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The Reapers were accompanied by two cor-sec platoons, just over thirty men and women, all armed with standard combat rifles and shotguns. For better or worse, the gunner was focusing his attention on Samuel, though he was strafing the squad’s position every few seconds just to keep them squatting in place. Whoever this ganger was, he certainly knew how to properly use a heavy weapon to control the battlefield, Samuel thought as he swept the area with his eyes in search of some way to strike back without being torn to pieces.

Samuel took in his surroundings with a more critical eye, noting the multitudes of bullet holes in the concrete walls opposite of the mouth of the sewage channel. Most of them were old, some even had mold growing out of them or brackish fluids leaking from them as the environment sought to fill any available dark crevice with some form of corruption or growth.

That was the way of things in downspire, Samuel had come to learn over the last few weeks. Since most of the bullet holes were old, Samuel began to realize why the dock was made out of ramshackle wood and barely held together.

The Haggard Sons had been holding this ground for years, perhaps even decades, as a natural choke point. Any enemy element, regardless of size, was architecturally forced to push through the bulkhead just behind Squad Aiken’s current position. Clearly, the gangers had engaged enemies numerous times here, and would simply re-build their dock whenever it had taken too much damage to function. Samuel glanced one last time at the bodies of the cor-sec troopers. He realized with begrudging respect that it was actually the gangers enemies that would be bringing the fresh ammunition and weapons into the jaws of this trap to replenish what the gunner would have exhausted cutting them down. It had a brutal simplicity to it, a low cunning that Samuel had to admire.

The marine could see several more gangers clinging to the walls as they moved to flank the Reaper position. Samuel’s observations were cut short as Boss Aiken’s voice sounded in his ear piece.

“Okay, soldiers, this half-life scum isn’t going to hold us back any longer. Command has us on a specific timetable and we need to stick with it,” Boss Aiken growled into the ears of the squad as they hid behind their various points of cover.

“Boss, I can see gangers moving into position, on your left flank,” interrupted Samuel, just before more bullets tore into the wood around his legs, pushing him into an awkward position as he attempted to keep himself secure behind the pylon, “They’ve got cloaks that look like the concrete, I count four but it’s tough to be sure, could be more.”

“Copy that, Prybar, I see them,” said Patrick Baen. Return fire soon spit out from behind one of the flak boards as the soldier squeezed the trigger.

One of the gangers fell away from the wall in a bloody spray, splashing into the foul liquid lake that took up most of the space in the large concrete chamber. More of the gangers began shooting and in seconds the chamber was a deafening cacophony of small arms fire as the two forces engaged.

The Reapers and cor-sec troopers were only too glad to have an enemy that they could see. The machine gunner on his boat was too far in the shadows for them to get a bead on, even with their half-light scopes. Something about the air quality in downspire played havoc with most of the more sophisticated gear, and more often than not the Reapers and cor-sec troopers relied on their old fashioned iron sights.

The gunner responded to the firefight by raking his weapon across the Reaper position. Samuel couldn’t see clearly who got hit, but he knew that several bodies jerked backwards and lay still on the ground.

“They want this beachhead secured and ready to receive work crews as soon as possible. I want volunteers!” Boss Aiken barked into his com, obviously uncaring about how many died needlessly as long as he attained his objective.

Boss Aiken was a transfer from the Bagrid Gamma Reaper fleet, a solar system near the Baen worlds, where deep core mining was the primary operation.

In Samuel’s opinion, Aiken’s character and personality had all of the subtlety and imagination of a stereotypical mining manager. He did not see his soldiers as people, more as resources to be exploited in the service of the Bottom Line. While Samuel knew this was indeed true, Boss Aiken all but rubbed their faces in it. At least Boss Marsters and Ulanti did their best to treat the Reapers like human beings. Their orders were sometimes difficult and brutal, but their callous demeanors were balanced by the honor and courage that they did their best to instill by example.

With Boss Taggart gone and Wynn Marsters being of the opinion that no soldier in Mag’s squad was ready for command, the Reaper command had transferred Aiken over to Tango Platoon. Talk around the mess hall was that Aiken had lost both of his former squads in the line of duty. Samuel put little faith in such rumors, but his experience with the turbines on Tetra Prime had illustrated to him the kind of military operation Grotto truly ran.

Perhaps all Bosses in the Bagrid Gamma fleet led the same way Aiken did, but this was a Baen Reaper platoon. Samuel hoped that Boss Marsters would take notice of how poorly Aiken ran the squad and remove him from command before anyone was needlessly killed.

The problem was that Squad Aiken hadn’t been in contact with the rest of Tango Platoon for nearly a week now as they moved deeper and deeper into the bowels of District 12.

Samuel knew that if he didn’t make a bold move Boss Aiken would end up doing something stupid like ordering his soldiers to move up and re-take the dock, despite the heavy casualties that such a tactic would incur.

Sighing and rolling, his eyes, the marine took advantage of brief shift in the gunner’s attention and rolled off of the dock and into the disgusting lake.

Samuel’s heavy armor carried him to the bottom of the lake, which was, thankfully, only seven or so feet deep. His helmet’s ocular sensors did their best to feed his eyes a modicum of vision in the murky water but it was still like looking through greenish brown clouds.

He had known from the briefings and his own experiences over the last several weeks that most of the bodies of “water” here were only a few feet deep, having been created by leaks or simple condensation and were contained within pre-designed chambers like the one he now stood inside.

This was a curious detail about sewer warfare that Samuel had learned from one of their ganger escorts, Vol, who was currently shouting boasts and cursing at the top of his lungs while shooting his heavy pistol at the enemy gangers.

Samuel smiled as he waded through the water, thinking that if that crazy ganger’s voice carried to his ears underwater, then it must be as loud as the guns above the water line.

The marine was forced to activate an orange light-stick as he worked his way through the water, knowing even as he did it, that it was going to give away his position. He had little choice in the matter. The murky lake was filled with heaps of refuse; some of it jagged metal, though most of it was mounds of organic matter, likely mold or some kind of toxic algae bloom. Regardless, Samuel had little interest in being impaled or otherwise entangled.

The marine knew that his only chance was to press forward and hope that the firefight raging above would keep the gunner occupied. Here and there errant rounds zipped through the liquid, most likely having ricocheted off of some part of the chamber.

Ahead, just at the outer range of his light stick, he saw movement under the surface. Samuel’s mouth went dry and he had a nauseous feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. Something was moving in on his position, and even though he hadn’t gotten a clear view of it, the primitive parts of his brain were screaming at him to flee.

Samuel had battled many deeply mutated and twisted human beings, but as he watched the slithering shadow move towards him in the half-light he knew that this was a true monster.