Samuel felt bile rise in the back of his throat as he realized that the enemy was advancing across ground that was littered with the broken bodies of penal legionnaires.
Clearly, the penal legion had fought their way across no man’s land, taken the first parallel of trenches, then been forced across a second stretch of no man’s land to seize this parallel. Once they had done so, the stormtroopers had swooped in behind them, occupied the forward positions and forced the surviving legionnaires to make a suicidal rush against the final and most stoutly defended Helion position.
Nearly five thousand souls, without body armor, had been ejected from massive transport vehicles, handed rifles with one or two spare magazines and were then hurled into the thick of combat without much regard for their survival. So long as they achieved sixty to seventy percent of their objective the penal legion would have represented significant savings, as it was much cheaper to throw five thousands convicts into the meat grinder than to expend the several score stormtroopers it would have taken to accomplish the same task.
Before Samuel had a chance to determine if he thought that was murder or just a dirty reality of war, the voice of a stormtrooper officer filled his comm-bead.
“Sons of Indron! The enemy is upon us once again!” boomed the voice, and to his right Samuel saw a stormtrooper with gold epaulets striding through the trench, attended by two other stormtroopers that Samuel assumed were his honor guard, “If our Lord Indron insists that we fight alongside penal scum and salvage marines, then let’s show them all how we rise above!”
“Indron! Indron! Hooah!” came the throaty howl of an entire company of stormtroopers as they opened fire on the striding battle mechs that had reached range. The Helion forces likewise found their own range and engaged as well.
As ordered, the Reapers fell in behind the stormtrooper positions as the Indron warriors unleashed a mighty salvo of fire at the encroaching Helion advance. The enemy troopers were advancing under the guard of a multitude of armored transports and mobile barricades, their battle mechs rushing ahead of them.
The heavy weapons of the stormtroopers were stout machine guns mounted on anti-grav platforms with thick recoil dampeners so that they could fire and move as needed. These and shoulder mounted rockets were exchanged with the auto-cannons and missile-pods of the battle mechs, all with devastating effect.
Samuel threw himself to the ground and was thankful that the Reapers were here in support. All of the fanciful thoughts of revenge against Helion troopers for Tetra Prime were pounded out of his head by the steady crump of explosive impacts and the screams of dying warriors. Samuel picked himself up and belly crawled over to a low barricade, then took a kneeling position next to Holland and raised his rifle to his shoulder.
The marine looked down his sights and did his best to ignore the heavy weapons duel going on around him, since his combat rifle could do little to effect the outcome of a fight involving mechs and armored gun emplacements.
In the context of this battle the Reapers were little more than light infantry, only a step above the penal legion, but as dozens and then scores of marines took up firing positions their contribution began to make itself known.
Samuel sighted in on a Helion trooper and took a deep breath before selecting a three round burst on his rifle and squeezing the trigger. At that range his rounds were not able to penetrate the trooper’s armor, but the impact knocked the man to the ground, which Samuel figured was better than nothing. By the time he’d found his next target the enemy troopers had found their range and opened up. The hot rounds from their rifles punched through the carapace armor of a stormtrooper who was standing on a firestep in the trench below Samuel’s position.
The marine watched as the armored corpse fell backwards into the floor of the trench. Samuel returned fire. Now that the range was beginning to close, his rounds found purchase and the marine was able to bring down a trooper with sustained fire.
Jada was using her scavenged Helion rifle with great effect, and each time she squeezed the trigger another trooper collapsed in a heap. Samuel was proud of the other marine, as she’d only improved after her ordeal on Vorhold. It was as if Jada had emerged from deepspire with a determination to become the best fighter she could be, which was saying something considering her decorated veteran status so far. Samuel could see that for the most part it was just the Reapers and the heavy weapons that were holding the line, as most of the stormtroopers were standing still and simply watching the advance.
“What the hell are they doing?” snapped Samuel as he and Holland worked together to shoot down another trooper and drive several more around to the other side of their armored transport, directly into the cone of fire for Ben’s heavy machine gun.
“Waiting for the enemy to draw near enough that when we attack they will be unable to flee without remaining in range,” said the voice of a stormtrooper who stood behind one of the barricades nearby. “We prefer combat to be an up close and personal affair.”
In response to the stormtrooper’s boast the com-channel suddenly erupted with firing orders from officers up and down the line of the trench and the entire company of auto-gun toting stormtroopers acted in unison.
The Helion troopers had closed distance with the trench and only sustained minor casualties from the harassment of the Reapers, though several of their armored vehicles and both of their battle mechs had been destroyed in the exchange with the gun emplacements, which themselves had been reduced by half.
When the order went out the stormtroopers raised their auto-guns and fired, sending a mind-numbingly vast wall of hard rounds at the Helion force. In the first barrage troopers were flung far and wide as round after round slammed into their armor, the rounds that did not penetrate still causing enough concussive damage to pulp the soldiers inside their suits.
“Grotto advance! Take the third parallel!” bellowed the stormtrooper officer, and as one the stormtroopers rose from their fighting positions and surged forward.
Samuel drilled another trooper with six rounds from his rifle before it clicked dry. As he reloaded he watched the company of stormtroopers rush out of the trench and into the teeth of the Helion advance.
It was insane, and yet, as Samuel watched, he realized that the stormtroopers were specifically equipped for this kind of action. The heavy carapace armor protected them acceptably well from the hot rounds so long as the stormtroopers were in motion, as only direct hits seemed to bring them down. The stormtroopers fired as they ran, having little need for re-loading thanks to the massive drum clips that fed their weapons round after round. Soon what had been a clear division between the Helion line and Grotto was a bloody and chaotic jumble of smoke, explosions, and clusters of soldiers fighting each other among the burning wrecks of the Helion vehicles.
“Reapers, advance to support!” crackled the voice of Boss Marsters, giving the order that Samuel feared would come.
Samuel nodded to his squad and they emerged from behind the barricades, rushing across the thin planks that had been set in place above the trench once the stormtroopers had seized it. The planks let them cross over the trench and rush straight into the firefight.
Samuel fired as he moved, taking his time to confirm a target before squeezing the trigger, ending the life of a Helion trooper who had just managed to bring down a stormtrooper.
One of the Helion armored transports suddenly hit the gas and barreled forward; abandoning the platoon of troopers it had been protecting and assaulting the trench itself.