Oz let the smouldering Triton rifle drop behind him from atop the decimated hover truck he knelt on. The charging chamber and barrel were both white hot, warped thanks to over seventy three minutes of near constant firing. He accepted another from a runner. “How are our rounds coming?” he asked as he let loose at a group of four framework soldiers moving to join a larger mass who had taken refuge behind an overturned transport.
The barrage made the frameworks hesitate a little, stepping back from the first one whose legs were mangled by Oz’s careful shooting. He fired a burst at each of their heads and spread their skull matter across the ground beside them. “That’ll take a minute to recover from,” he said.
Two loader suits repurposed with roughly built flak guns took the opportunity to run for the security of the wall. One was peppered with rounds before he made the jump while the other leapt over cleanly. The pilot turned the loader around, climbed a support and reached back over for her partner.
“Heavy support on sector twenty-three!” Oz called as he tried to press the framework soldiers firing on the failing loader suit. The pilot was opening the chest hatch so he could flee the failing armour. The suppressive fire drove most of the frameworks back behind cover, and the pilot chanced an escape. He was one of Frost’s loaders from the Triton gunnery deck, Timothy Dillon. He reached for the loader suit stretching over the wall for him, and it caught his vacsuit-clad arm.
Three shots ripped through his legs and side as his partner pulled him over the wall, but according to Crewcast, he had a good chance of making it; the stasis systems were already taking over. Their infirmary would have to take care of him, the medical system on Timothy’s comm unit was burned out from over-use.
The portable energy shield beside Oz took several shots. The runner flinched, Oz didn’t. He checked the line leading from the truck’s batteries to the small shield generator and saw the power reading was good. “Where’s my cover?” he shouted.
Alaka’s son returned fire from his position behind a steelcrete slab, forcing the frameworks with a good shot on Oz back under cover.
“Your ammo will be a few more minutes,” the runner replied.
“Materializer fourteen is burned out, we’re down to one.”
“Who got that ammo?” Oz asked.
“Commander Rice’s unit,” the runner replied, choosing his moment to run then dashing back towards the hangar.
“Ladies first, I guess,” Oz said to himself as he took aim at a framework leaning a little too far out from a chunk of an upturned landing platform. The platform and frameworks hiding behind it were ripped to shreds as a battered Uriel fighter strafed in low. Oz had just enough time to recognize the skull and crossed samurai swords emblem on the nose of the fighter. “Hello, Samurai Squadron,” he said into his comm.
“How goes the war?” Ronin replied, slowing his fighter down and landing it abruptly behind the wall of their shelter.
“I keep running out of ammo, burned through two rifles. It’s a gallery shoot for the most part,” Oz replied. “You’re going to have to join me up here, bring guns.”
Minh-Chu was out of the cockpit of his Uriel fighter in a moment, carrying a fresh Triton rifle. He climbed up the side of the hover truck and got in position behind Oz. “Which area are you covering?” he asked.
Ground crews started looking over his fighter, which had more than one hole and a burned out engine pod. “Sector twenty one, but I’m monitoring a lot more. Marking it on your tactical,” Oz said. He returned fire at a framework that broke cover to rush the no-man’s-land between the wreckage of the shanty port and the Triton Settlement wall. He fired wildly, trying to frighten his foes back behind cover as he made his run. There was a box in his other hand.
Oz’s shots along with those of several other defenders riddled the framework female and the bomb she was trying to deliver exploded in a white and blue flash. A nine-metre section of the wall was blown inward, crashing against the side of the Day Hauler, one of the ships they hadn’t gotten around to working on yet. The hull held up, but the breach in the wall had to be repaired. “Third time today,” Oz said, intensifying his fire at the frameworks with an easy shot at the gap. Four loader suits were already on their way to move armour plating ripped from one of their oldest ships, Jayne’s Run, to begin repairing that section of the wall.
“Have any of those soldiers made it to the wall with one of those bombs?” Minh-Chu asked, joining in with his own rifle.
Oz cringed at the thought. “No, but they’re effective against the wall for fifteen metres, now I’m stuck here covering our maintenance guys while they try to rebuild that.”
A runner arrived with a heavy crate of cartridges slung on his back. “Framework killers,” she announced, handing Oz four cartridges. “Our last mass materializer is dead.”
“So, that’s it?” Oz said.
“No, we got thirty five thousand rounds out of it before it went,” she replied with a grin.
“Finally, a lucky break,” Oz said. “Now make sure you and the other runners tell our guys we only got thirty five hundred,” Oz said. “The frames might have a surprise up their sleeve.”
“Yes, Sir,” the runner said, moving on in a hurry.
Oz pulled his clip of explosive rounds and chucked the fresh framework killer clip into his rifle. “Lay down cover fire to the right, give the left a chance to think they can take a shot.” He could tell Minh-Chu was struggling, trying to figure out which of the hundreds of targets Oz was talking about, and he marked the frameworks on his tactical system. “Sorry, I’ve been doing this for so long that I forget there’s anything else,” he said.
Minh-Chu’s aim left something to be desired, but he was out of practice. Oz had been practicing for hours, and he sent bursts into his targets the moment they broke cover in attempts to take a shot. To his great satisfaction, the frameworks twitched and died. “How are things up top?” Oz asked.
“I thought you’d get the signal from here,” Minh-Chu said.
“We haven’t gotten much since the Leviathan pulled into orbit. Something has been jamming everything outside of the atmosphere,” he replied. “I’ve been hoping to hear something from the Triton.”
“The Triton never came up on my scanners. The Sunspire came back, they brought the British, and the first Lorander warship I’ve ever seen. I’ve had at least three near-death experiences since I last saw you,” Minh-Chu said, laughing. “Help is coming.”
“What’s the Warlord doing so far down range?” Oz asked.
“Alice is alive again, or something like Alice,” Minh-Chu replied. “Who knows? But she found a great big escape ship that’s dug into the ground. Jake is going in, he plans to clear it out and claim it.”
Oz’s heart lightened at reminder that Alice was alive in one shape or another, and his steady calm was shaken by the news that Jacob was storming an objective with only the crew of the Warlord. “Oz to Slick,” he said into his communicator.
“Slick, here.”
“I need you to intensify firepower on anything our rifles can’t reach in our outer radius. Slag the field so we can get a team together to take an objective down-field. Put a rush on it.” He highlighted a ring outside of their firearms’ reach, knowing that frameworks were gathering, heading towards the Triton settlement.
“One ring of fire coming up. Frameworks can’t survive if they’re a pile of slag,” Slick replied.
Explosions sounded in the distance, followed by tall pillars of fire and flying debris.
“We can have another bird ready for you in twenty minutes, Sir,” said a maintenance worker to Minh-Chu from behind Oz. He didn’t have time to look. He was too busy watching for frameworks who were brave enough to poke their heads out from cover. The constant sounds of firing rifles had changed to quick, short bursts echoing all across the wall as soldiers got their ammunition upgrades. “This is turning,” Oz said to himself, suppressing the surge of hope threatening to break his concentration.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Minh-Chu told the maintenance worker. “Be down in a sec.” He turned to Oz. “There’s a Captain McPatrick commanding the Sunspire, you know him?” he asked.
Oz thought a moment and realized who it had to be with a surge of dread. “You had to go and ruin my day,” Oz said. “He’s my uncle, the asshole of the family. Great commander, though.”
Oz spotted a framework soldier with a larger than normal rifle as the muzzle flared when he fired and leapt from the hover truck. The projectile exploded into the hollow cavity of the truck and sent him end over end through the air. Nanobots attended to the weakened portion of his armour, and his personal shield read at zero, but he rushed to cover unharmed.
“That was close,” he said as Minh-Chu joined him. He made sure someone else killed that framework on his tactical system and nodded to himself.
“I guess that’s what happens when they punch a hole through the wall,” Minh-Chu said.
“Yeah, I’m going to miss that perch, but I should have known better than to stay up after the wall went down. Guess I just got complacent.”
“I’ve had more near-misses since this thing got started,” Minh-Chu said, nodding. “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”
“Speaking of which, you have a fighter to get ready, and I’ve got to find another position,” Oz said. “Good hunting.”
“Keep your head down,” Minh-Chu replied.