A gun spider scuttled over the top of the trench, firing on any human target it could find, making no distinction between corporate affiliations. After it had taken out a Helion trooper and a marine it caught the spider-faced Folken’s attention. The warrior blew the gun spider to pieces and then heaved themself to a standing position.
The elite seemed to have mercifully forgotten about Samuel and Bianca, who crouched behind the twisted metal of the gun emplacement, focusing its fire on a group of stormtroopers who were attempting to re-arm a mounted heavy weapon. The black carapace armor of the stormtroopers shattered under the withering fire of the rail gun.
Taking advantage of the elite warrior’s momentary distraction, both Samuel and Bianca emerged from cover and rushed the elite while firing their rifles on full-auto. The spider-face mask was pitted with hard rounds as the warrior spun, too late, to meet the attackers. Finally, the combined fire of the two combat rifles emptying sixty odd rounds into it at close range brought down the Folken warrior.
The com-bead was filled with so much chatter and conflicting intel that Samuel and Bianca both switched their beads off. There was simply too much chaos on the battlefield to manage. Samuel decided that he and Bianca had to just hold their ground.
“We stay here and we survive,” said Samuel as he scavenged two auto-guns with full drum clips from the dead stormtroopers. “This war is beyond our power to affect.”
Bianca nodded and took one of the auto-guns after slinging her combat rifle. They were each down to their last rifle mag. They knew the auto-guns were going to kick hard, but it beat fighting with sidearms and boarding knives. Samuel looked back to see that the Dire Sword drop ships had been diverted far south of the front line, so there would be no help from them.
That was when he noticed that the static electricity in the area seemed to be increasing. He was shocked by nearly everything he touched despite the insulated combat armor.
“That battery taste on the back of my tongue,” said Bianca in a low shaky voice, “It’s familiar.”
“The Alpha cyborg,” groaned Samuel as he knelt behind a barricade. “It must be in the field out there raising the Hollows.”
“I see them,” said Bianca as she pointed to no man’s land on the other side of the trench.
Out of the chaos of the three-way firefight came the shambling reanimated corpses of human beings, mostly penal legionnaires and Helion troopers. It was clear that the Helion third parallel had been completely over run.
Bianca cut loose as the first wave of Hollows reached the opposite edge of the trench, pulping several of the hostiles with high impact rounds from the auto-gun. Samuel trained his own weapon on a Helion trooper who attempted to rush their barricade, apparently unaware of their presence until it was too late.
More Helion troopers moved through the trench, still locked in combat with the stormtroopers. As more and more Hollows and the occasional gun spider found their way into the trench, the stormtroopers fell back into the distance. Soon, the only friendly Samuel could see was the woman fighting next to him.
For a startled second Samuel thought he recognized the bestial mask of Imago, the Folken he’d met many years ago on Tetra Prime. Samuel watched as the warrior cut his way through several Hollows to reach and kill a stormtrooper officer who had managed to barricade himself inside a wrecked Helion armored transport. By the time Samuel finished blasting a gun spider that had emerged from the trench the Folken warrior was gone.
Gun spiders. Folken. Helion troopers. Hollows.
It was all entirely too much, thought Samuel as he cradled the auto-gun in his arms and prepared himself to fire on anything hostile that dared approach their position.
No paycheck was worth this kind of bloody madness.
8. HARD STRIKE
Bianca squeezed Samuel’s hand as the two of them perched on the edge of the squad leader’s bunk. There was always going to be an emotional distance between them after their last parting, they both knew that, yet here they were again.
War, it seemed, had a strange and incalculable effect on the human heart, and though much of the bond between them had been severed both by intention and circumstance, not everything was gone. There was a kind of heat between them, a comforting warmth that seemed to push back against all of the dirt, blood, and noise.
Neither of them had spoken when the assault craft had arrived with medics and tech support. The two marines had simply continued to lean against one another, back to back, one supporting the other as they kept watch on either end of the corpse filled trench.
Eventually, the medics performing battlefield triage tapped them for transport back to the FOB, and they went in silence. They had been deposited at their camp, both of them none the worse for wear in a physical sense. They had helped one another with the post-combat protocols, going through the motions like the veterans they were as armor and weapons were stripped, cleaned, and re-assembled.
The platoon shower rack was empty, and at first they had begun washing in their own stalls, though by the time the water ran cold they were in the same stall, neither clearly recalling who went to who. Now, they held Samuel’s datapad and watched the brutal footage that had been uploaded to the task force channel, a clear breach of protocol that had them glued to the screen.
Neither of them could tear their eyes away from the images on the screen and they were not alone. Across the makeshift tent city marines crowded around datapads, personal monitors, and feed players watching the same piece of footage. For months now the discontent among the Reaper Corps had been growing, as had membership in the underground unionist movement within the collective Grotto fleets.
The talk of the tug was about the House Indron’s forced march conquest of Gedra Prime, which had hinged upon hurling Reaper elements into the frontline meat grinder against superior Helion forces. When word had reached other marine fleets, it wasn’t just the individual marines who were angry about the shift in their job description and the increased risk without compensation, but also portions of Reaper Command.
“I never imagined what it might look like to an outside observer,” whispered Bianca as she drew herself tighter against Samuel’s body. “It’s a miracle any of us have survived this long.”
“This could change everything, Bianca.” Samuel’s voice was husky with grief, but resonating with grim determination. “If enough people see it. I haven’t heard from Sura in months, communication is so tricky to maintain on this side of the Line, there’s no guarantee that the signal is strong enough to reach outside the camp. This is coming from a personal uplink, a marine or a tech somewhere; it would take Reaper Command boosting the signal to push it out.”
The marines watched as POV footage from Harold Marr came on. He may very well have been the person to wear the camera that Samuel had earlier refused. As Samuel watched he began to grow sickened with himself at having refused Virginia, knowing in his gut that it was capturing footage like this, or the death of Spencer that was going to make the change that got the Reapers off the front line.
On the screen were Marr and Tillman, standing alongside several other marines and stormtroopers exchanging fire with Helion troopers and Gedra gun spiders. Because of the camera angle it was very difficult to tell exactly what was happening, though it was sufficient to remind Samuel of just how heavy the fighting had been in the last moments before the Folken arrived.