Free LANCEJACK (The Union Series) by Phillip Richards Page B

my head in bewilderment. Who answered a lance corporal that way? What on
earth was wrong with these people? My blood boiled, and finally it boiled over.
    ‘You
stupid belter!’ I hollered, ‘Grow a set!’
    I
brought my rifle up to the aim and fired a string of shots into the enemy
firing points, ‘Jackson, get me that gun up here!’
    ‘What
about Pat?’
    ‘Don’t
worry about Pat, get me that gun up here, NOW!’
    Jackson
scrambled up the stairs as I fired as fast as my weapon’s recoil allowed me to
correct my aim. I put dart after dart into the red crosshairs that sporadically
flickered across my visor display.
    Taking
up a position beside me, Jackson placed the barrel of the mammoth on top of the
stairwell banister for support, corrected his aim and let rip.
    The
mammoth was more than a machine gun. It could punch through walls like they
were made of paper, its recoil dampened so much that it could fire at a
devastating rate without the loss of accuracy. Its magnets shrieked like some
horrible beast as they unleashed indiscriminate fury into the open windows used
by the enemy.
    ‘Okonkwo!’
I yelled over the din, ‘You get out and you fire , you coward! ’
    Okonkwo
snapped out of his funk with a jolt. There were few words that could really
hurt a man in the infantry, where insults were exchanged for fun. The word ‘jack’ on its own meant a trooper was idle, and didn’t help his mates when they needed
him, ‘crow’ meant that he was new, an unwanted replacement for somebody
better than him. But ‘coward’ - now that was a dirty word.
    ‘I
ain’t no coward!’ He roared, and emerged from cover to fire into the enemy.
    I
didn’t care if I had insulted the massive senior trooper, he was back in the
fight, and that was all that mattered.
    ‘Grenades,
Okonkwo! Give meHE!’ I didn’t care what Okonkwo
hit, I just wanted to do to the enemy what he had done to us. I wanted to shock
him.
    Okonkwo
obeyed, switching his launcher to high explosive rounds. With a dull thump, his
under-slung grenade launcher hurled a string of grenades into the air, each of
which almost appeared to hang in the air for a second before darting like a
little rocket into a target picked by his visor. The buildings above us rocked
with the detonations, hurling great chunks of marble plating across the street
that clattered to the ground.
    I
had no idea what Konny was up to, but so far he didn’t appear to have done
anything. There was only one thing for it, I wasn’t going to wait to die,
hoping for my section commander to do something.
    ‘Section!’
I screamed the order for everyone to hear, ‘Enemy to your front… Prepare for
rapid…’ I heard the message repeated up the street over the noise, ‘Rapid…
FIRE!’
    ‘Rapid
fire!’
    The
section shouldn’t need the order for rapid fire in an ambush situation, it
should be an instant response. A trooper wouldn’t wait for the ‘Okay’ to
fight back if a man was coming at him with a knife. But even in such close
quarters, where a target indication was unnecessary, a fire control order could
still be critical. It was so much more than a way to control rates of fire - it
said something to the troopers in the section – ‘ We are in control. Now
kill.’
    Those
troopers who had taken cover and hidden were suddenly inspired again to fight.
They emerged from their cover and they gave the enemy hell. More chunks of
marble and concrete flicked through the air as darts hacked at the buildings
towering above us with a ferocity that overwhelmed our foe, and for the first
time since the fire fight had begun there were no more red crosshairs
flickering on and off on my visor display.
    ‘Jackson,
how’s Patterson?’
    Jackson
spoke in between bursts, ‘He’s out cold. He took a lot of shrapnel, but life
signs are okay! I’ve patched up some of his wounds and his armour’s auto
treatment did a lot of the rest!’
    ‘Okay,’
I thought about what to do next. We needed to link