Vol moved easily and quietly among the ranks, taking point as he led them through the labyrinth of tunnels. The only illumination came from the Reapers gun-lights and muted lightsticks, but the ganger seemed to move more by touch and sound than he did sight.
It wasn’t long before Vol started using the iridescent paint that Boss Ulanti had scored for him from the quartermaster in order to mark traps and it was a most useful tool.
Vol silently pointed out a series of graffiti symbols painted on the wall, in what substance Samuel couldn’t tell, though it had to be blood or excrement considering the smell. They had finally entered Reeker territory, and once they crossed the threshold of those gang signs there was a cleverly disguised trap nearly every thirty meters. Most of them were spring-loaded projectiles made out of scrap metal. It was unlikely they would have been strong enough to penetrate the marine combat plate, but none of the Reapers wanted to test the potency of their armor against them.
It was growing more and more difficult for the on-board filters in the marine’s helmets to scrub the foul stench that began to overwhelm the location. It was little wonder, thought Samuel, using his gun-light to illuminate passageways and dark corners as the platoon moved through the deadly gloom, that they were called Reekers.
According to the terse brief given by Boss Marsters to the platoon before deploying from FOB Specter, this Reekertown had been built in and around the central sewage hub of the spire itself. While it was not the Basin, it was nestled adjacent to the Alpha Target and once cleared of hostiles would provide the Reapers with an ideal staging area.
Using the stories and crude drawings of the Rotted Kings gangers the engineer corps aboard the tug had extrapolated that one of three primary entries into the Basin was located within the settlement.
The plan was for Tango Platoon to make a covert approach from within the tunnel system, relying upon their ganger guide to prevent them from getting lost and ending up wandering downspire. The cor-sec forces, who numbered nearly seventy-five shooters thanks to the troop surge ordered by Reaper Command several days earlier, was supposedly going to drill through from the top down.
Where they kept finding more cor-sec troopers was beyond Samuel. As he’d taken a look at them in FOB Specter as they arrived on the crude trams, he was skeptical that any of them had more than a few days of training. More than likely they were freshly bonded into Grotto and willing to accept combat duty in exchange for smaller bonds.
Samuel supposed that it was a sound plan, if one were to consider the lives of the cor-sec troopers to be basically expendable. No doubt they were cheap shooters in the eyes of Grotto Corporation, he thought grimly as he made his way through the half-light, and management would consider them an acceptable loss so long as the objective was taken.
The Reapers were to launch a lighting assault on the settlement, using their supposedly superior firepower and advanced training to throw the Reeker defenses into abject chaos. This would, theoretically, prevent them from mounting a counter-attack on the cor-sec forces who would pour in from the drill chutes. It was a full scale shock and awe strategy, and Samuel hoped, for the sake of the untested cor-sec recruits, that it worked.
Samuel’s hopes were dashed as the sound of gunfire began to echo through the tunnels. Whatever was going on, it sounded like a war had broken out somewhere in the darkness. It was far too distant to be anyone inside the tunnel system with them, and the marines began to look at each other in confusion. Boss Ulanti and Boss Marsters traded a grimace. Ulanti turned to the platoon.
“The plan is humped,” she said matter-of-factly. “Reaper support must have gotten greedy with the drill and they’re already through.”
“What we’re hearing is cor-sec getting its ass handed to it,” Ben growled as he shook the dripping sewage off of his heavy machine gun. “What’s the play, Boss?”
“We move as fast as we can through the traps and then we engage,” said Boss Marsters as he nodded to Vol, who smiled wickedly before he and the platoon leader began rushing through the tunnel.
“So much for making plans,” laughed George Tuck as he let out an exaggerated sigh, falling in step with the rest of the marines as they ran down the tunnel towards the sound of gunfire.
Samuel was near the back of the column of marines as they jostled to push through the small tunnel exit and into the chaotic firefight below. As Samuel finally squeezed his bulky armored frame through the passage he got his first full view of Reekertown and the bloodbath that was unfolding within.
The settlement wasn’t so much a coherent series of buildings as it was a tangled mess of gangplanks, netting walls, zip-lines, and scaffolding. There were buildings of all shapes and sizes, uniform only in that they were all haphazardly built out of scraps. What it lacked in planning it certainly made up for in size, as the settlement easily spanned twice the distance of FOB Specter, which had, until that moment, been the most spacious place Samuel had seen in this cramped and murky underworld.
Tango Platoon had spread out as more marines followed Boss Marsters and Vol through the opening, but there was little room for large squad movements.
“Ulanti, Marr, Tillman, find the Basin hatch and secure it!” came Boss Marster’s iron edged voice through the platoon’s com-bead as he raised his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off a three round burst. “Tuck, holster your sidearm and get that flamer spitting, the rest of you pair off and engage at will.”
The platoon erupted into action as the veterans surged forward, dragging the newer members of the platoon along in their wake.
Spencer smacked his armored fist onto Samuel’s shoulder plate and as quick as that the two of them broke away from the opening and sprinted towards a mounted ladder leading down. Spencer raised his rifle and began laying down cover fire as Samuel ignored the rungs and allowed his weight to carry him swiftly down a lengthy drop before his boots hit the metal grating below. The marine shouldered his rifle and began scanning for enemies.
All around them the settlement was quaking with movement as the Reekers reacted to the premature cor-sec attack. From his perch, which was still easily four stories above the watery floor of the gigantic hub chamber, Samuel could see the evidence of cor-sec’s ill-fated assault.
From his vantage point it looked as if the drillers had chewed right through the upper decks, just as planned, and dropped the assault chutes. Samuel had only used the chutes during Reaper basic, and honestly, he was thankful that they’d never found occasion to deploy them during his years on the payroll.
The assault chutes were rapid-inflate, hard rubber slides, much like those sometimes used as emergency escape devices in large factories. With a few modifications in the bullet resistant polymers coating the chute, the Reapers were, in theory, able to use them as a way of delivering foot soldiers into close quarters combat zones that were otherwise impassable or less than ideal for traditional repel lines.
For better or worse, Samuel had always been in situations where there were an abundance of stairs, footholds, or pick points for repel lines, not to mention firefights in zero gravity.
The one day they trained on chutes in basic, Samuel had decided the devices had earned their nickname of ‘suicide slides’. Mag had postulated that whatever contractor had been pitching these chutes to Reaper Command must have made quite the demonstration.
The general idea was that the marines were intended to be shooting at the enemy during their descent, adding to the shock effect of the tactic. Unfortunately, the uncontrollable velocity that a fully armored Reaper achieved if he or she descended more than a few meters was sufficient to dump them into the combat zone in a crumpled heap at least thirty percent of the time. Landing on your back or crashing face first into a firefight was no way to survive said fight. Unsurprisingly, most Reaper leaders avoided the chutes when there was even a slim possibility of an alternative method.