When the Helion trooper operating the mounted weapon had to stop to reload, Samuel made his move. The two marines made a mad dash across the street, holding their fire until they were very near point blank range. Samuel’s attention was focused on the machine gunner, the Helion trooper going down with holes shot through his back as Samuel approached. Ben’s rail gun whirred and vomited projectiles in a deadly cloud that enveloped the troopers who occupied the nest. Samuel slung his rifle as he ran and vaulted the wall of the nest, trusting that his comrade marine would not only finish off the enemy, but also avoid shredding Samuel in the process. The marine knew that he had to turn the mounted gun on the building as soon as he could before the other Helion force knew what was coming.
Samuel landed as gracefully as he could and reached for the gun to steady himself as he stumbled. As it turned out, the stumble saved his life. A wounded, but still capable, Helion trooper raised a pistol and fired several rounds into the space where Samuel had been only milliseconds before.
Samuel whirled the heavy gun around even as he prayed that the previous operator had chambered the belt fed rounds. His luck held as he squeezed the trigger and the heavy gun belched a salvo of high velocity rounds tearing his adversary to pieces. Samuel then turned the gun on the handful of troopers who had survived Ben’s fusillade and the machine gun turned them into bloody pulp.
Without pausing to release the trigger, Samuel brought the gun up and strafed the adjacent building occupied by the Helion troopers and elites. He found that he was screaming as the rounds blew apart one of the elites and several of the troopers before the belt ended and the gun clicked empty once more. Both Samuel and Ben dove for cover as they scrambled to reload their own weapons.
The marine’s bold move had been noticed by the Grotto forces, and the Reapers took the opportunity to charge the Helion position while the enemy was reeling from the surprise attack. As Samuel and Ben lent their semi-automatic fire in support of the brazen charge the marines could see that the wargir who had been in their combat speeder was with the group.
The Helion forces were routed in short order, only to be cut down by more Reaper squads moving up from within the colony, having taken the interior with vicious street to street fighting spearheaded by the Folken elites.
Mere minutes after the death of Maggie Taggart, the squad rallied at the machine gun nest and held the position as Grotto Reapers and Folken elites eliminated the last of the Helion defenders.
7. POINTS OF VIEW
Samuel had stabilized Bianca and sent up the call for a casualty recovery when he noticed the wargir sitting on the smoking hull of the Helion battle tank that had died just at the top of a nearby hill.
The wargir waved an invitation to Samuel and the marine trudged up the dune hill to join the mercenary in surveying the battlefield. The fighting was all but finished, and for the first time that day Samuel began to feel confident about the mission.
“Well, uh,” Samuel wracked his brain for the other man’s name. Imago. “ Imago. Looks like we won,” said Samuel off handedly as he sat down next to the mercenary, “Good day for Grotto and bad day for Helion. Can’t say it feels all that victorious though, a lot of bodies out there that belong to us.”
“Hyst Samgir,” the mercenary said, “you must understand that when war is stripped of ideology, all that remains is the simple reality that it is nothing more, and nothing less, than the violent redistribution of wealth.” He cocked his head at Samuel as they sat perched upon the burned out hull of a Helion battle tank. “Anyone who says differently is just trying to lower your pay rate.”
The Errolite mercenary seemed to find humor in his own statement, and chuckled to himself behind his armored mask, which Samuel found particularly unsettling. They remained in silence for a moment, watching as the strange two headed birds of the tundra planet, which according to the fauna/flora briefing were a carrion species called kyracks, began to circle over the ravaged colony that lay smoldering in the valley below. The wargir gestured at the bloody chaos around them with a gauntleted hand.
“To anyone but those who fought and died here, this colony is just a name and a number, perhaps merely a number, in a vast accounting system that tallies inventory, personnel, property holdings, and monetary liquidity.
No matter how peaceful or neutral those who once lived here may have been, their resources were deemed worth the minimal cost for Helion forces to conquer and occupy this place.
Red Listed communities have no rights in the corporate world, and even that world is an illusion, it is the one we all fight for, the one that we, at present, ascribe to. A community with no rights cannot rely on anyone but themselves to protect it, because it exists outside of the system.
Captain Volk determined from our initial recon that the community did, at some point, have a small militia protecting it. Little evidence remains of them, just a few blasted gun nests and a half-slagged mech-warrior that looks to have been older than the colony itself. It must have been a feat of engineering for the colonists to keep it battle ready at all; much good it did them. Helion rolled over their petty militia in a matter of minutes, if our recon was accurate,” Imago said, his voice monotone thanks to the helmet’s modulator, “My point is, that someone, far away and privy to a broader scope of events in the universe than we, determined that this colony was worth taking. Then when this sector became contested space, those same people, or their successors, deemed it of continued interest to the Bottom Line that the colony remain in their possession. On our side, someone else determined that the colony, and the corresponding resources and projected revenues it represents, was worth the cost of assaulting.”
“You’re reducing this whole thing to money, like the bloody hell we just walked through was tantamount to a financial wager between two companies,” argued Samuel, suddenly offended that the strange mercenary’s callous logic reduced the life and death of Boss Maggie Taggart to the cost of doing business. “Like this whole thing is just a balance sheet on some administrator’s desk.”
The wargir’s body registered surprise. “Isn’t it? The events of today are logged, a tally taken of what was expended and what was gained,” he said, “who lived and who died.” He turned his grim visage to face Samuel.
“Eventually that log is turned into a report, which is sent through various chains of command, all the way to the unseen few who manage the Bottom Line. To them, the faceless masters of the universe, the deeds of our lives, be they glorious or vile, are merely data points on a balance sheet.”
“Good people died down there today! Some of them were my friends!” Samuel snapped through gritted teeth. “Your unit didn’t make it through unscathed either! I saw the man with the horns get blown to pieces!” He wasn’t sure why he said it. It felt like retaliation for the mercenaries’ previous remarks.
The Errolite mercenary considered Samuel for a moment from behind his wicked mask. The salvage marine held his gaze, not wanting to back down regardless of how fearsome the man was.
Something in the mercenary’s posture changed and he nodded his head. Reaching up, he unfastened the pressure seals on his dropsuit helmet. After the airflow balanced out he lifted it from his head. For the first time since meeting the strange warrior that morning Samuel saw his actual human face.