Sean-Michael Argo - Trade War

“Reapers, advance to support!” crackled the voice of Boss Marsters, giving the order that Samuel feared would come.

Samuel nodded to his squad and they emerged from behind the barricades, rushing across the thin planks that had been set in place above the trench once the stormtroopers had seized it. The planks let them cross over the trench and rush straight into the firefight.

Samuel fired as he moved, taking his time to confirm a target before squeezing the trigger, ending the life of a Helion trooper who had just managed to bring down a stormtrooper.

One of the Helion armored transports suddenly hit the gas and barreled forward; abandoning the platoon of troopers it had been protecting and assaulting the trench itself.

Samuel couldn’t tell what the pilot of the vehicle must have been thinking, and perhaps it was simply panic, but as the vehicle reached the trench he saw their plan but was helpless to do anything to stop it.

The armored transport snapped the plank it drove over and the nose of the vehicle drove down into the dirt at the bottom of the trench while the vehicle up ended itself. Once stationary the hatch blew and full platoon of troopers began disembarking.

“ They’re trying to flank us!” shouted Samuel as he saw several more transports make the same maneuver, “ Squad Hyst on me!”

Samuel sprinted back to the edge of the trench, switching his rifle to full-auto as he ran. The marine leaned over the edge, took quick aim at the troopers below and began firing. The troopers had been so intent on shooting the backs of several Reapers who were still working their way across the planks that they didn’t see Samuel until it was too late. Two troopers fell to the ground riddled with holes as Samuel sprayed them with his rifle. Then Bianca, Holland, and a new marine named, he thought, Naobi, added their fire to his. The troopers were caught by surprise, so confident had they been in their stratagem. In seconds seven of them were on the ground dead or dying.

The remaining troopers were thrown into confusion as some of them pressed forward and continued to fire on the Reapers further down the trench while others counter-attacked Squad Hyst. The marines fell back as a flurry of hot rounds peppered their position, leaving Holland with a smoking hole in his leg. Naobi took two rounds in the thigh, which caused her to lose her footing and stumbled sideways into the trench. Samuel didn’t see her die, but it ceased to be relevant when Gretchen stepped up and filled the trench with flames from her weapon, wiping out the rest of the troopers in a sticky inferno.

Ben had been holding their other flank with his heavy machine gun, exchanging fire with troopers who kept trying to slip past the stormtrooper counterattack and into the trench.

“Prybar, they’re on the left and coming in fast!” shouted Ben as he drew the marine’s attention to a cluster of gun spiders that had appeared on the other side of the Helion forces that he’d been fending off. As the marines watched the gun spiders engaged the troopers and while the Helion soldiers fought hard, it was clear that in a few moments the Gedra would advance on the Reapers in the trench.

“Boss, this ain’t a proper battle, just a big bloody brawl!” growled Harold as Squad Marsters retreated from the ongoing fight between the stormtrooper company and the remnants of the Helion advance.

“Command has dropped all of us in a meat grinder and they don’t even have a plan!” shouted Virginia, as she and Jada snapped off several rounds indiscriminately at the Gedra and Helion conflict.

“ Armor on the right! Sector 2! Sector 2!” screeched the voice of a stormtrooper through the com-bead just before a nearby gun emplacement started firing at a battle tank in the distance.

“Boss, we’re glorified scrappers,” snarled Boss Ulanti as she and her squad re-joined the platoon and took up securing their position from the right. “We aren’t ready for this kind of warfare, regardless of how bad Command wishes it was true.”

“Fall back and hold the trench marines,” said Boss Marsters flatly after a stern look from Boss Ulanti in a rare display of defiance. “If the stormtroopers don’t take the third parallel they’ll be driven back here.”

Tango platoon rushed back to the trench line, now much worse for wear after the Helion assault. Roughly half of the marines in the field had pressed forward to support the stormtrooper advance, while the rest had been caught up in defending the trench against the sudden Helion transport gambit.

Samuel risked pausing while on the plank, looking up and down the trench to see that while the marines had stopped the troopers from taking the trench, the cost had been dear. By the time Samuel and his squad had taken up position in a blasted gun emplacement and mounted Ben’s heavy machine gun in the best place they could, the fate of the stormtrooper’s advance revealed itself.

They were in full retreat, with the Helion forces nipping at their heels. As the stormtroopers reached the trench and began hurling themselves into cover, the Reapers laid down suppressing fire from their overwatch positions. Ben fired rounds from his heavy machine gun with deadly precision, opting to annihilate individual targets while his counterpart, Harold, sprayed his weapon back and forth like a hose. The combination of the heavy guns with the marksmanship of the marine riflemen halted the Helion pursuit.

Samuel looked up from his rifle after shooting a Helion trooper, watching as the stormtroopers began to turn around and fight back. In seconds the auto-guns of the stormtroopers joined with the combat rifles of the marines and the Helion forces started falling back.

Everyone had sustained heavy casualties. The Helion forces were surrounded by the Grotto line and at their backs were the Gedra. So far the gun spiders, at least those that could be seen from Samuel’s position, were focusing on the Helion forces outside the trench, and had either not noticed the Grotto forces or were focusing on the easy pickings first.

The whir of turbine engines could be heard over the battlefield and Samuel turned to see that there were several dozen Dire Sword dropships enroute to the frontline.

“ Finally! They’re going to get the elite contractors in here to tip the scales,” observed Holland as he followed Samuel’s gaze.

“ Marines, eyes up!” barked Boss Marsters. The marines of Tango Platoon did as instructed, some of them taking in for the first time the awe and dread inspiring sight of the void battle in the sky above.

Flaming debris streaked through the sky as several dark shapes loomed in their sight, and only in those last seconds did Samuel realize what he was looking at. The drop pods slammed into the ground all around the battlefield, most of them landing either in or around the contested trench network.

The pods were as large as a passenger vehicle. As soon as their metal landing gears were set, small caliber machine guns extended from the nose cones of the pods and sprayed fire in a three hundred and sixty degree arc around the pod.

Abasi Hondo took a round in the shoulder and possibly one in the stomach as Samuel watched, before he fell from his firing step into the trench below, and then the hatches of the pods blew.

From the pods leapt massive armored warriors, three to a pod, all of whom bore snarling metal beast masks upon their helmets. They began to unleash murderous fire from their railguns, slicing through the bodies of stormtrooper and marine alike.

“ The Folken ,” breathed Samuel, horrified, sudden terror loosening the grip on his rifle.

The Folken were loyal to whoever held their contract and apparently, today, that wasn’t Grotto.