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CHAPTER 12




Noah jolted awake. His boots swayed as Mason kept kicking them.

“I wasn’t sleepin’, sergeant.” Noah blinked hard. “I mean I was. How long?”

“Shh!” Mason pointed two fingers at the window. “Got a vehicle scoping us out from the other side of the highway.”

Noah pawed around either side of his legs looking for his carbine before he realized it was still attached to his chest rig. A picture of a ground car flanked by slums flickered on in the upper corner of his vision.

“It’s just a car,” Noah said.

“Check the EM filters. Don’t move yet,” Mason said.

Noah touched his forearm computer and pulled up a spectral analysis menu and ran the feed from the optics through the program. The car changed shape under different spectrums; most showed a turret mounted on the middle and the front angled like it was designed to deflect incoming hits.

“Hold on . . . what’s going on?” Noah asked. “That some sort of camo?”

“We called them cope covers during my last deployment. Emitters mounted on the chassis can spoof orbital platforms and make them look like regular civvie cars. Up close and we can see through it. It’s Alliance tech,” Mason said. “Same with the APC. Cheap and dirty Sabrahs. They can get churned out by a decent foundry if they’ve got the right printers and electronics. Bet the Patties sold it to the Flags cheap. Bastards just love twisting the knife, don’t they?”

“That’s a tank out there?” Noah looked around, as if the roaches and faded paint were going to help. “W-what do we do?”

“Nothing yet,” Mason said. “How’d it get so close? There’s supposed to be another battalion on the other side of the highway screening against this exact sort of recon.”

“SALT report.” Noah flipped his forearm screen open. “Size . . . one APC. Activity . . . recon. Location . . . they use grid or latitude and longitude here? We didn’t even get a map download—”

“I already sent it up. Just . . . relax,” Mason said.

“I was plenty relaxed when I was asleep.” Noah hopped up to a squat.

“You want to get woken up by me or when that Sabrah hits the building with a rocket?” Mason asked. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Ready an AT grenade. You should have an extended range one.”

Noah found the grenade with a white stripe running down the handle. He unsnapped it from his chest harness and rehearsed how to use it. One hard yank on the handle would lengthen it and activate the sensor suite. All he had to do was paint the target with the optics and the grenade would feed him the angle to fire it.

“Don’t activate it yet.” Mason held up a hand. “They got cope shrouds, they probably have detection systems. You paint it and it’ll put a big old target on us.”

“We didn’t rehearse defending against tanks in training,” Noah said. “Why didn’t they tell us to train for that?”

“Noah, at what point are you going to pick up that this isn’t the best organized or led operation in the history of the Hegemony?” Mason shook his head. “It ain’t called a SNAFU because things go smooth most of the time. Or some of the times. Or at all.”

“What’s a SNAFU?” Noah asked.

A thrum rose in the air. Mason froze, then moved a hand slowly to the barrel of his carbine. The buzz of drone rotors passed over the windows, moving towards the other fire team’s position.

Noah opened his mouth to give a warning, but Mason lifted a hand to stop him. He touched his earpiece, then waved his fingertips across his throat. Even with their short-range IR comms, the drone was close enough to detect them if they used the radio.

The buzzing stopped outside of the bedroom . . . then doubled back slowly. Mason raised his carbine to his shoulder and aimed at the window.

Noah cracked the seal on his visor.

“Do we shoot it?” he asked.

“It sees us then we’re made. Least we can keep it from seeing anything after that.” Mason crouched behind the small table.

The buzzing rattled the filthy dishes, flushing out even more roaches. The barrel of the machine gun mounted to the drone dipped below the top of the window, pointed down the side of the building.

“Not. Yet.” Mason’s carbine trembled in his hands.

The drone dropped two feet and swung back from the building, turning the weapon at the brothers.

Noah heard a sharp whine and saw a bright flash of light. The drone crashed through the shattered window and bounced off the living room wall and landed belly up. Two of the rotors had been torn off and the chassis was on fire.

Mason stomped on the drone and kicked the compact machine gun clean off. The barrel clattered against the wall as tiny fléchette rounds spewed out of the severed ammo line on the gun and the drone body. Mason picked it up and hurled it out of the same window it came in.

“Fuck. Fuck!” Mason touched the side of his helmet.

“Shrike hit, you see it up there?” Corre asked over the radio.

“Roger, target destroyed but I’m pretty sure they know we’re up here.” Mason pointed a knife hand at Noah. “Hallway. Now!”

Noah went for the door and fumbled with the handle. He looked up and saw the frame had been knocked askew when they broke in and was jammed shut.

“If you’ve got line of sight on the vehicle, engage!” Corre shot back. “We’ve got friendlies coming across the highway and they need cover.”

“Wait!” Mason grabbed Noah by the carry handle and turned him back toward the window. “ER grenade. Hurry!”

Noah looked down at his hands where the grenade had been, then saw it on the floor where he’d been sitting and abandoned it in the excitement.

“Sorry.” Noah scooped it up and yanked hard on the handle. A targeting window appeared on his visor and he selected the APC masquerading as a ground car. He handle-pulsed as the internal launchers calibrated.

Across the highway, the APC lurched forward, putting most of its chassis behind another car. The turret slewed form-side towards Noah, then the barrel elevated slowly.

A green reticule appeared over the APC.

Noah pressed hard on the activation switch and the warhead popped out of the grenade with a ploomph and shot across the highway. The warhead bounded up on a quick burst from tiny onboard thrusters and sailed over the top—and thinner—armor. The warhead activated over the armored vehicle and unleased a single explosively shaped blob of tungsten that formed into a molten lance and pierced through the Sabrah.

Noah watched as smoke and dust enveloped the vehicle and thrust a fist into the air.

“Hell yeah! Nailed that son of a—”

Mason tackled him to the ground. Machine gun bullets from the Sabrah annihilated the window frame and blasted chunks out of the ceiling.

“Out!” Mason low-crawled toward the door, dragging Noah by the carry handle mounted onto the armor over his trapezius muscles.

The squad channel burst into life as Corre and others tried to shout out instructions.

“I thought I got it.” Noah rolled onto his stomach and kept crawling. Mason’s boots heels bumped into his visor as they made for the door. Another burst from the Sabrah tore through the bedroom.

“Maybe you got the driver,” Mason said. “Gunner’s still alive and he’s pissed.”

“Frag out!” Rochelle called through the squad channel. Noah heard the warhead activate in the distance and the incoming fire stopped. “Bad shot. Besco’s relocating with his ER.”

Mason punched the bottom of the door and it popped open. The two crawled into the hallway as the other apartment door burst open. Besco had an ER grenade in hand and ran for the hallway windows, the nearest one still intact by some miracle.

Besco punched the grenade through the glass, shattering it. The shards caught the light of nearby fires as they fell.

Mason reached toward the Flanker.

“Get do—”

A shell from the main gun of the Sabrah hit the outside wall opposite from where Besco stood. The concussion slapped Noah against the floor and a world-encompassing whine filled his ears. Pulverized concrete dust billowed through the hallway, dissipating after a few seconds.

Besco’s arm lay a few feet from Mason, the grenade still clutched in his hand.

Mason reached out and pulled the severed limb to him, ignoring the spurt of blood across his chest. He wrenched the grenade out of the dead hand and pulled the handle to activate the targeting systems.

He reached up and held it against the bottom sill of the nearest window and pressed the firing stud a moment later. Mason fell flat, hands over his head.

A sharp crack shook the walls.

“Target destroyed,” Corre said and a pic of a fireball where the Sabrah had been flickered on Noah’s visor.

“Besco?” Noah lifted his head. The Flanker was in pieces amongst the rubble, wide pools of red spread over the detritus, turning pink in the dust.

“Position compromised,” Mason said over the channel. “Relocating two floors down. Rochelle! Fucking move!”

Sergeant Rochelle and Saluan forced the door to their apartment open. Rochelle stared at the remains of his soldier, one hand on the doorknob.

“Rochelle!” Mason shouted. Saluan punched his sergeant in the back and that got the man to move again.

“I need his tags.” Rochelle straddled the body and poked through the broken concrete.

“He ain’t going nowhere. Come back when it’s calm.” Mason got to his feet and shoulder-bumped the stairwell door open.

Rochelle hesitated, then lifted a block. He let out an ugly groan between shock and horror and went for the stairs.





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