“Major Morgan?” the voice came over his com. “Major Morgan, are you there?”
A cascade of dust and debris washed off a rising pile that managed to grunt, “I’m here, Colonel.” Morgan dusted himself off while still sitting in the rubble, feeling slightly concussed from the blast, managing to quickly glance around before continuing, “but our bunker got shelled. Our position will be overrun by Martian armour within the hour. Recommend pulling back to Rusholme.”
“Copy that, Major. Recommendation acknowledged but rejected. Hold the line.”
“Affirmative”, Morgan grumbled, sighing, increasingly convinced that to command and management, the common soldier was currency to be spent. Well, he supposed, that was why they referred to the recruitment offices as “Human Resources”.
Morgan got to his feet, rubbing his head where it had hit the back wall; the hair was slightly matted with blood and sweat. Private Marshall, the man who was manning the heavy pulse cannon, was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and mangled remains by the slagged pulp of what had been the cannon. Private Rogers' antipersonnel gun was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man himself. Lieutenant Johnson was attempting to lift the other antipersonnel gun from where it had fallen after being blown from its tripod. Going to help Johnson, he assumed the rest of his bunker crew were buried under the rubble of the bunker, and right now he didn’t have time to man a rescue operation.
“Beta and Epsilon bunkers, we need increased anti-vehicular coverage over Delta’s line of fire”, he grunted into the com as he helped Johnson heft the gun up to the remains of the wall to use as a brace. “Repeat, Delta bunker is down and out. We need more cover!”
Getting the gun in position, Morgan and Johnson poured pulsefire into the oncoming Martian troops.
A cascade of dust and debris washed off a rising pile that managed to grunt, “I’m here, Colonel.” Morgan dusted himself off while still sitting in the rubble, feeling slightly concussed from the blast, managing to quickly glance around before continuing, “but our bunker got shelled. Our position will be overrun by Martian armour within the hour. Recommend pulling back to Rusholme.”
“Copy that, Major. Recommendation acknowledged but rejected. Hold the line.”
“Affirmative”, Morgan grumbled, sighing, increasingly convinced that to command and management, the common soldier was currency to be spent. Well, he supposed, that was why they referred to the recruitment offices as “Human Resources”.
Morgan got to his feet, rubbing his head where it had hit the back wall; the hair was slightly matted with blood and sweat. Private Marshall, the man who was manning the heavy pulse cannon, was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and mangled remains by the slagged pulp of what had been the cannon. Private Rogers' antipersonnel gun was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man himself. Lieutenant Johnson was attempting to lift the other antipersonnel gun from where it had fallen after being blown from its tripod. Going to help Johnson, he assumed the rest of his bunker crew were buried under the rubble of the bunker, and right now he didn’t have time to man a rescue operation.
“Beta and Epsilon bunkers, we need increased anti-vehicular coverage over Delta’s line of fire”, he grunted into the com as he helped Johnson heft the gun up to the remains of the wall to use as a brace. “Repeat, Delta bunker is down and out. We need more cover!”
Getting the gun in position, Morgan and Johnson poured pulsefire into the oncoming Martian troops.
Elsewhere, Jeanne Duval frowned over the shoulder of her friend Anette, one of the duty watch officers, at the stolen satellite images of the Martian advance through inner-city Manchester – they were pushing the Dermis defenders back slowly, but sure enough they were pushing them back, and it was worrying Jeanne. She had no great love for Dermis Capital, of course, having seen her parents publicly executed when she was only twelve years old for the horrific crime of civil disobedience, and she dearly hoped the Dermis dynasty had been cut violently short when the Martians bombarded the head offices at Piccadilly House…perhaps the brothers had drowned in the blood of some of their stockholders and executives; her worries about the Martian advance were purely tactical – since the targets of the Martians appeared to be anything Human, it seemed obvious that those resisting a Martian occupation would find it far harder to simply blend in than in Corporate society.
Leaving the war room, she spotted Lance, one of the POWs she had helped rescue in a recent raid on Cheney Prison and a victim of the mind control experiments the Corporation had been conducting there. Lance had been subjected to unbelievable tortures in Cheney – the bastards at Dermis had learnt from him that pain can override other memories, and now he was condemned to relive his torment indefinitely in the confines of his own subconscious. She forced a smile for him, and shrugged off the glare she got in response as she wearily continued towards the residents’ quarters in the basement.
In the basement, she fell limply onto her bed, not bothering to remove her cybernetic foot, and lay there for what seemed like an eternity, sleep continuing to dance on the edge of her reach, drained in body but restless in mind.
Leaving the war room, she spotted Lance, one of the POWs she had helped rescue in a recent raid on Cheney Prison and a victim of the mind control experiments the Corporation had been conducting there. Lance had been subjected to unbelievable tortures in Cheney – the bastards at Dermis had learnt from him that pain can override other memories, and now he was condemned to relive his torment indefinitely in the confines of his own subconscious. She forced a smile for him, and shrugged off the glare she got in response as she wearily continued towards the residents’ quarters in the basement.
In the basement, she fell limply onto her bed, not bothering to remove her cybernetic foot, and lay there for what seemed like an eternity, sleep continuing to dance on the edge of her reach, drained in body but restless in mind.
Lance Tanner, an undercover agent of the Covert Enforcement Bureau, shuddered at the subversive stink of the treasonous skegs who surrounded him, satisfied that he would soon bring the might of the army down upon this den of thieves. He had infiltrated the rebels shockingly easily – when they came to break the prisoners out of the facility where he had been planted, he had passed himself off as a rebel captured by the military in a routine sweep a number of years ago, and claimed to have contracted amnesia as a victim of Dermis’s mind control experiments on POWs, so that he did not know any codes or passwords, and they bought it hook line and sinker, and - presumably out of the sympathy typical of these sentimental noobs after hearing his sob story - failed to even search him for hidden communications devices before they took the ‘rescuees’ back to their base of operations. Now all that was left was to find a restroom and signal the CEB.
