Unit 37: Rescue at Kilter Field

  Chapter 9

  She was upside in midair, her legs following each other in a graceful arc. She saw the reflection of her body on their helmets, her legs splayed into a Y, both hands holding pistols. She pulled the trigger on each.

  They didn’t have time to react. They had been standing beside the autocannon, watching the drone feed, and talking about the ride down from their frigate. And then they saw something, a blur, just in the corner of their eyes.

  Bri was moving at top speed before she jumped. She had already locked onto both marines while she was running, little squares flashed on her visor. The first two in the way.

  Biloxi was right behind her. Upside down, her body swinging through the air, she put two each of the marines. But she looked away as soon as she saw the holes appear in their helmets and chests. She wasn’t interested in what happened next. There would be blood, maybe a scream, and their bodies would fall or tumble. Projectile weapons were mean.

  Biloxi’s BB barked out three times in quick succession.

  Bri turned and saw two more marines torn to shreds just inside the gate to the facility. She hit the ground as two more turned a corner onto the street and saw them. She swung her pistols around and dropped them. Her visor went crazy as Earther marines poured out of every building like ants when you step on their hill.

  Burster fire echoed around them. They were just inside the walls and the gunfire sounded like it was coming from everywhere, a hundred rifles cracking off. There was a scream behind them. One of 62’s was hit three or four times and blown backward through the gate. Another green circle on her visor disappeared before Bri could even read the last name. She clenched her jaw and fired at two marines taking cover behind a transport cruiser.

  But the marines had raised the alarm. Everyone knew they were there. Bri remembered the numbers Pauly had given them. It seemed overwhelming. Marines poured out of nowhere until they were everywhere.

  There was no chatter over the comm. No one said a word. The possibility of failure and death was upon them. There had always been too many marines; they knew that when they left the Helios, but now they were faced with the reality, the sheer number of armored soldiers that stomped the earth toward them.

  Bri fired and hit another marine. Her energy cell went critical. For a thousandth of a second, the earth at her feet looked like it was rippling. Then it shifted and exploded upward. The shockwave threw her backward but only a few feet. There wasn’t time to reload.

  Using their exo’s to outpace the marines; the NewTs stayed in a tight knit ball of motion, jumping and running as fast as they could. Biloxi stopped every few yards and laid down cover fire.

  There are moments in battle, moments that supersede thought, moments where training and conditioning take over. There are moments where, if you had time to think (or if you dared), you’d find yourself cut to ribbons. Crossing the main street in Kilter Field was like that.

  The Earther had them surrounded, they closed in from the east and west, both sides of the tower the NewTs wanted. It was a cacophony of death. That run, the last hundred yards to tower passed in a blink that felt like a year.

  Bri turned her shoulder toward the door and smashed through. Burster fire echoed down the corridor. Two rounds grazed her arm. She twisted in midair and threw herself onto one wall and then down a hall.

  Biloxi, the second through the doorway, yanked a micro charge free and tossed it down the hall. The charge sizzled through the air, spinning faster than what seemed possible. Biloxi took two steps and stood like a wall between the soldiers and the rest of the NewTs. His BB thundered over and over. It echoed like thunder.

  Scoops slid through door with his rifle blazing. A stream of orange tracer rounds flew by. And the Burster fire stopped. And then all they could hear was the sound of their own footsteps.

  They cut toward the tower’s main stairwell and started climbing. Tower one was the facility’s first structure, a colony ship, secured and used as the heart of the facility’s ecosystem.

  The space was tight. There wasn’t much more than a narrow path of steps that wrapped around what had once been a maintenance tunnel. Bri saw a metal panel with the words The JMC Kilter. She wondered how many years had passed since their arrival. The Kilter looked like one of the early colony ships, the kind that drug a few thousand people and their families to some desolate corner of a system to build a factory or a mine or a harvester or simply explore.

  She thought of the stories of her home. Then she thought of her family. Would she see them again or would everything suddenly end? But there wasn’t time to figure it out. She looked down and saw marines running up the lower levels, coming up behind them. “Higher!” Bri called down the line. “Get to the top.”

  They ran as fast as the slowest man, one of 62’s that had taken a nasty hit to the leg, not by an Earther round but by debris.

  Burster fire echoed up the tunnel. Every few steps, massive chunks of the wall and stairs exploded in smoke and dust as the marines fired up at them.

  A door opened and three people, a man, a woman, and a child stepped onto the stairway ahead of them. There were still people in the tower. “Pauly,” Bri broke radio silence.

  “I see them. Looks like there are more on the top floors.”

  The young girl looked back, her eyes wild with excitement, fear, and wonder.

  Bri thought of her little sister; they had the same color hair, brown but with shades of copper and red. A tracer hit the wall and exploded in hot, yellow sparks. The father stumbled, but got back to his feet and kept running.

  Another door opened a few floors above them. They watched as five or six more people rushed onto the staircase terrified.

  “I count six!” Scoops voice shouted over the comms and echoed around the corridor. More tracer fire hit the walls and exploded into sparks.

  Bri stopped and hurried Pauly and Biloxi ahead of her. “Get those people to the top.” She waded through the rest of them until it was just her and Scoops. Scoops leaned back against the wall and shook his head. “I got this.”

  Bri looked at the man. He looked as tired as she felt. She wondered what his favorite drink was, beer or whisky. Then she realized she what she was thinking. But none of it mattered. They were about to die.

  The mission was over. They were just running from the end.

  Scoops loaded a fresh clip into his sweeper and handed Bri his last power cell. “I can hold them here for a minute or two. He looked over her shoulder.

  A man and woman peered around the edge of a door a few floors above them. They saw the rest of the NewTs running up the stairs and took off after them. A wall six feet away caught a round and fragments cut into Bri’s shoulder.

  “Go,” Scoops looked down the steps and aimed his rifle at the turn. Scoops could bottleneck them there, but only until he had to reload or the Earthers tossed a grenade.

  She pulled a charge off her belt, touched the proximity control, and tossed it down the stairs.

  The marines were close. The sound of their boots stomping up the stairs was almost louder than the gunfire.

  Bri clapped Scoops on the shoulder and turned back up the stairs.

  The entire building shook when the explosive detonated, but Bri didn’t look back. Instead, as she heard Scoop’s weapon begin to hold the line, she wrapped one arm around the waste of the man and the other around the woman she had caught up to, lifted them as best she could, and ran.

  She made it three floors before the tracers began again. There was no telling how many Scoops had taken with him. The shine of blood caught her eye and she noticed that the man she carried was dead. His body had shielded her from a wave of shrapnel but most of his left side was gone.

  The woman’s eyes were closed. Tears rained down her cheeks. Bri couldn’t tell if she knew or not, but there wasn’t time to explain. Her exo was about to quit, the energy cell was toast and the woman was getting heavier by the second.

  Without
a word, she simply let go of the man and he fell away behind them. They accelerated, turned a corner, and saw Biloxi and the business end of his BB.

  Relief overcame the anger, fear, and guilt. She dashed through the door and heard it close behind her.

  “Yes!” Kat gave a heavy sigh.

  The top floor of the Kilter wasn’t cut into separate residential units or offices. No, the top of the archaic colony ship was wide open on three sides. There were probably thirty or forty people who had made it to the top floor and they were huddled in the center of the room.

  What had Anderson said about reinforcements? How many hours would it take them?

  She ran through the information on her visor. They had been on the ground for a little over an hour. That left them five. A little shiver ran through her.

  Boom! Biloxi’s BB fired and he ducked inside.

  Kat dropped to one knee, her weapon aimed at the door.

  Bri looked around the room. There was only one way in or out. The windows around the room afforded a view of Kilter field that only drones could get. She looked down and saw the hordes of marines on the ground, pulling people into the streets, and taking over the place.

  A marine’s head came into view. Just the top curve of his helmet. Daylight from the windows reflected off the dome of his helmet before Kat’s rifle knocked him back down the stairs.

  They could hold the room.

  “Biloxi,” Bri waved him to the southern windows.

  The big man wandered across the room, his weapon still smoking. “You look like you’re thinking something.”

  Bri looked out the windows. The marines below them looked a tenth of the size. “Set the Broadrail up here.”