in the hatch holds on for balance, and then retreats back into his armored ship. I wonder why the chin turret isn’t firing back. The streams of tracers come from the rooftops of two tenement buildings, one on the right side of the plaza, and one at the far side, directly opposite the civic building. Both buildings are standard welfare shoebox stacks, thirty floors high, and I realize that the gun turret of the drop ship can’t deflect that high.
The guns on the rooftops fire in bursts, maybe twenty rounds at a time. Sergeant Fallon and I are in the open, between the relative safety of the building, and that of the armored ship. The hatch of the drop ship is much closer than the concrete overhang of the civic building, but the drop ship is already three feet off the ground, and it doesn’t look like the crew feels like waiting around while their ship is getting sprayed with incoming fire.
“Where the fuck did these people get heavy machine guns?” Sergeant Fallon asks. She pulls a smoke grenade out of her harness and motions for me to do the same. We chuck our grenades out into the plaza, and a few moments later, our position is obscured in thick smoke.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sergeant Fallon suggests. We seize the still unconscious lieutenant by the arms once more and start our dash back to the building. Behind us, the machine gun rounds keep hitting the armor of the drop ship in a steady staccato.
Suddenly, the pitch of the engines changes, and I can hear right away that something essential just broke. The steady howl of the turbines turns into a tortured shriek. I look over my shoulder and see smoke pouring out of the starboard engine. Another stream of tracers comes down onto the drop ship, which is now fifty feet above the plaza. As they impact the armor, they throw up red and yellow sparks, the tell-tale signature of armor-piercing rounds hitting a hard surface.
“Don’t stop to sight-see, moron,” Sergeant Fallon yells. We finish our dash to the safety of the overhang in front of the building.
Some of the troopers from Second Squad are crouching at the edge of the overhang. They’re aiming their rifles skyward, firing bursts at the source of the tracer rounds raking our drop ship. Whoever set up those machine guns knows the capabilities of a Hornet. The ship is most vulnerable sitting on the ground, and the machine guns are high up on rooftops, out of reach of the Hornet’s chin turret and its rapid-fire cannon. The position of the guns is either incredibly fortuitous, or shrewdly planned. I set down the lieutenant, sling his rifle across my chest armor, and then check the loading status of my own weapon. The grenades in my harness are all non-lethal munitions, nothing that could do more than irritate the enemy machine gun crews. In any case, there’s nothing in my assortment of launcher munitions that can reach all the way up to the roof of a thirty-story building.
“Fuckers know what they’re doing,” Sergeant Fallon says, in a tone that’s almost respectful. We watch as the drop ship swerves to the side and swings its tail around, the pilot doing her best to keep the cockpit and the remaining good engine away from the tracers. She tries to lift her ship out of what is now a concrete shot trap, but with one engine damaged, the Hornet is slow on the ascent. The machine guns keep hammering, and the path of the tracers follows the ship. Both streams converge at the cockpit.
The drop ship is a hundred feet above the plaza when it lurches to the side with alarming suddenness. Then the pilot catches the ship, and she swings the tail around and dips the nose down to gain speed. She’s decided to abandon the vertical takeoff, and get out of the kill zone at low level. Her path takes her right past one of the machine gun nests, and the gun stops firing as the drop ship roars past well below rooftop level. The other gun never ceases its steady stream of bursts, and the tracers from the second machine gun follow the Hornet all the way out of the plaza.
Above, a squad or two from Second Platoon have taken up position on the roof of the civil administration building. I can hear the chatter of their rifles as they engage the machine