The Electromagnetic Cannon Operators who had survived the truck's destruction fired their Electromagnetic Rifles from behind the wreckage. But whenever they showed their heads, Rick Kidd, the sniper in Augustus's squad, picked them off one by one with his Boatswain Sniper Rifle. The survivors were forced to raise their rifles over their heads and fire blindly.
Soon, amid deafening rumbling and a sharp sonic boom, Ward's rocket struck the truck in front of Augustus. The fuel tank ignited at once, and flames roared around the vehicle.
Several people caught fire. They jumped, shouted, and wailed before collapsing, standing or lying motionless. Then their bodies melted like candles.
At that moment, Rune Town residents armed with various weapons were also firing at Augustus and his men from several hundred yards away. Others, carrying only weapons like axes and powered shears, tried to close the distance to the Marines.
Augustus and the others turned their guns toward the residents who had begun charging. Only then did he notice that they were concealing weapons far more dangerous than powder shotguns and pickaxes: bundles of Electromagnetic Grenades strapped around their waists. Those grenades had most likely come from the Kel-Morian arms factory established in the area.
The charging residents were clearly being directed by someone, and they kept a wide distance from one another. Still, there were probably no Kel-Morian regular soldiers among them. As they had shown earlier, they were woefully short on electromagnetic weapons capable of piercing Power Armor.
Several of the Marines' heavy machine guns began to roar. Their unbroken streams of fire flickered like the lamps of the Reaper on its rounds.
Just a few hundred yards from Augustus, a barrage of Steel Nails raised a cloud of blood among the crowd. The people in front were torn apart by nails accelerated to supersonic speeds through electromagnetic coils. Within seconds, their bodies were reduced to scattered chunks of flesh. Limbs and scraps of flesh flew high into the air, then fell like rain, as if the crowd were a cluster of burst balloons.
Those farther back fell like straw figures swept down by a gale, like rag dolls nailed to the ground.
More than half of the two hundred people standing directly across from Augustus—including the resident spokesman who had stepped forward earlier—had fallen before he emptied his magazine of Steel Nails.
Augustus watched as the nails cut people in half. A single nail could pierce four or five people in a straight line, bury itself in the last person's body, and send him tumbling more than ten yards away.
Anyone struck in the torso or head by a Steel Nail had no chance of survival. Since only a few managed to scream or cry out, the battlefield rang only with the clatter of machine guns and electromagnetic rifles, and the thunderous roar of rocket fire.
By the time Augustus finished his first burst and changed magazines, the residents had already broken. The entire exchange had lasted less than ten seconds.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Warfield ordered.
The residents who had entered the square now lay in pools of blood, most of their bodies mangled beyond recognition. Some who were still alive groaned in pain, then gradually fell silent. The rest who had yet to reach the central square and could still walk fled in an instant.
As Augustus looked at the people moaning in pain, he reminded himself that they were a mob who had tried to kill him, and that he had only been following his superior's orders. But it did nothing to ease his mind.
The Confederacy's government had grown accustomed to using bloody massacres to suppress uprisings and revolutions, maintaining its rule through bloodshed and fear. And the enforcers of its tyranny were not the Confederacy police or local security forces, but the regular military.
Warfield immediately issued more orders. "Pursue them! 1st Platoon, move out and seize Rune Town's central Gas Refining Station. 4th Platoon, pursue them north along Cairns Road. 2nd Platoon, pursue them south along Newland Road. Drive everyone out—get them out of their houses. Medics, stay behind."
The three platoons immediately carried out their orders and ran off in different directions.
"I'll take direct command of 3rd Platoon," Warfield added.
"Yes, sir," Reagan, Augustus's platoon leader, replied at once.
Warfield led 3rd Platoon's 1st Squad toward a heavy truck overturned on its side, leaving the other squads to stand guard. Of the three trucks, it was the only one that had not been targeted by the rockets. A Marine was trapped beneath it.
He was a rifleman from 2nd Squad. The life-monitoring system built into his Power Armor showed that he was still alive, but they couldn't move the truck. Its container-style cargo bed was packed with scrap steel and alloy gathered by the people of Rune Town. Even the enhanced strength of their Power Armor couldn't make them superhuman.
"We need to find a crane," Augustus said, trying to push the truck.
"There's no time to call one in from the Engineering Department Regiment aboard the Pride of Boke," Warfield said, glancing at Augustus. He made up his mind at once.
"Explosives."
"Drain the fuel tank, and use the weakest D-7 charges." Augustus understood immediately and turned to Zander.
Zander was an art enthusiast, and his backpack held the widest variety and largest supply of demolition charges in the squad. Under Warfield's direction, 1st Squad set about planting the explosives, each man taking a clear role. Warfield personally chose their placement and charge strength.
After the blast, the connection between the truck's cab and cargo bed broke. The charges had been set with different strengths at several points, so the cargo bed pinning the Marine toppled neatly to one side. Augustus, Raynor, and the others worked together to pull him free.
The Marine's Power Armor was badly damaged, with several sections of armor dented inward. Augustus guessed he had been knocked unconscious by the impact, since there had been no response over the communications channel.
"Are you all right, Private?" Warfield knocked on the Marine's helmet. When there was no response, he pressed a button beneath the faceplate, and it slowly opened.
The young man had a bruised, swollen face and brown hair.
His injuries didn't appear too serious, mostly soft-tissue contusions, though blood kept seeping from the corner of his right eye. He might have had a mild concussion, too; he was barely able to stay awake. A medic in Power Armor approached, knelt, and lifted the Marine's eyelids to check his pupils.
The medic's Power Armor was painted the same color as Augustus and the others', distinguished only by a red cross sprayed onto its right shoulder. He carried a D-1 backpack even larger than an infantryman's M-2 pack.
When Augustus looked his way, the medic was rummaging through his backpack for a Medical Laser Nail Gun to stitch up the wound.
"My equipment isn't enough to handle this. We have to get him to the nearest medical station," the medic said to Warfield as he used a low-powered laser beam to treat the injured man's wounds and opened his faceplate. He was a pale young man with ordinary features.
"The nearest medical station is on the Pride of Boke. I'll request a transport aircraft from command right away." Warfield then looked at the Rune Town residents still lying in pools of blood. Some of the wounded were still groaning feebly. "Augustus, take your men and bring the injured locals, too."
Most of the Rune Town residents' bodies in the central square were mangled beyond recognition. Many had been torn into several pieces, leaving the ground strewn with dark greenish-black intestines, organs, bones, and chunks of flesh. Only those who had been shot in the legs were still alive.
Even though Augustus had already made it clear that the Marines would treat them, the residents kept trying to shoot at them, forcing the men of 1st Squad to return fire.
"Don't they want to live?" Josephine asked over the communications channel as they gathered the wounded.
"Maybe they just think there's something more important than staying alive," Augustus replied.
Raynor and Augustus exchanged a glance, an inexplicable feeling stirring within them.
About an hour later, when the transport aircraft arrived in Rune Town, the other units of 1st Company had already taken control of the town's Town Hall, church, and station. They had crushed an attempted counterattack by the residents, forcing them to flee their homes.
In the blood-scented air, a brand-new red-and-blue flag of the Terran Confederacy rose over the central square.
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