Sacremon (Harmony War Series Book 1) (45 page)

           
“Shit.” Jerome got up, grabbing his rifle and heading towards his gun. Mark moved up beside Tyler, putting his rifle on the lower rest that they’d made out of various items.

           
No one slept or did anything outside of their armor if they could help it so it wasn’t long before the walls were manned and repulsors were picking up their assualt.

           
“Shall we go leader hunting?” Tyler asked, putting a round through someone that had escaped a repulsor’s ire by falling behind some part of a factory wall.

           
“Yeah, and look for flankers. I don’t like how those rubble walls between the factories give them cover,” Mark said, firing, his gun moving after a few moments. Tyler’s barked again and talking ceased as they looked for colonist leaders, or anyone that looked to be directing them. Their sniper fire was blocked out by the repulsor fire that hammered out on the floor below.

           
Tyler saw one of the colonists thrashing on the ground, people dragged them into cover and Tyler held his fire, waiting to see what would happen. It looked like the poor bastard had an opening in his clothing and a good amount of the gas had gotten in.

           
Someone with a large guard rushed over to stab them with a needle.

           
“Jerome, hit the area I’m marking,” Tyler said.

           
“Got it.” Jerome faithfully lit up the area. Tyler, not leaving things to chance put a number of rounds in what must have been a medic.

           
 It was cold logic, the man must have something that fought off the effects of the gas, maybe even some kind of immunization. Killing them was more important than taking out a commander. It built panic amongst the colonists and would make them more prone to stupid decisions like running at the EMF’s defenses.

           
Let’s just hope that they don’t all come at us in one go.

           
“Enemy mortars!” Someone yelled and Tyler tilted his head, hearing the odd warbling cry of enemy mortars which landed, rocking the factory he hid in.

           
“Support, I want those mortar teams,” Nerva said.

           
Reclaimer was in orbit overhead the city, their telescopic cameras relaying information to the troopers on the ground. It made it a lot easier for a mortar sergeant to give out corrections when they could see what was happening to the enemy in real-time.

           
EMF mortars traversed onto the enemy’s position, not before one of the heavier and powerful explosive rounds hit the factory wall, blowing out another section of it, killing two troopers and injuring another.

           
The enemy mortars went silent and the EMF mortars turned back to raining deadly shrapnel rain down on the defenseless bodies of colonists trying to get into the fight.

           
Tyler didn’t see it but rather sensed it before it happened. The colonists broke, the fire power coming down on them, their inability to move forward with the numbers they had. It all came to a head when they realized that they weren’t even getting any support from their own mortars and that their own shotguns were only scoring glancing hits on the heavily fortified and armed factory.

           
People turned for the rear and ran. Without shooting at the troopers they made easy targets. More and more broke, rushing to the rear as the troopers fired at their retreating backs.

           
It was messy and the colonists paid heavily just to run away.

           
Cheers rose up from the Troopers, noises that reminded Tyler of people that had escaped the reapers clutches so many times that they had become familiar with him.

           
We did it again, but how long until they start putting
real
weight behind those attacks?

           
He tried to not think about that as the order came down for people to stand down from their positions.

           
“You eat, I’ll keep watch,” Mark said, looking over the battlefield.

           
“Thanks.” Tyler got up, stretching the kinks out of his body as he moved to the trays of food that rested on Mark’s cot.

           
Mark had changed since they had left the slums. He had always seen his brother as a strong and deadly man when he needed to be it. He had an anger to him when someone evoked it and he was dangerous. Now Tyler didn’t think of his brother as just dangerous.

           
There was a hardness to Mark’s eyes now, the kind of hardness that aged a person and showed that when the time came they could put their feelings aside and devote themselves completely to destruction.

           
Mark had been a dangerous man when he needed to be before, now he was a man holding that side at bay. He had seen Mark when he fought in hand-to-hand combat with the colonists coming from both sides.

           
Mark had moved through the colonists with an almost systematic violence. Bursts of fury drove him to inflict enough damage on his enemy to put them down before moving on the next. He always hit them with everything he had instead of holding anything back.

           
The augments gave him almost scary reaction time and strength. Tyler just wanted to get off the damned planet and try to get some kind of normality back to their lives that didn’t involve checking if the enemy was coming for them. He removed his helmet, grabbing his tray and sitting on his cot as he ate it.

           
As much as he wanted to get away from this all, he knew that they both had a number of years, that they had to survive in order to get out of the EMF, or get that elusive retirement.

           
It doesn’t look like some trivial amount of time now does it?
He ate his food, not really tasting it as he tried to forget the realities around him.

Chapter 20

           
Processing City

           
Sacremon Actual, Sacremon System

           
8/3171

           
Jerome took the coffee over to Mark who was on last watch, he’d finished his watch an hour before and getting extra would only leave him more tired.

           
“Thanks,” Mark said, accepting the warm pack. All of their liquids were stored in packs so that they didn’t get liquids everywhere if they were in space.

           
Zero grav is a bitch.
“No worries,” Jerome said as he took a seat next to Mark who was down behind a mounted repulsor. The two gun’s barrels moving as he looked for any sign of the colonists.

           
Nerva had made the techs help out with all their fancy gear and turned the warehouses into fortresses.

           
Jerome hadn’t focused much on defensive works, but Nerva seemed like he had made the damned manual on it.

           
“So how do you think it’s going to go down now?” Jerome asked, filling the silence.

           
“We hold, starve them out, they charge we put them down. It’s not going to be pretty,” Mark said, his voice cold and hard.

           
Jerome nodded to himself.

           
Mark drank his coffee for a few minutes, then looked to Jerome, “You good?” he asked.
With all of your section gone,
Mark’s eyes added.

           
“No,” Jerome sighed, choosing to not put up a front that he and Mark would both know was fake. “Though I know I did everything I could, it doesn’t feel like it.” Jerome looked to his coffee, “it’s like I know what to expect and, well it scares me and comforts me. I know that with time the grief and guilt will become easier, though I also know it’ll be like a wave, at first it’s hard to deal with, washing me out and draining me. I’m start understanding the waves and when they’re coming, they’ve become less but I can still tell when a big one is coming and I how to prepare myself for it.” Jerome looked to the warehouses steadily getting taller before the eight massive towers which shot into the sky.

            Down in the warehouses it was shit, weapons fire could be heard in the distance, broken roofs and smoldering trails showing the damage that had been reaped on the city.

           
Debris covered courtyards and broken warehouses marked no-man’s land. Jerome took it in, remembering the friends he’d joked with, had a drink with, trained, lived and seen die, or seen it on the cold updating casualty lists.

            Though in the distance, those towers looked pristine. Night and day, the slums and mega-city. Jerome looked away.

           
“Yeah,” Mark said, that simple word infusing how he was there for Jerome and understood his pain as someone who had gone through the same experience.

           
They sat there in companionable silence. They might be tired, in need of a shower and have an entire planet gunning for them. Yet they were alive, they had food in their stomachs, coffee in their hands and they had a new day. They took the time to crystalize those moments in their minds, to cling to them when they were deep in the shit.

***

           
Three hours later Jerome was in the entrenchments with troopers to his left and right, movement had been seen in the city.

           
Lieutenant Ortiz was in charge of their section of reinforced warehouses.

           
He’d taken his time making sure the defenses were damned tough, they didn’t want to lose another batch of troops to the colonists going ape shit.

           
Ortiz stopped next to Jerome and looked around.

           
“If you don’t tell Company Sergeant Quan where I am, I’ll let you fire the first burst,” Ortiz said in a conspiratorial tone.

           
Jerome felt a smile form on his face at the Lieutenant’s antics, the CSM undoubtedly wanted the Lieutenant to the rear and guiding the whole thing,
not
in the middle of the front line!

           
“Deal sir,” Jerome said clasping arms with Ortiz.

           
“Seems you picked something up from Nerva too,” Ortiz said, looking at their clasped arms, releasing one another.

           
“Easier than shaking with our damn gloves,” Jerome said.

           
“You may have a point there!” Ortiz laughed slapping Jerome’s shoulder. He cleared his throat and checked his rifle.

           
“Alright let’s see if we can’t wake these sleepy fuckers up! Watch your arcs and shoot anything big ugly and not Mark!” He switched to Jerome’s channel as the other’s got the giggles out.

           
A good laugh was better to focus troops than inane yelling.

           
They sat and waited, flickers of movement could be seen in the shadows.

           
It was near dusk; the colonists didn’t understand that the Trooper’s helmets allowed them to see nearly as good in the dark as the day.

           
Red Halos started popping up, sensor bundles tagging all in their view.

           
“Could you knock for us Jerome?” Ortiz asked.

           
“With pleasure sir.” Jerome nestled the familiar rifle in his shoulder leading someone running towards a large container hauler. A burst sent them sprawling.

           
The colonists in the immediate area stopped in shock.

           
The troopers had no such pause.

           
Red Halos dropped as weapons came alive, streams of tracers ripped through walls, machines, ricocheted around warehouses and cut down oncoming colonists.

           
The colonists switched from trying to sneak around to an all-out charge. They returned fire, the buildings the troopers were in being rocked by explosions.

           
Walls crumbled down and roofs cracked.

           
The world was the rapid sound of EMF weaponry and colonists ground shaking grenade-shotguns.

           
“Mortars incoming,” Ortiz said, he was standing to Jerome’s right and firing like any other trooper.

           
In that moment Jerome knew he would happily fight along Ortiz anytime.

           
He wasn’t like some of the officers he’d seen previously, he was more like Nerva. If he was going to make his troops do something, he’d be right down among them doing the worst job.

           
Mortars whistled overtop, hitting warehouse roofs and open areas, dust and debris rolled out in an angry and violent cloud as anything caught under the blast was turned to churned gore.

           
Jerome had no time to sit and watch the massacre, he was constantly changing magazines, slapping in new boxes and standing back so he could pick off the fleeing colonists.

           
The mortars were taking out the sensor bundles, but at this point the opposing warehouses were so filled with colonists that it was hard to not find a target.

           
The EMF was a wall, but the colonists had numbers.

           
For every colonist that dropped another made it a few feet. It was a hellish slog but they kept advancing, kept pushing forward with an unmatched ferocity.

            The troopers that went down were pulled back to the medics and ended up out of the game, leaving barely any reinforcements left to commit.

           
“Pull back to secondary positions!” Ortiz said, seeing the same shit storm as Jerome.

           
The troopers turned and headed through the dugouts, firing as soon as they were in the second line of defenses. Jerome made sure everyone was out of the way before he pulled Lieutenant Ortiz. It would not do to have his Company Commander get shot while acting as the rearguard.

           
“Thanks,” Ortiz grumbled as he regained his footing and ran to the second line.

           
“No problem sir,” Jerome replied, reloading his rifle and checking over his people’s ammunition levels.

           
“Three section! McNara, Smith drop ammunition packs, rest of you get a full battle load, work in fire teams, one person reloading while the others fire!” Ortiz yelled.

           
Jerome dropped his pack, “you two keep shooting, I’ll get you ammo.” Tapping Li and Ortiz so they understood he was talking to them before flipping the pack over and pulling the covering down. He fished out magazines, putting a handful of them between the two so they at least had something.

           
“What you need Li?” Jerome asked.

           
“Five grenade mags, four normal!” She replied.

           
“Ortiz?” Jerome asked, grabbing the ammunition from the pack.

           
“Six and six,” Ortiz answered.

           
Jerome dumped ammo on the trench’s parapet next to Li, he did the same with Ortiz’s ammunition before filling up his own pouches.

           
Jerome was getting up when he saw someone catch an explosion to their side, right where their plates were connected with open spaces instead of a large sheet like the front and back of a person.

            They were tossed to the side, their side looking messed up.

           
 “I got it!” Jerome said on the local area net, looking over the wounded person, they were from some other company, there were so few troopers left that Forces had been dissolved to make full Divisions.

            Even though Jerome didn’t know them, it didn’t matter, they were a trooper, one of his own.

           
Their arm and shoulder were pulverized and bleeding, ribs were cracked and blood was getting in their lungs.

           
Basically they’re side had been blown in and punctured by the explosion—not fucking good.