Free Fleet #03 No Rest for the Wicked by Michael Chatfield

humour.
    “Don't have any sense of humour, you lot,”
    “Spent too much time around you sir,” Shreesht said. I couldn't help grin at my group’s chuckles.
     
    ****
     
    Henry swung his plasmid battle axe, taking out two mecha's legs. One side of his blade had special hardened spikes which drove into the two troops' chests as he smashed them to the floor, shooting another one in the neck with his pistol.
    “Come on you fuckers!” He yelled as the Commandos roared with him. The commando to his right went down under a blade, but Henry made sure his attacker quickly followed him. Henry backed up slightly. He was tired and losing people too fast. The syndicate forces were having a hard time in the high gravity, but in a battle those things mattered little: fighting hormones and chemicals ruled. The syndicates also had more reinforcements than Henry had people. Nearly five times over.
    A syndicate troop got a weapon up, hitting Commandos in the faceplates and hitting Henry's shoulder before they stopped shooting. A Syndicate jumped, trying to plant his blade in Henry's neck. He hit the attacker away with the flat of his blade.
    “Pull back!” he said. He needed to change out people. His front lines were bone tired from fighting constantly.
    “Need to change, give us some room,”
    “There's a gun emplacement, but it's broken!” a gunner said who had re-donned his mecha. One needed to know how to fight no matter if they were an electrical technician, a gunner or a fully trained commando.
    “How long?” Henry got a glancing blow to the leg as he pushed an attacker back by the face plate, shooting that one while his axe crashed into the troop beside him.
    “Ten minutes!”
    Ten minutes was a lifetime.
    “We'll hold them off. Won't we, Commandos?!” Henry barked as his troops stepped up and cut into the enemy with renewed ferocity.
    Henry reloaded his pistol as he smacked a blade away, planting the spike between his two axe blades into the attacker’s shoulder. Another blade took off part of his helmet as he ducked. His rail pistol reloaded and he shot the enemy troop three times before finding something soft, at the same time dragging the plasmid blade across the groin of the one he’d spiked earlier. With an upward stroke his axe went through a helmet. His Commando's energy had waned again, and one over balanced as Henry leveled his axe. With an enemy troop going for the kill, he pressed a button on the axes handle and the spike at the end shot out, going through the attacker’s neck.
    “How long?” he barked as he used his pistol to avert a blow, turning it into a useless lump of sparking electronics. He threw it at a lunging trooper, giving the commando on the ground enough time to smack the blade away and take off the attacker’s helmet in a grisly display.
    “Five minutes,”
    It's only been five minutes. Henry's mind didn't seem to be able to comprehend that. As he grabbed a grenade with his now free hand, he turned stopping a blow from hitting his helmet only to have it lodge in his shoulder, forcing him to drop the grenade.
    “Argghhh!” Henry groaned, his eyes filled with pain driven anger as he extended the shaft of his axe with a press of a button, clearing a five foot area in front of him with four swings.
    “They're coming from behind!” someone yelled. Dread filled Henry as he employed the moves Yasu had taught him to use minimal energy for the most devastating attacks with a longer weapon.
    The enemy seemed to know that their forces were coming to cut off Henry's people. Their attacks redoubled, pushing back Henry and his defenders, many of them falling. Henry himself only barely survived, with limited mobility in his legs, his upper armoured torso a series of plasma burns.
    “The gun’s ready” a voice called out. “But they're almost here, we have to pull back.”
    I know that voice... Henry thought. It somehow reminded him of Verlu. Commander Tully! The man that took his spot, he