They rose at first light. Seven more flights of stairs in full equipment. The rooftop provided them with a front row view of the battles raging on down below. Yesterday’s dense clouds had settled due to nighttime rainfall, revealing the current state of the battlefield to them. The government forces had managed to crouch in on the water plant during the night, but were now bogged down at around three hundred meters from their target.

  ‘Poor chaps.’ said Atis. ‘They must be beyond exhausted and overstretched at this point. There’s no way they can break enemy lines with the amount of casualties they have.’

  ‘It was never their mission to take the plant.’ Dane replied. ‘They just need to soften up the defenders and distract them enough so we can sneak in and sabotage it.’

  Jabs huffed ‘Let’s not kid ourselves. There’s no way we’ll be able to sneak in. Their defenses are anything but softened up. We’ll get spotted and taken out well before we reach the plant. They should just abort this whole mission before ascensionist reinforcements arrive and cut us off from our evac point.’

  ‘Well look at you, mister military genius.’ Dane playfully mocked him.

  ‘You pick up a thing or two when you endure months of endless bickering between Emil and Tick playing their board games.’

  ‘Poor Emil..’ Atis said sullenly.

  A short silence fell between the men. The mentioning of Emil’s name had reopened a wound inside all of them.

  Dane broke the silence ‘We’ll all join Emil before nightfall if we stay distracted like that. I’ve just received word from command. Reinforcements arrive in one hour.’

  ‘More fodder for the meatgrinder.’ Jabs snided. ‘How many more lives are they going to waste for this catastrophe?’

  ‘They’re not sending in new platoons, Jabs.’ Dane interjected. ‘They’re sending in the sixteenth mechanized.’

  ‘Mechs?!? On Fosfat?’ Jabs blurted out. ‘This is going to be a bloodbath…’

  ‘Yes it will, which means we need to hurry up and sabotage that plant already. Each minute we save means blood unspilt.’

  ‘You give the order, sarge.’

  ‘We’ll move out in three minutes. Best get ready, men.’

  Atis checked his equipment one last time. Jabs got up, grabbed all his gear and walked towards the entrance to the stairwell.’

  ‘We’re not taking the stairs.’ Dane called after him.

  ‘Good. Then you won’t have to go past the absolute stinker I’m about to plant in there.’

  ‘Hurry up then.’ Dane sighed. ‘We’ve got two kilometers of hostile, war torn terrain to traverse to get to that plant and we’re on a schedule.’

  He signaled for Atis to prepare for their descent. Both men opened their kit before reluctantly putting their helmets back on. Neither of them was looking forward to what today would bring, unsure if they would live to tell the tale.

  Dane locked his helmet in place. The roar and cackle of the battlefield noises cleaned up due to the helmets systems filtering out the worst of the gunshots and explosions. A welcome, but surreal alleviation that took the edge off of the battlefield experience. Almost as if it was a drug that partially desensitized you from war’s horrors.

  ‘Hook in your zipline. We go down on my command. Jabs, you take rear guard.’

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He readied his own line and gave Atis the command to go as soon Jabs was in position. Jabs came jogging out of the stairwell with his gear on his back and his zip hook in hand.

  Dane gave the signal and Atis and him leapt over the side of the building, trusting their equipment to regulate the speed of their descent and hold them when they reached the ground down below. In under twenty seconds, both men landed with a muffled thud in between the rubble.

  ‘Secure perimeter, Atis.’. He pointed his own rifle forward, scanning their left for any potential threats.

  Another thud sounded. Jabs landed between them and readied his rifle too. The three men clicked their hooks loose, took two steps back against the building and waited for their steel hooks to slam into the ground before zipping them back into their belts.

  ‘Let’s go men. Double speed leapfrog. Stay alert.’

  It took them the greater part of an hour to slip through the battle lines to get to their selected site from where they would launch their assault.

  ‘I don’t like how easy that was.’ Atis panted as he dropped behind cover, guarding their right.

  ‘Yeah, that was too easy. Too smooth.’ Jabs agreed. ‘It’s as if they’re busy retreating or repositioning. A feint perhaps? Or an ambush?’

  ‘Or they’ve been tipped off on what’s about to hit them.’ Atis sighed. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. It’s as if they’ve cracked the codes of our communication channels.’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Jabs said. ‘The codes are different for each operation. They haven’t cracked our codes, somebody is leaking our plans to them. We’ve got ascensionists amongst our ranks.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter men, reinforcements are coming in hot. Focus and brace yourselves.’

  Several Minoutars came soaring through the sky with loud explosions following in their wake. Each Minoutar retaining full speed as they released their cargo. In a matter of seconds they were gone again. Their deliveries screaming down like a hailstorm.

  ‘Brace yourself, men. We go on my command!’

  The men waited with racing hearts and heavy breath, clasping their fingers tightly around their rifles, anticipating what was to come. Four pods crashed into the ground one by one, each one with the velocity of a bullet. Earth and debris were flung high in the sky and large dust clouds formed around the pods’ landing sites.

  Dane could feel his heart pound inside his throat, yet felt an odd sense of clarity. It was as if his body and mind had been disconnected, and his mind had become a cold, calculating machine in control of human flesh. He lifted up his hand, indicating to his men that he’d give the signal any second now. Loud bangs sounded as the pod doors flung open. Out came four mechs. Each standing well over five meters tall. They unleashed an inferno of missiles, bullets and laserbeams.

  They were met by an avalanche of equal magnitude. Every kind of weaponry imaginable was flying back and forth. It was obvious the ascensionists had been aware of what was to come. They had coordinated their defenses well and were firing everything they had into the mechs.

  The ascensionist defense was well coordinated, but the mech suits evaded the incoming missiles and brushed off the laser and gunfire as if they had been small pebbles thrown by kids. In stark contrast, the mechs’ fire had devastating effects on the ascensionist positions. Several of them were blown high in the sky. Men and women were flung into the air due to the blast from the explosions. Sharp whistles shrieked through the air.

  ‘They’re giving the order to retreat.’ Jabs said.

  ‘We go now!’ Dane ordered and the three men leapt over their cover and dashed into the danger zone. They ran towards the remnants of a small side entrance that had been blown to bits by one of the mechs. Jabs was in front, Dane in centre and Atis in the rear. Jabs was first to jump through the hole in the wall. Dane managed to make it in safely too, but when Atis was just about to reach the safety of the building, a huge blastwave hit them. Dane was thrown into a wall and laid down, dazed and confused, for a few seconds. When he got up he saw that Jabs and himself were both alright. Their helmets and their suits’ armor had absorbed the brunt of the blast. Atis was nowhere to be seen. Dane rushed back out and saw Atis had been tossed up into the ruined concrete walls of a side building twenty meters away. Atis’ helmet and metal backpack had left visible imprints three meters up in the wall, and Atis himself was slumped over down on the ground.

  ‘Atis, come in. Atis, come in damn it! Jabs you push on with the mission. I’m taking care of Atis.’

  ‘Roger that, sarge. See you at the extraction.’

  Dane rushed back out of the building. He looked at the direction hence the explosion had come from, wondering what the hell could have created such a shockwave. He saw parts of two legs, that had been part of a mech suit, lying at opposite ends of a massive crater. The rest of the mech had vanished.

  Something had hit the mech, causing it to explode; but what weapon could cause such carnage, or how the ascensionists had managed to get a bullseye on one of the government’s elite fighting units, he had no idea. It didn’t matter though in the grander scheme of things. Taking out one mech wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide of battle. The other three suits had survived the blast unscathed and had already gotten themselves upright again, ready to exact revenge upon whatever had slain their fallen comrade. Still though, the significance of such a blow could not be understated.

  ‘They’ve done it. They’ve gone ahead and done it, the bastards.’ He murmured to himself. ‘A mech, they’ve taken out a mech.’. He was still mumbling to himself incredulously when he reached Atis’ lifeless body.

  ‘Atis, come in. Atis, are you hurt?’

  His question was answered by a soft groaning.

  ‘Stay with me, Atis. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m taking you to the evac.’

  ‘Jabs..?’ A weak voice asked him.

  ‘Don’t worry about Jabs. He can take care of..’

  Jabs screaming voice interrupted his own. ‘It’s a trap! The place is rigged. RUN!’

  Dane slung Atis over his shoulder and dashed for cover behind the wall that Atis had just slammed in, and not a moment too soon. A giant explosion ensued, one even worse than the mech had caused. The earth shook as half the plant flew up in the air. A shower of debris rained down on the battlefield. Several large chunks of reinforced concrete slammed into the ground just meters away from Dane and Atis. A thick, toxic smoke covered them. Dane quickly taped up Atis’ damaged helmet visor in a desperate attempt to keep the filthy dust out of his lungs.

  ‘Jabs! He shouted throug his intercom. ‘Jabs, come in!’

  Dane repeated his pleas several times and anxiously waited for a response, but there was nothing. Only static noise.