The bug drones showed movement coming in their way. There were two ways to do an assault, noisy or quiet. These guys were noisy.
They drove an armored ATV into the magnetic fence, trying to rip apart the hinges. But it didn’t work, as the steel poles were too deep in the ground to simply smash through, even with a massive vehicle. Failing that, they hopped out of the vehicle and climbed on top of the hood, climbing their way over the fence.
Vidal opened up his nano carbon alloy shutter enough that he could sight through his laser sniping rifle. The opening was only enough so that he could steady his rifle barrel on top of the opening and look outside the window. He held his breath and slow squeezed his shot. One of the idiots on top of the vehicle started throwing gear over the fence. Vidal’s shot ripped right through the man’s midsection, leaving a scorching hole in him that knocked him off the vehicle and onto the ground. Other Marines began shooting into the incoming attackers, some just shot the gear that had been thrown over, effectively destroying it.
Vidal peppered the vehicle with shots as it backed up and drove off, but a heavy armored vehicle wouldn’t be easily damaged by regular rifle fire. Five dead bodies lay outside the gate, steam rising up from where they’d been torn apart. That had been very easy.
“They’re all just hovering together at the intersections,” a male voice said over the helmet comms, “I think they’re regrouping.”
After a few agonizing minutes, waiting around and peering through his scope, Vidal saw waves of vehicles coming in fast and lining up around the perimeter of the fence, at least two dozen from what Vidal could see. Each vehicle could seat up to ten people, which meant a possible force of over two hundred and forty people were about to come their way. When these people stepped out, they were in full heavy combat armor. Rather than throwing their gear over the fence and then jumping over, these attackers had their weapons strapped over their back so they could move freely with their hands.
The Marines opened fire on the advanced units, but the heavy armor could take several shots before it began to crumble under pressure. A few of the more enterprising attackers picked up the bodies of their dead or fallen comrades and used them as shields, a move which reminded Vidal of why snipers shot people in the back of formation, not the front.
“More hostiles are in bound. We count five ATVs heading your way,” a voice called over the radio. Vidal winced, but then received even more bad news, “Five more on another side,” another voice said. A hundred reinforcements.
The Marines switched to firing off grenades when the enemy switched to using dead bodies as cover, blowing gigantic holes in the lawn as body parts, dirt clouds, and blood mists began to litter the area and obscure the Marines vision. The ones who ran through the killing fields hugged the walls of the mansion, too close for the Marines to shoot or to effectively hit with grenades. Without any battering ram or other equipment, they didn’t have any way to breach the mansion. A few of the dumber ones ran back to their vehicles, only to get picked off again by Marines.
“Any more inbound?” Captain Smith asked over the comms.
“Clear on the north side,” said the first voice.
“Clear on the south side,” said the second voice.
“Clear on the east side,” another voice called out.
“Clear on the west side,” another voice rang out.
“There’s too many of them, we need reinforcements. Echo through Hotel, advance and close off the attackers,” Captain Smith’s voice went through the comms. “Indigo and Juliet, keep lookout for anyone trying to join afterwards, go to north side and south side positions, that gives the best vantage point. Bug drones will watch on the east and west. Attack immediately if reinforcements arrive, hit hard and fast, but move out. They have better armor in their vehicles than we do.”
Some of the smarter ones began walking back from the house and shooting up into the nano carbon shutters. This suppressive fire kept the Marines from shooting at the rest of incoming force. Vidal had no idea how many of them were left out there, but he guessed it was at least a hundred. The sustained gunfire into the house made patches of wall disappear, melted away or blown apart.
“Abandon the windows. Everyone, fall back to the portable bunkers,” Captain Smith’s voice called out over the comms. The portable bunkers were heavy reinforced covers with hydraulic bolts that slammed into the ground, providing protection against heavy attacks like grenade and mortar attacks. With openings now available, the attackers would soon begin hurling grenades and shooting rockets through the opening.
Vidal and his soldiers retreated back into the portable bunkers, sealing them up and sticking their weapons through the gun holes. Each bunker could hold four people in it, giving a full sweep of firing lanes. Vidal hated being trapped in there, even with the 360 perimeter his men provided, he felt like he was a sitting duck. He wanted to be in the thick of things, but knew that was a great way to die when things got hot.
The other Marines were still closing in on them, the goal was to form a pincer attack that left the attackers stranded in the middle of an open field. He hoped that the attackers were as tactically clueless as they appeared. If they had another contingent nearby, they could enclose the incoming Marines and pinch them instead.
They had nineteen people on the inside, sixteen people arriving as backup, and they were against a group that had triple those numbers.
Rockets and grenades started peppering the house, explosions rocketing the building and vibrating through the ground. The house was built with marble, reinforced steel, and magnetic plates. Fires started catching in different areas. When they did, the house would start spraying foam into the fire and smother it, but as more pieces of the house were blown apart, the security systems started failing.
One of the assaulters tried cutting off the power to the house, only to get blasted by the prepared claymore charge that had been setup. The houses power shut off and Vidal’s helmet immediately switched over to ultra sensory mode. He could still see, but now the fires were free to spread wherever they wanted. Sections of the ceiling started falling off in huge blocks, hitting some of the portable bunkers and pinning them shut. It wouldn’t kill the Marines inside, but being trapped in a tiny bunker for hours until a rescue crew could cut them out was a terrible way to spend the day, and it further reduced their fighting force.
The explosion slowed down, then stopped. Someone must have given the order to stop shelling the house. Even though it felt like he’d been pinned for hours, the total elapsed time had been four minutes. The first team of their reinforcements had arrived, but they weren’t advancing yet. They had to keep waiting until all of their personnel arrived.
“Head count. Team Zulu, all accounted for and able to move,” Captain Smith said over the comms.
“Team Alpha, all accounted for and able to move,” 1SG Vidal said into the comms.
“Team Bravo, all accounted for, one soldier is down from shrapnel. He’s not KIA, but he’s not in fighting condition,” SSG Emily Gułminski said. “But we can still move.”
“Team Charlie, all accounted for but we are pinned down under heavy debris, will require an excavation crew,” SGT Absalon Legezki said.
“Team Delta, all accounted for, also unable to move from our position,” SGT Sergio Murphy replied. “We’re not completely closed in, if someone can move one of the marble slabs off of us, we should be good to go.”
“Team Alpha,” Captain Smith said, “Move silently and get team Delta out if you can.”
“Affirmative Ma’am,” Vidal said. He hit the hydraulic release button and started pulling the cover off of himself, his soldiers did likewise. He low crawled to the position that his helmet marked for where team Delta was located at. The fire and smoke were obscuring their vision too much, and though the ultra sensory equipment could easily deal with smoke, it had a harder time dealing with the fires. When was the last time he low crawled? He’d forgotten how much it sucked.
His thoughts were interrupted when another part of the ceiling came crashing down right where he was about to crawl. He hopped back as it slammed into the grounds a foot from where he’d been. “Fuck,” the only expletive he felt adequately conveyed the situation. He set his comms to broadcast, “Everyone watch out. Sections of ceiling are falling down. Fires are also all over the place, obscuring vision. Proceed with caution.”
He saw team Delta’s position. A gigantic marble and stone piece lay on top of it, but it wasn’t completely on there. They could push it all off if they gave it their all.
“We gotta be quick about this,” Vidal told his team. “On three, pop up, push as hard as you can, and as soon as you feel it fall off, move back and hit the ground. One. Two. Three.”
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He jumped up pushed on the collapsed stone piece, feeling his men hit it with their momentum at the same time. It wouldn’t budge. He squatted down and put all of his strength into the move, his men were likewise repositioning themselves to get better leverage. He felt the stone piece move. He kept straining at the stone, throwing all of his muscle into it. His back felt like it was going to pop under the strain. He reminded himself to breath, pushing out short, harsh breaths through his mouth. Just when he thought his body would tear itself apart, the sudden release of pressure as the stone toppled over left him lurching off balance.
He followed the momentum through and resumed the low crawl position. Team Delta released their bolts and followed along beside them, all of them hugging the floor. The crawl through the house was only a few hundred feet, but low crawling at a high pace after exerting himself took a physical toll on him. Still, he was a Marine, and Marines persevered.
Captain Smith and Private Preuss were on two mounted machine guns on a staircase that overlooked the front door. Fortunately, the staircase provided a choke point, and they’d reinforced the railings with expandable reinforced plating. Captain Thomas was huddled in the corner, looking at his data pad. He kept all of the communication and visual equipment in motion, so he wasn’t going to be much use in the fight. Vidal signaled for his men to spread out over the walkway of the stair way to take up firing positions.
A bolted spider web of filament hung above their heads, acting as a grenade catcher. If anyone shot or threw a grenade at them, the material would absorb the energy and return it back. It was very useful when your enemies used projective weapons, less effective against laser weapons that could burn right through the stuff. Still, it was better than nothing.
Plasma torches burned through the nano carbon reinforcements that they’d erected over the walls. They had seconds until the first breach occurred.
The main door went down first, falling with a quick crash. A few bodies quickly stepped into the opening, before a massive outward explosion detonated. Captain Thomas remotely controlled the claymore mines guarding the doors, and he detonated the first one. Their combat helmets immediately cut off any noise above a certain level, protecting their hearing, but Vidal knew that if he didn’t have a helmet on, his eardrums would have ruptured at the deafening sound in enclosed space.
Mark detonated the rest of the claymores near a breach point before the assaulters could fall back and try to destroy them from a distance. Immediately after, bright laser beams started firing out at rapid pace as the automated turrets Captain Thomas controlled began tracking targets. The assault group returned fire with lasers, grenades, and rockets, shaking the ground and destroying the turrets.
Bodies began pouring into the house like an angry nest that had been kicked over. Grenades went up to their position, but the net simply bounced them back. Explosions buffeted around various points in the house, the result of the assault teams uncoordinated attack killing each other. Vidal and his team poured laser fire into anyone who stepped inside, while Private Preuss and Captain Smith did the heavy damage. Their goal was to coral people from moving too far to the outside, leaving the rest of the people to concentrate their fire in the middle.
Laser beams flew across everywhere. Vidal took a hard hit to the top of his helmet, knocking him back. His helmet was intact, but the momentum took him down. He saw another Marine get a laser beam directly into the chest, and several of the inbound were concentrating fire on the two heavy gunners. The protective metal on their turrets slagged off from the extreme heat, running down in metal pools to the floor.
Preuss’ gun quit firing, and he fell back and picked up a regular rifle. As Vidal picked himself up from the floor, he saw a grenade lob right through one of the holes on the webbing. It moved as if in slow motion, and tunnel vision set in as he focused on the grenade. The small, oblong shaped object enveloped his entire sphere of vision, looking like a two-ton rock heading their way. “GRENADE!”, he shouted into his microphone, about to lift himself up and dive onto the deadly device.
But before he could move, Captain Thomas had moved to intercept the grenade. He swatted it out of the air and back through the same opening it had entered, an impossible act of speed and precision. The grenade blew up before it hit the ground on the other side, sending shrapnel and heat waves through the people on the bottom.
“Start chunking grenades through that opening,” Mark said, “And for God’s sake, don’t miss.”
Vidal scrambled to the preset ammo point behind the group, lobbing grenades through the hole with expert precision. The shot wasn’t that hard, as the opening was only a few feet from the Marines, but a good dozen yard throw for anyone trying to hit it from the bottom of the staircase.
Their barriers started falling apart, and more of their team started getting pelted by lasers. A few of them penetrated the heavy armor, which immediately closed off the flesh wounds and prevented the soldiers from suffering a mortal wound. Still, at least eight of the team was down, almost half their fighting force.
“Pull back,” Captain Smith ordered. “We can’t defend this position any more.”
She grabbed two grenades, popped the pin, and rolled them down the staircase like a bowling pin. They detonated at the bottom, taking out a cluster of invaders who started going up the stairs.
“Move fast, they’ll be here in seconds.”
Vidal grabbed one of the downed Marines and saw the other able Marines doing so as well. Captain Thomas joined Captain Smith in the bowling for destruction hobby. They then sprinted back and Thomas planted a claymore mine, again moving with that superhuman speed he occasionally displayed. From the rumors, Vidal knew that this meant the Captain would be bleeding right now, but couldn’t tell because of the combat helmets they all wore.
Even as they were pulling out of the stairwell, the claymore went off. More ceiling rubble came down as they scrambled to avoid getting crushed to death. The upstairs open to defend, the repeated blasts turned the upstairs into a single open room, minus a few walls and room that were still standing.
“Move the wounded to a portable bunker and seal them in with yourself,” Captain Smith said, “Anyone not moving the wounded target the ceiling near the entrance and bring it down. We need some cover here!” she said, shooting into the ceiling the entire time she was talking. More of it came tumbling down as she and the other Marines targeted it while walking backwards to cover. Vidal sealed himself in with his wounded, and a teammate and his wounded.
“Can you still shoot?” he asked over his comm to the wounded person near him.
“Yes,” responded a female voice, “just have to do my shooting on my back, my guts are kind of spilling out in the front.”
“Hoorah soldier,” Vidal responded, positioning her on her back, aiming upside down through the rifle.
“We’re coming in!”, one of the team’s outside the area said. More explosions rocketed the outside. Laser fire started blasting a hole through the rubble that the teams had made to delay entry. Captain Smith and six other soldiers were scattered about the area, ducking behind cover. But Captain Thomas was near the point that they would enter, holding two vibroblades in his hand.
Vidal wanted to tell him to move back, but the rubble opened up in front of where Captain Mark Thomas stood. Vidal switched his visor over to see what Mark saw. A mass of bodies pointing laser rifles. Before any of them could squeeze off a shot, Mark’s knife cut off the barrels of their gun. Before the first stroke finished, the second blade stabbed into the helmet of the first attacker, piercing right through his eye.
Mark became a dervish whirlwind, making quick thrusts into the head, neck, heart, and liver of anyone in front of him. It’s a cliche that you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. At a distance, that’s true. But up close, a knife is more versatile and deadly than a gun. Particularly if the person holding it isn’t afraid to use it for a deadly purpose.
The invaders had bunched up too closely together, a tactical mistake as they couldn’t quickly adjust their aim to kill the thin wraith moving amongst them. Quicker than anyone could adjust, he’d kill the person move their dying bodies out of his way to continue the assault. Sometimes, he’d make a quick backstroke into the spinal cord or the kidneys of his opponents as he moved.
A few of the invaders, not knowing what to do, started panic firing into the backs of their own people. The other teams entered into the house, shooting the people caught on the stairwell. Packed tightly together, unable to move effectively, a few of the smarter invaders dropped their rifles and went for their more mobile sidearms or vibroknives. It didn’t matter.
Their wrists would get slashed or stabbed, making them drop the weapon. Or they’d be so bundled up the additional mobility didn’t matter. Mark leaped over falling bodies and plunged his dagger into the necks of the people behind them, moving amidst them with whirlwind, deadly accuracy. In less than a minute, it was all over. The assault team had been wiped out in-between the pincer of laser fire from downstairs and knife blades upstairs.
Mark fell to his knees as he knifed his last opponent. Vidal lifted the bunker cover again and ran out to check on the Captain, the other people that were still mobile doing the same. Vidal held up his hand to motion them to slow down as he walked through the dead bodies, blasting each of them in the face with his laser rifle. He’d learned the hard way that just because someone looked like they were dead, didn’t mean they were actually dead. This slowed down their movement, but it was better safe than sorry.
They reached the Captain, who now had his back against a wall, resting. Two members of the team that had just arrived were supporting him.
“If you’re downstairs, check on the bodies and make sure they’re dead. We know these people don’t ever get captured alive, so kill them or they may pull a mujahideen on you,” Vidal said over the comms.
“All upstairs teams,” Captain Smith replied on the radio, “Gather the wounded and evacuate them from the area. Teams Indigo and Juliet, move in to evacuate the wounded.”
Vidal looked around the mansion. Scorch marks, detonation holes, blood, viscera, and body parts, battle suit pieces, the mansion looked like a war zone. He guessed off the top of his head that whoever their enemy was had sent over three hundred and fifty people to kill them. More of them would be littering the yard. And despite an assault on the governor’s mansion, not a single police unit from this planet was out there to quarantine the area.