As he led his squad forward, Augustus was still the first to charge ahead.
As he advanced, Augustus counted the shops they passed and estimated the distance. When the step counter on his HUD showed that he had run about seven hundred yards, he entered a fashion boutique on the left, walked straight past the counter and toppled clothing racks, and reached the shopfront facing A-220 Commercial Street.
Looking back down A-220 Commercial Street in the direction they had come, Augustus could see a dozen or so Kel-Morian soldiers behind the barricade, their backs to his squad as they focused on firing ahead.
"Harnack, stay close to me. Zander, get the grenades ready. Second fire team, switch to grenades and take out the Kel-Morians' Rippers," Augustus said. "Rick, take out whoever's giving their orders. Laird, you and your men charge as soon as I give the word."
"Understood?"
"Understood," came a chorus of replies over the channel.
"Just watch me, boss."
"Yes, sir."
"Follow me!" A few breaths later, Augustus was the first to step out of the shop and onto A-220 Commercial Street, with eighteen fully armed marines close behind.
Augustus was only a hundred yards from the Kel-Morians' barricade. The sound of powered boots pounding over brick stood out sharply against the staccato of electromagnetic rifles, immediately drawing the enemy's attention.
In a panic, the soldiers turned and opened fire on Augustus's unit, but it was already too late.
"Zander!" Augustus shouted.
With the power of his Power Armor's servo systems behind him, Zander hurled two C-54 Electromagnetic Grenades in quick succession toward the barricade, more than eighty yards away. The grenades detonated in flashes of pale blue, sending several Kel-Morian Labor Auxiliary Corps soldiers flying. Chunks of flesh and blood rained down on their comrades.
In the first volley from Augustus and the others' Gauss Rifles, all the unarmored Labor Auxiliary Corps soldiers fell. Only two Rippers in black Power Armor remained to return fire. Bullets clanged against Augustus's armor, doing no more than adding a few more dents that didn't need repairing.
With a thunderous bang, a grenade fired by Raynor struck one Ripper's abdominal armor. It exploded against the plating, instantly tearing through the tempered steel. The superheated, twisted metal seared and mangled the Ripper's belly.
Sniper Rick fired at almost the same moment. A white streak appeared across the last Ripper's helmet, and the impact of the bullet made him stagger. The second shot from the Boatswain Sniper Rifle pierced his helmet and ended his suffering in an instant.
A Labor Auxiliary Corps soldier whose legs had been blown off by a grenade lay on the ground, screaming in agony. Blood poured from his wounds, and within minutes, he would bleed to death.
Augustus walked up to him, frowning at his heart-rending cries and hateful stare. Then he shot the Kel-Morian soldier through the chest. A huge, ragged hole appeared, and the man's cries abruptly stopped.
The battle was over in a very short time. Many of Augustus's preparations had never even been needed.
Soon, Corporal Hopey, the same one they had encountered earlier, arrived with his soldiers and joined up with Augustus.
"Let's keep moving," Augustus told him.
"I'll follow your lead," the corporal said.
Before long, Augustus's force had grown to more than forty men, nearly the size of the recruit platoon he'd led back at boot camp.
Augustus led the mixed unit north along A-220 Commercial Street. He suspected that a large force of Kel-Morians was hiding in the commercial district, because barely two minutes later, they ran straight into another Ripper unit.
A Kel-Morian Ripper squad running along the street suddenly appeared in front of them. It was about the same size as a full-strength squad in the Confederate Marine Corps, and every soldier wore black-painted CMC Power Armor.
At a distance of about two hundred yards, the Rippers and the Confederate troops ran into each other and opened fire. Neither side looked for cover or dropped to the ground to dodge bullets. They were like two lines of infantry from seventeenth-century Earth, exchanging volleys with muskets.
As the two sides of Power Armor-clad soldiers stood in the street and fired at each other, shooting skill and tactics hardly mattered. The only questions were whose armor was tougher, and who could stay on their feet longer before the other side went down.
Bullets ricocheted off Augustus's breastplate. The clanging impacts and the ever-present possibility of death sent his adrenaline surging.
The ammunition counter on the HUD inside Augustus's helmet visor dropped from 360 to zero in a matter of seconds. While he reloaded, two of his men fell, but five or six Kel-Morian Rippers were already down.
The Rippers didn't retreat. Those who remained reloaded at the same pace as Augustus, then fired and silently fell. Augustus couldn't imagine the faces behind their black visors. So far, he had never seen a Kel-Morian retreat or surrender.
"Report casualties." Augustus naturally took over as acting commander of the mixed unit, and the other two squads seemed perfectly happy to follow his orders.
"Fourth and Fifth Squads, Third Platoon, Fifth Company, each lost one man," Corporal Hopey said with a sigh.
Augustus looked around, making sure no wounded had been left behind.
"Check whether any of the Kel-Morians are still alive," he told them.
Almost none of the Kel-Morian Rippers lying on the ground had died because bullets had punched straight through their armor. Most of the spikes that killed them had bounced off the plating and entered through gaps in the armor. A ricocheting bullet could still kill someone if it hit at the right angle.
After taking a head count, Augustus stepped over the Rippers' bodies and continued onward.
According to the satellite map, Augustus's unit was now only five hundred yards from the exit of A-220 Commercial Street. Once they left the street, they could reach a major east-west road and join up with the other units.
But as Augustus and the others drew closer to the exit and could already see the light beyond it, a huge shadow suddenly rose on their left.
To Augustus's left stood a building more than forty stories tall. Below it was a private parking garage that connected to the surface through a steep ramp. The entrance to the garage had clearly been widened with explosives.
At first, it was just a black speck. But soon, two rows of missile launchers rose into view before Augustus, followed by a T-shaped cockpit that looked like the cab of a Kel-Morian tractor.
It was a Kel-Morian Goliath Combat Robot, a bipedal mech made of steel.
"Left! Goliath!"
The marines reacted at once and swung their guns around, but the Goliath fired first.
Before it had even left the parking garage and stepped onto the street, the Goliath's two 35mm autocannons swept across the entire road, their barrels spinning at a terrifying speed. Muzzle flashes a meter long burst from the barrels, while bullets ripped two rows of craters across the ground, advancing rapidly toward them.
At least three men in Augustus's unit were cut down, and he had no time to think about whether any of them belonged to his squad.
Before you continue