Kel-Morian Labor Auxiliary

Augustus ordered his men to advance in their original three four-man fire teams. Then, gripping the Gauss Rifle in his hands, he charged after the Marines ahead of him.

In front of him, at least several hundred silver-gray-armored Marines from the 4th Brigade were running forward.

Several Avenger fighters from the Confederacy Air Force streaked overhead, a few hundred feet above them. Within seconds, the missiles under their wings fell toward the distant Kel-Morian positions, trailing dense plumes of smoke and erupting in a string of dazzling orange-red flashes.

Just ahead and to Augustus's left, an artillery position was still firing at them. Several electromagnetic shells landed in the middle of a platoon in front of him, sending bloody limbs and helmets with flesh and bone still attached flying through the air.

But as Augustus stepped over a Marine lying on the ground, deafening explosions rang out from the direction the shells had come from. Under the concentrated assault of the Confederacy's bombers, the Kel-Morian artillery position fell silent at once.

The warnings sent by Terran Confederacy scouts and reconnaissance aircraft had not reached the 4th Brigade's commanders in time. Everyone thought they were advancing toward a town with no defenders.

Many had even naively imagined that the locals in Vellino, their destination, had already boiled water for them, and that all they had to do was enjoy the local food. Then they would sleep through the afternoon in comfortable wooden houses, ready to launch an attack at dawn the next day.

Instead, Vellino was full of nothing but crazed Kel-Morians.

The Marine command structure was somewhat confused at first, but soon every battalion and company knew which positions they were supposed to seize and which allied units they were to cover.

"Where are those Kel-Morian bastards? Just let me get my hands on them!" Reagan asked as he ran, over the First Platoon's comm channel.

"I'm gonna blow their heads off!" Ward roared over the comm channel.

"What happened? The mission briefing clearly said there shouldn't be any Kel-Morian troops here," Omo said.

"But there are now, Tom," Augustus said. "Stick with me. Stick with your team leaders. Two battalions, nearly a thousand men, are ahead of us. By the time they reach the high ground, all we'll have to do is walk up and congratulate them."

"Don't get too far ahead. It won't do you or any of your buddies any good. Do you understand?"

"Yes, squad leader!"

"No problem, boss." Affirmative replies came over the comm channel.

The men in the First Platoon stayed close behind their squad leader. As it turned out, Augustus had been right. While their squad was still making its way through the jungle, a battalion from the 4th Brigade's vanguard had already attacked Z-103 Hill. By the time they reached its foot, the Confederacy's red-and-blue flag was already flying above it.

Second Lieutenant Reagan was nearby, with Second Squad of the 3rd Platoon. The platoon soon assembled at the foot of the hill, then, on their platoon leader's orders, went around Z-103 Hill and headed northeast toward Vellino.

By then, the Confederacy Marines had captured all the positions the Kel-Morians had established around the high ground. Some Kel-Morian troops had withdrawn at the last moment and fled toward the town behind the hill. Augustus's mission had now become pursuing the retreating enemy.

The 3rd Platoon entered Vellino along a country road paved with stones and barely ten feet wide. They didn't see a single Kel-Morian along the way, but they did catch up with one Confederate Marine squad and platoon after another.

Augustus had only seen a few Kel-Morian corpses before. This was his first time seeing regular Kel-Morian troops other than Assault Cavalry, not Holographic Projections in a recruit training camp.

Unlike the uniform CMC-200 Power Armor used by the Confederate military, Kel-Morian armor and weapons were almost never identical. It was just like how they built heavy assault vehicles and tanks from whatever materials they could find.

Only the tallest, strongest, and most battle-hardened Kel-Morians wore Power Armor closely resembling CMC Power Armor. At first glance, their armor looked no different from the suit Augustus wore, except that it had been painted black over its original finish.

The Kel-Morians' frenzied modifications covered nearly every inch of the armor. The one in front of Augustus, for instance, had sharp copper spikes hammered into every section of his Power Armor. Two sharpened Turaxis Hunter Daggers had been welded directly onto his shoulder plates, and white paint covered his black armor in chaotic graffiti.

The only marking Augustus recognized was the distinctive emblem of the Kel-Morian Rippers, which he had learned about at the recruit training camp: a spiked war hammer breaking through a window with shards of glass flying around it. The rest were even stranger, depicting animals and symbols whose meanings were unclear. Augustus guessed they represented the warrior's family or guild.

Augustus knew that anyone qualified to wear Power Armor was at least an elite veteran or a Kel-Morian guild foreman or higher.

The rest of the Kel-Morian warriors were much more poorly equipped. More than half wore only blue-green wool uniforms and carried smaller Kel-Morian Electromagnetic Rifles. Some wore overalls and coveralls, their many-pocketed outfits looking more like work clothes than military uniforms.

Others had better equipment. They wore round helmets with a raised ridge down the center and goggles, and the capital letters "KM" were printed vertically on the helmets.

Over their uniforms, these soldiers wore crude armor stitched together from kinetic plates and thick leather padding. It was far inferior to the powered CMC series armor used by the Confederacy, and covered far less of the body. The better suits protected the shins and forearms; the worse ones covered only the torso and thighs.

These soldiers made up a much larger proportion of the Kel-Morian army than the Rippers who could afford to wear Power Armor. Before taking up weapons and going to war against the Confederacy, they had been miners in the factories and mines of various guilds.

When the Guild Wars broke out, the guild government conscripted them. They were the Kel-Morian Labor Auxiliary, made up of miners. They lacked armor, but possessed an unyielding will.

Augustus's squad pressed on, seeing more corpses along the way, including some Confederate soldiers killed by land mines. The fighting in Vellino had already died down. Burned-out houses stood everywhere, and Confederate soldiers were dragging Kel-Morian corpses into the town center, loading them onto trucks, and transporting them elsewhere for burial.

That afternoon, Augustus and the men in his squad crowded into the civilian house assigned to them to rest and prepare for the general assault at dawn. Every house was crammed with stinking, sweat-soaked Marines, and even more men had to pitch tents around town.

No one knew where Vellino's original residents had gone.