Chapter 33

DAY 56 – BETA SITE – REED

“Well, this is horseshit,” Reed grumbled as he glanced through his scope. He was lying prone atop a tall dune, the wind blowing the leather cowl that was wrapped around his helmet, airborne sand particles whipping at his visor. Komodo was lying to his right, and Fuller was to his left, the three men looking out at the compound beyond.

From his current vantage point, he could make out the ten-foot carbcrete walls that rose up from the desert, along with a couple of the point-defense guns that jutted above them, their cupcake-shaped radomes glinting in the harsh sunlight. There was also a guard tower with a square roof situated beside the main gate, which seemed to be the only way in and out. To the rear was a great outcrop of sandstone that towered like a cliff to loom over the base, a couple more turrets perched atop it.

“Looks like the Governor’s intel was pretty spot-on,” Komodo said, his helmet’s superior optics letting him zoom in closer. “The PDF must have drilled this kind of operation hundreds of times. Their units are about where he said they would be.”

“What do you see?” Reed asked.

“The base of the wall is lined with sandbags,” the agent replied. “That suggests to me that they’re going to leave the base to occupy those positions when they come under attack. I can’t really see inside the compound, but everything looks as expected.”

“Can’t you throw up a little drone or something?” Reed pressed.

“Those CIWS guns would pick up a drone immediately,” he explained.

“When is our heavy support supposed to arrive?” Sergeant Fuller asked.

“Yeah, Brenner promised us backup!” Reed hissed. “If we engage these guys without access to heavy weapons, those PCEs are gonna be playing hacky sack with our heads before sunset.”

“She’ll be here,” Komodo insisted. “Trust Brenner’s plan.”

“I’ve got nine squads ready to go,” Fuller added. “That’s a hundred Marines and pissed-off locals ready for a scrap. Mortar and MG teams are prepped to fire.”

“Time’s almost up,” Komodo said, checking the clock on his HUD. “Get to your squads.”

The three men trudged back down the sandy incline. Fuller headed off to the West, where he would be commanding the three squads on the left flank. Reed stuck with Komodo, reaching the base of the dune where three squads of fighters and the rest of the agent’s team were waiting.

One of the squads had been equipped as a mortar and MG team, with four mortars and loaders, and four gunners. The gunners had XMRs configured for high volume of fire, with long, reinforced barrels and drum magazines. The weapons were a hodgepodge of whatever had been scrounged from the garrison armories and whatever Brenner had brought with him, some of them sporting ancient receivers with cutting-edge optics and rangefinders.

The remaining two squads were equipped as rifle teams, with a blend of intermediate and short-range XMRs, if such a thing existed. They were all wrapped in shawls and leather cloaks, their surplus PDF helmets peeking out from beneath their hoods. A few of them had underbarrel grenade launchers provided by the agents, their bandoleers filled with shells.

Komodo’s fireteam was equipped with the usual eclectic mix of equipment, each weapon tailored to its wielder’s specific needs. Every man was probably wearing enough gear to buy a yacht. Komodo was commanding, with Rancher, Eyeball, Strzyga, Viper, and Halberd following. They were the tip of the spear. Without them, the fighters would stand little chance against the enemy SWAR teams when the distances closed.

“Sergeant Fuller, are your people ready?” Komodo asked as he lifted a prosthetic hand to his helmet.

“Good to go, Lieutenant,” he replied over the comms.

“Right, time to go loud,” Komodo announced. “All mortar teams – open fire! Flush those fuckers out! Assault teams – get into position!”

Reed checked his rifle one more time, watching as one of the mortar loaders dropped a shell into the tube, leaning away while the operator dialed in the coordinates on its fold-out display. There was a loud thud as it fired, shaking the sand around it and sending the shell sailing away into the sky. It was followed by three more shells from the nearest team, and Reed knew that more would be firing from the other two positions. Almost as soon as the first shells had left the tubes, they were loading more, sending a stream of explosives raining towards the compound.

Reed waved for his squad of twelve Marines and Hadean fighters to follow, marching back up to the lip of the dune, Komodo’s men and the machinegunners moving alongside him. They reached the top and peeked over just in time to see the first salvo land, bright, fiery explosions billowing from within the walls.

Only seconds later, a procession of PDF began to pour through the main gate like ants, taking up position behind the rows of sandbags along the base of the wall. There looked to be a hundred of them – maybe more. Most were armed with rifles, but he could see a few of them carrying heavy MGs on tripods to nests at the corners of the compound. The mortar teams adjusted their aim, Reed seeing a shell land just outside the sandbags, tossing up a torrent of dirt and sending an unfortunate trooper’s ragged remains sailing through the air.

“Open fire!” Komodo barked.

The squads had moved up the dune, peeking their rifles over its lip and taking up firing positions, opening up on his order. The report of dozens of XMRs echoed across the desert, near a hundred shooters firing from three directions, the air filling with glowing trails of molten slag. The machinegunners opened up, their heavy barrels glowing red-hot as they sent a stream of slugs downrange, their heat shrouds shimmering like a mirage. Reed joined in, aiming down his scope and sighting one of the terrified defenders. The PDF had been taken completely by surprise, suddenly beset on all sides by massive volumes of fire and shelling. They were cowering behind their sandbags, the barriers doing a decent job of stopping the slugs, popping out to return fire wherever they could.

Reed watched his target flinch into cover as the man beside him was all but decapitated by a well-placed shot, shattering his helmet and painting the carbcrete wall at his back with brain matter. Reed exhaled, then squeezed the trigger, catching the trooper in the shoulder and sending him lurching out of view. Even at a range of three hundred meters, a slug at sufficient voltage would hit its target almost instantly.

The enemy was rallying now, their machinegun emplacements starting to spew tungsten into the dunes, the heavy rounds creating splashes where they hit the sand. The resistance had presented as small a target as possible, but they weren’t invincible. Reed cursed as he saw a Marine further down the line take a round to the helmet, rolling back down the dune.

“Get some fire on those MG nests!” Reed ordered. “Marksmen!”

More shells hammered the enemy defenses, tossing the troopers from cover, bodies missing limbs raining back to the sand. They kept up the withering fire, some of the fighters pausing to reload, the coils on their barrels burning like beacons. A mortar shell landed a direct impact on one of the MG teams, and they vanished in a plume of dust and flame, another gunner taking a precision round to the chest and slumping over his smoking gun. Reed glanced to his right, seeing Rancher fire another shot that took out a trooper who was moving to take over the gun.

A few of the PDF teams were retreating back inside the compound now, trying to lay down covering fire, while the defenses outside the wall had been visibly thinned. The sound of mortars faded, replaced by the buzzing of CIWS guns, the emplacements atop the wall finally coming online. The turrets turned their rotary barrels to the sky, streams of tracer fire reaching out to intercept the shells with surprising precision, making them explode in the air like fireworks.

“That’s as good as it’s gonna get,” Komodo snarled, rising to his feet. “Assault teams – with me!”

With his SWAR team hot on his heels, he scrambled over the top of the dune and began to race down the other side, skidding in the loose sand as stray rounds impacted only feet away. Running into gunfire was the last thing Reed wanted to do, his every instinct fighting him, but he swallowed his fear and rose to his feet.

“Eh, fuck it,” he hissed under his breath, raising his rifle above his head. “For Hades!” he bellowed, letting out an old Marine battle cry.

“For Captain Ortega!” one of the Marines yelled, more war cries following in chorus as they thundered down the dune in pursuit of the agents. Reed slipped and slid in the sand, more falling than running, his own heavy breathing filling his helmet. The marksmen and machinegunners on the dune behind him kept up their fire, supporting the advance – the fighters left with very little cover as they sprinted across open ground. Some of them paused to take shots at the defenders, suppressing the enemy, others stopping to fire off grenades from their underbarrel launchers. Unlike the mortars, the arcs were too low for the CIWS guns to intercept them, and they exploded amidst the sandbags.

Through the haze of dust and smoke, Reed spied the SWAR agents nearing the wall. They moved with purpose, keeping their weapons raised, firing on the defenders with surgical precision without missing a beat. It was like their very arms were stabilized. As they reached the sandbags, Rancher took down a pair of PDF with a single shot each, switching targets faster than Reed could track them. Viper leapt over the obstacle, landing on top of a trooper and dispatching him with a swift stab from a concealed blade in his arm. In the blink of an eye, he had brought up his rifle again, firing a burst into the scrambling defenders further down the line. The operatives spread out along the base of the wall, moving from target to target, flowing through the enemy like a corrosive liquid.

Reed’s team was far less graceful, the man ahead of him vaulting over the sandbags and kicking the trooper behind them in the chest. The two men fell out of view, then there was a gunshot, the Marine rising to fire on more targets as his tattered cloak whipped in the wind. Reed and his men piled into the defenses, and he found himself standing in something akin to a trench. The carbcrete wall of the compound rose up to his left, and the sandbags were to his right – the space between them excavated a couple of feet below ground level. It was already filled with dead and dying PDF, some killed by XMR fire, others maimed by grenades and mortars.

“Keep going!” Reed yelled. “Get to the gate!”

He followed the procession of fighters as they made their way along the wall, the occasional burst of gunfire ringing out. To his right, he watched as a Marine dragged an injured fighter by his rig, pulling him to the sandbags and kneeling to render first aid. A few more dead were scattered on the sand, but they had made it through remarkably unscathed. Much of the covering fire from the dunes had ceased now, and what remained was redirected towards the gate.

There was a yell, and he lifted his visor to see a trooper fall from the guard tower, the Marines beneath having to leap out of his way as he landed in the trench with a thud. The CWIS guns were still blaring, the mortar teams keeping them occupied.

Reed was growing worried now. They were about to breach the compound, yet there was still no sign of Brenner’s trump card. They would soon be facing down PCEs with no heavy weapons. He’d been in that situation before, and he didn’t much fancy going through it again. He moved along the trench, nearing the gate, one of the men ahead of him pausing to fire a grenade into the compound at a high arc. He could see Komodo’s team again. They were on the other side of the wide gate, tossing smoke grenades and shimmering dust that must be some kind of chaff, leaning around the pillars to fire at those inside. The Marines nearest the breach hopped over to the other side of the sandbags, using them as cover to get a better angle, firing through the smoke.

“Keep pushing!” he heard Fuller order over the radio. “Don’t let them rally and take advantage of that bottleneck!”

Komodo waved a hand, leading his team into the haze, flashes of molten red illuminating the swirling cloud from within as return fire punched through it. It was soon Reed’s turn, and he couldn’t even see what was on the other side, the fighters ahead of him ducking low and vanishing into the smoke. Resisting the impulse to hold his breath, he passed through, feeling a slug displace the air just above his helmet.

When he emerged, he was inside the base, the wall rising up at his back. Before him was the compound, more walls of sandbags and much larger gabions breaking up the lines of sight. Gabions were two-meter cubes made from a heavy-duty fabric liner encased in a wire mesh. When filled with sand or dirt and stacked to form walls, they did a great job minimizing the danger posed by explosives, and they could even stop an AMR round pretty reliably. Most of them were placed to protect buildings and to cover commonly used walkways.

He could make out rows of more permanent structures that took the form of carbcrete buildings with rounded roofs, likely serving as shelters or ammunition depots, and there were more of the pervasive prefabs set up around them. Unlike the naked white facades of those in the city, these were covered with camouflaged netting. The structures mostly hugged the walls, with a large expanse of dusty courtyard left clear, the tire tracks that still lingered in the sand leaving little doubt that it was the main thoroughfare for launch platforms and cargo.

He could see a few camouflaged PDF trucks parked haphazardly, some of them with troopers peeking out of the roof hatches with rifles, and further along were temporary storage areas for cargo containers. Further still was the rock face, rising up two or three times the height of the walls, a couple more CIWS guns perched atop its crags. There was a large cave mouth that led into darkness – the beginnings of the underground depot, and parked in front of it was the MAST launcher.

It resembled a long truck painted in PDF desert camo, with a boxy cab and eight or nine pairs of tough off-road wheels. Unlike the cargo trucks that he was used to seeing, it wasn’t articulated. Along its bed was a giant tube that had to be close to a hundred feet long. It was clearly a rocket, with a conical nose and large engine cones at the rear. There were erector pistons attached to the rail it was sitting on, suggesting that it would be raised up and aimed skyward during a launch, and he could see outriggers that were ready to deploy.

That was their target, but it was clear on the other side of the base. Standing between them was a whole legion of augmented troopers. There were at least forty of them that he could see, distinguishable from their comrades where the sleeves and pants of their camouflaged uniforms were rolled up to expose the dark polymer of their prosthetics. Their equipment was better quality than the surplus gear of the troopers, probably looted from the carrier, with newer body armor and helmets. Their XMRs actually had optics and attachments. Unlike true SWAR agents, they had no decals on their visors, and there was no variation in their loadouts.