Jada watched as the green light of the flare illuminated the skulls on the helmets of the assembled warriors and knew that they saw the same light upon hers. They stood like that for a moment, each watching the other as battle raged around them, then Ranec and Berg opened up on a new clutch of enemies that approached. The four mercs in the street moved as one, surging forward on the ground as the other two mercs kept pace with them from the rooftops.
After the fury of the initial assault, it seemed that resistance had lessened now that the Dire Swords had broken through the outer perimeters and into the city proper. Their drop coordinates had spread elements evenly throughout the city, just on the outside of the excavation site so that they could push in without immediately having enemies at their backs.
Jada moved through the winding streets with an increased sense of unease. If the abominations had still been hurling themselves at her, she’d have felt better, but the enemy resistance had thinned to the point that Jada finally stopped in her tracks.
“Hold up,” she said as she raised her clenched fist, halting the other five mercs. “Do you hear that?”
“I got nothing up here,” answered Ranec from the low rooftop adjacent.
“That’s what I mean, I don’t hear anything,” said Jada, straining to ensure that she wasn’t just hallucinating. “Two minutes ago, we were in a citywide firefight, now all I hear is the wind and distant thunder.”
“Raid Alpha, be advised, five Helion battle barges airborne and inbound,” warned Marcus over the company channel. “A frigate slipped past our picket line from the other side of the planet and launched away craft before Sword Base could engage.”
“We don’t have the armor or air support to take on a dynamic response force,” announced Womack. “Get the Tasca skiffs moving. First raid elements will reach master ring in minutes, toggle in on my beacon. Once the Objective is sighted, we paint the target and Tasca extracts while we hold position.”
Moments later, a fresh flare sailed upwards from near the base of the master ring and Jada’s HUD fixed on the position, prioritizing it over Berg’s now flickering and dying flare several blocks to her left.
“So, I guess nobody is going to talk about how this place just went silent as the grave?” asked Poe over their private channel as he and Jada ran across a series of gangplanks that carried them over several dig pits.
“The closer we get to that ring without a fight, the worse I think it will be when we get there,” responded Jada, swapping out her half-empty magazine with a full one in anticipation of the heavy conflict to come.
“The Objective is calling its horde home,” said Ranec over the squad channel. “Probably going to be a boss fight like back on Gedra Prime where they huddle up and battle as a mob, trying to protect the leader.”
“If it turns out to be more than a tomb lord, which is dangerous enough, I hope those Tasca goons are up to the task,” said Osric, who had served as ops security aboard Sword Base prior to being given the opportunity to advance to being a full-fledged Dire Sword. “Defending a hard point in this environment will be tough enough as it is without them running late.”
As the mercs ran, more flares went up from the base of the ring and the shooting started in earnest. They could hear the strange report of the modified Gedra rifles mixed with a cacophony of small arms fire that they assumed came from the hollows.
Berg and Ranec leapt across one building, and as they landed upon the flowstone adjacent, they were able to see what was transpiring at the master ring.
“Overwatch, the master ring is unoccupied at the center, the Objective is not present,” growled Womack over the company channel.
“Sat photos were taken over time, indicating the figure is stationary,” replied Marcus in everyone’s comm-bead, “Confirm observation.”
“Overwatch, I’m telling you that dais is empty, but I have what appears to be a temple construct just beneath the ring, hollows are concentrating their defense of the substructure instead of the ring,” snapped Womack. “Gregor and Qais, I want your squads to clear the steps and take the ring. Baylock and Indra, get a loose perimeter around the base of the structure. I’m taking the temple; Berg, you’re second wave on me.”
“We are circling the perimeter, taking no ground fire at present,” said Najib over the company channel. “If the Objective is down there, tag the thing and we will drag it out one way or the other.”
“Yep, it’s a boss fight,” snarled Ranec as he and Berg took a running leap off of the building and landed in the street alongside the rest of the mercs.
Strega’s scanner lit up and the mercs quickened their pace, eager to engage, as if the whirlwind of a firefight was more comfortable than the eerie silence of moments before.
Jada emerged over a low ridge of flowstone and saw for the first time the sheer scale of the master ring. There were five fresh flares hanging high in the area, illuminating the scene before her, as if all of the muzzle flares weren’t enough.
Two squads of mercs were fighting their way up the terraced steps that had been cut or otherwise shaped out of the raw face of a massive flowstone wall. Resistance appeared to be light, as only a handful of the creatures stood against them. The real firefight was taking place at the base of the ring, where two squads of Dire Swords were exchanging withering hails of fire with a swarm of hollows that poured in from the surrounding area, as if converging on the temple in order to defend it.
Jada and the others sprinted across the open ground that lay between the urban landscape and the temple and began to engage. The mercs circled wide of the firefight and then cut in sharply, putting themselves somewhat parallel to the other mercs defending the base of the structure. When Jada cut loose with her rifle, spitting forth a mixture of tracer rounds and armor-piercing bullets, her angle of attack allowed her to tear into the enemy with a strong crossfire while avoiding having her comrades downrange.
In the additional seconds it took for the squad to get into position, the hurricane of small arms fire had dropped one of the mercs defending the temple and the rest of them were sporting a wide variety of minor injuries.
Jada advanced as she fired, her sprint having slowed to a steady march as she carefully selected targets and put round after round into them. Now that all of the Dire Sword elements were in place, the frag ban was lifted and the squads who were positioned on the terraced high ground of the ring started firing grenade rounds into the thick knots of advancing hollows.
Each of the mercs had been kitted out with a break action single shot grenade pistol that fired explosive projectiles. They were ‘slag frags’ that were metal cylinders with cores that became super-heated when fired. Once detonated, the cylinders were transformed into molten metal shrapnel, capable of burning flesh and slagging armor, hence the name.
Jada and her group advanced under the cover of the hail of grenades coming from the squads above. The rain of explosives combined with the crossfire maneuver had inflicted grievous casualties upon the enemy. However, the hollows were not deterred and continued to hurl themselves at the mercs without regard for their continued survival. A fresh wave of hostiles emerged from the urban sprawl and sprinted towards the merc defenders, spitting pistol rounds in deadly clouds as they came.
Jada had seen this sort of tactic before on many battlefields, the last desperate surge before defeat, the most reckless and deadly moment of any conflict. Without an abundance of legitimate cover, it was a shooting war out of ancient history, with two forces hurling salvos at each other across open ground. Such was the tactical reality of the conflict, even if it was far less than ideal. Thankfully, the presence of the Gedra rifles and the slag frags gave the mercs a distinct edge.