The Reeker shooters that had previously been enjoying the shooting gallery of the kill zone were starting to fall back in the face of the increasingly stiff resistance from both cor-sec troopers and the two salvage marines.
The brief reprieve from the punishing crossfire had given the remaining cor-sec troopers a chance to break out of the kill zone and spread their numbers into several of the shacks and canvas covered structures around the plaza. The high pitch cracks of the cor-sec pistols and the stout barks of their shotguns added to the cacophony of Reekertown.
Samuel continued to use his iron sights to swiftly spread fire across the plaza, hitting any point he either saw or suspected a hostile shooter, until his magazine clicked dry once more. The marine swiftly reloaded and checked his mag pouches to discover that he was already down to his last two.
Close quarters urban warfare always consumed more ammunition, given how important suppressing and sustained fire was in advancing position, as well as bracketing fire for eliminating enemy snipers.
Samuel scampered across the shack over to Spencer’s body, relieved to find that the marine still clung to life, however weakly.
Spencer’s armor was cracked in several places and he was bleeding from multiple wounds. Samuel swiftly dosed the marine with more booster shots and affixed a quick pressure patch on all the most obvious wounds. There was little that Samuel could do without the squad kit, though he knew that Spencer would need a med-evac and soon if he was going to survive, even with the squad kit.
Samuel dragged Spencer’s armored form into the furthest corner of the bullet-riddled shack and then stripped the marine of his remaining magazine. The shooting outside had died down so Samuel depressed the med-evac indicator tab on the side of Spencer’s helmet before leaving the marine alone in the soft red glow of the tab.
Samuel emerged from the shack and was greeted by four cor-sec troopers, each of whom looked like they’d been handed a firearm only yesterday. Their faces had that battle-shock look to them, dilation in the eyes and tightness in the shoulders that most soldiers struggled with during their first few engagements. Samuel knew that these men needed a leader and badly.
“Troopers report,” barked Samuel as he approached them and when no answer was forthcoming he pointed at the least haggard looking of the group and said, “You, trooper, report. Where is the rest of the unit?”
“Me? Um, sorry sir, yes,” stammered the man in a thick upspire accent until he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, doing his best to get his nerves under control, “Our unit commander was killed in the descent, so we’ve been just hanging on as best we could. Once you shot the Reeker with the machine gun everyone went in different directions, it’s just us four that waited for you.”
“So you did.” Samuel nodded, looking the bedraggled group over. “We’ll move as a unit. I want to push towards the Basin gate and reinforce that position,” He readied his rifle, gesturing at one man. “You, with the shotgun, I’ve got a wounded Reaper in the shack behind me. Hold that shack until the medic arrives, it could take him a while to fight through, but he’ll have a ping on his system and know where you are.” He swept the other troopers with a look. “Let’s get this done.” Without waiting to see if the remaining three actually followed, he began striding deeper into the city.
Samuel and the three cor-sec troopers slipped out of the plaza and made their way down a series of gangplanks that angled towards the center of the settlement. There were several cor-sec corpses that they passed along the way, in addition to a few Reekers. While the noise of the fighting had died down the battle was far from over.
Above them, the settlement was ablaze as George Tuck torched buildings level by level while he too worked his way towards the Basin gate.
Samuel reacted with lighting fast reflexes, putting four single shot rounds into the chest of a Reeker who leapt out of a burning shanty. Whether it was an attempt to ambush the Grotto soldiers or simply escape the fire, Samuel could not tell. The shots caught the Reeker in mid-flight and sent him spiraling out and over the gangplanks.
Samuel and the troopers kicked down the door of a shack at the end of the gangplank network and shot the two Reekers hiding within.
The salvage marine couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like on the other side of this battle. The Reekers, regardless of what kind of reputation they had as a vicious downspire scavenger clan, were defending their homes from him, the armored invader from upspire. Samuel saw it in the eyes of the woman who lunged at him with a crude axe before he put a round through her throat and watched her tumble off of the plank, landing lifeless in one of the safety nets hanging below them.
He knew there had to be children somewhere in the settlement, silently thankful that he had encountered none and been forced to make the decision between following orders or disobeying. The burning buildings above were beginning to collapse. Soon all that would be left of the settlement would be the metal scaffolding and support beams. In a way the fire was returning the chamber to its original specifications, removing the makeshift Reeker settlement as if it was a parasite that needed to be burned away from the flesh to which it clung.
The roar of the flames had drowned out most of the fighting, though Samuel and his troopers were close enough to the firefight raging ahead of them that they could hear the telltale signatures of Reaper combat rifles.
At a signal from Samuel the troopers followed him through the smoke and netting until they came upon the Basin gate. It was far less impressive in size than Samuel had expected, though what it lacked in size it made up for in sheer macabre decoration. The gates were festooned with netting that was littered with the bones of dozens of human beings and other creatures; it resembled a great shrine of sorts.
It was the largest sewage hatch Samuel had ever seen, and having been deployed in downspire for months now, that was saying something. It sported a sturdy metal frame and a huge crank wheel that opened or closed it. In front of the gate was a series of concrete flood breakers jutting up from a shallow spillway, indicating that the tunnel itself was actually a drainage pipe that was used to relieve water pressure in case the Basin ever flooded. There was a small platform just above the gate that had been reinforced with pieces of sheet metal, wood, and wire fencing to create a machine gun nest of sorts. The broken bodies of several Reekers lay beneath the platform, with one even hanging off of the barbed edges of the platform itself.
Boss Ulanti and the remnants of her squad stood behind the modest protection of the platform. They were exchanging salvos with a small, but stubborn group of Reekers who seemed oblivious to the fact that their settlement was burning down and the battle was all but lost.
The Reekers were using the flood breakers as cover, and Samuel knew that if this standoff went on much longer it was likely that the Reapers would be overrun. Even as he watched, a Reeker broke from cover and rushed the platform. Before he was gunned down he managed to hurl a homemade explosive that detonated in mid-air and showered the Reapers with a cloud of shrapnel.
The marine standing closest to the blast was pulped by the force of the explosion, pierced by dozens of nails, ball bearings, and scraps of metal that had been packed into the explosive.
Once more Samuel felt a tinge of guilt and regret that he hadn’t learned the man’s name, even though he had been with Tango Platoon ever since the Baen 6 Reaper corps had received reinforcements following the battle on Tetra Prime.