Chapter 7

We had certainly rung the Lizard dinner bell. It was probably a good thing we had no aerial surveillance or instead of imagining the worst we would know it for sure.

Considering our situation I chose the gators. In my opinion they were easier to handle than the skinks. They usually traveled in less numbers and had a stronger self preservation instinct than the skinks did.

Firing as I skipped I skirted around a fist of gators. The members of our team were close enough so we would cover each other if we got pinned down. We were in a fighting retreat and were not so strung out.

Bravo was not being stingy with the grenades I was happy to see. Those two may not have been Force Recon but they knew their shit.

I noticed a pod of dragons running to intercept us. Highlighting them on the battle comp Bravo redirected their fire. After the first couple grenades hit they scattered and kept coming.

"Bravo, deal with the groups. Whisky kill the dragons," Kapoor said.

He said that for Bravo's benefit. Whisky was already moving to intercept the dragons. It was almost a given that if dragons were in the field something interesting was nearby, something worth smashing.

Turning towards the dragons also gave us some space from the rest of the lizards. There would not be much reinforcing the group attacking the Command unit by the looks of the heat we were receiving.

"Tell command we kicked the hornet's nest and if they are going to make a move now would be a good time," I told Amy.

"Acknowledged. No medals."

Right, no medals I thought, and then shot a dragon that damn near got me. Fucker was hiding. Dragons don't hide as a general rule.

"Dragon was playing hide and seek," I informed the rest of the team.

"Fuck," was Kapoor's response. He was a bit of a pessimist.

Another dragon jumped up and swung at me with it sword. I hacked a leg off and kept moving.

Tomps and Lupe were behind me to my eight and four o'clock positions while Bravo was at my six further back with Kapoor at my six behind them.

It was getting serious. As we kept moving the lizards were rushing in from the sides. We were faster so they ended up trailing us and Bravo was giving them reason to slow down.

Ten dragons crested a small rise in front of us and the three of us in the lead shot them while Bravo narrowly dodged some plasma explosions that were launched from the other side of the rise.

"Something interesting ahead. Be ready Bravo," I said.

One of them sent a couple grenades following the path that the plasma ball took and they stopped coming. The ten dragons that were meat on the hill were stepped on by more. They were firing as soon as they crested the hill and we dove for cover. They rushed down towards us. We had their number though.

You could feel the excitement. They were protecting something or we had got something very important with the TBs previously.

Not charging over the rise I dropped to the ground and peeked. Below was a huge tunnel. It was opened to the side with a large overhang and had extensive camouflage covering it from aerial views. The thing was nearly a hundred fifty meters high and eight hundred meters wide. It was a hanger.

I sent what I saw to the rest of the team and onto Swanson. Inside you could see mobile cannons and batteries along with fighter craft.

Bravo immediately set the tunnel busters down and attached the B4s they had and sent them over and down at top speed. The rest of us started to fire at the dragons and skinks milling around down there. They were moving rattlesnakes into position.

When a lizard noticed the drones of death headed down towards them and tried to fire on them, Whisky was waiting. We shot them. I handed my hand grenades to Lupe and he was busy throwing them down both sides of the rise. The hand grenade we carried verses the nickels heavy weapons used, were a twenty fold increase in power. Of course they were much too large to be launched practically. You could not carry enough to justify the weight and bulk of the launcher. You just made damn sure you were at a safe distance before they blew.

As soon as the TBs reached the hanger I turned my attention to our rear. We had to get out of there alive after all.

It was not good. The twenty tics it took to Bravo to setup and reach the hanger had got us a horde of lizards blocking any retreat.

"When they blow we push ahead and out," I said.

"Oorah," was the response along with two obscenely large explosions followed by several more.

We quickly rolled over the hill and got out of the line of fire from behind us. The scene in front was extreme. The TBs were nearly fission in power. The lizard ordinance in that hanger was sensitive enough to go as well. The whole area, that had not blown into the atmosphere and was landing around us, was so hot it had turned into a molten lake. There must have been a shit load of plasma ordinance to create that much heat.

Not hanging around for the second act I jumped up.

"We're leaving Marines," I said.

"Fucking Aye. Holy Shit," Lupe said.

As we skipped down the rise the battle comps warned us about surface temperatures being dangerous to tread on. I leapt over what looked the hottest with the others following only to leap again twice to get out of the crater.

On the other side we found some lizards but it was clearly the path of least resistance. They were in disarray and many were injured from the explosion. We were on the move and didn't wait for them to get organized.

The next group of dragons was out for blood. They charged right at us from our flank. We kept our heading and run and gunned until we spotted some more coming right in front of us.

"Fuck," I said and turned to the ones at our flank. They were closer and Bravo would have more time to work on the new group.

Bravo launched nickels at the new group to slow them down and then engaged with Whisky.

They were using darts. Lupe caught one almost right away in his thigh. We had no real choice but to close with them or get surrounded.

I found my ax once again to be a life saver. Once the dragons saw me with it they tried to go hand to hand. I however, used both sharp edge and slug to fight them.

It was a short brutal fight. We had to move or die. Lupe almost didn't make it. His reduced mobility made him an easy target.

Through them we moved on.

James bought it. A dart in the back as he turned to skip ahead after firing. Kapoor grabbed his coilgun and slug pack without pausing. He was set to blow on proximity.

The dragons behind were wary, but not wary enough and a few went with him as the Armor's power source overloaded.

A large group of skinks was trying to head us off so we picked up the pace.

"Keep your ass down Tate or you'll get your ass darted," Kapoor yelled at him.

The faster you moved the harder it was to not leap and give any lizard an excellent shot as you sailed through the air.

He didn't say anything but his skips got shallower. We were moving fast enough that I didn't think he could fire without breaking his concentration.

The skinks were going to be close I thought.

Pausing I stopped and threw a grenade. It landed spot on and scores of them flew through the air in pieces making the others pause and go around. I paused again and threw. As Kapoor passed me he tossed me two of his grenades.

I ran ahead and did it again. They had spread out though and not so many were in the kill zone. Before skipping on I fired behind us and took two dragons down. The two in the lead.

It never really occurred to me to leave the rest of my team. My ground pace was easily twice theirs while being able to fire. Tate was doing better concentrating on speed and not slowing down the rest of Whisky's maneuvers. Lupe was not firing much but he was keeping up. It's all we expected of him when injured.

The skinks were slowed down by the grenades I tossed at them, but I only had a few left and the others were out. There was no fast way to transfer the CG55AM from Tate's armor to any of ours. He was wearing Class Vc being weapons platoon and had the external mounts.

When we got closer to them Kapoor, Tomps, and I engaged, slowing, while Lupe and Tate did not slow down. When they cleared Tomps skipped back into the lead and Kapoor took off as well bringing up the rear. I stayed a few more tics before skipping on.

Past the skinks, it looked like we had avoided the worst. They could not hope to keep up and the dragons would hopefully give up or get slowed down by the skinks.

Our problem was we were heading clearly away from our unit and the Command element.

"We need to circle around," Kapoor said.

Tomps turned right and we watched over our shoulder as well as in front of us. Without orbital we were moving blind hoping we did not skip right into the Lizards' lap.

The dragons did notice our turn and once again we were in danger of being cut off. I spotted them cresting a rise.

"Tomps. They are at our three o'clock."

"Fuck," he said and turned a little to the left to give us some time.

There was a larger rise up ahead to the left a little.

"Tomps, head for that rise," I said.

He just turned and did it.

I skipped on ahead as fast as I could. Thirty tics ahead of them I dropped at the top and took aim. As I spotted the first dragon at three klicks out, I started to fire. It took the five before they altered course and stuck to low lying areas. I lost them until the rest of my team topped the rise and the dragons jumped up, either running out of low lying areas going in the right direction, or perhaps they were just feeling safe again.

I got seven before they found a hole to jump down. Not waiting to see how long they stayed down I skipped off to my left to catch up to the others having changed direction back to put us back on course. We would have to turn again and head back but hopefully with fewer lizards in between us and the unit.

A few klicks later we did change direction. Our pace had slowed to a fighting speed for Tate without active pursuit.

"The Command element was just recalled," Swanson sent to us.

"Now get your asses back here so we can leave too," she added.

"Aye Aye Lieutenant," Kapoor said.

We had twelve klicks to go. At six we had to stop. A fucking swarm was in the way. They were moving at the double towards our unit.

"Send a bumblebee up. You got a swarm headed to you," I told Swanson.

"Where in the fuck are they coming from? We are headed to this grid. Meet us," she said.

We backtracked a little and were off to meet up. We would have to put some serious distance between us. They had a couple crawlers and there would not be any pickup with them nearby.