Five by Five by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

–6–

The banshee wail of a dozen-plus CAR-7 rifles drove cold fingers into the back of Marcos’ brain—squeezing, digging—while all around him reality wavered in the backwash of overlapping distortion fields. His jaw ached from clenching against the rifle discharge. His temples throbbed. But it wasn’t allowed to be pain. The egghead lectures clearly defined pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential physical damage. CAR-7 discharge fields might be unpleasant and disorientating, but they did not—would not (ever)—cause actual tissue damage.

Therefore, no pain.

The eggheads could lecture all day. So far as Marcos was concerned, in the second hour of their run-and-gun firefight, he was now certain of only one thing.

It fragging well hurt.

A jet of white-hot plasma swept overhead, arcing and spitting, driving his men back from the edge and into the aqueduct once more. Hypervelocity pellets cracked the air around Marcos, half a hundred tiny, supersonic breaks creating a short peal of deadly thunder.

He dove for the ground, scrambling away as a furious salvo shattered the aqueduct’s rim. Concrete erupted in a spray of razor-tipped shards; a handful gouging deep tracks across his faceplate.

Marcos’ platoon clung to the aqueduct’s steep side like desperate spiders, scrabbling along the edge, hammering back at the Cyborg walkers attempting to flank them. Below, the wide basin was filled with less than a meter of gray, ash-swollen water siphoned out of the poisoned river which twisted its way through the distant battlefield. The wounded struggled and slid and climbed to the best of their ability. Two-Joe and a few others had surrendered to the mucked-up waters, wading along as best they could.

As cover went, he could have asked for better.

Then again, not much was worse than the open battlefield they’d had to cross in order to gain the city’s outskirts and some semblance of a defensible position once it had become clear that the platoon’s network would be some time rebuilding. The greatest danger on a battlefield is a soldier who does not know what he is doing. Due to poor training or a weak commander, this man becomes a liability to himself and everyone around him. The second-greatest danger is a unit that no one else in the order of battle understands what it is doing. Non-responsive to commands and unable to update their standing orders. Stumbling about in the middle of a detailed operation. Such a unit is worse than the soldier who doesn’t know what to do. They think they know, and so they act. And if they are lucky, they will only find themselves unsupported on the flanks of a battle.

Worse would be to target what would seem to be an enemy position, and take out your own command post. Or blunder too close to the enemy and find yourself on the receiving end of overwhelming friendly fire. Bad enough suffering casualties from an enemy you know is offering no quarter. When you understand that the soldier at the other end of the bullet was on your side, morale got real low, real quick.

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