I look around at the remnants of our squad. We have two dead bodies, Sergeant Fallon and the drop ship pilot can’t walk, and the crew chief is still unconscious. Hansen won’t be carrying anyone, either. The five of us who are still on our feet will each need to carry someone. We’re in no shape for a fight anymore.
“Well, let’s get to it, then,” Corporal Jackson says. She shoulders her rifle and bends down to pick up the unconscious crew chief.
“Grayson, you take the sergeant. Let’s get going. If we miss this ride, we’re well and truly fucked.”
I don’t want to go back out into the street, but I don’t want to stay here, either. Once the PRC comes alive after sunrise, and people start collecting the bodies of their friends, any soldier in the area will be fair game for a public barbecue.
“Ten minutes,” Sergeant Fallon says as I help her up and drape her arm over my shoulder. “Don’t be stopping to smell the flowers.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I say.
Encumbered by Sergeant Fallon’s armored bulk, I am out of breath at the end of the first block. We’re running down the street that leads straight back to the civic plaza, stopping on every intersection to catch our collective breath and check the cross streets for enemy presence.
The shooting starts again when we’re a block and a half away from the building where we had holed up. Up ahead, at the nearest intersection, someone leans around a corner and starts popping off shots at our ragged little column. I’m in the lead with Sergeant Fallon, and her bulk on my right side prevents me from using my rifle to shoot back on the run. I sway to the side and lower the sergeant to the ground in the cover of a doorway, but by the time I have my rifle in my hands, the shooter at the corner has disappeared. Then I hear gunshots behind us, from the intersection we had just cleared a few moments ago.
“Watch the corners,” Corporal Jackson shouts.
I sight my rifle and fire back. My flechettes are kicking up concrete dust, but the shooter disappeared around the corner as soon as I brought my rifle to bear. If we’re going to be harassed like this all the way back to the civic plaza, we’ll get there in a few hours at best. They know where we are and where we’re going, and they’re smart enough to avoid a stand-up fight.
“Shoot on the run,” Corporal Jackson says. “Switch to full-auto and hose down the corners when they pop their heads out. Monitor your ammo, and reload when we pause to take a breath.”
Our progress along the street is painfully slow. Sergeant Fallon is doped up, but conscious, and she’s assisting me by using her rifle with her unencumbered right hand. Others in my squad are carrying dead weight. We go from block to block, rushing across intersections as fast as we can, and pausing after every dash to reload our weapons and rest for a few seconds. I parcel out the spare magazines I have left from Lieutenant Weaving’s stash to the rest of the squad. Firing bursts makes the enemy keep their heads down, but our ammo stock is dwindling fast.
As we get closer to the civic plaza, the shooting gets more intense. Where before there were individuals taking potshots at us, now there are groups of three and four working together, like infantry fire teams. It seems that everybody with a working firearm is out on the street tonight, and they all know which way we’re going.
I’m in the front for a change, stumbling along with Sergeant Fallon by my side. We’ve turned into a symbiotic organism, a slow-moving creature with three working legs and two rifles. As we come up on the intersections, she covers the right side of our frontal arc, and I cover the left. Without the aiming marker projected onto my helmet display, I wouldn’t be hitting anything. As it is, I’m not wildly accurate firing my rifle from the crook of my arm as we’re ambling along, but it’s enough to make the other guys duck back behind corners. I’m firing three-round bursts, and my rifle is down to a hundred rounds, with two magazines remaining in the pouches on my harness.
“Quarter klick to go,” Sergeant Fallon says over the squad channel as we hunker down for a rest after dashing across yet another intersection. Whenever we walk up to the intersection, people shoot at us from alley mouths and building corners, and every time we cross a major street, the fire from our left and right gets twice as dense as we offer the crowd a clear line of fire from four sides. Standard infantry practice is to pop smoke grenades before dashing across, but we’ve popped our last smoke a few hundred yards back. Now we’re just relying on the laminate of our battle armor, and the knowledge that most black market small arms can’t pierce our suits easily.
In running shoes, I can cover two hundred and fifty meters in well under a minute. Right now, it might as well be two hundred and fifty miles. We’re taking fire from every alley and side street along the way. I fire a burst at a building corner up ahead where someone with a rifle just popped off two shots at our column. The shooter pulls back the moment he sees my muzzle swing towards him, and my salvo hits nothing but dirty concrete. Still, I mash the trigger again, and again, sending two more bursts into the space where his head was just a moment ago.
“Grayson, you got any grenades left?” Sergeant Fallon asks. Her voice sounds weak.
“Just two rubber rounds,” I say.
“Well, fuck. I’m just about out, too.”
As she says this, she aims her rifle at an alley mouth to our right, and pulls the trigger. I didn’t even see anyone there, but as her burst tears into the darkness, I hear a cry of pain, and a shouted exclamation. Then the bolt of Sergeant Fallon’s rifle locks back on an empty magazine.
“Sling it, and take this,” I say, and pull the pistol out of my harness. She lets go of the rifle, which remains suspended muzzle-down by her side, and seizes the pistol.
“Where’d you get that cap gun?” she asks.
“Drop ship armory,” I reply. “I’ll reload your rifle when we’re across the intersection.”
“Good man.” She hefts the pistol. “Shitload easier to use with one hand.”
The next intersection is a major one, two main roads crossing. I stop at the forward edge of the corner building, and aim the rifle around the corner with my left hand. The M-66 has a built-in uplink to the TacLink computer, and we can use our rifles as remote cameras, to snoop around corners without exposing ourselves to fire. As soon as my muzzle clears the edge of the building, I see a bunch of red carets on my tactical map, all advancing on the intersection from the left. There are at least a hundred people coming down the street, and the closest one is less than fifty yards away.
“Hold,” I yell into my mike.
“I see it,” Jackson says behind me. “If only half of ‘em got guns, we’ll never make it across.”
“I’ll stay at the corner with the Sarge and cover. You get across, and then cover us.”
“You got ammo left?”
“Two mags,” I say. “Hurry the fuck up, will you?”
I lower Sergeant Fallon to the ground, and replace the partially empty magazine in my rifle with a full one. Sergeant Fallon holds out her hand, and I pass her the other full magazine. I drop to one knee, lean around the corner, and commence firing.
The closest gaggle of people is twenty yards away when I drop them with single shots, one round each. The crowd behind them scatters. Some dash for cover in the nearest alley, some turn around and run the way they came. A few shoot back, and they go down next. I have low-light vision, computer-controlled weaponry, and ballistic armor. They have outdated weapons, and battery-powered flashlights. For once, they’re caught in the open, and I have no remorse about exacting payback.
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