Warrior's Mission
I hurled myself backwards, away from the grenade flipping over trench wall. I probably could have used my Air powers to throw it right back where it had come from, but I was a bit distracted. Being targeted by every sniper out there tends to do that to you.
The grenade went off with a muffled thud. My helmet spared
me the noise, while my armor spared me the shrapnel. I paused for a moment to
praise my apparently amnesiastic self for designing such good gear before
scooping up my plasma rifle and poking my head back over the top of the trench.
The advancing troops, confident that they had cleared their
one remaining obstacle out of the way, were streaming towards the trench that I
was the sole occupier of. They were apparently not aware that a Warrior was
that occupier. I opened fire, managing to take down seven of the 15-person
squad and shoot two more grenades out of the air before they retreated.
“Dangit, Ryan, didn’t you hear the retreat order?”
I glanced sideways as Hyatt rolled into the trench next to
me. Like me, he was wearing a full battlesuit; unlike me, his spells were
nearly gone. I saw burn marks across his arms and chest.
“Yeah, I did, but if we lose this trench, it’s gonna take us
months to get it back,” I warned, snapping off another few shots without really
aiming. “When did Command say reinforcements were coming?”
“They’re not warping in until mid-cycle,” Hyatt snorted,
wrist gun spinning as he launched his own attack. “That’s 12 hours from now. We
can’t hold the trench that long, especially not with the air support arriving.”
I stared down Serenity Valley, which seemed to me to be most
unfortunately named at this point in time. “Air strike? Why didn’t I hear about
this?”
“They just got wind of it,” Hyatt grunted.
“Was that a pun?” I didn’t wait for his reply, flipping
through the menus in on my visor screen until I found what I was looking for. “Command,
this is Stormwalker Ryan from Trench Oh-Seven-Seven-Five. What’s this about an
airstrike?”
Devonius’s voice filled my headset, causing me to grit my
teeth with hatred. “Soldier, that information does not concern you. Pull out
now.”
“With all due respect, General,
it does concern me. Can you get the reinforcements here if the air is cleared?”
“Soldier, that was an order. Pull out now!”
“That’s a stupid order, sir. Answer my question!”
“SOLDIER—“
I snarled and cut the link, turning to Hyatt. “Get on the
horn to our captain, let him know that the anti-aircraft batteries have been
taken and the strike is being held back.”
Hyatt shot a jet of water out of his palm to knock away an
incoming grenade. “You want me to lie? I can see their anti-aircraft batteries
from here! They’re still under enemy control!”
“Knowing your communications array, they won’t be by the
time you raise the captain. Do it!”
I vaulted out of the trench before Hyatt could fully
understand what I meant and charged across the three hundred or so feet
separating me from my goal. Under normal circumstances, and for a normal
soldier, this would be a suicide mission. But these were not normal
circumstances.
And I was a Warrior.
Not that anyone else needed to know that.
My shield spiraled out on my left arm just in time to block
two plasma blasts coming in from the sentries, who were clearly not ready for
this. I located their box and leapt, reaching over my right shoulder for one of
my blades. One midair flip and quick strike later, and their heads were no
longer in company with their bodies.
I landed in the enemy trench and channeled fire down my
blade. The spear of pure plasma leapt off the tip to punch straight through spells,
chestplates, and torsos. All the soldiers down one side of the trench
collapsed, dead. I spun and whipped my blade through two more soldiers before I
found who I was looking for. The leader of the group was firing at me, guns in
all four of his hands, when I batted the bolts aside with my shield and smashed
him right in his helmeted face with it. He flew backwards, right towards the
heavily armored doors of the anti-aircraft battery…
…and sailed right through as they slid open automatically for him.
As I’d expected, he had the key for the doors somewhere in
his body. I hurled my shield at the quickly-closing doors, wedging them open.
Running forward, I threw my legs forward into a slide underneath the shield,
reaching up with one hand to catch the edge of my shield to both yank it free
and arrest my forward progress into the room.
Good thing too; plasma fire blew out the deck where I would
have skidded. I spun up my wrist gun and opened fire, covering myself with my
shield. I also folded out the minigun in my powerpack on my back and flipped it
over my shoulder to help rake the interior with plasma fire, visor aiding me in
targeting opponents.
Fifteen seconds later, it was all over. I stepped over the
charred alien corpses to the controls, visor lighting up with translations and schematics
as it scanned the interior of the room. A few more seconds, and I had set the
computer to fire back up the valley at its own aircraft.
The fighters were caught completely flat-footed, the
squadron decimated in seconds. I activated my comm., to find Captain Rodgers
giving Hyatt heck over the channel for drinking on duty.
“Ryan here, sir, and Hyatt wasn’t drinking,” I cut in. “I
ordered him to call in with those reports.”
“Ryan, why the heck are you still out there? I ordered a
retreat!” Rodgers shouted.
“Musta missed that call,” I shrugged.
“Twelve times??”
“I was in the middle of a counter-attack,” I shot back. “The
anti-aircraft gun has been captured and reprogrammed to blast Scoric fighters
into little-bitty pieces and we now own Trench Oh-Seven-Seven-Six. Got any
backup coming, as per my request?”
I knew I would never get tired of getting those shocked
silences from my commanding officers, even though that usually ended with my
butt getting transferred to another unit. “Three squads are coming your way,”
Rodgers finally came back. There was a pause, and I waited for the inevitable transfer
orders.
It was his turn to catch me by surprise. “Unit Three has
orders to report to you for command. Congratulations on your promotion, Squad
Leader.”
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