Masoul (Harmony War Series Book 2) (47 page)

              “Message from the Triple-Twos: welcome to the fucking party. My name’s Jolie. Tyler said that you would have sensor units; give them to us and we can put them up across the tower,” the girl said, jumping down from her hatch. Other kids were behind her, all of them looking skinny, but Alexis saw a fire in them.

              “What’s Tyler’s nickname?” Alexis asked.

              “SWAS,” Jolie said.

              “Give her your sensor units and the mines,” Alexis said to those around her.

              Alexis opened a channel to Dang as she stuffed mines into the bag Jolie had produced.

“Just met a resistance contact who comes bearing a message from Triple-Twos. They want sensor units,” Alexis said, her section pulling out sensor units as she and Horley faced down towards the stairwell where Chosen might come from.

              Bags were produced and sensor bricks the size of a person’s pinkie and filled with sensors were tossed in, as well as the small disk mines.

              They were shuffled back into the duct; Alexis could hear people moving off with the equipment.

              “Got a resupply coming in with extras. Move your section up and keep clearing; as sections pass, they’ll hand off their sensor gear and mines,” Dang said.

              “We’re going to clear lower. As sections pass, they’ll give you their sensor gear,” Alexis relayed to Jolie.

              “Alright,” Jolie said. Alexis had already started seeing sections of the tower on her HUD showing red haloes of moving Chosen in real-time.

              The troopers’ job had just gotten a bit easier.

Chapter 43

             
Landing City

             
Masoul Actual, Masoul System

             
6/3242

              Nerva looked over the reports all around him; resistance groups had made contact, and a sensor grid was quickly being established. Colonel Domashev was pushing troopers and supplies out of the flight deck as fast as Combat Shuttles could be loaded.

              The majors were dealing with the action on the ground, the lieutenant colonels giving advice instead of orders. The majors were the ones on the ground actually dealing with the problem head-on.

              Even then, if a section was under contact and couldn’t follow Nerva’s orders, he expected them to tell him to go to hell instead of try and carry out his orders and put themselves in a position that would get them all killed.

              There were no reports of powered armor yet; hopefully there wouldn’t be. Right now he was focused on getting people into Landing City, pushing down from every tower’s landing pad. The faster he could get enough people on a level, the more he could use the confusion and fear that was raging through Chosen’s ranks.

              There was limited light in the city, meaning that Chosen had to do with the few lights that they had left—here and there a fixture on a secondary grid that hadn’t blown out worked. It was rare, but it happened in some sections.

              Other Chosen had flashlights, but it was chaos in there; they wanted to close with the enemy, but it was pitch black beneath the surface, buried under tens or hundreds of meters of rock. Light never reached down there, and people didn’t know what to do.

              Nerva needed to capitalize on that. In Central Tower, they’d gained access to the first floor, flanked them, and put a weapons detail right into their midst. You could walk across the floor without ever touching the ground now.

              He looked to the adjoining towers; he knew that Haas had said that the tunnels connecting them should be down except for the ones that the resistance used, but Nerva wanted to be ready for the enemy factor. No matter what, one could never completely understand what the enemy might do. Sure, they could in broad strokes, but down on the individual and section level, no military leader was that good.

              Nerva worked his way down to the third floor. Fighting was sporadic and across the level. Level five was the worst, while the first level was completely cleared.

              He saw sections move through the remains of offices. A grenade went off, and it must have caught something extra, as suddenly a large chunk of the offices went up in a large fireball, the explosion throwing office cubicles in every direction and flattening the section moving up on the weapons fire.

              Chosen were thrown, screaming, and a number of them were on fire and running.

              “No mercy!” Nerva heard someone call.

              “We are troopers!” the others returned, letting Chosen run burning to death. A few took the easy route out, putting their guns to their heads and pulling the trigger.

              The troopers regained their feet and moved forward; medics moved to help those that had caught some kind of office appliance or Harmony renovation that had been turned into shrapnel.

              Nerva played through the recording, trying to figure out what the explosion had come from. He looked at the oxygen levels; they were kind of low.

             
“It’s from the waste recycling systems; the bathrooms are now bombs,”
NIDenise supplied.

              Nerva sighed and shook his head, opening a channel to his officers.

              “Seems that the Triple-Threes blocked the shitters, backed them up, and now they’re gas bombs. Watch out for them when you’re shooting,” Nerva warned, getting green lights on his HUD. He sent another message up to Domashev, who had the word passed around.

              “Sounds like a bad comedy,” Captain Ortiz said.

              “Quite,” Nerva said dryly, looking to the four other divisions that were moving to support him.

              He opened a channel to the other two majors assaulting the central tower with him.

              “Push on through us. I want to keep them off balance and hopefully leapfrog our divisions down. We’ve got resistance fighters on the lower levels making Harmony’s lives shit. Pass them your sensors and mini-mines; they’ve got ways to get a sensor grid up and running instead of going in blind. Also, watch out, the shitters explode if you so much as look at them with a spark,” Nerva said.

              “That has got to be one of the weirdest sit-reps I’ve ever heard,” Major Duvall said, laughing in her helmet.

              “Exploding fucking shitters, sounds entertaining,” Loa laughed.

              “Masks and filters on, the gases will kill most who start sniffing it in. Seems that thirty years of gases and nastiness were pumped into the air,” Nerva said.

              “Ughh, nasty,” Duvall said. Nerva saw her forces moving down past his own and deeper into the tower.

              Sporadic fire came from his right; he saw the Chosen firing. He brought his rifle up and fired controlled bursts at the red halos. The three troopers with him joined in, one popping a grenade off in the direction. The Chosen, blind and confused, didn’t stand a chance.

              Nerva went back to scanning, the grenade putting an end to the fight.

              “What’s that old saying, better out than in?” Soo said with a laugh.

              Loa groaned as Duvall laughed.

             
Might slap a rank on them, but they’re still troopers at heart,
Nerva thought with a sigh, watching as troopers moved out onto new floors, sections fanning out and cutting down Chosen as they found them.

              Greens changed colors as they pushed on, but the Chosen couldn’t shoot what they didn’t see. Troopers hit the ground, shooting from their stomachs, the Chosen firing over them, the rounds leaving their barrels blinding their night vision and making them useless.

              Their city had turned into a prison; they couldn’t see their targets, their air was getting stale and used, and at lower levels, resistance fighters would throw grenades in their midst, usually making Chosen cut one another down.

             
This is planning, this is how war is waged, and how it shows you just how terrible it can be.

              The Chosen were learning; in the dark, they couldn’t see their losses, so they were charging the troopers.

              They were cut down, most times; other times they reached their lines.

              Brawls were breaking out, coming down to blades and strength.

              Again, the troopers had an edge, but the Chosen had numbers.

              They had nearly thirty times their number; they could afford to lose a few to close with and kill the troopers.

***

              Jerome flipped his face shield down and went to work with his welder, adding extra armor to the vulnerable joints.

              A few were moving in their powered armor, others running tests as they tried to work out the kinks and bugs they’d noticed.

              They were packing months of development into hours, maybe days.

              Haas had set up a rotating list of people to work on the powered armor, some working to reinforce them, others that were made to rest, and those watching the doors.

              They had lived together for nearly a year; they had become closer than they thought possible in many ways.

              A look or gesture from one was all they needed; words were a bygone.

              They might have hated one another after the shuttle ride, but now they were focused on the goal that they had worked for nearly a year to obtain: the fall of Harmony on Masoul. It was within their grasp.

              Excitement filled them and pushed them to do more, to finish up the final steps. They worried about the EMF forces that were descending through the city.

              They waited and improved, knowing that all too soon they would be called on, yet it would always seem like it took too long.

              Haas moved across the floor. His control had improved in bounds in just a short time of practice. He wasn’t a pro—none of them were—but they acted more like kids going through an awkward growth spurt than walking on stilts for the first time.

              Moretti was moving around the tech area, floating from terminal to terminal, unlocking their secrets, downloading them to his implants and making extra files that were uploading to everyone’s implants. As long as one of them made it to the troopers, then the message would get back to Earth.

              The information was apparently vital to Earth and her colonies. As they were now able to talk freely, Dan Moretti had finally given them his story.

              The man hadn’t had it the worst, but he had needed to hide his true self for so many years that it wasn’t until the troopers had arrived that he’d thought there was a possibility of him ever escaping Harmony’s control.

              He talked of his thoughts that Harmony hadn’t come from Masoul, that someone else was using Masoul as a proving ground.

              The troopers had come to trust the spy and took his suspicions seriously.

              Jerome finished tacking the armor plate in place and started to get to his serious welds. The armor plate had been bent and formed to fit over the shoulder joint; it was already welded to other plates, which made armored shoulders like the ones the troopers used on their regular strapped-on armor.

              It took him time, but it also took his mind off the fighting above him. He, like every trooper, wanted to get in the fight, to help out their brothers and sisters, but here they waited.

              Jerome flicked his mask up a while later, checking his welds. He moved, his back aching from the concentrated and slow work; it took a lot of time getting the armor plates to melt and fuse to one another.

              He saw Moretti standing with Haas and Zukic; no one looked happy as Moretti stopped talking and Haas rubbed his face, obviously having to make some kind of decision.

              Jerome was impressed with the control Haas showed with that simple act; it would be only too easy for him to break his own jaw with his new strength.

              Haas looked around, seeing Holm and Sasaki.

              The two were wearing unaltered powered armor, all unarmored joints. At least their control systems had been fixed up.

              The suits that the troopers were going to use were all in their cradles except for Haas’. They wanted to have them at a full charge as soon as they stepped into them. They’d been training every moment they could. They still weren’t the best at handling the machines, but they had the basics down.

              With a glance and a wave, Holm and Sasaki stomped over to the group.

              Jerome watched with interest as the two nodded, their helmets dropping over their heads and sealing.

              They checked their weapons out of reflex and Moretti moved for the doorway. Holm and Sasaki walked with him, easily catching up.