Sergeant Stevenson tightened his grip on one of the metal bars running across ceiling but just below the canvass cover of the flatbed troop truck as the driver swerved to avoid the burning wreck of a Cornerian Broadsword fighter laying in the street and gunned the engine again. Scattered on the street behind and in front of his vehicle several more flatbed trucks, light vehicles, and an APC raced down the street. The small column of vehicles began to shed speed in an empty, open area of the Cornerian highway, and where the line of buildings met the road he could see a group of fallen Cornerian and Brotherhood soldiers with the sound of weapons fire coming from beyond the buildings. Almost before the column had come to a full stop Stevenson began shouting orders.
"Pile out marines, go, go, go, set up a perimeter!"
The green clad marines swarmed across the street and began to fan out around the buildings while pairs of marines lugged several heavy tripod guns into the buildings. Stevenson and his squad sprinted around one of the buildings and nearly collided with a battered squad of marines headed the other way, several carrying wounded comrades. Stevenson stepped in front of canine corporal with a nasty wound on his left shoulder.
"What's going on over there marine?"
"Sir, we had two platoons of soldiers that were moving in to secure this area when command picked up a large group of Brotherhood coming down in the area. We were engaging about two squads of enemy paratroopers when we got hit from hard on are left flank by at least three more squads of hostiles, we took some heavy casualties and our Lieutenant got hit as we were pulling back. The rest of the unit is still back there, but we don't know how many hostiles there are now."
"Our vehicles are back that way waiting to evacuate wounded, have everyone leave us some spare ammo before getting out of here, the rest of you get ready to go in there and give our guys a hand. Simons head back up to those buildings and make sure that the rest of the marines have finished setting up defensive positions up there. Tucker head back to the insertion point and bring another squad down here. Everyone else follow me, we're going in!"
Sergeant Stevenson followed the sounds of the weapons fire down an alley and past a row of parked hover cars sitting next to a concrete wall. As he dashed through an entryway in the wall he instinctively ducked his head as a burst of blaster bolts tore into the concrete less than a meter from his body. He dove behind another parked hover car before sticking his head up and laying down covering fire as the rest of his squad charged through the entrance and found cover of their own. Only when the rest of his team was safely behind cover did he allow himself the luxury of surveying his surroundings. He was on a large boulevard, with plenty of parked hover cars, metal trashcans, and lots of other good objects to use for cover. A row of trees had been planted on both sides of the street and at the moment both groups were using them the cover they offered to their advantage. From where he was he could see a squad of Cornerian soldiers hiding behind everything from street benches to hover cars, surrounded by their fallen comrades and numerous wounded. On the other side of the street at least thirty or forty Brotherhood soldiers were pummeling his men and the other squad of marines. On his command his troops hurled grenades in unison and began laying down suppressing fire on the enemy troops and as Stevenson watched, knots of hostiles were torn apart by grenades or riddled with bullets or blaster bolts. Unfortunately his men began to fall in quick succession as the Brotherhood troops returned fire. He crawled over to where a feline marine wearing a sergeant's insignia was laying down fire on a pair of Brotherhood soldiers. Stevenson glanced at the name printed on the back of the soldier's helmet.
"Sergeant Perez, I'm Sergeant Stevenson, what can we do to help?"
The other marine ducked back behind cover and turned towards him.
"We need to pull back and regroup and to get our wounded out of here, can your men lay down enough covering fire to get the job done?"
As if on cue the squad Stevenson had sent Tucker to fetch arrived and began to fan out and get behind cover. To Stevenson's delight two marines were lugging a metal box behind a hover car and hurriedly began to set up the heavy tripod gun it contained.
"We can give you enough cover but not for very long against this many hostiles, tell your men that as soon as they start to hear organized bursts of weapons fire to head for the entryway and run like hell, the rest of our team has dug in some of those buildings back that way."
Sergeant Perez nodded and bellowed the necessary orders, his troops disengaged and got ready to move. Perez nodded to Stevenson and he turned and gave the order.
"Friendly's moving out covering fire!"
Stevenson raised his assault rifle and emptied the clip in the direction of the Brotherhood soldiers while both of his squads let loose a hail of blaster bolts and bullets, trying desperately to keep the Brotherhood soldier's heads down long enough. Sergeant Perez's squad moved out carrying, helping or dragging the wounded through the entryway while their squad members joined the fire against the Brotherhood paratroopers. When the last of Perez's squad was through the opening the second squad under Stevenson's command sprinted for the opening while the sergeant's group covered them before sprinting through it themselves, unfortunately nobody was covering them and as he sprinted back past the row of parked hover cars by the wall and toward the alley Stevenson heard several screams as his squad lost several more soldiers. He couldn't stop for them now, the Brotherhood soldiers were no doubt in pursuit by now and he had to get back to the rest of the company.
General Pepper rubbed his aching eyes and looked back at the main view screen. Another AO battery had been lost and be it from being destroyed, running out of missiles, or finally overheating their power generators the weapons of the AAA grid were slowly beginning to fall silent. His fighters were at the moment still holding their own against the Brotherhood fighters, but there were just too many Wraiths in the air for very many of his own fighters to go after the Brotherhood bombers or dropships. On the view screen another wave of Brotherhood bombers flew in and began to carpet bomb the city. Pepper sighed and pressed a button on the command table, switching the view to where a group of Brotherhood dropships and a pair of light assault transports were touching down in an open area of the city unloading battalion after battalion of infantry and releasing probably every kind of assault vehicle his forces had encountered so far and a few they hadn't. He turned to one of the technicians working busily at a command console.
"Status report!"
"Sir Brotherhood aircraft are slowly overrunning our air defense zones and we have squadrons of dropships already slipping the kill zone. The entire northeast section of Cornerian City is wall to wall fire fights."
General Pepper walked over the holo table at the center of the war room and stared down at it. The sky above the city was a chaotic cloud of darting colored shapes and symbols. He looked at the miniature recreation of the city itself were an equally chaotic mass of symbols clashed in the northeast section with the occasional skirmish in other sections. At the edge of the northeast section a mass of red symbols was expanding outward from an area that had been carpet bombed into the ground, that had to be the landing site.
"Lieutenant gather all forces not engaged in combat and have them set up defensive positions along the edge of this area here, and have get at least a full battalion of armor to attack the Brotherhood forces here and try to divide their ground forces, that should buy us a little more time."
"Yes General!"
Sergeant Stevenson ducked back from the window as a stream of metal bullets shot through where he had just been and tore holes in the wall behind him. He hit the clip release, slammed a fresh clip into his assault rifle, pulling the charging lever as a blaster bolt zipped through the window. The Brotherhood had them outnumbered but just barely and his troops had better positions. As he put a burst of gunfire into a Brotherhood soldier who had been moving to a better position he heard a loud combination of rumbling and rattling, and uttered a curse under his breath. The front of a building across the way suddenly exploded and the steel bulk of a Brotherhood tank rolled through the gap, its machine guns already blazing as the turret turned towards one of the buildings his troops were in. A rocket lanced out from one of the buildings, deforming the base of the turret but it was too late the tank gun roared and sent a hundred twenty millimeter shell slamming into the building, blowing a sizable hole and causing the one of the floors on top of it to come crashing down. As two more rockets slammed into the tank and blew it to pieces a second, third, fourth, and fifth tank rolled onto the street and opened fire. Stevenson ducked back and opened one of the pockets on his uniform pulling out a ten-pound brick of explosives. He set the timer for four seconds and threw with all his strength. The brick spun end over end through the air and landed among a cluster of Brotherhood soldiers who desperately tried to dive away from it but weren't quite fast enough. The bomb went off and reduced the soldiers to smears of blood and small junks of charred bone. As Stevenson pressed his body against the wall a phosphate grenade bounced into the window next to his, went off, and began to burn through the face of the Cornerian marine crouching there. Stevenson dashed over to the soldier and drew his combat knife.
"God damn it marine hold still!"
Another marine held the soldier down while Sergeant Stevenson began to cut away the smoldering fur and skin on the left side of the soldier's face, if he survived that would be a pretty nasty scar he'd have. As one of the units medics helped the wounded marine to safety Stevenson leaned over the fallen communication specialist and pulled the receiver unit from the marine's backpack then picked a datapad and began to calculate his position.
"Come in command, this Sergeant Stevenson of D Company. We are taking heavy fire in sector three at coordinates five-nine-two-seven and have enemy armor bearing down on us. Send air support ASAP!"
Fox went hard to port and dodged a burst of laser fire from another Wraith. He swung around and shook the starfighter from his tail, coming up on the tail of another Wraith. As the fighter began to jink Fox put a burst of laser fire up the fighter's exhaust port. As he swung to starboard to avoid a burning Broadsword a message came in over the command channel.
"Come in command, this Sergeant Stevenson of D Company. We are taking heavy fire in sector three at coordinates five-nine-two-seven and have enemy armor bearing down on us. Send air support ASAP!"
Fox keyed his comm. to the Starfox team's frequency.
"Krystal, you hear that."
"I did Fox, we have to help them."
"I know, I know, form up on me we're going in."
As Fox broke away from the battle and brought his Arwing in low over Cornerian City his sensor homed in the coordinates.
"Sergeant Stevenson this is Captain Fox McCloud of the Starfox team, there's too much activity down there, can you get a sensor beacon to guide our bombs in?"
"Roger Captain, throwing beacon now."
"There's our target Krys!"
A pulsing target symbol appeared on Fox's HUD. He pressed a few buttons and the target lock tone sounded as his targeting sensors locked on to the beacon. Fox pulled a trigger on the stick and a pair of Novastar bombs exploded from the launch tubes of both Arwings and slammed into the target Stevenson had designated. A sizable fireball boiled up as the bombs exploded and tore apart the tanks and troops, and shattered the buildings that Brotherhood soldiers had been hiding in.
"Your all clear sarge we're heading back to the battle."
"Roger McCloud see back at base."