***
“Lladron.” Unit 62’s lead was a young man with the word Scoops written across his chest in big round letters. He was tall, with dark hair and green eyes and she recognized him from a number of the scrimmages over the past weeks. He looked shaken, there was a thin spray of red across his left arm, but he seemed to be maintaining.
“I’ve got Kat,” Pauly’s voice came over the comm. “We disabled the eastern gun, but she’s in bad shape.” He was talking a mile a minute.
Bri realized that he must have hacked the signals somehow, because he was talking but there was no green circle on her visor, no buoy mark for Pauly.
“We see you,” Scoops handed Biloxi a med disc and Biloxi pressed it to his forehead. The disc dissolved into a little patch of nanobots that repaired the bleeding gash.
“We’ve got problems,” Scoops touched his wristcall and then looked at Bri. “We’ve lost 18 and 23,” Scoops was doing his best to stay calm, but you could see it on his face, he was falling apart.
Bri laid a hand on his shoulder. “Either we get in there and get his done, or we’re dead along with everyone else here.” She didn’t know where the sudden bit of strength was coming from, but she held onto it. She looked around at what was left of 62. Everyone was beat to hell. Some were covered in lake dirt, a few were nursing injuries, but most were just not there, KIA. Scoops was shaken. He had seen more than he could handle.
“Pauly?” Bri called over the comm. “How bad is Kat?”
Sporadic gunfire from the gate echoed out over the lakebed. They listened for NewT weapons but only heard Burster fire. And Bri wasn’t the only person hunkered down along the shoreline wondering if the marines had finished off two more from 37.
“Unconscious, but she’s not bleeding anymore. I mean, I think I got all the little cuts and scrapes. Her vitals are good.” Pauly’s voice was weak, shaken, you could tell he was at his wits end and, as small as he was, there was no way he was going to be able to get Kat out of there on his own.
Bri looked around. There wasn’t much left, 62 was beat up, 18 and 23 were gone, and 37 was running with 4 alive, but only 2 in service. The numbers were dwindling and it looked like most of 62 was ready to call it quits.
She looked over the unit. They had a couple sweepers, one Broadrail, Biloxi’s BB, and one other long rifle. It wasn’t much, but it looked like they had managed to conserve a fair amount of energy cells along with a bunch of p-loads, cartridges for weapons like the BB and the sweepers that used projectiles instead of plasma or directed energy.
“We need to get out of here,” Hinks had gone pale, he was going into shock. His eyes were wide and wild. Sweat poured off his face.
Bri looked around. Everything about where they were was bad – outside the facility, little cover, and sandwiched between Earther forces already inside and reinforcements on the way. Not to mention that the numbers they were up against had been staggering before they lost two entire units and had the other two severely diminished.
“I think we need to think about surrender,” Scoops looked Bri in the eye. “We can’t fight this many. It’s a death sentence.”
Bri thought back to the feed she had watched with Sedris. She remembered the Earther Dreadnaught destroying the unarmed, New Terran mining ships without so much as thought. Everyone knew the Earther military didn’t take prisoners.
She stared up at the tower that rose above the wall. If they could get there. She looked back at Scoops. “Our mission is to save those people.”
The earth around them shook as four Earther marines ran through the haze toward the facility. Everyone trained their weapons on the sound, but the marines were twenty yards away and didn’t see them.
“I say we rush them,” Bri looked around at what was left of 62. “It’s the last thing they’ll expect.” A few in the group looked less than pleased with the option. “We can’t sit out here in the open for much longer.”
Scoops touched his wristcall. Bri could see he was trying to work it out, measuring the number of marines they were against, the almost certainty that they would die in the attack. But if surrender wasn’t a possibility, what other option did they have?
Biloxi reloaded his BB. “We can pick up Kat and Pauly on the way,” he wiped his face with the palm of his hand. They had been on the ground for less than an hour but it felt like days.
“Where to?” Scoops looked at Bri.
“The tower,” she pointed, “we get there we might have a chance.”
“I’ve got almost a hundred marines between us and them,” Pauly sent a data feed to Bri’s visor. It was a drone view. He had hacked into one of the Earther drones somehow.
The drone must have been hovering just above the gates because the view shoed the disabled autocannon as well as the western gun. The scene that was unfolding inside the facility looked like something out of a nightmare. There were bodies in the streets and it looked like the marines were conducting door to door searches.
Bri watched as two marines smashed their way through a door and opened fire on whoever was inside. The windows shattered onto the street and she had to look away. “They’re not expecting us,” Scoops had been watching the same feed on his visor.
“Let’s go,” Bri scrambled to her feet and Biloxi fell in beside her.
“Pauly, we comin at you.” Biloxi took two quick steps and then leapt into the air, long-jumping toward the place where cover Pauly and Kat had found.
Scoops and the rest of 62 fell in behind them.
Bri glanced skyward looking for the drone, but she couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter. The marines might get warning, but it would be too late. Biloxi doubled his speed, flying across the lakebed with the his BB ready.
They came on Pauly just as Kat was waking up. Her vitals flashed across the screen. She was hurt, but not bad. She gave Bri and Biloxi a little chuckle when she recognized them. “Pauly just told me we’re not out of this thing yet.”
“Not yet,” a 62 with a medic band on his upper arm knelt beside Kat. “Diagnostics are good. You have a broken rib and some serious bruising, but nothing that we can’t fix once we get back to civilization. The medic dusted Kat’s helmet off and handed it to her.
“Company,” Hinks, who was still a little wild-eyed and pale, swung his Burster around and opened it up. The weapon punched holes through the dingy, beige mist and they heard a scream and the sound of metal on metal.
Bri helped Kat to her feet and everyone moved off for the gate.