High above Pride of Boke, thousands of feet in the air, Kel-Morian Hellhounds and Terran Confederacy Avengers clashed in a brutal aerial contest. In the city center, anti-aircraft towers and flak guns roared. The city was burning, flames surging into the sky and setting the night alight.
Augustus and the soldiers in his squad ran and fired alongside an AVV Arclite Siege Tank, praying that the electromagnetic shells from the Kel-Morians' Guild-pattern heavy mortars would not land on them or their comrades.
According to the attack plan, the ten battalions of the 2nd and 4th Brigades would attack from the east side of Pride of Boke in three columns. The 5th Battalion, where Augustus was serving, would advance straight up the center and thrust directly into the heart of the enemy-held urban district.
The squads were spread far apart along a front seven or eight hundred yards wide. Ahead of them, a Resocialized Company was charging at full speed; behind it were the three companies of a Resocialized Battalion, with the other companies of the 5th Battalion farther back.
In the light of one flare after another, Augustus drew ever closer to the Kel-Morian positions at the city entrance, built around sandbags, steel plates, electrified barbed wire, and bunkers. These were clearly only the enemy's first line of defense.
Augustus stepped over the bodies of Resocialized Soldiers strewn across the ground. Before long, he could see the flashes of electromagnetic rifles firing from the enemy positions.
About a thousand yards ahead of Augustus stood a Kel-Morian hemispherical bunker, already wrecked by an Arclite Siege Tank shell. The position, built up with sandbags and scrap metal, had been blasted to pieces.
Even so, the Kel-Morian soldiers held their ground, returning fire at the charging Confederacy troops with an assortment of weapons, all of them surprisingly powerful. They had brought laser drills from the mines, along with every other dangerous tool they could find in the pits and guilds, and put them to use on the front lines.
Augustus had to admit that the Kel-Morians, raised in fiercely competitive guilds, had far more will to fight than many Confederacy conscripts. They were born warriors, ready to sacrifice everything for their guilds and their families' honor.
The Arclite Siege Tank pressed on, its turret turning as it fired repeatedly at the Kel-Morian positions. The Goliath Combat Robots beside Augustus opened fire too. These twelve-foot-tall, bipedal machines looked like steel giants, their hardened steel plating reflecting a cold, iron-gray sheen in the searchlights.
The 30mm automatic cannons mounted on the Goliaths' arms spun as they fired thousands of rounds in seconds, until their barrels glowed red.
Then the missile pods on the Goliath Combat Robots' shoulders rotated open and unleashed a volley of ground-to-ground missiles. Their withering fire tore hole after hole in the Kel-Morian positions.
Augustus and his squad stayed close behind the tank the entire time, bullets whistling overhead. Although Warfield's 1st Company was the first unit to attack, they kept up a steady pace on the company commander's orders, advancing in step with the tank.
Several minutes had passed since they entered charging range. One shell had struck the tank's armor, only to ricochet off at once. Another landed beside Augustus, but failed to hurt him.
Augustus remained composed and calm. He advanced steadily, firing at the flashes of light.
The soldiers of 1st Squad were spread out nearby, twenty yards apart. Closest to Augustus were Rick, the sniper in 1st Fireteam, and Benjamin, who carried the Whisperer heavy machine gun.
After 1st Company slowed its pace, the Resocialized Soldiers still charging at full speed began to pass them one after another. Their Power Armor and helmets bore none of the wolf-head insignia of the 33rd Ground Assault Division, so Augustus could still tell them apart from regular soldiers.
There was no doubt that once their commander ordered an attack, these Resocialized Soldiers would charge forward without pause, even knowing they were headed straight into hell.
Squad after squad of Resocialized Soldiers fell to Kel-Morian shells and bullets ahead of Augustus, but more kept charging in their place. They advanced like robots following a preset program, as if they had been born knowing only how to move forward.
After leaving more than a hundred bodies behind, the Resocialized Soldiers reached the Kel-Morian positions at the city entrance. But even then, they did not stop. They continued at the same speed and soon disappeared into the distance, beyond Augustus's sight.
The Kel-Morian artillery positions finally fell silent, apparently in retreat. By then, Warfield's 1st Company was still nearly two hundred yards from the enemy positions.
"Keep moving. Maintain your spacing and stay close behind the Arclite Siege Tank," Warfield said over the command channel.
Warfield and his orderly charged at the front. The silver-gray-armored lieutenant was the first to step onto the enemy positions, followed closely by 1st and 4th Platoons.
Behind them, the Arclite Siege Tank ahead of Augustus accelerated and smashed through the Kel-Morians' makeshift sandbag barricade. It rolled over the bloody corpses littering the shell-cratered road and entered the city.
But the war was not over. Augustus realized that the fighting in the city was likely to be the bloodiest phase of all.
Given the Kel-Morian soldiers' fighting spirit, they would probably have to endure brutal street-by-street, building-by-building, room-by-room battles to take the city.
Fortunately, compared with the city's vast size, the Kel-Morian defenders numbered only twenty to thirty thousand. Most of their forces had previously been stationed along the north bank of the Paddick River, which ran through the city center.
By the time Augustus followed the tank into the district of towering buildings, dawn had broken, though the sky was still thick with clouds.
Hellhound or Avenger fighters periodically became bright points of light as they fell from the sky. Several aircraft, their wings trailing black smoke, plunged like swords from the heavens into the skyscrapers—or slammed into their sides and erupted in flames.
To Augustus and the others, the city seemed gray. Kel-Morian armored vehicles burned along the streets, and every window and door was shut tight. The shopfront windows on the ground floors of the commercial district had all been shattered. Goods and furniture had been burned to ashes, and the walls were blackened.
The streets were darkened by the weather. Rain had begun to fall, pattering softly.
Gunfire sounded now and then from other blocks and behind the buildings. The only thing still moving through the city, abandoned for years, was an IAA holographic-projection advertising robot powered by solar cells.
The little plastic robot stood only two feet tall. It rolled up to Augustus on two rusted wheels, while the holographic projector on its forehead cycled through advertisements for maglev bicycles and a Goddess Statue tourist attraction.
"Sir, welcome to beautiful Pride of Boke! May I take just a few seconds to tell you about the Terra 55 commercial maglev motorcycle—"
Before the IAA robot could finish, Benjamin, the heavy machine gunner beside Augustus, kicked it away as if he were kicking a ball. None of them could be sure the treacherous Kel-Morians hadn't hidden a timed explosive inside the robot's small body.
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