Thanks once again to all reviewers, sorry it took me a while to get a new chapter up but assorted life based filth got in the way, that and I haven't been feeling particularly inspired as of late.

Anyway, onwards to chapter 5.

Chapter 5: The battle of Cheboksary, part 2

Only one of the mounted machine gun turrets was still firing. The others were all in assorted pieces on the floor; blood seeped from underneath the wreckage where the gunner's crushed bodies lay.
The remaining gunner wasn't aiming at a specific target. Cool detached professionalism and rational thought had abandoned him. He was blindly firing in all directions, hoping to hit anything and everything that came near him.
The erratic nature of the gunner's firing had, for the moment, forced the sentinels to pull back whilst they tried to determine a method of attack that wouldn't gat any friendly units shot to pieces.
The solution was eventually provided by Azami, using one of the small piles of rubble that had once been a machine gun turret as a barricade, she hurled a grenade in the direction of the shooter.
A single grenade wasn't nearly powerful enough to do much damage to the weapon, and Azami hadn't thrown the explosive close enough to the gunner to kill him. What it did do however, was cause a momentary surge of panic in the already panicky A.O.H soldier, which resulted in a pause in the firing which was long enough to allow a New Order human infantry soldier to put a bullet through his skull.
Numerous sentinels that were in the area began to descend upon the town before them. Initially they had formed one large ball, each of the sentinels weaving in and amongst its companions with casual ease. There were no collisions, no scrapes, nothing.
From this ball soon shot five wide lines of sentinels. From behind the formation resembled a clawed hand reaching towards the town in front of it. The human New Order soldiers, who were not in any immediate danger of being shot, stared upon the sight in admiration for a few moments before the angry voice of their C.O sounded over their com units.
"This is not a sight seeing trip. Pull your heads out of your arses and do your jobs; now!" After a few final glances, the human New Order soldiers were advancing on Cheboksary along with their mechanical comrades.
To her right, Azami noticed a shadow steadily advancing behind her; she turned and found herself looking upon a 'Porcupine'. An intelligent war machine designed by both human and artificial technicians. At first glance it resembled a huge, flying spiked sphere. Those who would be its targets typically expected it to fly into them and impale them with one of its spikes, which wouldn't be too much of a problem for them if they had an EMP cannon or rocket launcher handy.
In reality however, the porcupine was a flying distributor of high energy lasers that could shoot in all angles simultaneously if need be. These devices had been responsible for the majority of hostile fatalities in five major engagements since the war began, and in the other engagements, they had been effective enough to be worthy of note.
Azami noticed that there were already too soldiers, one human, the other a humanoid machine that were each using two of the spikes to support themselves. This was a common habit of new order infantry soldiers who did not fancy the idea of a long run to their target.
Deciding to emulate the two soldiers, Azami raised a hand to signal to the Porcupine that she wished for a lift. He machine slowed slightly after noticing her. It was still travelling at a fairly quick speed but it was sufficiently slow for her to grab a spike with both hands, lift her legs off of the floor and place them on another spike. The Porcupine maintained its reduced speed for a few moments until its onboard sensors told it that the hitchhiker was unlikely to fall off at its normal speed.
The sound of rushing wind drowned out the sounds of the battlefield, it also lashed against Azami's hands at an uncomfortably high speed, thereby making them both colder and stiffer, and consequently making the spike she was hanging on to much harder to grip.
This task was not impossible however, once she had secured herself as best as she could, Azami's gaze fell upon Cheboksary, which was now flying towards her at a much greater speed.
Pushing the remaining fear down as far as it would go, Azami waited to be unleashed upon the town.

Corporal Jose Benitez, one of the four thousand Alliance of Humanity troops who had been transferred from all Europe to re-enforce the A.O.H border in Russia, stood in the middle of what was once presumably a busy high street. Now all of the shops were closed, and all of the people who would normally inhabit them were hiding as deep inside their residences as they could push themselves. They, like the soldiers fighting to protect them, were certain that an untimely death was just a few miles away.
It was wrong, he thought, civilians shouldn't be anywhere near a battle zone, it wouldn't have been hard to evacuate them before the New Order forces arrived, but the A.O.H council, backed by a smattering of arse kissing generals had deemed that it wouldn't be possible, that the transports needed were required elsewhere. To Benitez, and everyone who had not been taken in by the lies of the propaganda services, the real reason was that the deaths of all these innocent civilians would be a perfect propaganda weapon.
He wasn't even sure if anyone would die, the way the news was covering recent A.O.H losses was that 'in-spite of a heroic and valiant effort on the part of the brave soldiers of humanity, the evil machines and their traitorous human allies broke through allied defences and killed everything that moved'. Jose doubted that this was actually the case, but he thought this only at an intellectual level. With the New Order coming to kill him, it was hard to think of them as anything but the enemy, and right now any thought that could make killing them seem more appealing was something he wanted to cling to.
His hands tightened around the machine gun turret that he was manning. It felt good to have this piece of hardware standing between him and death; he knew that it wasn't going to save him, but it might stave off his own demise for an extra minute or two.
He wasn't fighting because he believed the Alliance of Humanity was a cause worth dying for, given the choice he'd probably fight for the New Order. But he didn't have a choice, he was a conscript, pulled from his wife, two children and his ordinary, happy life in Crete and given a different choice, fight, or get shot in the chest.
For a brief moment, Jose thought of ending the anguish of an impending demise by turning his gun on his comrades and striking back at the government that had caused him so much misery; that had robbed him of any possibility of seeing his family again. He abandoned the idea almost instantly. The people he was fighting with were the same as him, conscripts, people who had been pulled away from their lives and now only had the option of trying to prolong their survival for as long as they could.
Jose's thoughts were cut off as he heard a sound that sent fear surging throughout his body. It was the familiar mechanical whir of sentinels.
"Look alive people, here they come!" Shouted the voice of a sergeant behind him, Jose barely noticed, he didn't even register anyone's presence anymore. All that he noticed now was gun barrel, and the targeting display in front of his eyes.
"Goodbye." He said to a brief series of blissful mental pictures of family and friends as the first of the sentinels came into view.

To be continued.