Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour by Mark E. Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

ignored that to sight into the plaza. She and her squad were just inside the main doors and should see some action. Other squads were with them, but the bulk of Alpha Company was on the first floor. It looked as if she would have to start without Strong after all. Boy, was he going to be pissed.
    “Wait… wait…” she said as the vehicles entered the plaza. “Now! Let them have it!”
    Gina added her fire to that of her squad, but it was a mere sideshow to the heavy thudding of the AAR. Frankowski targeted an MPV near the rear of the rebel formation and it blew up spectacularly well. The burning vehicle crashed back to earth blocking the route out of the plaza. She nodded with approval at his choice of target.
    The rebels were taken by surprise by the first explosion, but as the APCs blew up one after another, they went to ground. They had lost a considerable edge with the destruction of the heavy pulsers in the APCs, but each of the surviving rebels took it upon himself to open up on the parliament building with an awesome barrage of pulser fire and grenades. Rocket propelled grenades struck the building launched from every side of the plaza. So many, that Gina feared her squad would be buried in the debris raining from the upper floors. Glass and chunks of plascrete crashed down on the street outside. She tried not to notice when uniformed corpses added themselves to the growing piles with meaty sounding thuds.
    The result of the rebel’s initial attack was inconclusive with regard to the Alliance forces on the ground floor, but Charlie Company on the second floor took heavy casualties. Gina’s squad was mostly unhurt. Frankowski and Hollings both had minor cuts and bruises caused by chips of plascrete, but the rest of her people were fine. Other squads were not so lucky. Marines were screaming for medics while others screamed in pain still firing their rifles wildly into the plaza. Sergeants and corporals shouted curses and orders to their squads, trying to restore order and discipline in a situation that threatened to get out of control. Dust and smoke hung thickly in the air. More windows blew in as pulser fire ripped the building’s facade to shreds.
    Gina’s squad hunkered down as the rebels pumped overwhelming fire into the building in an effort to suppress the storm that had destroyed their vehicles, and was in the process of killing them. Fire from the Marines was reduced to a trickle, as plascrete walls and columns were pocked and hammered by slug throwers and plasma from the rebel pulsers. Frankowski killed the fountain he disliked so much, and in so doing deprived the rebels its use as cover. He left off when it was reduced to a smoking crater, but then he turned the AAR on the shop fronts where most of the enemy were attempting to hide.
    “Hand me the launcher would you?” Gina said in a conversational tone of voice.
    Eric handed her the shoulder rig and slid a box of ammunition closer before opening up with his pulser again. He was using single shot and making every round count. Bodies were piling up as he methodically moved along the line of rebels.
    Outgoing fire from the Marines increased again until it was a hurricane compared to the rebels light drizzle. No word had been heard from the Major since Charlie Company was hit at the start of the action, but no one needed orders to kill the killers of Marines.
    “You should have been a Marine sniper,” Gina said absently as she loaded the launcher with a high explosive contact fused rocket.
    “Been one,” Eric murmured as he tracked and fired at his targets without pause. “Not a Marine, a sniper I mean.”
    “Oh?”
    Eric fired again. “That’s how I was recruited. The Colonel liked my moves and the next thing I knew I was going into surgery. When I came out I was no longer a man.”
    That was a strange way to put it. Many people said similar things, but she hadn’t expected to hear it from him.
    “You’re still human, Eric,” she said and