Chapter 49

When things fall apart

Freya sighed as she paused at the edge of the street and looked around the building to see if there were any enemy troops. Not long after they had left they had gotten a new objective to head east towards the city-side of Third Company’s bridge. The new objective didn’t say why. It only told them that they were to cause enough damage to the enemy at the rear to delay them. Now Freya was leading her squad towards the new waypoint.

Toast had them observing radio silence, but that hadn’t stopped Freya from trying to think of why the new objective had appeared. Her best guess was that the armored company that was supposed to show up to pass over the bridges ages ago had somehow been delayed. She reasoned that if they had arrived already then they would be attacking deeper in the city. Instead her squad was wandering around behind enemy lines trying to delay the enemy from moving forward.

Freya glanced at her mini map to see if her sensor drone had picked up anything - the only icons were her own people. Behind her, about thirty feet away, Paterson had stopped to take cover behind a truck. Thirty feet behind him, Tike was kneeling down beside steps that led up to a building. Covering the rear, Toast had paused to scan behind them by a car that was parked in a small driveway.

Freya waved Patterson up so that he could cover her as she ran across the street. She turned back to peek around the corner and scanned the street she needed to cross. On her mini map she sat Patterson’s icon run up behind her. The rest of the squad moved up, like a caterpillar, to each take over the position of the person in front of them. Tike was now standing beside the truck while Toast was by the stairs to the building.

Freya took a few seconds to look down the street she needed to cross. Besides a few cars that were parked on the side of the road, she didn’t see anything that might signal that the enemy was nearby. The street looked empty. She pulled back, let Patterson take her position and waited until he nodded before she ran past him and across the street. She took up her position on the next street beside a bush and waited as the others moved up. Paterson waited until she nodded to run across the street. He ran until he got just past her before he stopped and took her position. She moved back to let him get closer to the street. Once he was in position, she moved down the street they were walking on. She stopped by the next block and waited. It was slow going, but it was better than walking into an ambush.

They were walking down a large residential street of brick row houses. They had to turn south soon, but Freya wanted to wait until they were a bit further down the road. The city streets were lined up in a nice grid pattern so it was easy to plan her route and make her way towards the waypoint. So far they hadn’t come across anyone, whether they were military or civilians.

She stopped at the street she wanted to turn on and waited, with one eye on her mini map watching her squad mates move up towards her, by the intersection. She took cover near the entrance to a fast food restaurant and peeked inside. She didn’t see anyone and the lights were off. Once she was sure it was safe, she turned around and motioned for Patterson to move up. She waited until Patterson had started moving towards her before she turned around and looked down the street.

She was scanning the one-way, single lane road when her attention was drawn to her mini map. For a second she didn’t understand why she was drawn to it but then she saw that Toast’s icon was black. It took a few seconds to realize that it should be green and not black before she turned around and looked down the street behind her.

The first thing she saw was Patterson running towards her. He didn’t look like he was in a hurry so she ignored him and looked past him. She spotted Tike beside a truck looking across the street from where she was. She was holding her rifle casually and didn’t look alarmed. Freya looked past her and spotted Toast laying in a small heap about thirty feet behind her. He was on his knees with his head on the sidewalk and his arms hanging beside him.

Freya cursed, raised her rifle up and looked through her scope. She panned her rifle behind his body, but she didn’t see any enemy soldiers. She frantically looked around, but she saw no one.

“Toast is down.” Freya yelled over the radio as she heard Patterson run by her. She was confused. They were all under active camouflage. There was no way that an enemy could have spotted then. It took her about a second to remember that there was at least one way that the enemy could see them. She looked up, even though she knew that there was no way she could spot a spy satellite in the sky.

“There must be a spy satellite above us.” She told her squad mates in fear.

Freya heard Tike cursing over the radio, and looked away from her scope to see her squad mate slide under the truck she had taken cover next too. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Everyone take cover. Patterson, you’re going to run north to the other side of the street. Stay on this side of the intersection. Magic and me, we’re going to see if we can spot the shooter.” Tike told them over the radio. “On my word, you run your ass off, Patterson.”

Freya quickly moved towards the entrance of the fast food restaurant, pulled out her pistol with her left hand and shot out the glass door. She raced inside the restaurant until she was about half way through the front of the seating area. She slid to her knees beside a small, round table and propped her rifle on the top of it. She looked through her scope down the street she had come from.

For a second she had a panic attack as she could not see Paterson, but then she saw that he had moved back down the street about ten or so feet away from the restaurant she had taken cover in. On her mini map it appeared that he was standing right next to the row house, but she knew he must have found cover under something. There was no way he was stupid enough to stand in the open so that the spy satellite could see him.

“Everyone ready?” Tike asked over the radio.

“In position.” Freya said, looking down the street, hoping to spot whoever had shot Toast.

“Ready.” She heard Patterson say over the radio a second later.

“Go. Go. Go.” Tike called out over the radio. Freya saw a dark blur when Patterson ran past her firing line as she scanned the street.

For about two seconds nothing happened, then Freya spotted a small hole appear in the side of a building. Then Patterson cried out over the radio.

“I’m hit. I’m hit.” He yelled out.

Freya fought the urge to swear as she zoomed in on the hole. She spotted a second hole appear in the wall. She took a deep breath, guessed at where the shooter had to be and pulled her trigger. A third hole appeared in the wall in between the two other holes and slightly below them. She used her Personal AI to mark the building with a waypoint and she pulled the trigger once more, creating a fourth hole.

“Marked the building.” She called over the radio, interrupting Patterson’s steady stream of swearing. She was about to pull the trigger at the building once more when a fifth hole appeared about five feet from the other holes.

“Taking fire!” Tike screamed over the radio.

“Screw this.” Paterson said over the radio just before Freya heard his gun open up.

She watched the side of the building quickly fill with holes as his rounds punched right though the wall. She joined in Patterson’s orgy of destruction and fired blindly at the wall.

“Fire in the hole.” Tike yelled and there was a flash of white as the front side of the building exploded inwards. Freya only noticed that her suit had muted the sound when it turned back on and she could hear Patterson’s gun firing once more.

“Cease fire.” Tike said over the radio. When they stopped shooting, she came back over the radio. “Patterson, cover me. I’m moving up.”

“Wait. Reloading.” Freya yelled, as she quickly pulled out a new battery and replaced the used one on her belt. “Done. Ready.” She told Tike as soon as she was done.

“Going now.” Tike told them. She saw Tike’s icon slide out from under the truck and move towards the building.

“I got two bodies.” Tike told them when she reached the huge hole in the building. “I think we got them. Patterson, how bad are you?”

“I got hit in the side of my stomach. Health is down to seventy percent, but I can move.” Freya heard him say over the radio.

“Medi pen that. We need to move. They have our position and they can track us.” Tike said over the radio.

Freya worried about how they were going to hide from a spy satellite. She had switched to her cloudforge, and that meant that she didn’t have the camo boost on her armor. She looked around and spotted an old fashioned manhole cover. She blinked and smiled.

“Tike, we should take the sewer.” Freya called excitedly over the radio.

“Can your drone map out a route for us?” Tike asked.

“Not my surveillance drone, but I have a sensor drone that will map about forty feet around us.” Freya told her squad mate.

“It will have to do. Patterson, cover me. I’m coming out. Magic, get that manhole cover up.” Tike ordered them.

Freya slung her big rifle over her shoulder and ran out of the fast food restaurant. She ran towards the middle of the road where the manhole cover was and slid onto her knees beside it. It took her a second to realize that she didn’t have a pry bar to pry it open.

“I hope my trenching tool will work.” She thought to herself as she pulled her backpack off and yanked it open. She pulled the shovel out and opened it. She slid the edge of the shovel part into the crack between the cover and the metal ring around it. She pushed down and, to her happy surprise, the cover popped up. She slid the trenching tool deeper into the hole and pushed upwards. The manhole cover popped up enough so that she could her fingers to lift it up and flip it over, uncover the sewer. She smiled and looked up to see Tike come running up.

“Don’t just sit there, get in.” Tike said pointing at the sewer.

Feeling her cheeks get warm, she did as Tike asked and slid into the dark hole. She grabbed the metal bars of the ladder on the side of the hole and quickly lowered herself down the fifteen feet or so to the sewer. She winced when she dropped into a small stream of black water. A warning appeared on her HUD telling her that there was a large concentration of methane in the air. It warned her not to fire her pistol and that she needed to be careful of shooting her Desus long barrel rifle while in the sewer.

Freya took notice of the warning and moved away from the ladder. She switched her Desus to her GMZ. It was the only rifle she had that would not cause a fire if she shot it. She also sent up her sensor cloud and had her forge start to create a new one. It took a few seconds for it to map out the sewer. While it was doing so, both Tike and Patterson dropped down without using the ladder.

“You got a direction yet, Magic?” Tike asked her as soon as she stood up from dropping down.

“Yuppers.” Magic said with a smile. “This way.” She told them as she led them down to the left. From what she could see, the sewer followed the streets.

“Patterson, you take the rear. Lead on, Magic.” Tike said waving her arm at Freya.

Freya started walking down the sewer, but Tike stopped her. “We need to run. Move faster.” Tike told her.

“Sorry.” Freya told her as she started jogging.

The sewer was about four feet wide and they had to crouch over. The only time Freya could stand up was when they came across a tunnel that led upwards towards a manhole cover, which appeared regularly every fifty feet or so. There were pipes and loose wires along the sides of the sewer tunnel. While Freya didn’t see any vermin with her eyes, they did appear on her mini map. Freya spotted a few that were the size of a medium-sized dog. She hoped that they were like Earth’s rats and were not human predators.

She ran down the tunnel towards the waypoint. She had to adjust her mini map so that the buildings and streets above her showed up slightly translucent behind her map of the sewers that she was creating. She was glad that her mini map mapped out the way she came. The last thing she wanted was to get lost in a sewer. She was a bit apprehensive as she ran down the tunnel as there was nothing after forty feet in front of her. It was just a blank space that slowly became a tunnel on her mini map as she ran forward. She did have the map of the city to guide her though, so she was not completely lost. The bad part was that it was just a map. It didn’t tell her if the enemy was above her or not.

She got them about a mile out from the waypoint before the sewer tunnel shrunk to the point where they would have to lay on their bellies to continue. Tike made the decision to go above ground instead of crawling in the small pipe. Freya was glad she did, as she was more than ready to get out of the sewer. She had stepped in something that squished and made her footing slippery for nearly twenty feet afterwards. She really didn’t want to know what she stepped in.

She climbed up the ladder and used the handle of her trenching tool to lift the manhole cover. She only cracked it before she sent out a surveillance drone. She programmed it to send the feed to both her squad mates. She didn’t bother sending the feed to the command staff. There was no point.

She had the drone scan the surroundings. She watched the feed, but didn’t see any enemy soldiers. She did see a bunch of civilians running away with their belongings. Some had carts while others had trash bags full of stuff. She didn’t see anyone with a weapon though so she pushed the manhole cover up and climbed out.

The people saw the manhole cover pop up by itself and ran away. She held her GMZ loosely in her arms as she watched the civilians run every way but towards her. Behind her Patterson popped up followed by Tike. Like her they held their weapons pointed downwards even though they could see them. Freya watched as the civilians ran away in full panicking mode.

“They are going to call someone and tell them where we are.” Patterson said as Freya pushed the manhole cover back in place.

“Can’t be helped. Magic, find us a path away from everyone and towards our objective.” Tike ordered.

“Roger that.” Freya replied and, after a quick look at her mini map, she turned down a side street and led her squad through an alley. The alley ended with a metal fence. Freya didn’t pause - climbing up and jumping over the top to the other side. Both Tike and Patterson followed her. She followed a small bike path that led to a small, scenic tunnel in a park where she slowed to a stop. She could hear the sounds of battle in the distance. There were loud bangs as some heavy ordnance was being fired.

“We are in the area, now.” She told them as they came up to her.

Freya watched as Tike looked around. She turned to look in the same direction and started examining the area, looking for targets. The tunnel emptied out at the edge of the park. There was a street that circled the park and, across the street, there were a bunch of high-end shops. The people in the streets were in full riot mode. Freya watched as a small crowd bashed in a window to a store and cimb inside. Aside from the chaos she didn’t see any military objectives. There were no military vehicles or personnel in the area that she could see.

“Well, there’s nothing here.” Tike said with a sigh. “Let’s go find where the guns are being fired from.”

Freya smiled and led her squad mates out of the park. They were about a half mile away from the foot of the bridge when Freya spotted the first military presence. It was a small squad vehicle with a heavy automatic grenade launcher on it. There was a single gunner, and two passengers sitting in the vehicle facing them watching the people riot in front of them, doing nothing to stop it. Freya paused and looked at Tike who held up her hand and motioned her to wait.

Freya found cover between two cars and waited as Tike crept forwards under active camouflage and stuck something under the military truck. Freya shook her head in wonder as she watched Tike walk up to the truck. If Tike had not been under active camouflage then there was no way that she could have gotten so close. Freya watched, amazed, as Tike literally walked right in front of the three people in the truck and placed something under the front of their vehicle before she ran away. Once she was past the truck, she motioned for them to follow her down the street. They kept to the opposite side from where the truck was and kept at the edge of where the cars were parked on the side of the road. They did it to avoid people accidentally running into them and making a scene. Once they were down the road and too far away to see the truck, Tike hit the trigger. There was a loud thump and smoke billowed up behind them. Tike never looked back. She motioned Freya to keep going.

Freya followed the street they were on and came upon a three-lane highway that was blocked off. There were a bunch of military trucks staging in the road. On the far side of the road were five Mechs, firing off artillery shells into the distance.

Tike motioned for them to huddle up. She looked at Freya and made a top sign that Freya interrupted as ‘overwatch.’ Then Tike made a hand motion at some buildings on the same side of the street as they were standing. She then pointed to Patterson and herself and made the sign ‘walking.’ Then she pointed at the Mechs. She made the motion of pulling the pin of a grenade and then motioned pressing a hand trigger. Freya interpreted it to mean that she and Patterson were going to plant a few bombs on the Mechs. Tike then made a wait motion then pointed to her collar and made the gun sign with her hand. Freya guessed that Tike didn’t expect to live long enough after the bombs went off. She was telling Freya to stay hidden and pick off any ranking military targets.

Freya nodded her understanding before Patterson did the same. Tike smiled and raised her first two fingers to her face shield and kissed them before she raised them to both Patterson and Freya. Patterson smiled and did the same. Freya had no idea what it meant but she guessed it was some kind of team building thing so she did the same. Tike smiled and slapped Freya on the shoulder before turning to move away. Patterson smiled and waved at her before leaving Freya by herself as he followed Tike.

Freya paused to look behind her for a good position. She ruled out the tops of the buildings, as that would be the first places they would look. She also remembered the spy satellite and guessed that if it wasn’t already looking in this area it would be very soon. She also ruled out a parking garage as being too obvious. She finally picked a weird, castle-looking building at the curve of the street. The building looked right down at the parked trucks, giving her a beautiful, straight line of fire, instead of a much harder cross-fire line. It was easier to predict someone running up and down than it was to predict them running side to side. Once she had her building picked out, she ran as fast as she could towards it. There were no people or traffic on the road that paralleled the highway that the enemy military had blocked off so she could run as fast as she wanted.

The odd castle-looking building turned out to be an office building. Freya looked into the lobby as she ran up to it. She noted that it was deserted. The door was unlocked, but just inside was a weapons scanner. The scanner was one of those old-fashioned ones that you walked through and it scanned you. If you had a weapon it would set off an alarm. Freya simply jumped on top of the scanner and crawled over it to prevent it from going off. She slid down the other side and looked around. There was an empty security desk near the scanner and six elevators past it. Freya headed towards the elevators.

She randomly chose the seventh floor and stepped out of the elevator to another lobby. This lobby looked very elegant with a large, empty, silver reception desk. The sign behind the desk made Freya think she was in a law office. To her left was a gold-rimmed glass door. It was locked but quickly fell to her sabotage kit. Just past the doors was a wide hallway with a nice, burgundy carpet on the floor. There were a bunch of office doors with smaller desks in front of them. Freya was impressed.

She found a locked office door that she used her sabotage kit to open. She quickly set up a sniper position on the huge desk that was in front of a wall to ceiling window. There was a window that looked down on the street below, giving her a good vantage point to shoot from. She could even see the bridge Third Platoon was trying to guard. They had been pushed back to the other side. She noted that while they were on the far side of the bridge, the enemy was only on this side of the bridge. No one was on the bridge itself.

Freya found that the window was blocked by some blinds, but a bit of tape that she stole from the big desk was enough to stick it open so that she could see out, without exposing herself. She made sure the hole she cut in the window was small enough that it would be hard to see from far away, but big enough that she had enough room to cover a large area. She pushed the chair around to the other side of the desk and so she could sit down. She had just sat down and was looking through her scope when the explosions took out the Mechs.

Freya smiled as the windows rattled with the shockwaves from the explosions. Looking out at the carnage that Tike had wrought, Freya shook her head in wonder. All five of the Mechs were wrecked. She scanned the area looking for her platoon mates and found them running towards the bridge. Patterson was in the rear, shooting at anyone who came up behind them, while Tike was firing off grenades from a grenade launcher, creating havoc wherever they landed.

Freya spotted a squad setting up in front of them. She picked out the soldier in the rear who looked like he was directing the other four people in front of him. Her HUD told her that it was a woman and she was a sergeant. Freya gently pulled the trigger and the sergeant dropped. The four others didn’t notice as they rose up almost at the same time and started shooting at Tike and Patterson. Tike dropped right away, but Patterson dodged to the left and took cover behind a truck. Freya quickly moved her gun and fired her gun five times. She missed only once.

Freya watched as Patterson looked around the truck. When he saw the dead enemies he started running again towards the bridge. Freya tracked two enemy soldiers coming up from his side, trying to get in front of him. She quickly targeted them and pulled the trigger. Patterson jumped over their dead bodies as he ran. She spotted a turret gunner tracking him. A second later the turret gunner was dead. She cursed as she saw that he was running right towards a company of enemy soldiers. They must have been told about him because she watched them turn around and start moving towards him.

She sat helplessly as Patterson ran past the last truck and right out into the killing field. He made it about five feet before he was knocked backwards by the sheer amount of bullets that hit him. Several soldiers broke cover to walk towards him, shooting his dead body the entire time. She tracked them, but didn’t fire. She was mad, but she wasn’t mad enough to give her position away. She tracked the soldiers who had broken cover, trying to memorise them so that they would die before she did. He would come back. They wouldn’t.