Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence (5 page)

BOOK: Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence
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A loud explosion erupted behind them, in the open ground between
their building and the tree line. Delta Squad was getting hammered hard in the
woods. Everyone inside the warehouse held their breath a moment. Then
thritt-thritt-thritt
,
followed by another blast, smaller and grinding. Drones were known for their
silence. Except when they died.

“That’s one down,” said Stug.

“We need to move,” said the captain. She knew, like everyone
else, that Delta Squad wouldn’t last much longer against the drones.

“Right. Bracer, count it.”

“Three!” barked the heavy-weapons man.

Laser blasts outside, followed by the
thritt-thritt-thritt
of Delta’s gun
.
It was crazy to think it, but to Hatch, the machine
gun sounded the slightest bit desperate.

“Two!”

They could hear Echo’s chain guns now, opening up on the
left from the fortified position at the guard post. Probably trying to keep
more porters from entering the primary objective. The captain prayed there were
no civilians in the way.

“One!”

Bracer opened up with his machine gun, one long chug of
rapid fire. He blasted the windows first to force the porters’ heads down, then
traced a line of bullet holes along the right side of Objective Two to warn
away any would-be heroes that might be around the corner.

Hatch yanked the door and Stug charged, a bull moose with
his head down and screaming a war whoop better suited to charging a hill
somewhere in history. The QB followed, aiming at the window opposite them on
the left, shattering its panes inward.

“Report!” shouted Hatch, straining to be heard over Bracer’s
continuous fire.

“Suppression successful, sir. Heads are down,” said Hawkeye.

Hatch leapt after the others and sprinted for the second
warehouse. Stug was flat-backed against it now, under the window and preparing
a sonic grenade. Some brave porter had kicked the door open and was tracking
the QB’s steps with his laser rifle. Hatch took aim on the run and put him down
as the captain reached Stug.

The sergeant pulled her down and away from the window, and
Hatch dived for their position as the sonic grenade detonated. There was no
sound, none at all. The grenade blasted its area of effect with sound attuned
to a spectrum beyond human hearing. The frequency of the silent sonic boom
temporarily overwhelmed the inner ear of any target within range, spiraling
them into vertigo and knocking them off their feet.

Hatch squat-ran to the door now blocked by the porter, who
still breathed but could do little else. Bracer ceased fire for a moment while
Hawkeye called down through their broken window, “Drones! Go, go, go!”

He could feel Stug moving behind him, but there was no time
to let the sergeant by. Stepping over the moaning soldier, Hatch elbowed the
door open, bringing his weapon to bear and moving through. He could see three
soldiers to his left, obviously stationed at the window prior to Stug’s
pineapple toss, clutching their heads, weapons dropped. Lasers blasted the wall
behind him, and he dived and rolled forward to kneel behind a shipping crate.
He popped his rifle around the right side of the crate and sent an otherwise
useless barrage of bullets at his attackers, hoping to make them duck and
cover.

Stug was in now and, instantly assessing the situation,
moved to cover behind a crate just inside and to the right of the door. The QB
was on his tail, briefly trying to decide whose crate to hide behind.

“Get the hell down!” shouted Hatch. In his mind, he did his best
imitation of Stug’s whine, bemoaning how little time it took being off the
front lines for an officer’s instincts to atrophy.

She ducked and dived for Stug’s crate in time to avoid a
laser blast that took out the door they’d just passed through.

Outside, they could hear Bracer’s fire resuming, marking the
wide walls of the warehouse they were in. Then the first of the drones came
through the door.

Hatch turned his weapon around, keenly aware that the
porters—knowing the TRACE fighters were being attacked from behind—could simply
charge their position. Hopefully Stug would think of that too and keep the
human enemy pinned while Hatch dispatched the mechanical threat.

“Stop!” yelled the QB. “Don’t fire!”

The lieutenant’s index finger twitched over the trigger as a
second drone whooshed through the open doorway.

“They’re ours!”

As if aiming to prove her right, the two drones—with
scorched hulls and nattering servos—flew over their heads and straight at the
porters’ position.

Hatch gawped while Stug whooped, “I knew it! My whole life
is
a B-grade vid plot!”

Suddenly a blast came from the left, its heat scorching the
plastic container and melting Hatch’s sleeve to the crate in the process;
apparently one of the soldiers felled by the sonic grenade was back in action.
Hatch rolled left first, ripping the sleeve now slagged to the crate, then back
right, and leveled his weapon. First the upright threat went down permanently,
then the two still on the ground.

One drone screamed mechanical death as laser fire enveloped
it from two sides. Its partner passed its position, twisted in midair, and
targeted the porters, immolating one and injuring another before it, too, was
destroyed. But Stug was up and whooping again, charging straight for the two
remaining porters. Having turned to meet the threat from the drones, they were now
out of position, away from the cover of their makeshift pillbox of crates. By
the time they turned to meet the terrifying sound of Stug’s roar, he was
already on top of them. He cracked one on the chin with his rifle butt and
ducked when the second fired wildly over his head.

“Okay, now I’m mad!” Stug screamed at the young Transport
soldier, whose shocked expression seemed to likewise freeze the rest of his
body. The sergeant knocked away the porter’s laser with a backhanded swipe of his
own weapon, then pulled his right fist back and buried it in the center of the
man’s face with a satisfying, bone-smashing crunch.

“Finally!” the big man exulted. He returned his attention to
the first porter and dealt him a similar blow. “Two-fer!” he gloated.

Both porters hit the ground with a pleasingly solid thud.

Except for the wheezing pop of their downed drones, all was
suddenly quiet inside Objective Two. Stug looked around, slinging his weapon
into its ready-fire position. Smoke drifted from the drones. One of the men
he’d just flattened moaned quietly, out of it.

Glancing upward, the sergeant surveyed the second and third
floors of the warehouse but found none of the enemy. “Well that was refreshing,
if short-lived. We really should draw these fun times out more.”

Hatch stood up and whistled as the captain moved to his
side. She, too, was captivated by what she saw, her rifle hanging loosely at
her side. Crate after crate filled the warehouse, ready for shipping. Crate
after crate of okcillium.

Delta Squad had lost two men: their heavy-weapons expert and
their spotter, who were often positioned close together. The drones that had
initially attacked from the right had indeed been Transport. TRACE’s own
drones—the five that were left from the recon mission launched the night
before—had returned in time to combine arms with Delta and send the Transport
drones limping off, three shy of their original six attack force. By the end of
the engagement, TRACE had lost all five of its remaining drones, two of them
protecting Alpha Squad inside Objective Two.

The QB left Bravo and Echo squads in their original position
at the town’s perimeter to watch for enemy intervention, then pulled the rest
of her squads in to secure the second warehouse. Stug continued to grouse about
how easy the whole thing had been, and no one was disagreeing. Still, they had
okcillium to move. More okcillium than they’d ever hoped to see in one
lifetime.

Colonel Neville arrived within half an hour of B Company’s
securing the objectives. After very publicly admonishing the captain, he
oversaw preparation of the landing site for the converted airbuses that would
ferry away as much okcillium as possible before Transport counterattacked and
retook the town. Once loading began, Neville’s principal contribution was to
stand around and look imperious.

After taking the big warehouse, they’d found Transport’s
BICE jammer on one of the upper floors. Rather than destroy it, they’d pulled
its okcillium battery and turned over the equipment to Neville’s communications
specialists for later disassembly and examination. Having the use of their
BICEs back had made coordinating the loading of their prize that much easier,
but still, moving that much okcillium onto the cargo ships took the better part
of the afternoon.

As the loading continued, Hatch approached the QB. “You did
good here today,” he said, smiling and brandishing a laser rifle retrieved from
a fallen porter. “This haul might push the war home for us.”

The captain tilted her head noncommittally. She’d always had
trouble taking praise graciously. In a way, she preferred the kind of reprimand
Neville had given her several hours before. She kindled the end of a cigar
she’d commandeered from Stug, who always smoked one after surviving a
firefight. Gave him good luck for the next one, he claimed.

“Once Pook and the others make the weapons and okcy
batteries, I’ll relax a little,” she replied. Pook Rayburn, proprietor of
Merrill’s Grocery Supply in the City, and his cohorts in the resistance could
manufacture new laser weapons using 3-D printers. And now that they had the
critical component—okcillium—they could also make power sources for them. “I’m
with Stug, though,” she continued. “Too easy.”

Exasperated, Hatch replied, “Maybe, for
once
, it’s
supposed to be easy. Maybe, for once, we don’t have to barely make it, barely
survive. Maybe luck was on our side.”

She winced and shook her head as if to clear it, and he knew
why instantly. Hatch could see others doing the same thing, their hands going
to their ears as they mentally switched off their links.

The jamming was back. And that meant so was Transport.

A crate crashed onto a ramp as two TRACE soldiers succumbed
to the vertigo caused by the jamming. Granulated okcillium spilled onto the ground
like crystallized black gold.

“Move it, people!” Neville was saying. “Get those cargo ships
out of here!”

A final broadcast to all TRACE soldiers indicated multiple
gunships and dropships inbound from the City. Then the warning fritzed out to
static.

The captain looked at her former lover. “You were saying?”


Crap
. Alpha Squad!” Hatch bellowed, adjusting once
again to coordinating his command with his voice. “Prepare to defend those
ships!”

Stug spit out his stub of cigar. “Knew it,” he said to no
one.

They could hear Echo’s chain guns spinning hot bullets into
the sky from their position at the guard post. The first of the converted
airbuses fired up its engines as explosions thundered outside. Transport was
here. In force.

To cover the landing zone, the QB moved Alpha, Charlie, and
what was left of Delta squad to the second-story windows of the warehouse. They
barely had time to set up their 18-millimeter guns before Transport drones were
plinking them with laser fire. Delta, having lost its gunner, stood in support
of the other two squads, helping to direct fire and occasionally pot-shotting
at drones with their rifles. Fortunately, the late afternoon sun was behind
them and not in their eyes.

Two TRACE cargo ships were in the air. To Hatch they seemed heavy,
like lumbering elephants, standing still and swaying on a lazy morning. In
contrast, Transport’s advance drones were quick and nimble, swarming like
hornets, stinging the tough skins of the cargo ships with laser fire. The
drones seemed uncoordinated at first, but as the first gunships bore down on
the warehouses, Transport’s drone attack became more effective. What had been useless
laser fire against reinforced hulls was now aimed at vulnerable engines.

BOOK: Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence
7.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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