Sacremon (Harmony War Series Book 1) (42 page)

           
He bent over his stomach in pain, his upper thigh burned and twanged with pain as the muscles pulled at the tears through them.

           
“Good to go,” he said, breathing heavily.

           
“Alright.” Tyler moved quicker than before, they came to another perpendicular tunnel. Tyler closed it off as Mark watched the ladder that went up into a factory, he could hear mortar fire in the distance.

           
They continued on, coming into contact with three more groups, Tyler hammered them while Mark fought to stay conscious, as soon as he felt drowsy he smacked his broken hand against the wall, using the pain to aid him. It was not pretty.

           
“Mark, Tyler, where are you?” Jerome asked over a private channel.

           
“Taking the scenic route,” Mark said, his coughs wet now.

           
“We’re in the tunnels, what’s happening up there?” Tyler asked, all business as they continued on.

           
“We’ve pulled back to the outer five factories losing Pullo in the fighting,” Jerome’s voice was harsh.

           
Those words sent a kind of pain that couldn’t be described in physical feeling, they hurt so much worse than the bleeding wounds of Marks stomach. “I just found you guys on my implants, we’ve got teams down in the tunnels, clearing them, there’s a team about five hundred meters from you, let them know where you are and they’ll grab you,” Jerome said.

           
Mark used his implants to find the groups Jerome was referring to and accessed their communications.

           
“We’re about five hundred meters in front of you, need a goddamn medic,” Mark coughed and slumped against a wall.

           
“Who is this?” Someone asked, Mark didn’t pay attention to their name, his vision wobbly already.

           
“Corporal Mark Victor, guard for Captain Nerva and my brother Tyler Victor,” Mark added Tyler to the channel with some difficulty. He heard them talking and saw them appear a few moments later, they moved past Tyler who let his rifle fall, they started pumping Mark with various drugs and spraying his wounds.

           
Mark changed the settings on his augments putting healing over keeping him awake.

           
He tried to fight his eyelids but it was a losing battle, darkness closed in on him.

***

           
Nerva looked up as Tyler came closer.

           
“You called for me Captain?” Tyler asked, there was concern in his voice, not over the conversation that they were about to have, but rather at having to leave his brother who was under the care of a number of medics.

           
“Yes, how is Mark?” Nerva asked, allowing some honest interest to seep into his voice.

           
Tyler was touched by the concern which was so rare from the man who had gained the nickname Diablo.

           
“He’s apparently not as bad as I was, which kind of scares me considering how far gone I was. Ferguson says that he should be able to get him up and moving by the end of the day though,” Tyler added, faithfully repeating the information that Ferguson had given him. He didn’t try to hide his apprehension; he’d seen the mess that was Mark’s body underneath his armor. It looked like he had been bent over for the impacts which had cracked his armor plates, they were used like shrapnel to be driven up and into his main cavity. They’d nicked his lungs and come out of his back.

           
“You two take a hell of a lot to put down, if Ferguson says he’ll be up by the end of the day then we might as well take that as law. Now what I want to know is your take on the colonists and the tunnels you went through. We’re going to need them in the next offensive or we’re going to have them crawling back up behind us once again,” Nerva said, waving Tyler to a pile of what had been a machine.

           
Jerome walked towards them, nodding to Tyler, a cigarette in his mouth.

           
Even though Tyler didn’t like the habit he felt like having one of the smokes to calm himself down, take the edge off of everything he’d seen.

           
“They’re pretty well designed, simple but effective. Fighting in them is going to be a bitch, whoever has control of them has to push forward relentlessly, not getting distracted. There’s little to nowhere to hide and grenades will take out the supports and drop the roof on top of anyone. I think they’re linked to every single factory. I don’t know if there is a way for them to cross between districts but we’d find out after using them. At each ladder up into a factory they run a tunnel to all of the ladders and connect all of the parallel tunnels,” Tyler said, grasping at other things to say.

           
“Did they have lights all the way up to the front?” Nerva asked.

           
“Umm, yeah they did, I didn’t really notice them with the helmets illuminating the tunnels,” Tyler said.

           
“So they need light to move down there,” Nerva trailed off, his eyes thoughtful, nodding to himself as if confirming a thought.

           
“How wide and tall?” He asked his eyes coming back to the here and now.

           
“About two people wide and around average height,” Tyler said, wondering what the Captain was thinking.

           
“Good, alright get yourself squared away, I think it’s time we tried something old school.” There was a hard edge to Nerva’s eyes and also, sadness?

           
Nerva pushed himself to his feet and headed off. Tyler leaned backwards until his back was touching the machinery behind him.

           
Jerome came over and took Nerva’s spot sitting against the other wall with a heavy sigh, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

           
“You got another?” Tyler asked.

           
Jerome pulled out a pack and tossed it to Tyler.

           
“Thanks.” He pulled his helmet off, pulling his sweaty hair out of his face and pulling a cigarette from the pack. He grabbed the lighter inside and sparked up the stick, taking a large inhale as the smoke filled his lungs, he held it for a moment before letting it out.

           
He put the lighter back in the pack.

           
“How did Pullo die?” Tyler said, the pack and lighter back together, tossing it to Jerome.

           
Jerome took his time putting the pack away. Tyler could see the fresh and raw memories pass behind Jerome’s eyes.

           
“One of those shotguns got him from below. They shot the catwalk sending shards into his legs. He fell down but they got another few rounds into the catwalk, he was dead in seconds,” Jerome said, taking a drag on his cigarette.

           
It wasn’t a good death or a bad death, it was like the majority of troopers that died, it was sudden and terrifying. One moment someone was alive, the next they were gone.

           
Just like the rest of the section.
A shiver went through him as he remembered how he had been following Utkin when he had stepped on a mine. The force of the explosion lifted him up, his body had dropped down, he cried out, the radio cutting out the noise as he tried to get up and see his lower half. A round from a weapon emplacement removed his head so suddenly, Utkin’s remains had dropped to the ground and Tyler had run over him, using his path because he knew it was clear of mines up to him.

           
He spat on the ground, not because of the taste of the cigarette but the feeling of rising bile at the image of Utkin’s body which remained impressed on his memory.

           
He and Jerome sat there in companionable silence, finishing off their cigarettes and taking a few long minutes before Tyler stood.

           
“Where’s the ammo dump? I need to get a new load and Mark will probably be needing one too,” he said.

           
“I’ll show you,” Jerome said, standing and leading the way.

           
“How long do you think it’ll be before we get sent into the grinder again?” Jerome asked.

           
“As soon as the higher ups realize that we’re not moving, probably in a few hours,” Tyler said with a voice of someone ten years older than he was.

           
“Did you hear?” Jerome asked, looking to Tyler as they climbed down the metal rungs of the factory’s catwalk.

           
“What?” Tyler asked.

           
“They fucked up by the numbers it seems,” Jerome growled, bent over as if he was carrying an extra load of ammunition on his back, a sour expression on his face.

           
“In which way?” Tyler said, thinking of a number of ways that the higher ‘credible intelligence’ had royally fucked them a few times. He had a new appreciation for EMF’s intelligence and it had most definitely not gone up.

           
“It looks like they think there are closer to a million colonists holding out in the city, not three hundred thousand,” Jerome said, looking like he was about to pull out another cigarette just as they got to the ammo dump. Thinking better of it with the tech people’s dirty looks.

           
“Fuck,” Tyler said.

           
“Got that right, and we lost about forty-three thousand people. Fifty-nine thousand against a million, they should have brought three carriers to take back Sacremon,” Jerome said, spitting in anger, moving through ammunition piles and slotting new magazines into empty holsters.

           
Tyler didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. Jerome had said everything that needed to be said.

           
And was General Wai going to order an orbital on Processing? Hell no! We’re just sixty thousand odd people. None of us are a CEO or worth more than the gear we wear. They would send another three carriers to Sacremon to take it back as long as the CEO’s are willing to pay for it. When it comes down to it we’re still just people from the slums, they can always get more of us.

           
They piled ammunition into their harnesses and pockets, slapping ammunition packs on while taking an extra each.

           
They’d probably need all too much of it soon.

           
Jerome sparked up a cigarette as they walked away.

           
“Got another?” Tyler asked, Jerome passed him the pack and lighter without even a raised eyebrow.

           
Tyler sparked up and felt the smoke fill his lungs.

           
It felt nasty for the first few, but it started to cool his nerves. He passed it back to Jerome as they trudged to their position.

Chapter 19

           
Processing City

           
Sacremon Actual, Sacremon System

           
8/3171

           
Mark awoke with a lurch, fresh dreams made him reach for his pistol, he needed to save his section-mates, the colonists were coming.

           
“Woah woah woah, calm down there Mark!” Ferguson said, hearing the man’s voice gave Mark pause as he found that he also wasn’t wearing his pistol or his holster.

           
I got hit in the tunnels, our people just found us when I changed my implants to saving me.
His mind put images to his thoughts.

           
“Hey,” Mark said, looking down at his tattered shirt. What hadn’t been messed up by constant fighting had been ripped off by the medics. Scars lay right under his stomach. He felt the tight areas in his back, finding new larger scars there.

           
He looked to Ferguson, the man was watching him warily. Mark could see the exhaustion in the other man’s eyes. The kind of exhaustion that weighed not only on a person’s body but their soul.

           
He spotted the needle in his hand.

           
“I guess there’s a reason that you woke me up?” Mark asked.

           
“Yeah, we’re moving forward. The contract got adjusted so we’re losing some restrictions and they’re offering us one hell of a bonus if we succeed, the less damage we do to it the better the payout.” Ferguson slumped onto the medical supplies behind him, rubbing a tired hand over his features.

           
“How bad is it?” Mark asked.

           
“Bad, they’re dug in tight and some of the units that got closer than us found out that they had artillery support. It’s short ranged but their explosives are powerful. Not many made it out of that mess,” Ferguson said, looking tired, the kind that seeps into a person’s bones.