extent that it was just a background noise, yet they could still not hear any gunfire from above.
“Kelly must have covered some ground!”
They continued up another three floors until finally they could hear the familiar sound of the Reiter rifles firing rapidly. They reached the floor where the action was taking place and burst out from the stairs to see Kelly up ahead reloading his rifle.
“Kelly!” Taylor shouted.
The Commander slammed in his magazine and quickly lifted his rifle at the sound of his name, but he relaxed when he saw Taylor. Behind him a dozen of his troops continued to battle around a bend on the hallway.
“Where are the rest of your people?”
“We’re scattered a little thin, Major. This floor is infested with the bastards!”
“The Colonel is under heavy attack, Sir. We need to turn this around, and we need to show everyone that we have secured this building.”
Kelly nodded in agreement. He put down his rifle and pack and lifted out a flag, the blue and white spot flag of the Lunar colony. He flicked out a telescopic pole and clipped on the flag.
“This second we lift this flag over Parliament, it will change everything. The enemy clearly have eyes on this place.”
“Let’s do it!”
“On me!” Kelly ordered.
The twelve MDF troops followed Kelly and Taylor’s unit to the stairs and continued upwards through the structure. They passed two other floors of fighting where Morris had engaged the enemy. They finally reached the top and rushed out from the stairwell. As they did so, an explosion erupted behind them, and the stairwell collapsed. Taylor turned back in horror to see Parker and the others fall through the breach.
“Eli!” he screamed.
Pulses ripped into their position, and he was suddenly hauled with immense force into a side room. He tumbled in against a desk and looked back to see Jafar had thrown him inside. Only Taylor, Kelly, Jafar and two of the MDF soldiers had made it. Kelly looked horrified and in utter shock.
“We have to go back. We have to go back for them,” he muttered.
Taylor gritted his teeth. He wanted to go to Parker’s aid more than anything, but he also knew they had a job to do that would save many more lives.
“Sir, this is on us. We have to do this!” Taylor shouted.
“With five soldiers? How?”
“Sir, do you want the Moon back or not? I didn’t come here to die!”
He got to his feet and pulled the Commander up.
“How far is it to the roof access?”
Kelly mumbled a little until he regained his composure and could see Taylor was serious.
“It’s about fifty metres from here.”
“Alright, we have fought our way across a world, a space station, and onto this rock you call a home. We can make it fifty metres!”
He rushed over to a door at the far side and saw a Mech peering through the glass. He quickly lifted his rifle and fired five shots into its head, sending it tumbling to the floor the other side.
“One down!”
He ripped open the door and fired another few shots into the nearest Mech. He looked back to the others with a look of bloodthirsty frenzy. Kelly could see that in that moment, the Major was unstoppable. It gave him a new sense of hope, and he leapt into action, carrying the flag in one hand and lifting his rifle into the other.
The five of them passed quickly through the burnt doorway and over the body of the Mech whose fresh blood spewed out across the hard floor. They got to the end of the hallway when a door beside them burst from its mounts, and the wall at its side it collapsed. Five Mechs burst through into the hall and were already firing before Taylor could respond. The two MDF soldiers were killed instantly, and a pulse smashed into Taylor’s rifle that split it in half and continued on to smash into his torso plate.
The power of the pulse launched Taylor into the far wall, and he crumpled down to the ground. He coughed out blood as he turned onto his side. Kelly lifted his rifle, but it was smashed aside by one of the creatures who proceeded to smash a hard strike into his flank. It caused his armour to buckle. It hit him again which launched him down the corridor and onto his back.
Jafar leapt nimbly into action and dodged a pulse and fired rapidly into the first creature. Taylor looked up to see him duck under another strike and thrust a blade into the beast’s faceplate that Taylor had not previously seen. He drew his Assegai in one hand and pistol into the other and stumbled to his feet. He rushed forwards firing rapidly. The pistol had a lower calibre version of Reiter’s ammunition, but it still needed ten shots to take down the creature.