I slowly ease myself down the steps, a few at a time until I can half crouch without my head under risk of being hit like Bell. I am about to go further down when I see half a gun suddenly poke around the corner.

I jump, and by a miracle the idiot walks right into my path as I spray a burst off and land on him, swinging around and using him as a meat shield towards the way he came and spraying to my other side, then, feeling rather dumb shoot the other way and back up into better cover as noone was actually flanking.

I put down suppressing fire and grab the fallen trooper's, Green team, gun and use it instead of reloading. And then it hits me, they're muffled. The damned bastards have hit us with suppressors and while a suppressed gun is still loud the sound travels much less. Which to be honest explains their plan. Take me down before I could call an alarm, silently take half the camp down and cripple us. But now I can hear our guns opening up elsewhere, and it looks like I might have reinforcements on the way. I hear more then see another shot whiz by my face and flinch back, blind firing around a corner.

"I repeat, come in Tower 3, report over!" I flinch again as my earpiece blares angrily at me. I must of tuned him out while taking out the poor green sod at the base of my tower.

"HQ this is Tower 3, under heavy fire with a man down, need immediate relief and medi-vac for my sniper, over" I reply tersely, sending out another volley and checking behind me. I nearly fill my trousers as I see five men sprinting in behind me.

"Tower 3, you should have Fireteam Kansas closing on you over."

The leadman gives me a wave as I stop trying to aim at them, gun half way around my body. I put it back the correct facing (towards the enemy), hope they can't see me blushing and speak back while waiting for them to finish closing.

"Confirmed HQ, Tower 3 out."

I smack back a grenade that rolls around the corner, causing it to roll up into my tower slightly, hearing it denote just above my head and send a shower of stun paint across the top of my helmet and grass. Thankfully, it's light enough that it doesn't trigger anything. Kansas takes cover next to me.

"Evening. Heard you have a slight issue with green team?" The leader, a short lad with a macaber grin asks.

"Yeah, you could sa-wait, I never IDed them." I point out warily.

"No but Tower 5 did while taking down half the team attacking you."

Ah. "That explains why it took so long for them to throw a damned grenade." I look pointedly at the colourful explosion around me as a Kansas member shuffles by me and lobs a grenade, something sadly lacking from my gear, and then charges with two other members in a blaze of fire.

"You need to get up to barracks four and rally up with Squad Leader Io, we've got orders from command to launch a capture and control on Red Team while performing asset denial on this base." I nod, standing up and moving out. I can't hear any gunfire, but I can hear alot of shouting. It looks like our perimeter has been hit in several places from the radio traffic I'm hearing.

I arrive at barracks four to nine people stood waiting for me outside, the small building looks like half a tin can with two Warthogs parked outside, transport variants.

"Took your damned time, Lazarus." Io smirks at me, and goes on to tell me the plan.

This isn't going to be fun.