Eve Berg
Location: Yangon-2, Yangon System, Eastern Block
“Hold.” The SEAL leading Team Two transmitted a short burst.
Eve was out in the open, protected only by the polychromatic exterior of her armor, so she quickly found cover behind a large metal barrel. SGT Sullivan silently slipped behind the barrel next to hers.
For the movement toward the logistics point it quickly became obvious that all five of them couldn’t move together. The polymorphic covering on the armor was the best camouflage in the Commonwealth’s arsenal, but it was impossible to make anything completely invisible. Five of them moving together increased the chance that someone was going to see them. Moving as individuals was also out of the question, because that just wasn’t how things were done, so they split up into two teams. Eve and SGT Sullivan teamed up due to their history together and became the vanguard for their little unit. The SEAL leader and the other two SPECOPS operators formed the second team and moved about twenty meters behind them. Eve and the Ranger SGT were charged with identifying everything directly in front of their advancing unit. The higher-level mission processes were left to the SEAL and his team, so they must have spotted something.
The ground rumbled beneath them as the shield overhead sizzled from incoming ordinance. For the most part it held. One of two dual-penetrating shells got through and wreaked havoc near the frontlines, but nothing breeched the energy barrier and detonated near Team Two.
“That’s the last teaser,” the SEAL relayed.
Fourth Brigade was setting up for a major assault to take the PDC, and part of that was psychologically messing with the enemy. The massive artillery bombardments put fear in the Blockies that the big push was coming. They’d get everyone ready, gets their adrenaline flowing, and after an hour of sitting with their thumbs up their asses they’d realize no attack was coming that time. It also sowed a distrust in the minds of the Blockies about the Commonwealth’s commitment, so when the big push finally did come, maybe they would be unprepared. It all depended on the discipline of the Blockie units.
Their HUD’s had gradually been completing the map of the PDC as the team advanced farther into the unknown space. If she zoomed out, she would see a lot more data as the other three teams progressed toward their objectives, but that was just a distraction. Her HUD was focused in on the two-hundred-by-two-hundred-meter area around them. At the edge of that space was the logistics point.
She peeked around the barrel she was using as cover and zoomed in on the objective. It looked like piles and piles of boxes stacked up to create a maze of material four meters high. Above it, cammo-netting was stretched taught to camouflage the position against aerial sensors, and inside it, hundreds of logisticians moved frantically to gather the supplies they needed to continue defending the PDC against the imperialist Commonwealth.
Eve broadcasted her sensor feed to the SEAL and highlighted a few basic entry points that she noticed. In the thirty seconds she watched the objective, she saw the unarmored supply personnel scurrying through each of those points.
“We’ve got a roving patrol.” The SEAL snapped Eve back to the present as half a dozen red icons were highlighted on her HUD.
They were only standard infantry, with the longer plate-like armor than the scales the Commonwealth grunts had, but that didn’t matter. A child with a good set of lungs could alert everyone within a few hundred meters that the SPECOPS team was there.
“Hunker down, everyone. We’ll map their route, time them, and then make our move. When we do, Berg and Sullivan will ingress here, I’ll enter here, and Spikily and Kalgan will go here.” Three different waypoints popped up on their HUDs.
Eve let the SEAL take care of mapping the roving patrol’s route and timing their pass by the ingress routes. She spent the valuable time figuring out how she and Sullivan were going to get from their barrels to the opening in the stack of crates. It was a hundred and seventy-five meters over mostly open ground. It was every Infantry soldier’s worse nightmare…even with hi-tech, camouflaged LACS.
Eve and the SGT communicated as little as possible, just like the four teams were communicating as little as possible. In the belly of the beast there was always a chance that their tight-beam coms could get intercepted because it was so congested, so they were sticking with line of sight. Still, no unnecessary communication was the rule of thumb.
White lines marked the routes they planned and transmitted to each other. They refined it a few times before agreeing upon where they were going to go, and then sent it to the SEAL. There was only so much cover in the hundred-and-seventy-five meter crossing, and they didn’t want to bunch up with the other soldiers and make a convenient target for a Blockie missile.
The SEAL let the roving patrol pass twice before giving them the info. It was short and sweet. “You’ve got three minutes, GO!”
Eve didn’t need to be told twice. She ran twenty five meters to their first piece of cover. She tried to avoid the puddles in her path, because nothing was going to give away her position more than a bunch of water jumping into the air for no reason. The rain had basically stopped twenty minutes ago, which was another sign of good luck, or at least she hoped so.
She reached the car parked alongside one of the major roads leading toward the wall. When Third Fleet appeared in the system the road would have been packed with people streaming into the shelters beneath the PDC. There was evidence of the mass migration everywhere: polyplast bags the soldiers told the civilians to leave, food wrappers, and even a few children’s toys were strewn outside the vibrant, florescent, yellow traffic lines.
She laid her Buss across the hood of the vehicles and scanned the area. The SEAL bounded almost fifty meters to the side of some concrete structure. Eve left that sector of fire to him, and the other buddy team was moving a good seventy meters away, well away from her area of concern. She swept her ninety-degree cone of responsibility in front of her as the SGT dashed to her position. He tapped her on the shoulder when he arrived and she moved so he could take up the firing position. She made sure not to hip-check the vehicle as she zeroed in on the next waypoint forty-two meters in front of her. She did her best not to disturb the garbage as she crossed the road.
“FREEZE!” She hissed to the whole team. The patrol was back a full ninety seconds ahead of schedule.
Sheer fucking luck had them all behind cover, but they were dangerously alone and spaced out. Only the buddy team farthest away was still together. The SEAL was in a crater from a Commonwealth round that snuck through the shield, and Eve was over forty meters from Sullivan. That was going to prove a challenging fighting retreat if it came to it, because the six enemy troopers had a new friend with them. The taller, hulking form of a Blockie Nutcracker walked in the middle of the group. The enemy HI trooper was staring straight ahead, but Eve could feel his sensors scanning the area around him. She held her breath as they walked past about a hundred meters from her position.
She knew the fuck-up wasn’t the SEAL’s fault, but she had trouble not cursing him as she tried to make herself as small as possible behind the duro-steel crate that was her temporary cover. She huddled there for a full four minutes before she peeked her helmet over the top. If they kept to their previous schedule they should have two minutes to cross the remaining hundred meters to the objective, but she didn’t trust that schedule anymore. All she trusted was the SGT behind her and the Buss in her hand.
The SGT rushed up to her position fifteen seconds later and tapped her to move again. She did, but this time she ignored the twenty meter rush they had originally planned and went sixty meters. She just knew in her gut they needed to hurry. She could swear she heard the SGT grumbling under his armor when he joined her, but she didn’t stick around to chat. Another forty meters and she’d reach the objective.
There was only one problem. The maze of supplies was packed together with the premise that normal people would move through its maze, not abnormally large soldiers in armor. It was too tight. Her bulk and the added width of her Buss were going to knock shit down all over the place.
“Blades,” she sent back to the SGT as he rushed to the ingress point and she covered him.
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Once he arrived she slung her Buss behind her back and toggled through her options to her armor’s functions. She hit a few buttons and felt the soft thump as she magnetized a section of her back and the Buss snapped securely into place. This way, it wouldn’t be swinging around and alerting the enemy to her presence. The SGT did the same thing, but didn’t extend his blades. That was one of the design flaws of the V3s. The blades didn’t have the same polychromatic features as the rest of the armor. Eve understood why. The armor was expensive as shit, and the polymorphic material was part of that. The designers thought if a soldier was going blades hot then they were in close combat with the enemy, and therefore didn’t need camouflage.
Eve and the SGT moved slowly and deliberately, but they were always cognizant of the countdown clock in the corner of their HUDs. They knew when Fourth Brigade was going to attack, and they needed to complete their mission and exfil to a safer area before then. They had less than twenty minutes to complete their mission, and they’d need at least five to get the hell out of there.
Eve slowed and held up her hand as the came to a turn and she heard grunting around the corner. It sounded like someone was trying to lift something heavy, so she held up a hand to get the SGT to stop. She turned to look at him expectantly. So far, they’d been placing micro-explosive charges every ten meters or so, but they were still far enough out from the center that they were going to destroy mostly food and spare parts. The real stuff they needed to deprive the enemy of: replacements, weapons, ammo stock, artillery shells, power packs for energy weapons, fabricators, etc… were closer to the distribution points at the front of the objective. That meant they needed to go deeper, and that reality meant a decision needed to be made. They either needed to turn around and find another route, or go through this obstacle. A new route would take time they didn’t have, but going through would mean bodies, which would lead to people searching for their missing comrades, and eventually, finding out they’d been killed.
Thankfully for Eve, this wasn’t her call. She was a CPL and Sullivan was a SGT and seasoned Ranger. It was up to him, and he wasted no time in making a call. He sent her a burst transmission of a man drawing a finger across his throat. Eve nodded and extended her blade. She was in front, and the SGT couldn’t get around her in the tight confines. The kill was hers.
Her blade hung there, disembodied in the air for a few seconds before she flew around the corner. Violence of action was key, but what she saw made her freeze. The grunting she’d heard wasn’t someone trying to lift something heavy. It was two soldiers frantically coupling. One man had another bent over a box and was screwing like his life depended on it.
She crossed the few meters between her and the love-making pair and stabbed down with her blade. It was a precise thrust. Her blade entered the upper back of the first man vertically. It stabbed down through his chest, destroying his heart, and exploded out his front. The only warning the other man had that something was wrong was blood and tissue splashing all over his back. From there, she thrust her blade forward aiming for the C1 and C2 vertebra. She severed them easily and it instantly paralyzed the second man. She had both men impaled on her blade like a human shish kabob as she lowered them quickly to the ground. Blood was spreading quickly. Sullivan hurriedly began moving boxes to find an impromptu hiding place. He picked up one box, scooted the box beneath it out a bit, and Eve dumped the two bodies in the newly opened space. They replaced the boxes as best they could, but they still stuck out into the narrow aisle and would draw attention, but that was the best they could do in thirty seconds.
Eve mixed the blood in with the mud as best she could before the two rangers moved on.
They continued their push forward, still trying to avoid people if possible and silently dispensing those they couldn’t get around. They made it into where they stored ammo and fuel before they finally reached the end of their luck.
Sullivan was placing a charge behind a rack of 125mm shells when someone walked around the corner and directly into him. The small women looked utterly confused when she rebounded off thin air, but it didn’t take long for realization to dawn on her face. Before she could open her mouth, Eve’s blade slashed out and removed her head, while in the process, also slicing through a barrel of high-grade fuel. Eve’s detached mind considered that the fuel was probably pumped into thermobaric warheads, as the Blockie logistician’s head rolled off her soldiers, and dropped into the mud with a wet squelch. Her body hit a moment later with a much louder thud.
The SGT quickly placed a charge on the barrel beneath the one Eve had sliced through and moved to pick up the headless corpse. A shout went up from nearby, it sounded like a name, and then another soldier came around the corner. Eve would have probably shit her pants if she was the guy; his headless friend seemingly hanging unsupported in midair and her head lying on the ground in a growing pile of fuel. It was straight out of a horror story. So, he did what any rational person would do, he screamed.
Eve cut off the scream by punching her blade through his throat, but the jig was up. Along with the micro-explosives, they’d planted sensors, and those sensors were feeding data into STRATNET, which was showing that they’d kicked over the anthill. Blockie soldiers were streaming into the area. The only thankful bit of info seemed to be that not that many troops were able to hustle to the rear of the logistics point. Eve counted only about a dozen.
“Cammo up until we start taking fire, then secure it.” Sullivan ordered as they abandoned the two Blockie bodies and ran for it.
Eve detached her Buss and pulled it around to her front. She didn’t care if it was going to be a tight squeeze. She knew at least one nutcracker was out there, and she wasn’t going to star an engagement at range with only blades. That was tactical suicide.
“Coming up on our right,” the SGT warned as they approached a turn. STRATNET showed two red icons moving toward them.
Eve was in the lead so she burst around the corner and brought her weapon to bear on the enemy…which of course immediately got snagged on a crate.
“Fucking shit!” She yelled as the Blockies raised their weapons when they saw the box move of its own accord. They’d gotten the memo of what they were facing.
Neither got a shot off. They were close enough for Eve to lash out with a front kick. Her more powerful body and armor connected with the front Blockie’s chestplate perfectly. She saw it crumble inward from the force of the kick, and he flew back into his partner. He lost his gun, and his partner’s got pinned underneath the man’s limp weight. Eve rushed passed them and the SGT finished them off with a blade through their chests. The only reason Eve didn’t blow them away with her Buss was a desire to not give away their position until absolutely necessary.
That time ended up being thirty seconds later. They rounded another bend, only a few turns from the exit, when 1mm rounds started to ping off Eve’s armor. She immediately dropped the cammo so it wouldn’t get more damaged, and opened up with her Buss. Her explosive, plasma-tipped rounds ate into the lead Blockie and he dropped dead with a smoking hole in his chest. His buddies behind him scrambled back around the corner for cover, but Eve was able to tag another in the leg. She blew the unarmored limb off below the knee, and kept moving forward. The third and last Blockie was trying to pull his buddy to safety when Eve rounded the corner and popped him right in the head.
“Time for a distraction. FIRE IN THE HOLE!” The SGT broadcasted over the Team’s net. He toggled to the detonation function on his armor and transmitted the codes.
The first micro-charges went off in front of them. Their kill radius was small, so they only took some light shrapnel as they continued their charge out of the death trap they were in. More than anything, they were pelted with bits of foodstuffs as the explosions worked their way inward.
Eve and Sullivan passed through the still-airborne debris when the first big explosion shook the area. It was probably one of the boxed-up fabricator’s power units or the fuel containers, but whatever it was it started a chain reaction.
“Move your ass, Berg,” the SGT yelled and Eve felt a stab of fear just before a wave of heat and overpressure slammed into her back.
She was picked up off her feet, and might have bought the farm if she didn’t activate the ES function in her armor. Her HUD went down and audio automatically cut out as whatever the hell had just exploded threw her and the SGT out of the logistics area.
She counted the seconds until her rigid armor hit the ground. She landed on her side. Her shoulder popped out of its socket, and her head smashed hard against the side of her helmet. It was like the foam lining there to protect her from concussions wasn’t even there. She was pretty sure she blacked out for a second, because when she came back her HUD was rebooting.
It popped back into existence, “Fuckin’ A!” she exclaimed as she looked at the mayhem and destruction they’d wrought.
A big chunk of the logistics point was a shallow crater, with an expanding, black cloud rising upward nearly to the shield above them. “Mission accomplished,” she muttered and winced as she tried to get to her feet. Her shoulder didn’t respond, but her armor did the job for her.
Despite the raining, the dust was still thick around her. She couldn’t see more than a few meters, so she had to navigate by STRATNET. SGT Sullivan was twenty meters away, and both of them have been thrown a solid fifty meters from the edge of the camp. They were lucky to be alive.
“We gotta move, Sarge.” She took a kneeling position beside the SGT and covered every direction at once with her armor’s extra ordinance.
The SGT didn’t answer. Eve cycled to his medical readiness and saw it was yellow. She scrolled down and saw he was unconscious, had a broken leg, two cracked ribs, and his lungs were slowly filling with fluid. He’d be red soon and dead a bit after that if he didn’t get medical attention.
Due to her own injury, she didn’t have a choice which one to carry him on. She stowed her railgun, which despite the impact was still in working order, and draped his bulk over that arm. All that was left was her eight hypervelocity missiles, 250mm cannon, and the SGT’s Buss, which she carried muzzle down at her side.
All of that made it slow going as she trudged away from the logistics point and toward cover. The dust was rapidly clearing as fresh rain started to fall, but coms with the rest of Team Two were still choppy. The best signal she was getting was a waypoint two hundred and fifty meters away. That’s what she was heading for when the ground opened up fifty meters in front of her and troops started to pour out from their subterranean barracks.
The first thing they saw was the black cloud rising into the sky. The second was a section of the wall collapsing next to the logistical point. Third was Eve, who they correctly assumed had done the blowing up. Lastly, number four would be the final image of several dozen Blockies’ lives. They caught a quick glimpse of Eve firing all eight of her hypersonic missiles at the three openings they’d just charged trough. She’d raised the SGT’s Buss and was charging them head on as their world exploded around them.