Edward Grant - Rebellion

Great.

Whatever had hit the suit had screwed up the exoskeleton. But it would have to do.

“McCoy, you ready yet?” Volkov said.

“Ready as I’ll ever be, sir.”

“Join up with Charlie team on the west flank. They need all the help they can get right now.”

Mortar bombs whistled toward the village.

Guns chattered around the village square in front of the hall, and some of the bombs exploded in mid-air. Others came down intact. Dirt sprayed into the air in the middle of the square as a mortar bomb exploded there, and shrapnel rattled off the side of Logan’s suit.

The men had barricaded the square almost as well as they’d barricaded the entrance to the village. No wonder they decided to put the aid station there.

Slit trenches surrounded the village hall itself, deep enough for a suit to crouch in without being seen, or stand in to shoot out. Tree trunks blocked the streets and alleys that led into the square, with only small gaps for men to pass by.

But a suit could still jump over them logs, if it had to. If the Panzergrenadiers came charging in, the barricades wouldn’t provide much protection against them.

Charlie team’s position appeared on the HUD. Logan jogged out of the square as more dirt and shrapnel tapped against the suit, then turned right along the town’s main street.

“I hear I got some new blood,” a voice said on the team net. Kader, according to the HUD.

“McCoy, sir. I’m on my way.”

A shower of dirt erupted from the building to Logan’s left as he jogged along the street.

The grenades that were hitting the buildings might not hurt those inside, but they’d eventually blow their way through the roofs if the Panzergrenadiers kept firing them.

Rifle rounds cracked through the air as Logan approached the western perimeter. He crouched and stayed in the cover of the buildings as much as he could, but the fire grew ever more intense. The insurgents must be throwing everything they could spare at that flank.

He took cover behind the building for a few seconds until the rifle fire lessened, then ran to the next. A grenade exploded on the far side of the building, just behind Charlie team. Kader raised a grenade launcher, and it popped as it fired a burst back the other way. An autocannon boomed as it fired beside him.

Three men leaned around piled tree trunks in the middle of the road, firing rifles. Beyond them the HUD showed a mass of red squares, at least a dozen insurgents tagged as coming their way. Kader crouched beside another torn down tree trunk on the right, and the remaining man in Charlie team fired the autocannon over it.

Logan dropped to the ground, and crawled past the front of the building as fast as the suit’s metal knees and elbows could carry him. He could hear the rifle rounds slamming into the tree trunks as he crawled toward them, and crawled across to the right of the autocannon.

He leaned around the right side of the trunk, to fire past the hacked-up remains of the roots toward the Montagnards who were crawling their way. One dropped his rifle as Logan fired a burst his way, then grabbed it and rolled back behind a rock.

“What happened?” Logan said.

“We were scouting out the area around where the bastards launched the mortar attacks from the other day,” Kader said, then fired another burst from the grenade launcher. “And these guys had an ambush lined up for us. We lost half of 3rd section before Volkov got us out of there. We fought our way up here, pulled down the trees for some kind of defence, and we’ve been fighting off their attacks ever since.”

“What about the civilians?”

“Most of them got out of here as fast as they could. A few wouldn’t go, and some stayed to help out. Poor bastards.”

Rifle rounds hammered into the tree trunk barricade, and Logan rolled back behind it.

A grenade slammed down and exploded, showering him with splinters and chunks of wood. He held out the rifle at arm’s length, aiming it between the roots, and looking through the sights on his HUD.

“What the hell are they trying to do?”

“I figure they thought they’d get us all in the ambush. Might have done too, if Volkov hadn’t got us moving out of there as fast as we could go. Now they’re in the shit. We’re hitting them hard, and they won’t get a chance like this again if they retreat.”

“They’ll still get us if we don’t get more support soon.”

Logan leaned around the trunk again. A Montagnard was running between rocks, heading toward the barricade. Logan fired a burst, and blood exploded from the man’s legs. The man fell as his legs collapsed beneath him, and crawled behind the rock, dragging the bloody mess of his left calf behind him.

The autocannon fired above Logan as he leaned back while incoming rounds tore up the dirt beside the tree. Kader fired another burst of grenades, then stopped to reload the launcher with a magazine from the ground beside him.

Grenades exploded behind them, and shrapnel rattled from the back of Logan’s suit. The early morning sunlight reflected from chunks of shrapnel that had embedded themselves in the tree trunks of the barricade.

Something slammed to the ground beside him. A suit rolled on the ground, with the left hand missing.

The autocannon gunner.

“Medic,” a voice yelled over the net.

“On my way,” Heinrichs said.

Kader reloaded the launcher and raised the muzzle above the barricade. “Just you and me left, kid. Get on the autocannon, and give the bastards hell.”

Logan knelt behind the autocannon and grabbed the hand grips with the metal fingers of his suit. Blood was still splattered across them from the hit on the last gunner. Rifle rounds hammered into the plasteel shield that stretched a metre in each direction around the cannon barrel.

He kept his head low, but the gun sight was just a hazy mess, probably badly damaged by the same rounds that hit the gunner. He peered through the narrow gap in the shield above the cannon’s thick barrel, but it barely gave him enough space to see where it might hit when he fired.

The Montagnards were still moving forward, and four of the Panzergrenadiers were approaching with them.

The Panzergrenadiers’ suits had turned green, grey and brown to match the terrain they were crawled up toward the barricade, but the other Legionnaires were targeting them as they moved, and they showed up on the suit HUD as slow-moving red squares.

Logan turned the gun toward the nearest square, and fired. The cannon jerked hard against the tripod as a burst of three hypervelocity armour-piercing explosive rounds belched from the barrel. The impact of the shells downrange threw dirt and rocks into the air, but, without the sights, he was firing too low to hit the suits.

He raised the barrel a few degrees, and fired another burst. The exploding shells blew a mass of chunks from a rock, but had no impact on the insurgents other than to keep their heads down for a few seconds.

Logan paused, waiting for one of them to move. The red squares were slowly coming closer, but they were staying in cover whenever they weren’t firing at the defenders or crawling up the hillside toward them.

That hillside had once been thinly covered with trees, and Logan could see the shattered bases of the trunks protruding from the ground. But the trees themselves had either been pulled down by the Legion, or shot down at some point during the battle. Only a handful still stood on the hillside, and those had lost most of their upper branches.

The fallen trunks were thick enough to provide some sporadic cover for the insurgents as they approached.

A suit emerged from hiding behind the end of one trunk. Logan swung the cannon and fired as the suit raced toward a rock. Two rounds hit the dirt in front of the man and blew dirt and stones into the air. But the third hit home. The lower half of the suit’s left leg tumbled through the air as the suit slammed down onto the ground. Blood spurted across the dirt as the suit crawled to the rock, and slumped down behind it.