Free Titan's Fall by Zachary Brown

“Downstairs,” she said.
    After the heavy doors shut behind us, they groaned and started smoking. “What’s that about?”
    â€œSlowing Zeus down,” Amira said.
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    We had to make the hard choice of loading up with spare engine parts instead of ammo. We left the guns on the floor. But with a plan at hand, the four squads pulled together quietly.
    Mohamed Cisse carried a turbofan on his back like Atlas, the engineers clustered near him, and we formed up around them. Amira led us back up and out. We popped out like groundhogs and ran for the hills. After a few lopes, westarted dropping even more gear and just picking up the engineers under our arms so we could leap our way from rock to rock.
    A triangular formation of raptors fell in behind us, but Ken took Alpha squad and fell behind a bit. The firefight was intense and brief.
    We crested the hills and pelted downhill toward the open plains and the ethane lake where we’d crashed with the new platoon members just a day before.
    â€œKeep up the pace,” Ken muttered. “We went down a long way from the base, and the engineers don’t have that much air. Don’t stop for any Conglomeration, just keep moving.”
    I didn’t respond. I was too busy focusing on each armor-­enhanced leap that took us farther away from Shangri-La.
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    â€œI think the Conglomeration may be taking orbit,” Amira said, looking up from the bank of the ethane lake.
    I looked up as well. But there was nothing more than Titan’s usual gloom and thick clouds. “How can you tell?”
    â€œI’m listening hard. Through the static. I think I’m feeling some battle chatter. Ship-to-ship stuff.”
    Three squads got their shoulders under the jumpship and lifted it up. “I think I just shorted something out,” Erica Li said. “Someone take my place.”
    They all staggered the jumpship up out of the liquid ethane, letting it all gush out of the gaps as they waited, and then carried it up onto the bank.
    Someone started coughing on the common channel. “Shit, same here, something blew inside my suit. There’s smoke.”
    â€œContact,” Ken said.
    â€œTake Alpha and engage,” I said. “Bravo, Delta, circle upand keep the ship in the middle. Charlie, you’re there to help the engineers move anything heavy.”
    As everyone scrambled to, I stood by the jumpship and looked out across the ethane lake, half expecting crickets to come boiling out of it again. But there was only stillness.
    A moment of calm in the storm. It caught in the back of my throat, like a hiccup. As if I’d still been moving forward and then suddenly braked, and everything came up.
    The sound of weapons fire floated over Titan’s air, breaking the moment of stillness.
    â€œKen?” I asked.
    â€œRaptors. Scout team. We’ve been located,” he reported.
    â€œFall back and tighten up. Charlie, you’ll have to help the engineers and shoot anything that gets through. How is the ship looking? How long do we need?”
    â€œTwo hours,” came the response.
    â€œWe have fifteen or twenty minutes before the bad guys hit us,” I told them. “Hurry.”
    The first wave of crickets hit ten minutes later.
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    The next hour, we ground the crickets down as they came at us. Amira took point, using the EPC-1 to down them in swathes. Anything that got through, we stomped into tiny debris.
    But the raptors that came in afterward required bullets and direct confrontation, though some of the mines that Ken had taken the time to lay down killed many in the first batch. There was no running now. We had to keep them from the jumpship as the engineers swore and removed this part and that part.
    It didn’t take long to run low on ammo, even despite shortbursts and frequent direct confrontation. It took three to four of us