"This is fucking bullshit." I said over the sound of pulsating engines. A voice across from me snorted, and the owner looked up with a smile across his face.
"You think everything's bullshit, don't you Koch? Shit, we may as well call you Captain Bullshit. Getting paid ain't we?" He said, and laughed a short, staccato laugh. I smirked and gave my retort.
"Fuck off." We carried on in relative silence after that, with the occasional sound of shuffling as someone moved on their seat or checked their belt kit or weapon. The interior of the troop transport was cramped and bathed in a dim red light coming from a single bulb in the ceiling, caged in thick black wire to prevent it being dislodged by a careless movement.
There was me and three other guys sitting in the transport, weapons between our legs and necks bent to keep our heads from colliding with the ceiling. The man across from me was a canine, brown-furred and sunken featured. Twelve years as a private contractor tended to do that to you. He went by the moniker of Grim, and acted as the team leader. The man next to him was a grey vulpine named Blaine and our resident support specialist; resting against his left leg was a 8mm GPMG feeding from a 200 round cloth bag. Firing at 700rpm, that was a lot of suppressive fire. Sitting next to me was a black feline by the name of Jansen. Our weapons were a pick and mix of various types; being mercenaries, we were free to take whichever weapons we felt were appropriate for the job. I myself carried a semi automatic 7.5mm battle rifle feeding from 20 round box mags, Grim toted a 4.8mm carbine rifle and Jansen took a 10mm DMR with a midrange scope, with a 8mm "short" submachine gun for closer ranges. We were the definition of irregular; our uniforms being a mix of privately purchased battledress and civilian outdoor clothing. I was kitted out in a flecktarn combat jacket and grey civilian cargo trousers, with assault boots on my feet and a surplus helmet protecting my skull. The others were dressed similarly.
We were on our way to initiate a big fuck off firefight and blow shit up, to put it bluntly. More precisely, we were advancing on revolutionaries hiding out in the Katina desert; they were broadcasting an anti-government message on most civilian com frequencies and there had been quite a few attacks on politicians and the like recently; just last week a car bomb had exploded, killing two soldiers and wounding another as they patrolled the streets of Corneria. They called themselves the People's Revolutionary Forces and attempted to seem like an organised, regular force, but in reality they were a bunch of amateurs with some radio equipment and rusty old rifles. They sounded like no problem to us; we expected to be in and out in less than fifteen minutes. The driver of the transport opened a hatch between the transport bay and the driver's cab and yelled in.
"Approaching the stronghold now, roughly 2 klicks out." This was the signal we had been waiting for. We made ready our weapons and gave our belt kit a final check, the chorus of clacks as we cocked our weapons coming together in the confined space. I checked my safety catch and my chinstrap, affirming that my helmet wouldn't jump off as I left the vehicle and open me up to have my brain spattered over the sand.
"One K!" the driver shouted, and I gripped a handle on the ceiling and pulled myself into a half standing, half squatting position, ready to scream out of the transport and get rounds down as soon as the ramp came down into the desert sand. The rest of the guys did the same.
"You ready?" Asked Grim, swaying a little as he held onto the handle. I nodded and heard a few murmurs of affirmation from behind me.
"Quarter of a K, good luck fellas!" shouted the driver, and I felt the transport slow to a crawl. The hydraulics of the ramp began to hiss as the ramp came down, sunlight filtering in and triggering the reaction coating on my goggles, turning them from a transparent shade to a dark brown shade to protect my eyes from the sudden burst of sunlight. The ramp thudded into the sand and Grim began to shout as we sprang into action.
"Dismount! Dismount! Set up a firing line!" This basically meant, get your arse out and start eating sand. I ran down the ramp and sprinted about ten meters out before dropping to the floor, sending a cloud of sand and dust up. Rounds beat the air over my head and thudded into the sand in front of me as rifle and machinegun fire sprang up from the broadcast station some two hundred meters in front of me. The occasional red or green bolt flew overhead too; these guys were packing blasters. Shame they couldn't shoot for shit.
"Get rounds down!" Grim shouted, stating the obvious. I raised my rifle and bought the station into my sights, aiming for a first floor balcony from which I could see long bursts emanating. I flicked off my safety and curled my finger round the trigger, ready to fire. I took a second to steady my aim on the machine gunner and squeezed. The rifle kicked and spat out a smoking casing, the thump of the powder exploding lost in the sound of the other guy's fire. Blaine was firing off long, fifteen-round bursts to get the enemy's heads down so we could move, and before long he reached his desired effect.
"Move up! Move up!" Grim shouted as he sprang to his feet. I pushed up and started running towards a pile of rocks. Rounds from the MG spat up bits of sand by my feet and sparked off the rock, making a peyooow sound not unlike those you hear in the movies. I dived behind the biggest rock I could see, landing hard on my elbows. I shook off the momentary jarring and raised my rifle again, adrenaline pumping through my veins and my heart pounding. I fired off four more rounds, sending puffs of plaster shooting off the building as the bullets impacted. A casing bounced off the rock in front of me and managed to work its way into my sleeve; this was less then comfortable for me since it was singing my right forearm. I ignored it and carried on firing, managing to hit my man on the balcony and sending him tumbling onto the sand below with a yelp. A round hit the rock in front of me and sent a shower of sparks flying into the air, causing me to flinch and stop firing momentarily. The pause in my firing was long enough for the enemy to bring an automatic weapon to bear on me, cracking the air over my head and missing me so closely I could feel the wind from the bullets on my face. "Fuckthis," I thought, and rolled back behind the rock, emerging on the other side with a clear line of sight on the guy who was giving me so much grief. "Surprise,fucker!" I thought as I lined my sights up on his chest and pumped two rounds into him. He fell back, obscured from view by the wall under the window.
"Move!" Shouted Grim, having decided the enemy was sufficiently suppressed. I darted towards a depression in the sand, throwing myself into it and taking care to make sure I was covered. Raising my rifle, I took aim at a fighter armed with a blaster rifle; he had the potential to do some real damage. As I squeezed the trigger, instead of the normal loud, bass bang and the kaching of the working parts moving, I heard a click. Empty magazine.
"Magazine!" I shouted as I slithered backwards, detaching the mag from my rifle and fumbling with my belt kit for another, full magazine. Just fifty meters from the station now, the intensity of fire was horrendous; I could barely put my head up for fear of being shot. I managed to extract a magazine from the pouch and clipped it on, recocking my rifle and trying to take aim at a window without taking a bullet in the head. I succeeded, and managed to get a few rounds into the guy with the blaster. That was one blaster gone, out of about three.
"Blaine, give us cover!" Grim yelled above the noise of the firefight, and I heard a rapid series of staccato cracks as he gave the building a taste of its own medicine. I saw guys ducking for cover under the windowsills, not that it would do them any good. Blaine's MG was loaded with armour-piercing rounds, and as well as armour they were damn good at penetrating walls. Confirming my thoughts, I heard several cries from the building and smiled.
"Move to the building, prepare to breach!" Grim shouted and I threw myself onto my feet, sprinting for the door. I flattened myself against the wall on the left hand side of the door and Blaine and Jansen joined me, Grim going on the right side of the door as he carried the breach charge. I felt a hand on my shoulder and readied myself. Grim placed the block of Taram-3 on the door and extracted the clacker from his belt kit, retreating from the door a little. Our little conga line did the same too. Blaine lifted the safety catch from the clacker and squeezed it together, the Taram-3 detonating with a boom and bright orange flame. At that moment, I threw myself through the door with my rifle raised, Blaine and Jansen following me in. The room was dark and bare, with a folding table in the centre with a few plastic chairs dotted around. Half eaten meals sat on the table; we must have interrupted them in the middle of lunch. On the right there was a dead body, bleeding from the centre of his chest. A blaster rifle lay nearby. Grim started barking orders as he entered the room.
"Get upstairs! Go! Go!" Taking heed, I took point as we moved up the stairs towards an open doorway. I could hear hurried voices coming from within the room and held my hand out to the rest of the squad, palm facing outwards, to signal a stop. Letting my weapon hang from its sling I opened my grenade pouch and extricated a spherical, black and silver M450 frag grenade. Twisting the primer cap, I hurled the grenade into the room with a cry of "Grenade out!" and then dropped as low as I could on the stairs. I felt the blast wave rush over my head before I heard the explosion, a hot waft of air that ruffled the fur on the back of my neck. Several screams came from the room and I motioned for us to enter. Rifle raised, I stepped through the doorway and began sidestepping to minimise my chances of being shot, if anyone even survived the grenade. Which they didn't. Bodies lay torn and bloody, slumped over radio equipment or crumpled on the floor. One man was groaning as he lay on the floor, blood pouring from his stomach as the grenade had opened a pretty nasty gash which was bleeding all over the place. I turned him over with my boot and he looked into my eyes with his, despair and fear etched across his face. I swung my rifle round and fired a single shot, closing his eyes for good. Blood sprayed onto the muzzle of the rifle and sizzled slightly; it was still hot from the rounds I had fired.
"Fucking hell Koch, you're not supposed to do that." Came a voice from behind me. It was Jansen. I turned to face him.
"What, and waste medical supplies patching up one of the enemy? No thanks; they do that mercy-nursey shit in the army. We don't seem to be the army now do we?" I replied. Jansen bit his tongue.
"Will you ladies stop arguing and get over here?" Snapped Grim. I shook my head and stepped over bodies towards him. "We've found our radio equipment. Plant charges and prepare to blow this shit." He said. I nodded and reached in my belt kit for a block of Taram-3, extracting it after a few seconds and slapping it onto one of the radios. I stuck in a det pin and turned on the clacker.
"Set." I said. The word chorused around the room.
"Good, now we get out and blow this sky high." Grim said. We piled down the stairs and retreated about fifty meters from the building, clackers in hand. Grim started counting down.
"Three… Two… One… Blow it!" He shouted, and I banged on the clacker three times. The building shook as the Taram-3 charges detonated inside, and smoke billowed out of the windows as the noise of the explosion, a rushing whoosh sound, reached us. Whoops and cheers erupted around me, but I wasn't one for making loud noises. I just smiled, feeling satisfied with a job relatively well done. Grim pressed the send button on his radio and spoke into it, presumably arranging our transport back to the Katina spaceport.
"Driver says he'll be three minutes max. Wait out." Came the word from Grim, and I took it as a cue to relax, taking off my helmet and sinking into a sitting position in the sand. Around me, the rest of the guys did the same. We sat there in silence, reflecting on the job and the money that was in it for us; four thousand credits each seemed pretty reasonable for what we had just done. We saw the transport off in the distance, shimmering in the heat, and stood up feeling positively elated. We'd carried out the job flawlessly. It pulled up near us and the driver leaned out of the window, a grin across his face.
"Fuckin' good job guys, I'll get your duty frees at the port!" he beamed. We weren't going to say no to that. He opened the ramp and we piled back in to the transport to begin the journey back.