The tider's head exploded in a cloud of red mist.
Ashe felt the rifle's mechanism reload another round as he swept it around looking for his next target. Viewing the scene through the focused circle of a scope was, in its own way, a blessing. He didn't really have to watch the stream of tiders falling like raindrops on the grounds and walls of the Royal Court, nor did he have to watch what happened to the unfortunate civilians who may get in their way. It was a kind of ignorance that he welcomed. It was just him, the scope and a fast slug of hated firing whenever he deemed necessary.
Sergeant Green had managed to rally four additional court guards for the rooftop defence operation, pulling them away from their evac and security duties. He'd briefly introduced them all but Ashe hadn't paid attention, he'd been too busy focusing every fibre of his mental capabilities into pushing the hangover away and making sure that his eyes and fingers would coordinate as necessary.
Green had led them to a weapons locker and armed them all with long distance riot-control rifles and it had taken him and his team less than a minute to remove the non-lethal ammo modules and replace them with kill-fire mechanisms. Minutes later, their group of seven were on the roof and taking up cover positions along the south facing ledge. They looked out at the incursion: the ground defence being mounted below, the spires and walls of the Royal Court and Assembly Hall, and the three hovering death machines above. There was about a mile between them and the scene of carnage but the rifles were more than up to the task - equipped with weather sensors, self-compensating software and scope HUDs that would instruct the shooter to adjust their aim accordingly for the kill shot.
Ashe was positioned with Garvey on his left, and a guard whose name he couldn't remember on his right. All of them were linked with ear-buds that Green had provided, giving them some extra comms clarity over the sounds of weapon fire and skyship engines. With rifles mounted on the raised stone lip in front of them, the team could comfortably cover a south-south-east to south-south-west firing range.
The strategy was to take out as many tiders mid-drop as possible, if not in the air, then when they touched down on the rooftops and ledges, out of reach of any ground forces. They were dropping fast and would soon number at least three to four hundred. Ashe knew their group had no hope of taking out even a fraction of that number, but that didn't mean they wouldn't at least try. They had a duty after all. A damn duty. As always.
"You ever gone shooting in pyjamas before, Corporal?" Garvey asked, firing off a shot.
"Funnily enough Garvey, I have, but that really is a story worth telling over a beer when this is done." Ashe's finger squeezed the trigger again and a tider fell lifeless in his chute, hitting a tall spire and rolling downwards, the cute getting caught and suspending the corpse there.
"Brannigan, on your left, two of them going for that pair of men down on that security platform," Green said in Ashe's ear.
"I've got one if you have the other," the guard called Brannigan came back. Ashe heard the crack of their two shots, almost simultaneously.
Through his own scope, Ashe saw a tider hit a rooftop and activate his chute pack, the cloud of beige material began reeling in on motorised rollers. Ashe assessed the stream of info on his HUD and moved off the target slightly to adjust for wind. He waited for the red LOCK prompt to appear before firing and the mass of beige canvas was suddenly spattered with gore as the bullet passed through the man's torso.
In the surrounding grounds of the Royal Court sporadic clusters of hoppers, lawmen, and court guards moved through the streets and arches, the flashes of gunfire visible from Ashe's sniping point. Hoppers - most in full combat armour, but some without - were still spilling out of the Assembly Hall, slowly thickening the thinly spread Capital forces, coordinating as best they could. Fewer and fewer tiders were making it to the ground before being cut down by swarms of armed men and women. Ashe moved his scope to the next wayward target and focused on the job at hand.
"The fact that the scumbags thought they could try this is nothing short of humourous, if it wasn't so tragic," Green said, popping off another shot.
"For the Capital!" Garvey yelled, putting a bullet in some distant body.
"Enjoying combat, Garvey?" Ashe said dryly.
"Sir," he responded meekly.
"Easy when you're not down there," a guard said in Ash's earpiece. "All the fun, none of the danger."
"I don't know," Ashe said taking aim. "I've been known to have a little fun every so often. Only thing that gets me through." The rifle recoiled against his shoulder. "Well, that and a lot of drink."
He swung his rifle towards the Assembly Hall where a handful of tiders were now crawling over its surface like lice. They were attached to grapples and harnesses and were coordinating in surftongue.
"This cluster on the North side of the Assembly Hall, whatever they are doing, don't let them." Ashe blew one of them off the face of the building.
"Roger that, Corporal," Green responded. He fired off a shot and another man fell dead. The group of tiders responded by changing tact and started scaling around to the south side, out of the range of fire.
"They're still coming downstairs," Ashe said. The hoppers below continued to fan down the front steps of the Assembly Hall, signalling orders to each other and seeking out the nearest enemy targets.
"There was some sort of conference being held in there," Green said over the radio. "The Cabinet meeting with the Admiralty or something, I didn't get a chance to watch much more before the alarm sounded."
"Depending on how this plays out, that's either incredibly fortuitous, or incredibly bad timing," Ashe replied. He tried taking aim at one of the grappling tiders but the man disappeared around a spire. A sudden fit of coughing made Ashe's next shot go wild and a small burst of debris fell from the roof where the rogue slug had hit. He spat out a ball of bloody phlegm and quickly peered at the scene below. The screaming and battle cries of the hopper forces were audible from where he lay. It was uncoordinated and undisciplined but it did bring a smile to his face.
This is our home fuckers. LOCK. Bang.
"Corporal, are those frequency charges?" Garvey's voice came through in disbelief.
"Where?" Ashe responded.
"The cluster on the Hall?"
Ashe swung his scope back to the tiders scaling the Hall spire's. Although most were out of sight, he saw one man remove a cylindrical device from his bag and hand it around the corner to his comrade. Once set, the frequency charges would vibrate with an intense sonic frequency that could crack concrete or stone. It was an alternate workaround to breaching a reinforced structure when traditional explosives wouldn't work.
"Damn it! Take them out! Hit the men or the charges, just don't let them set them!" LOCK. Bang. He fired off a shot and the tider with the bag full of charges fell limp in his harness.
"Where the hell did they get them?" Green asked, firing a shot and missing the charge. "That's Capital tech."
Ashe filed the information away for later, it was definitely something worth reporting to his superiors. Another mystery to add to the mounting questions.
The explosion was not enormous by any means, but more than audible over the sounds of battle. Ashe didn't see when one of the huge windows of the Assembly Hall collapsed inwards, but the cloud of dust and rubble that erupted from the south side of the building confirmed the breach.
"Shit!" Green said as a fresh wave of tiders dropped from above aiming directly for the newly formed hole.
"Take them out!" Ashe yelled with a less-than heroic cough, and the seven of them began firing off rounds as fast as they were able. In their urgency, they hit almost none of the falling men.
"Yes!" a surprised voice in Ashe's ear yelled. He was confused as the celebration seemed just a tad unwarranted given the heavy miss rate of their barrage. But when he looked up to check the scene, he saw a missile or mortar of some kind rocketing up from the ground in a trail of smoke and fire. Someone down below had obviously had the foresight to locate some mobile ground-to-air hardware. A second missile followed close behind.
"Come on, come on," Green almost willed.
The two projectiles were headed straight for one of the smaller skyships.
Several cheers and woops assaulted Ashe's ear and he could hear an echo of the cries alongside him. He let out a cheer himself.
The third missile had barely left the cluster of buildings and towers below before the first two were destroyed mid-flight by one of the larger ships' point-defence cannons. The cries of celebration fell short just as the third rocket was taken out in another burst of gunfire, raining more fragments of fiery debris onto the scene below.
"We won't get through those PDC's," Ashe said with a croaky sigh. He coughed again.
"Can we take them out?" someone said, Ashe thought it may have been Brannigan.
"Negative," Ashe replied. "We'll need more than rifles to make a dent."
In the distance two more rockets made their way pointlessly towards the three vessels. After they were taken down, all further attempts seemed to stop.
LOCK. Bang.
Ashe managed to clip a parachuting tider in the leg, causing him to writhe in pain and trail off course.
"McKenzie's down!" someone yelled.
"Fall back" Green barked.
Ashe looked up to see the guard two spaces to his right laying dead, the top of his head lay in pieces a few feet further away.
Someone else yelled in pain. He thought it may have been Garvey.
Green and two other guards were already up, ducking towards safer cover behind a ventilation shaft.
Ashe had barely grabbed his rifle before a bullet grazed his arm. The sting coursed through his body in a wave and he fumbled with his weapon before tucking himself tighter into the ledge as a chip of tiling shot up and scraped his thigh.
"They found us!" Garvey yelled. Ashe turned and saw him running towards the roof access door. He didn't look injured. The earlier yell couldn't have been him.
Ashe peered out from his own hiding place towards the closest ship above, and saw the briefest of muzzle flashes from between the guard railings. He ducked in again as the bullet hit, inches away from his face.
"Fall back inside," Green yelled. "We won't get through the railings!"
"Sergeant!" Ashe yelled, it made his throat sting with agony. He was sure he felt something dislodge somewhere in his neck. The group were scattered, now pinned behind various shafts and industrial conduits, all except Ashe, who remained curled against the ledge, unable to move. "Rapid fire the fuckers!" The last few words vanished behind a fit of coughing.
"Brannigan, Garvey, set to rapid! Cover Marvel!"
"Yes, Sergeant," Brannigan replied.
The two men set their rifles to rapid fire and laid them on their cover positions with an approximate aim at the skyship above. The sounds of immediate gunfire ripped through the air and Ashe focused on nothing but the open door sitting between two pulsing flashes of muzzle-fire. He tried to take several deep breaths, but found he couldn't. His breathing was laboured and shallow. He was poisded, terrified.
"Go, Marvel, now!" Greens voice screamed so loudly in the earbud that it hurt Ashe's ear. But he was up, running. He zig-zagged towards the access door. Garvey left his weapon firing and rolled, scrambling towards the door. Ashe saw a spurt of blood emerge somewhere from Garvey's torso and the man screamed in pain. Ashe launched himself over the mans writhing body into the stairwell and collided with the wall, falling down a few steps before catching himself with the bannister.
Above him, Green was in, dragging Garvey through the doorway as another two slugs connected with his lower body. Garvey was crying, but crying meant he was still alive at least.
Ashe clambered up to help, but fell back. Too weak to move. Caught up in another coughing fit. Two more shrieks of pain came through his earbud and he pulled it out, throwing it to the floor.
Footsteps raced past him. He saw two pairs of boots run down the stairs. Heard the slam of a door. Saw the slowly growing pool of what he assumed was Garvey's blood soaking into his hospital pyjamas.
He heard nothing but the pounding of his own heart in his ears. The clenching of his gut warned him of the rising tide of vomit moments before it passed through his burning throat. As the hot liquid fell through the gaps in the stairs, he was pushed aside as another guard passed him. He didn't know what had happened, or who was hurt or who was dead. All he knew was that he had made it and that he was safe.
Outside, another foghorn echoed throughout the Capital, two more horns blared in response. There were a handful of slight tremors as something exploded in the distance.
It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he was alive.
Ashe Marvel had beaten the odds, yet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment