“Fire everything you’ve got,” Kader said. “If we don’t stop them now, we never will.”
Logan fired at anything he could see. But the insurgents were moving fast now the heavy weapons were out of ammo, and carefully. They only moved out of cover for the second or so they needed to run to the next rock, fallen tree, or ridge in the hillside. Then they went down and fired at the village. And they were getting close.
His gaussrifle flashed empty.
He pulled out the magazine, tossed it aside, and replaced it with a spare from the suit’s ammo storage. Then rolled back, ready to lean past the tree and keep shooting.
Just in time to see a trail of smoke heading for the barricade. Chunks of wood flew from the tree trunk as the RPG hit it, and exploded. The autocannon toppled over, and crashed down on its side with a mangled barrel. Logan fired back with his rifle at the Montagnard with the RPG, but the man ducked into cover too fast, and the rounds only hit empty air.
Then the Panzergrenadiers rose from the ground, and began to run toward the barricades. Another RPG fired from the left, blowing apart one side of the tree trunk barricade on that side. The rifleman who had been taking cover behind it fell back, and rolled to the far side, dragging his left arm behind him.
Grenades flew from the launchers on the Panzergrenadiers’ suits. Logan ducked back behind the barricades as the grenades exploded on them, shaking the tree trunks, and filling the air with chunks of bark and showers of splinters.
More exploded behind him, shattering the empty ammo boxes, and throwing empty magazines into the air. One magazine smacked against the back of his helmet before he rolled back into firing position.
The Panzergrenadiers were moving too fast to aim at. He swung the rifle their way and held the trigger back, spraying he area around them.
One suit went down, slamming hard into the dirt as sparks burst from its legs. It slid a few metres before coming to a stop. The others continued on, and Logan fired until the magazine was empty.
He grabbed another magazine from the suit’s stores, and slammed it into the rifle. He swung back around the tree trunk ready to fire. The Panzergrenadiers were almost on the first barricade, just over ten metres from the one Logan lay behind. And now that first barricade was providing cover for them, blocking Logan’s view of the hillside behind it.
The Montagnards rose from cover and sprinted after the Panzergrenadiers, crouching low and firing as they moved. The rifle rounds weren’t aimed, but hammered into the dirt all around the barricades.
“Prepare for close combat,” Kader said.
Logan extended the blades from the arms of the suit, and psyched himself up to swing them. He’d fought with knives in the ZUS, but never blades half a metre long.
Then the dirt erupted around the approaching insurgents.
One of the Montagnards went down, slamming into the dirt before his body disintegrated into a mass of flying blood and flesh. A Panzergrenadier dodged behind the outer barricade, but the suit’s leg exploded before it got there. Brown splinters erupted from the barricade as more rounds hammered into it.
“What is that?” a voice said over the net.
“2nd platoon’s drone made it at last,” Volkov said.
The drone’s Gatling gun continued to spray the area as the insurgents took cover. More of the Montagnards fell across the hillside, in a gruesome spray of blood and guts. The remainder began to pull back, sprinting from cover to cover as the drone fired hundreds of rounds at them in a few seconds.
A cloud of smoke appeared behind the Montagnards as the surviving Panzergrenadiers sprayed the area with a long burst of smoke grenades.
The drone continued firing. Logan and the two remaining riflemen fired through the smoke. Kader raised his rifle and fired over the top of the barricade.
If they weren’t actually hitting anything, at least they could encourage the bastards to keep running.
Then a small dot rose from the plain to their right, trailing a bright flame and a stream of grey smoke. The point-defence guns fired from the town square, and the missile exploded in mid-air. Two more SAMs rose from further to the right. Bright, glowing decoys burst in a shower from the drone as they approached.
One SAM exploded as the guns caught it, but the other dodged the decoys and reached the drone.
It vanished in a cloud of smoke and debris that moved slowly to the south as it fell.
“Ah, crap,” Kader said.
He raised his head above the barricade, and peered down the hillside. Logan looked around the side. The smoke was slowly clearing beyond the barricades, and the last of the insurgents were running down the hillside.
“West flank’s clear for now, sir,” Kader said.
“Good,” Merle said. “We need help to the south.”
“They may be back, sir.”
“I’d rather have men firing on the side where they are than the side where they might be. Get over here.”
Logan followed Kader along the street toward the village square. They raced past the village hall, toward the barricades in the south of the square.
The smoke trail of another RPG round raced through the air above the barricade and past the flagpole, before it slammed into the roof of the village hall and exploded. Dirt showered Volkov and Poulin as they crouched in a trench beside the hall, firing toward the hillside.
“Morning, Mademoiselle,” Logan said as he passed her. She didn’t reply.
Probably out of ideas on how to make the Panzergrenadiers like them.
Three Legionnaires were already taking cover behind the barricade. Another was dragging the point-defence gun across the square, toward the south.
An autocannon fired over the barricade, blowing chunks of dirt into the air where the explosive shells hit the hillside around the insurgents. The ruins of one of the platoon rocket launchers lay on its side near the barricade, still smouldering.
Kader jumped into a slit trench near the barricade.
A rifleman was already there. He glanced at Kader for a split second, then turned his attention back to the insurgents, and continued firing.
Logan found a trench on the far side of the barricade. Long tracks in the dirt showed where an earlier occupant had been dragged away toward the village hall. The dark stains in the soil showed where he’d been hit.
The point-defence gun began to fire with a rapid-fire moan as the Legionnaire behind it pointed it manually toward the hillside. The long, rapid-fire bursts tore up the dirt around the advancing suits, and ripped through two Panzergrenadiers who were moving at the time. Their suits exploded, and fell to the ground in shattered chunks of metal and flesh.
Using the gun as an anti-personnel weapon made sense in a desperate situation, but the rate of fire to shoot down missiles was too fast for the ammunition supply to last long.
But at least it was suppressing their fire. Logan aimed at a Montagnard who rolled on his back to avoid the explosive shells. Logan’s rifle rounds sprayed across the ground in front of the man, then Logan raised his aim a little. The next rounds blew the man’s head and shoulders apart, and he collapsed with arms outstretched beside what remained of his body.
A crouching Montagnard leaned around a rock as the point-defence gun fired. He swung an RPG around the side of the rock, and the smoke trail of the RPG round followed a split second later. The Legionnaire firing the point-defence gun rolled aside as the RPG round flew toward it.
The gun exploded, and the smouldering remains scattered across the square.
Logan swung his rifle, and fired a long burst toward the Montagnard with the RPG. The man’s chest exploded with at least half a dozen good hits, and the remains went down.
But, no matter how many insurgents they hit, there always seemed to be more.