"Out of the vehicle! Now!" Stisen barked, leveling his weapon at the windshield.
But the sedan's doors remained shut. Jenkins felt his heart pounding in his chest.
"Thermal?" he whispered to Forsell, hoping the spotting scope's more sophisticated optics could confirm if either of the Staff Sergeants was in the sedan.
"Negative," Forsell replied. "It's all white. Exterior's too hot."
"First team!" Stisen barked. "Move up!"
Jenkins watched four recruits move out from behind the western berm and walk cautiously through the gate, MA5s tucked tight against their shoulders. They surrounded the sedan, two on either side.
"Burdick! Pop the door!" Stisen motioned one of his men forward.
Jenkins drew a breath, and did his best to relax into his weapon. As he exhaled, he let his scope's aiming reticle come to rest where he guessed the driver's head would be when he emerged. For some reason, he imagined Staff Sergeant Byrne's face grinning in his crosshairs.
Burdick reached toward the door release, but just as he did the sedan's gull-wing doors sprung open. The recruit had a moment to flinch, but not enough time to cry out in surprise as the sedan exploded in a flash of white vapor. Instantly, Burdick toppled to the pavement, as did two of the other flanking recruits. Each was spattered bright red, as if he had been shot through with shrapnel.
"Claymores!" groaned the lone survivor. He shuffled away from the sedan, dragging a crippled leg behind him.
"Everyone stay back!" Stisen bellowed to the rest of his squad as he took the struggling recruit's arm across his shoulders and dragged him inside the gate. The squad leader fired a one-handed burst into the sedan's windshield, but instead of shattering it flashed red—the same vibrant color as the recruits' seemingly mortal wounds.
For the exercise, each recruit's MA5 was loaded with tactical training rounds (TTR). These bullets had a plastic polymer shell to help maintain muzzle velocity and trajectory—to emulate, as much as possible, ballistics of lethal rounds. But each TTR also contained a proximity fuse that dissolved its shell, turning it into a harmless blob of red paint when it was within ten centimeters of any surface.
Harmless but not inert, Jenkins reminded himself. The paint was both a powerful, tactile anesthetic and a reactant that worked on nanofibers woven into the recruits' fatigues, causing the fibers to harden when saturated. Translation: when you got hit, you passed out and froze up.
A single TTR in any limb would render it useless. Multiple rounds to the chest would cause the whole uniform to stiffen, simulating a mortal wound. Burdick and the other downed recruits had been hit by dozens of TTR from the claymores—black plastic boxes screwed to the inside of the sedan's doors, now covered with condensation from their CO2 propellant.
"Hold your fire!" Healy shouted as he rushed to Burdick's side, med kit in hand. The recruit had taken the worst of the blast, stiffened like a board, and fallen straight onto his back.
"How's he doing, Corpsman?" Ponder asked, stepping down from his Warthog.
Healy pulled a blued-metal baton from the kit and passed it over Burdick's midsection.
Circuits inside the baton relaxed his uniform's nanofibers, and the Corpsman was able to hook the recruit under the arms, pull him to the sedan, and prop him against the front, driver-side tire. "He'll live," Healy said sarcastically. He patted Burdick on the shoulder and set his MA5 across his lap. Then he moved on to the other downed recruits.
Jenkins breathed a sigh of relief. He knew they would be fine—easily revived at the end of the exercise. But the attack had looked very real. Jenkins could easily imagine a far more gruesome scene if the sedan had contained Innie explosives. He was just about to share his thoughts with Forsell when Andersen, the newly anointed squad leader of 1/B shouted: "The combine! It isn't turning!"
Jenkins twitched east and saw Andersen and the rest of his squad retreating from the fence.
The towering JOTUN had indeed passed its usual pivot line and was barreling down on the complex. As the combine reached a thick strip of clay that edged the field, its rotary head bit into the hardened soil and locked with an audible snap of timing belts. But the JOTUN wasn't fazed. It simply raised the disabled header on its hydraulic arms and kept on rolling toward the fence. Steel poles and galvanized chainlink crumpled under the combine's first pair of tires, then twisted around the axles. The fencing sparked against the machines' underbelly as it came to a halt, half its length inside the complex and half out.
By that time, the JOTUN was covered with TTR. The recruits hadn't spotted either Staff Sergeant, but that hadn't stopped them from laying on their triggers in uncontrolled panic. In the confusion, no one noticed the grenade lofting toward the reactor tower.
"Get down!" Dass yelled. But it was too late. Jenkins barely had time to duck his head behind his rucksack before the grenade burst. He heard TTR spatter the wall below him, and he knew even before Osmo spoke that most of 1/A was gone.
"They got Dass!" Osmo wailed. "They got me!"
Risking exposure, Jenkins slunk forward and peered down at the first-story roof. Dass was unconscious as were most of the other 1/A recruits, but Osmo himself was fine. Lying facedown, hands clasped over his helmet, he hadn't noticed that the numbness in his legs was simply the result of another recruit's collapse across them.
"You're fine, Oz!" Jenkins shouted over the frantic clatter of the rest of the militia company's MA5s. "Sit up and—"
At that moment three TTR broke against the first-story wall, right below Jenkins' head—a burst from a battle rifle.
"Byrne! He's on the combine!" Forsell shouted.
If Jenkins had tried to crawl back to his ruck, he would have gotten shot. But some previously unknown instinct took over as Jenkins instead brought his battle rifle up—spotted Byrne hunkered between the first and second body segments and opened fire. Even though his shots went wide, they prompted the Staff Sergeant to abandon his already precarious position.
Byrne swung onto a ladder that ran down the backside of the first segment and headed for ground.
"I got him!" Jenkins shouted, thumbing his battle rifle fire-select switch from semi- automatic to burst. But his heavier fire only quickened the Staff Sergeant's descent. Byrne grabbed the ladder's stiles and slid down without bothering to toe the rungs. When his boots hit the asphalt, Byrne rolled between the the JOTUN's tires. From there he had good, if temporary cover, from Jenkins' battle rifle as well as the crossfire from Andersen and Stisen's squads.
"Like hell you do!" the 2/A squad leader shouted as TTR from Byrne's battle rifle sprayed the sandbags near the gate. "Critchley!" Stisen commanded. "Come to front!"
Jenkins grit his teeth. He didn't appreciate Stisen calling him out on the open COM. And besides, Critchley and his spotter were set up at the northern edge of the first-story roof and were supposed to be watching Jenkins' back.
"I said I got him!" Jenkins retorted, drilling a burst against the JOTUN's tire.
"Shut it, Jenkins!" Stisen roared. "Critchley! Respond!"
But the 2nd platoon marksman didn't say a word.
"Forsell, check your COM!" Jenkins shouted. Each recruit's COM-pad was constantly monitoring his vital signs. If one of them went down, the loss registered on the local network.
"Critchley's gone!" Forsell replied, voice shocked. "So is all of one-cee!"
"What?"
"We've lost everyone on the western fence!"
Jenkins saw Byrne's battle rifle flash from the shadows beneath the JOTUN. One of the 1/A recruits screamed as he fell. That's got to be close to thirty casualties, Jenkins thought grimly.
He squeezed off two more bursts, then rolled to his side and swapped magazines. "Stisen, we're heading to the back!"
"No goddamnit!" Stisen cursed. Then to 2/C's squad leader, tasked with guarding the northeast corner of the complex: "Habel! Shift west! It's gotta be Johnson!"
Just hearing his Staff Sergeant's name made Jenkins' stomach churn. He and the rest of the recruits had spent the day bellyaching about the heat, unaware they'd been resting between the jaws of a well-set trap. Now with Byrne firmly entrenched and Johnson pressing, it was only a matter of time before the recruits were crushed.
"Oz?" Jenkins asked, rising to a knee. "You still kicking?"
"Y-yeah!"
"You've got good height. You can keep Byrne pinned."
"But …"
"Just do it, Osmo!"
Jenkins tapped Forsell on the shoulder. They locked stares, and Jenkins knew Forsell was thinking the exact same thing: When you're caught in a trap, you fight your way out. "Stisen,"
Jenkins announced. "First marksmen are on the move."
From the top of the rise, Avery had a panoramic view of the complex. Critchley and his spotter were an easy shot, but he'd waited for Byrne to crash the fence and draw the recruits' attention before he fired twice, hitting both recruits in the sides of their heads. Circuits in their helmets registered the "lethal" headshots and instantly froze their uniforms. In the general clamor of automatic weapons fire, Avery was confident none of the other recruits had heard his shots ring out.
He also bet none of the militiamen would bother to check their motion trackers now that the devices' signals had been thoroughly confused by the cloud of fungicide. The chemicals had coated Avery in fine white powder as they settled into the wheat, and he looked almost comical as he rose from the field—as if some unseen prankster had loosed a giant bag of flour overhead. But there was nothing humorous about Avery's intent: He planned to drop every recruit guarding the western fence before they stopped thinking about Byrne and remembered to watch the perimeter.
As Avery ran down the rise, battle rifle up and plump kernels batting at his elbows, it struck him that this was the first time since TREBUCHET that he'd fired on a human being. This was different, of course; it was an exercise with practice ammunition. But Avery couldn't help noticing how easy—how automatic—it was for him to put someone in his crosshairs, and pull the trigger. This was just good training, Avery knew. And while he wasn't always happy with the way he'd put his skills to use, he was determined to pass them on—instill in his men the same confidence and lack of hesitation. In the fight to come, they would need both to stay alive.
Avery heard a grenade go off. The noise was much more muffled than the claymores he and Byrne had affixed to the sedan's doors before letting Mack bring the vehicle to the complex gate. The AI had been more than happy to help them with their exercise—had actually been the one to suggest using the JOTUN combine as an additional distraction. Avery wasn't quite sure why except that, like the marines and Lt. Commander al-Cygni, Mack must have known Harvest's reactor would be a juicy target for any hostile force and was eager to let the militia practice its defense.
Avery didn't fire through the fence. He knew the chain-link would shred his battle rifle's TTR before they hit their targets. But the same would be true for the recruits' shots as well, so it was with reasonable confidence of not getting shot that Avery sprinted over the hard-clay border between the wheat and the fence and leapt onto the chain-link.
Almost immediately, one of the 1/C recruits, Wick, heard the rattling metal and turned. His already frightened eyes widened to saucer-size as he saw what must have looked like Avery's ghost jump down inside the compound, billowing white fungicide. Before Wick could recover, Avery unslung his battle rifle and pumped two rounds into the center of his chest.
The recruit's scream carried above the din, causing three of his squad mates to turn. Avery dropped each one—left to right—before switching his rifle to burst fire and strafing the confused remains of 1/C. As the last recruit fell, the illuminated ammunition counter below the battle rifle's scope displayed three rounds remaining. But just as Avery pulled a fresh magazine from his assault vest, he started taking fire from the east.
Squad 2/C had swung around the back of the reactor tower. If the recruits had run a little faster or remembered to settle into more stable stances before opening fire, they would have caught Avery in a very bad spot. But their opening shots were wild, and all they did was give Avery time to roll left, putting the curve of the tower in between him and unexpected fire. By the time the first of the 2/C recruits came charging around the bend, Avery had reloaded. He dropped two and forced the rest of the squad to pull back and bunker down—waste valuable seconds debating when and how they should attempt to flank Avery's position.
"Charlie one is gone," Avery growled into his throat mic. "I'm getting heat from bravo two."
"I just blew your alpha boys to hell," Byrne replied. He paused to snap off a few rounds.
"But I'm still taking fire from up top."
"Must be my marksmen."
"How's that?"
"Yours are dead."
"Well, quiet 'em down, will you?"
"On it."
Keeping his battle rifle pointing north in case 2/C got organized quicker than he thought, Avery walked backward to a service ladder that would take him to the first-story roof. He slung his weapon for the climb and worked the rungs as quickly as he could. As his head cleared the roofline, Avery saw movement to his right. He jerked his head down just in time to avoid a burst from Forsell's MA5.
Without hesitating, Avery unholstered his M6 sidearm, and sprang up one-handed just as Forsell pulled his finger off the trigger. As Avery rose, so did his shots; one TTR blossomed in the middle of Forsell's gut, two more traveled up his sternum. As Forsell staggered back, Avery stepped onto the roof. Supporting his M6 with both hands, Avery kept the heavy pistol's iron sights trained on Forsell's helmet as he crumpled. The recruit was big, and Avery wanted to make sure the pistol's smaller caliber rounds were sufficient to knock him out.
Satisfied that Forsell was down for the count, Avery moved toward the ladder that would take him to the top of the second story. But he'd only taken a few steps when he felt three sharp pains in the back of his right thigh. Fueled by adrenaline, Avery spun around his rapidly deadening leg and returned fire on a target he only recognized as Jenkins after his rounds were on their way.