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Adamant Chapter 50
"Hurry up you slugs!" Sergeant Cooper roared, "Get in the damned trucks!"
"You're panicking them," Wagner protested.
"They'd better be scared, if we're not out of here in an hour they're all dead men," Cooper snarled.
Wagner turned to the milling crowd, "Come on you clubfooted dolts! Get into the trucks, forget your damned luggage and get in!"
At the main base of the Liberation Army the Troopers hastily oversaw the evacuation, frantic soldiers and clerks rushing to get into a line of waiting trucks. They looked terrified, discipline was holding by a thread. Around the edges of the base Trooper teams directed fleeing soldiers to get onto trucks, requisitioned forcefully from the locals and pressed into service. Total collapse of discipline threatened to consume them, only bellowed instructions by Troopers were keeping them from breaking and running into the wilderness.
Cooper's Team had been pulled off prison duty the second the Jackals had shown up in orbit. Every hand was required to preserve some measure of the army's strength. Word had filtered down the fleet was hard-pressed and Cooper had a sick suspicion the Guilders were going to be here soon. The Entente had to get its personnel dispersed before that happened, or tens of thousands of soldiers would be incinerated by orbital bombardments.
A pasty-faced man stumbled into Cooper, tripping over his own feet and dropping the heavy case he was carrying. The jolt cracked the lid and items in silver foil spilled upon the ground. Cooper's exposed nose wrinkled as he smelled a fishy aroma rising off the pallets, briny in a tempting way. It should make his mouth water, but today it only annoyed him more.
"What the Frig is this?!" he snapped at the man.
The soldier quivered back, "Orders, got to take rations along, got to eat."
"Prime cut Sealshark fillets?!"
"For the officers, can't expect the General to eat Food Processor rations!"
"Are you insane?!" Cooper gawped, "We're about to be hit by Jackals and you're worried about General Powers having to chow down on the same grub we eat?!"
The man stiffened, "Standards must be maintained, I worked in the hospitality industry on Londonium and we'd be shamed to serve basic rations to men of culture!"
Cooper's face went red as he hollered, "I don't care if you scrubbed the Triumvirates' toilets! You're in the army now and you'll do as you're told. Forget the fish and get your dumb ass onto a truck! Move those laggard feet, one, two, one, two, one, two!"
The man scurried away, joining a line of people hurriedly scrambling onto a flatbed. They were packing soldiers in twenty to a truck, double the number they could comfortably carry and it still wasn't enough. Cooper was painfully aware that they hadn't enough transportation for everybody, some would inevitably be left behind. Those unable to get to an evacuation convoy were being directed to go into the cities and seek shelter with local volunteers, dumping armour and arms to hide in plain sight. Ironic, given Cooper's mission had been to stop the Jackals doing exactly that.
A shrill voice cut through the bedlam, "Stick close to the Resistance Mauler, they can hide you from orbital scans. Keep a wide spread from the other convoys but keep yours huddled together. Do not under any circumstance let anyone drift more than half a kilometre from the Mauler. No… I don't care if there's a lot of fender benders, just do it. If the Jackals see you they'll blast you from orbit, worse they might find the base camp!"
Major Decker was haranguing a Lieutenant in charge of the convoy. Without waiting for a reply she turned and stomped over, her armour's faceplate raised to reveal a furious expression. "Idiots!" she growled.
"Crayon-eaters giving you lip?" Jing sneered.
"They're dragging their feet and we're running out of time. The fleet's falling back, the Jackals have claimed high orbit."
"Damn," Dupone growled, "Can't we send this lot off and direct the rest to follow as they can?"
Decker shook her head, "No, if they're captured they'll reveal the Resistance base. It's our only hope to hide a portion of the army from the Guilders. It's hundreds of kilometres to cover, no time for convoys to be making round trips. One wave of evacuation is all we've got time for."
Cooper sensed the dreadful implication, despite their best efforts a lot of soldiers were about to die. He intended to ask if General Powers had been evacuated yet, but then the sky lit up with fire. From high above a ship-launched plasma shot came, slamming into the base's shields. A wash of bright colour spread out, like ripples on a pond and the air beneath grew heavy with discharging static. The base had the best shields available, equal to a Capital ship, but another bolt descended and another and another. The shield wouldn't last long.
Cooper slammed his faceplate closed and grabbed Decker about the waist, heaving her up. "What are you doing?! Put me down! "she cried. Cooper didn't listen, marching ten paces to an idling Mauler, one with a Gizmo perched on top. The Resistances' APC was the convoy's only hope to escape undetected, and Cooper had standing orders to make sure Major Decker did not die on this planet. He threw her into the rear compartment, slammed the hatch shut then yelled to the surprised man sticking out of the top hatch, "Go now! Don't stop for anything!"
The Mauler rose as the surrounding trucks started their engines. Internal combustion had long been obsolete but even the clean running electric motors made noise enough to drown out the bombardment. The far edge of the evacuation convoy began to nose out into the surrounding wilderness, while the last evacuees ran desperately for the rearmost trucks, yelling not to be left behind. The Team hastily got out of the way as a hundred trucks began negotiating their way out of the base, with an awful lot of cursing and arguments. This would take a while, time they did not have.
Quint chimed in, "Standard Guild doctrine is once the shields come down send in the Jackal elite to purge the base."
"Let them come," Jing growled as she hefted her Minigun.
Cooper racked his Shattergun, "Hit them hard, move and fire, we need to keep them defensive, we're fighting for time not ground."
They left the convoy behind as they ran into the heart of the base, where the heaviest assault would surely fall. Overhead the torrent of plasma intensified, each one unleashing a peal of thunder that made loose soil dance. Atmospheric dispersion was attenuating the blasts, but that only bought them a minute. This amount of firepower must be coming from a dozen assault ships, the shield was turning pearl-white as it strained to hold. Then it collapsed utterly.
Cooper's Nanoweave armour crackled head to toe as electrostatic wash poured over them. His teeth itched and his ears felt packed with cotton wool, but that didn't matter, for the first drop capsules were already incoming. Launched into the teeth of the barrage, counting on the shield being down by the time they arrived. Damn, the Jackals were crazy. A black arrowhead taller than a man slammed into a prefab building, crushing it under the intense wave of Propulsor wash it was using to break its speed. The flimsy construction folded under the weight as the side of the capsule blew open. A Jackal in full Nanoweave burst out, ripping impact webbing in the process. He was fast, he was strong and he had his Shiv in hand, expecting to be in the heat of battle the second he saw daylight, but he wasn't expecting Cooper's Shattergun in his face, blasting his innards over the capsule before he'd taken a third step.
"Incoming!" Jing roared as she let rip at more arriving capsules with yowling streams of plasma.
"They're everywhere!" Wagner shouted as he sniped at emerging Jackals.
"Hit them before they can group up!" Cooper roared as he blasted another emerging Jackal to shreds.
"There's sodding hundreds of the bastards!" Dupone yelled.
"It's just getting started," Quint snarled as he unloaded a full charge pack into a staggering Jackal woman, "Here come the Hellbats!"
The first wave of capsules had been to sow confusion and dismay, but now the full weight of the invaders fell upon them. Triangular craft blotted out the sky, their shadows multiplying as Hellrider fighters broke free to strafe the base. Guilders had dealt with the problem of getting air support into ground fights by designing a dropship that could carry two aerofighters through re-entry, deploying them in the first minute of an assault. The freed fighters fired indiscriminately into the buildings, not caring if they shot their own men.
A Hellbat slammed down twenty metres away, the ramp under the elevated cockpit crashing into the dirt. From within a wave of Jackals charged, screaming with fury. They were met by a scythe of Plasma, Jing lashing through them with a torrent of rapid fire. Bodies fell dissected, steam rising from pools of boiling blood, but Cooper was far more concerned with the Pulsars lining the Hellbat's leading edge, tracking about to target the woman.
"Get down!" he yelled as he threw himself against Jing. The move saved her life, as the Hellbat's Pulsars blasted the dirt in a long line, starting where she was standing.
"Get into cover!" Quint yelled as he took potshots at the craft.
"These prefab walls will do jackshant against that!" Dupone hollered.
"If they can't see us, they can't shoot us," Wagner growled.
Cooper had to drag Jing through a nearby door, running flat out through a prefab building and out the other side. Moments later the flimsy structure was torn apart by Pulsars, but they dashed across a street and into another. Halfway through they took a left and ran out another door, jumping over the piled bodies of Entente soldiers who'd been left behind in the mad chaos. No time to check how they died, no time to mourn, they could only run and pray not to be gunned down. Cooper saw a larger building, a headquarters facility cobbled together out of a dozen prefabs. He threw himself at the double door and dived into the darkness beyond. Nobody was left, everyone had run, but where to go next, the larger structure offered a number of options, any of which could lead to safety or instant death.
"Jing, Quint, guard this door," Cooper ordered, "Wagner check out the left side, Dupone the right. I'll go straight."
"What are we looking for?" Dupone gulped.
"A way out that doesn't lead us to a hundred Jackals," Cooper snarled.
"I thought we wanted to fight the gene-freaks," Jing grumbled.
"We're buying time for the evacuees to get clear, the longer the Jackals chase us, the less time they have to realise someone got out."
Cooper took off, racing for a blank metal door on the far wall. These prefabs were as bland and mass-constructed as any, but the interior rooms were packed with desks and chairs. Smoking remains of computers sat on tables, spiked by retreating personnel, good luck to the Guilders retrieving anything from those. Cooper ran through three empty offices as he looked for the back door, only to find himself bursting into a mess-kitchen.
He found gleaming silver tables, ovens, fridges and racks of knives and utensils. One couldn't expect officers to dine on Food Processor rations after all, so the top-brass had their own dedicated cooks and dishwashers. The kitchen had been abandoned mid-shift, saucepans bubbled over open flames, frying pans smoked with meat left to char broil and cutlery was stacked up ready to wash. Yet Cooper's attention was mostly taken by the pair of Jackals flanking the door, ready to ambush anyone who came through.
A Shiv came out of nowhere, trying to rip his throat out. He reacted on instinct, twisting aside at the last instant. The blurring edge caught his shoulder and parted Nanoweave, causing a line of fire to sear his clavicle. Backing up would be certain death so he dived forward, slamming the bulk of his Shattergun into a broad chest as a second Shiv missed his spine by inches. The Jackal didn't fall, both hands grabbing the rifle and twisting hard. Cooper jerked sideways but couldn't break the grip, then he sensed the other Guilder stepping up, ready to run him through. He had no choice save to let go and dive sideways, hitting a table and rolling over, scattering utensils everywhere.
"I claim the kill," a Jackal he only just realised was a woman hissed.
"Hold on," the larger one growled as he slid his hand onto the Shattergun's grip, "This looks fun."
"That's mine," Cooper snarled.
"Come and get it."
"If you insist," Cooper retorted.
His hand fell to his Shiv's sheath and he flung it at the Guilder in one smooth motion. The heavy knife spun end over end and struck the Jackal point first. Nanoweave faceplate was pierced, skull and brain too, and the Guilder collapsed with a hilt sticking out of his forehead, dead before he hit the ground. Cooper had taken out the threat of the Shattergun, but that left him unarmed and the Guilder woman stalked forward, her Shiv blurring. Cooper took a step backwards, his hands scrambling for a weapon: a knife, a meat hammer, anything. He found a handle and gripped it hard, sweeping up the item before him, only to discover he'd picked up a frying pan.
The Jackal sneered, "What are you going to do, make dinner?"
"Maybe after I kill you," Cooper bluffed knowing he was outmatched.
"I enjoy gutting Entente scum," she hissed as she brandished her Shiv.
"Come on then," Cooper growled as he hefted the frying pan, "Let's do this."