colored carets marking friendlies and hostiles. All I see is the green-tinged visual feed from my helmet sensor, void of any tactical interpretation by the tactical computer built into my armor. Other than the low-light enhanced vision, I’m no better off technologically than the people who are shooting at us.
Then my computer resets itself, recovering from the massive knock that has upset its digital equilibrium. I see the familiar code sequence of a system initialization flashing on the helmet-mounted screen, and five seconds later, I can see and hear properly once more.
I toggle my TacLink into the squad channel, and clear my throat.
“First Squad, comm check. Anyone copy?”
“Yeah, we’re back,” Baker replies. “Boy, that was a bit of a rattle, wasn’t it?”
“No shit,” Hansen says. “I haven’t heard anything this loud since that floor party in my senior year.”
“Perimeter, people,” Sergeant Fallon admonishes. “Get up, and mind your sectors.”
Her order seems a bit pointless for the moment—anyone caught in this stuff without the benefit of battle armor or integrated helmet systems will be blind and deaf for a while. Still, I check my rifle once more, pick up the MARS launcher, and take up position by the side of a trash dumpster, to cover the mouth of the alley.
The entire alley is covered in debris that wasn’t there just moments ago. There are shards of polycarbonate everywhere, and as I look up at the buildings that make up one side of this alley, I realize that every single window in the building has been blown out by the pressure wave, dozens of inch-thick polycarb panes shattered like thin ice on a puddle. In the street beyond, I see flaming debris.
“Grayson and Hansen, head over to the end of the alley and sneak a peek,” Sergeant Fallon orders.
We dust ourselves off and trot to the mouth of the alley, back to where we stood just a few moments ago.
“Holy shit,” Hansen says as we turn the corner.
The street in front of us looks nothing like it did when we ran up to the drop ship a few minutes ago. The intersection where the wounded ship crashed is no longer a tidy, mappable feature in the cityscape. The road ends seventy-five yards in front of us, and a smoldering crater marks the spot where the drop ship blew up. The buildings that flanked the intersection are simply gone. From our spot at the corner of the alley to the ruined houses at the edge of the explosion radius, there’s not a single window left intact on the street. There’s debris everywhere—bits of building material, shards of polycarb window panes, and chunks of pavement. The drop ship has disappeared entirely, and I can’t see a single identifiable part of it anywhere.
“What the hell do they stuff into those demolition charges?” I ask.
“Fuel-air explosive,” Hansen answers. “Field-improvised. The tanks are rigged so the remaining fuel gets vaporized into the ship. They also light off whatever ordnance is still on the racks.”
“Holy hell. This neighborhood is fucked up now.”
“It’s not like it was a vacation spot before,” Hansen chuckles.
I scan the area with my low-light vision. There are hundreds of little fires in my field of view, flaring bright green on my helmet screen. I wonder how many people were blown up with that drop ship, or had their houses come down on top of them. Would anyone have stuck around after the crash, and the firefight? I’m trying to think about what I would have done, back home in the PRC, and I conclude that anyone who decides to stick around when a drop ship falls out of the sky next to their house deserves to get blown sky high.
“Keep a watch,” Sergeant Fallon says. “We’re coming out. Let’s clear the area while the cockroaches are stunned.”
Chapter 12
Sergeant Fallon has elected to take the most direct route back to the civic center. We’re walking out of the place the same way we walked in, on the main road that leads straight back to the plaza. The side streets and alleys offer more cover, but that would benefit our opponents more than us.
I am once again on rear guard duty. The two pairs of troopers carrying the pilot and crew chief are shielded by two pairs of unencumbered troopers in the lead and rear. Hansen and I are keeping an eye out on the road behind us, but the street scene is eerily quiet once more. Every once in a while, I see movement in