The second strike happened in the middle of the night. The UNAF forces moved to surround the building with the APCs and technicals, and then hit the building with a galaxy of covering fire while three squads of ten troops moved toward the perimeter wall.
‘Here we go!’ Vasco shouted. He had collected everyone’s micromortars and installed himself in the centre of the roof. Using his drone for enhanced optics and time-on-target targeting, he began methodically discharging each one and discarding them. The subsequent ripple of explosions tore through the surrounding streets and shook the whole compound, sowing total chaos amongst the advancing squads. As before, they immediately scattered, some seeking refuge on the ground floor of Government House itself, others running back to the UNAF line of vehicles. In between lay a dozen mangled corpses, steaming from where the high explosive had overwhelmed their Mantix shock dissipater layer and turned their innards to soup.
Sev and Kgosi were on the ground floor, completely impervious to all but the most sustained and powerful LRIS—which the UNAF forces were now bringing to bear, from old, outdated electronic warfare pods—and opened up a field of enfilading fire for those troops advancing through the ground floor. Those who were not simply deleted from existence by the magma pulse fired back wild salvos of rail rounds, some of which even connected with the shielded Mantix of the VIPER team, before being forced to retreat.
‘Yeah, keep running motherfuckers,’ Kgosi shouted over the wideband.
‘There’s no sport in this,’ Sev said. ‘They should give up now.’
‘We tried to tell them, Sev,’ Vasco replied, as more laser and rail fire slammed into the building from all sides. Large sections of the cladding had melted away now or been shredded by the railgun fire, revealing the large diamond flak boards and webbed carbon skeleton of Government House below. Hell, the building would have made a good go of withstanding a kinetic rail strike from orbit. Without Harlequins or even some man-portable heavy, penetrative ordnance, they simply weren’t going to get through the external walls in any meaningful way.
‘Captain?’ Jennifer Brock’s voice suddenly crackled over the comlink.
‘Yeah?’ Vasco replied.
‘Can I see someone for a second? It’s the General.’
Vasco checked the drone feeds. UNAF forces had retreated back to the perimeter, but no further this time. They were regrouping for another assault, rather than retreating.
‘K, go see what she wants,’ he said. ‘And quickly,’ he added.
‘Chief.’
Again, Vasco tuned into Kgosi’s helmet camera as the man moved back up to the top floor and to the small alcove where they had placed their three charges.
‘Ah, shit,’ Kgosi said.
‘Shit,’ Vasco murmured to himself.
Rhodes was as pale as snow, and dripping with sweat. His eyes were red and his nose was streaming. Every few seconds he would be wracked with deep fits of expectorate coughing. The phlegm cascading down his chin and chest was bloody.
‘Shit, Chief, he looks like he’s dying,’ Kgosi said, crouching down. ‘His temperature is fucking high. I don’t know shit about medicine, but I think his ticket’s getting punched in under an hour.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Brock asked. She didn’t look great herself; there was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and her eyes looked rheumy. Her chest and armpits were dark with sweat.
‘Motherfucker,’ Kgosi muttered, and screwed off his helmet.
‘Lids on, K,’ Vasco said, switching to Kgosi’s corneal implants.
‘Shit, Chief, this guy might need breath in a few minutes.’
It happened quickly—so quickly it was done before Vasco could shout a warning. Brock snatched the big combat knife from Kgosi’s chest scabbard and jammed it into his neck a half-second before he slammed her arm out the way with bone-shattering force.
‘Shit!’ Vasco shouted. ‘K!’
‘Mother… fucker,’ Kgosi gurgled.
‘Fuck you! Fuck the UN!’ Brock screamed, cradling her shattered arm and snatching wildly for the knife.
‘Fuck! K!’ Vasco shouted. ‘Sev, get your ass to K, now!’
‘On my way,’ Sev replied.
‘K, leave it in your neck, don’t take it out!’ Vasco shouted. He couldn’t see what was happening, the corporal was flailing around. ‘Talk to me Sev, come on!’
‘I’m nearly there,’ Sev replied, unrufflable.
‘Brock’s stabbed K in the neck. She’s a problem, Sev, you need to restrain her.’
‘Understood.’
Vasco switched between Sev’s and Kgosi’s helmet cams. Kgosi’s vital signs were nosediving on his HUD. Drugs suffused his bloodstream, calming him. Implant nanobots swarmed to the site of the bleed, coagulating the internal haemorrhaging.
‘You need to get his helmet back on,’ Vasco said, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘That Mantix needs sealing asap.’
He watched through a combination of the Government House VI and Sev’s helmet cam as Sev arrived. He immediately, dispassionately forced the screaming, frothing Brock to the floor and restrained her, before calmly setting Kgosi down. The man’s eyes were bulging, and despite the drugs he was clearly in deep distress; but his UN Marines training was kicking in, forcing him to remain calm. They spent subjective months of VR debt undergoing deliberately brutal and violent maiming in order to enable them to accept that their bodies could be recovered and healed from almost any injury. Although nothing could compare to the horror of being mortally injured in real life, the training was having some effect.
‘All right K, all right brother, relax, relax, calm,’ Sev was saying, looking at the knife. ‘I don’t want to take it out,’ he said to Vasco, gently probing the wound. The knife had gone in at the left side of his neck, sliced the carotid artery and jugular vein in two, and was embedded in one of the cervical vertebra. ‘I can’t get his helmet back on with the knife still in, though.’
‘You’re going to have to remove the handle,’ Vasco said, keeping his voice level. The UNAF forces outside were regrouping for another attack. ‘Sev, we don’t have much time. You need to find a way to remove the handle.’
‘Shit, Chief, I’d need some kind of plasma cutter for that.’
‘Sev, without that helmet he will die.’
‘Ah, fuck,’ Sev muttered. Kgosi was losing consciousness. ‘I’ll have to use the pulser on a tight beam.’
Vasco was on the move, climbing down from the roof.
‘Do what you need to,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
Sev lifted the magma pulse and, using his IHD, changed the settings to the narrowest cone of fire at the lowest intensity.
‘K,’ Vasco heard him say over the comlink, ‘Don’t move.’
Sev pressed the muzzle of the pulser against the hilt of the blade and squeezed the trigger. There was a sound like a thunderbolt, and the blade’s handle tumbled to the floor. Kgosi’s neck immediately blossomed with angry-looking burns, but the skin remained intact. He was also rendered suddenly and profoundly deaf in his left ear.
‘I got it,’ Sev said, snatching up Kgosi’s helmet and twisting it back on. Immediately Kgosi’s vitals stabilised. His helmet could feed his brain oxygen and his arteries had been sealed by the implant nanobots. He would live, but for now he was completely incapacitated. With nothing more to be done, his IHD knocked him into a coma.
‘Sev, I’m going to the bombardment shelter to check something,’ Vasco said, moving down the south stairwell. ‘UNAF forces are regrouping for an attack. We’ve got maybe a couple of minutes. If I’m not back from the bunker in time, I want you to seal the first floor using the explosives we’ve planted and hold out for as long as you can or until VIPER Bravo can extract you. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sev replied.
‘Good.’ Vasco cancelled the link as he reached the ground floor. He sprinted through the building, following the marker on his HUD, until he reached the east stairwell
and descended into the bowels of the facility.
It took painfully long minutes to get down to the shelter. Like all shelters, by law it had to be a certain depth below solid bedrock in order to withstand most orbital ordnance, and the descent spanned several hundred metres. There was no way to access it remotely either; to prevent hacking, the shelter was sealed from the IHD and global network.
‘Hurry, Captain,’ Sev said. ‘You’re running out of time.’
Vasco reached the bottom. The hatch in front of him was an airlock, a thick, circular door covered in warning markers. More painfully long seconds ticked by as he cycled through the outer and inner airlocks.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said as the inner door finally opened. ‘Oh sweet Christ.’