The horse gave out a deep, rattly groan. Logan glanced back as he pushed Nicole through a gap between the barricades. Shrapnel had torn more bloody wounds in the horse’s side, and its head slumped to the ground. It whinnied one last time, then its head fell to the ground, and the body went still.
A metal hand grabbed Logan’s body armour, and pulled him around the barricade.
“Crazy son of a bitch,” a voice said.
“Keep that chatter off the platoon net,” Volkov said.
Nicole limped away from the barricade, toward the nearest building in the street. Logan limped behind her, still wincing every time his leg muscles pressed against the jagged shrapnel.
Nicole slumped down on the steps in front of the building. Incoming rifle rounds slammed into the dirt piled over the roof, but were well above their heads as they crouched. Logan sat down beside her, and twisted his leg around to expose the shrapnel that protruded from his thigh. It wasn’t much larger than a nail, but hurt like a knife. Fortunately, it was buried in the muscle, nowhere near a vital blood vessel.
“Are you OK?” he said.
“I think I twisted something when I fell.”
Logan pulled on the shrapnel.
He gritted his teeth as a centimetre of bloody metal emerged from the leg of his fatigues, then another. Another centimetre came out before it finally slid free, and he tossed it aside. Blood oozed out of his leg. He pulled a bandage from the first-aid kit on his belt, and wrapped it around the wound.
Nicole stared back toward the barricade. “Did they…?”
“Sorry. Your horse is gone. One of the grenades hit her after we ran. But she did good. We wouldn’t be here without her.”
Logan looked around the village as he worked on his leg. The Legionnaires had constructed a hasty defensive position there. The men who didn’t have buildings, barricades, or rocks to hide behind crouched in rough slit trenches, only emerging from them to fire their weapons.
Even Poulin had a rifle. She lay beside a building, partially hidden behind a rock, and fired randomly around it down the hillside. She might not hit anything, but hopefully she could help keep their heads down.
Mortar bombs or rockets had exploded around the streets, scattering small, twisted chunks of torn metal that protruded from the buildings and the remaining trees around him.
A few of the mortar bombs must have dug into the ground when they landed, and left craters a metre deep and a couple of metres across. At least the craters might provide some free cover for the Legionnaires.
“Let’s find somewhere safer for you to sit,” Logan said.
He helped Nicole to her feet, and they limped along the street together, crouching below the erratic, incoming rifle fire. The girl winced every time a grenade exploded, but Logan just pulled her on faster behind him. The sooner she could get safely into a building, the better.
The flagpole was on their right, still flying proudly above the roofs of the nearby buildings. Logan led Nicole on into an alleyway between the buildings, heading toward the flag. The village square opened out at the end of the alley, surrounded by long, low buildings protected by more barricades of tree trunks and dirt.
Moans and yells came from the building on their left. Logan steered her that way, and peered inside. Wounded men lay on bloodstained straw that covered the dirt floor as the platoon medics swarmed around them. A civilian man and two women assisted, but barely glanced up as he entered.
Logan helped Nicole into the impromptu aid station. One of the women grabbed her, and led her to an empty patch of straw in the corner.
“I’ll be alright,” Nicole said. “I can help them in here.”
Logan nodded.
“Go for it.”
She’d be safe for now. Hopefully. Only a direct hit from a rocket was likely to damage the building.
Of course, she might not be so safe if the Panzergrenadiers and their friends won the battles.
So he’d better make sure that didn’t happen.
“Get everyone we can spare to the west flank,” Merle said.
“Sir, it’s Legionnaire McCoy. Can I help?”
“About time we got reinforcements. Where are the others?”
“Gallo is KIA, sir. Desoto and Bairamov are MIA. Do you have a suit I can use?”
“What the hell happened to yours?” Volkov said. “Did your girlfriend steal it?”
“I fell off a cliff, sir. I had to abandon it.”
“McCoy. For the first time since I joined the Legion, I am honestly speechless. If I survive this battle, I’ll be telling this story for decades to come.”
Another voice joined the net. Joffer. “Got a salvaged suit over by the village hall. Last guy’s in the aid station, he didn’t mess it up too bad.”
“Try not to lose that one, McCoy.”
CHAPTER 32
Joffer was correct. The suit wasn’t that badly damaged. If you didn’t count the ten-centimetre diameter hole in the lower back, and the much narrower entrance wound in the front. No wonder the last guy wasn’t using it any more. Logan would be safe enough, though. Unless he decided to run away from the fight, and expose the hole.
And he had no plans to turn his back on these people.
The sun rose over the hills as Logan clambered into the open back of the suit, and slid into his seat in the frame. Red smears of blood coated the suit’s HUD. Logan wiped them away with the side of his hand, and adjusted the blood-stained straps until they held him tightly in the suit’s frame.
“Suit, load settings Logan McCoy.”
“Confirmed. Settings loaded.”
“Alice. When will the Marine LePen be in range?”
“One hour and thirty-eight minutes to next orbital pass with a firing solution.”
Just over an hour and a half, and the Marine LePen could make the Panzergrenadiers and Montagnards regret that they’d ever been born. But could the platoon last that long?
“Alice, seal up.”
The back of the suit whirred closed behind him. The sounds of gunfire and explosions faded as the back clunked shut.
“Suit damage prevents airtight seal,” the suit said.
Hopefully he wouldn’t need one tonight.
Logan grabbed the gaussrifle that leaned against the wall of the village hall beside the suit. The magazine was half-full. The suit froze for a split second as he tried to straighten up, while red lights flashed on the HUD. Then it moved again.
Great.
Whatever had hit the suit had screwed up the exoskeleton. But it would have to do.
“McCoy, you ready yet?” Volkov said.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, sir.”
“Join up with Charlie team on the west flank. They need all the help they can get right now.”
Mortar bombs whistled toward the village.
Guns chattered around the village square in front of the hall, and some of the bombs exploded in mid-air. Others came down intact. Dirt sprayed into the air in the middle of the square as a mortar bomb exploded there, and shrapnel rattled off the side of Logan’s suit.
The men had barricaded the square almost as well as they’d barricaded the entrance to the village. No wonder they decided to put the aid station there.
Slit trenches surrounded the village hall itself, deep enough for a suit to crouch in without being seen, or stand in to shoot out. Tree trunks blocked the streets and alleys that led into the square, with only small gaps for men to pass by.
But a suit could still jump over them logs, if it had to. If the Panzergrenadiers came charging in, the barricades wouldn’t provide much protection against them.
Charlie team’s position appeared on the HUD. Logan jogged out of the square as more dirt and shrapnel tapped against the suit, then turned right along the town’s main street.