Not waiting for anyone else, I charged forward. The stone exploded around me as the enemy fired. Thankful for the targeting jammers built into my suit, I ran behind the nearest chunk. Aiming around the jagged piece, I fired short bursts. Taking out a few of the people nearly as often as I missed.

  Multiple people from our group charged past me, taking advantage of my covering fire to move forward. Hunkering down, they took over as I moved up. Suddenly, a massive boom came from behind me—a new crater formed in the target's wall.

  “Advising all units, heavy machine turrets spotted.” Came Greg's voice over the radio. “The targeted turret door has been temporarily jammed.”

  That was both a good thing and a bad thing. Heavy turrets could eat through our armor like they were tissue paper. By jamming the door, the sniper had managed to prevent their use, temporarily.

  As I raced past the people providing covering fire, I heard a cacophony of noise from my right. Another boom sounded behind me. The noise was replaced by a series of small explosions as smoke came from the right.

  “Teams nine and five have suffered massive casualties. Teams eight and three, move to support.” Three of our guys broke off and ran back the way we had come. They were racing around the area in an effort to cover the other team’s retreat. Swarms of drones formed small clouds above each road I could see.

  Charging forward, the drones flew at the target. My computer's targeting cleared up as the drones fed information back to our teams. Our rate of fire picked up, but so did our enemies. Drones started to rain down as they were rapidly taken out. As fast as the drones had swarmed around the enemy, they were gone. Only a handful of drones remained in the sky.

  They were just enough to give our computers enough information to ignore any ghosts, but that was it. Pushing forward, I reached the halfway mark when a scream came over the radio. Before I had a chance to make out what they were saying, the scream cut off.

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  “We have flankers.” Came my commander’s voice. My computer lit up with warnings as I heard sharp pops behind me. The only gun we had that made such a noise was the five drones, whose job was to protect their controller. Somehow, someone was behind us. Knowing that there were a few people close to both of our controllers, I reached my next spot and started to lay down cover fire.

  Looking over my HUD, I noticed we were down two people and the commander was down to only one protection drone. Queen was doing better with three, though she looked like she was bunkering down with Greg. An explosion behind me told me that something was very wrong.

  “Activating nuclear fallout protocol.” Came my suit's voice in my ear. Some idiot had hit the laser backpacks. While those generators were nowhere near big enough to do much damage, they were still nuclear.

  A small series of pinches stung my shoulders as my suit injected me with a cocktail of chemicals to mitigate and protect my body from any damage from radiation. Typically, this was reserved for when someone was not shielded during a radiation storm.

  Sharp flashes let me know we were not the only ones being surprised. A second after the thought flowed through my head, a broadcast came through on my headset. “Unknown hostiles in orbit. Moving to intercept.”

  Their moving to return fire was not a good thing. That meant the ships were no longer able to provide any support we might need. This entire situation started devolving as enemies came out of the woodwork. Something was bugging me. All the intel I had seen said that this was the last stronghold. The enemy’s last stand. There shouldn’t be any ships left for them to use.

  My HUD suddenly informed me that the three people from our squad who had gone to support the right teams were gone. My mind whirled as it tried to figure out how they could be taken out so fast. Something red flashed into sight on that side. Looking over, I saw someone firing what looked to be a flame thrower. Seeing it confused me as no one had been issued such a device that I knew of.

  While my mind was confused, my body reacted, and I started to shoot at the new target. From how it jerked, I wasn’t the only one either, but it wasn’t enough. It kept firing even as its body jerked from the bullets hitting it.

  Focusing a camera on it, I mentally zoomed in on the target. The image my computer managed to get was blurred and confusing. Some sort of fire surrounded the creature. Behind it flowed four whip-like cables. Nowhere did I see a single thing that could be a weapon, yet I saw it fire small balls of plasma and waves of fire.