Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn by Jay Allan

support, only to have the orders
countermanded by higher authority for undisclosed reasons. Jake
Taylor was on his own, and his performance was being closely
watched…though he had no idea any of this was going on.
    Finally, he ordered Bear to post a small
flank guard and attack down off the hillside with the rest of his
men. The combined assault proved to be too much for the Machines
defending the trenches. They pulled back, leaving 2/3 of their
numbers behind, dead in their works.
    Now the enemy was trying to integrate all the
units that had withdrawn and organize a counterattack. Taylor’s
exhausted and shattered sections had to hold the ground they’d
taken…and give the engineers a chance to break through the enemy
fortifications. There were no reserves…they were on their own. The
rest of the battalion had moved to cut off enemy reinforcements
approaching from the north. If fresh Machine units got through,
Taylor’s people wouldn’t have a chance. At 50% strength, fatigued,
and low on ammo, they’d be swept away like dry leaves in the
breeze.
    “Jarrod, get those mortars repositioned. I
want fire on those bastards. They don’t get a chance to regroup.
Understood?”
    “Yes, Lieutenant.” Voices coming through on
the implanted com unit always sounded a little strange…hollow,
tiny. But hearing himself called lieutenant was stranger still.
“We’re on the way, sir.”
    The enemy had taken out one of the mortars,
along with its entire team. Corporal Stone and his people didn’t
have any warning. They’d been changing their position after every
two shots, but the enemy still managed to target them and score a
direct hit. Jarrod ran over to see if there were any survivors, but
he couldn’t find a piece of anybody bigger than a softball.
    “Lieutenant Taylor…Captain Graves here.”
Graves was the lead engineer. His crew were UN regulars, not UNFE
lifers. There was a lot of resentment between the conscripts
condemned to Erastus and the short-term UN specialists with a
ticket home, but Taylor had made it clear to his people he wasn’t
going to tolerate anything less than total support for the
engineers.
    “Yes, Captain.” Taylor didn’t share the
resentment. He might hate the higher ups, the people who made the
policies that sent him and his brethren to die on Erastus. But that
animosity didn’t extend to a team of engineers. He might envy their
ticket home, but that wasn’t the same thing. They didn’t create the
situation any more than he did. “What can I do for you?”
    “We’re going to blow the plasma charges in 3
minutes. I need all your people at least 500 meters from the hatch
by then.”
    Taylor sighed. Three minutes wasn’t much
time. “Understood, Captain.” There was no use arguing. Graves
didn’t have any latitude, and Taylor knew it. Getting into that
base was worth more than his entire strikeforce to UN Command…worth
more than all of Graves’s men too. Any of his people who were too
close in three minutes would be vaporized by a plasma charge. On
UNFE’s spreadsheet it would be just so many more casualties in the
glorious victory.
    “Attention all personnel.” He was practically
shouting into his com. “I want everyone a minimum of 600 meters…”
He added an extra 100, just to be safe. “…from the hatch in two
minutes.” His voice was commanding, his tone urgent. He didn’t
intend to lose any rookies because they fucked around instead of
obeying his orders immediately.
    Taylor tapped the controls on his helmet,
activating his tactical display. He took a quick glance, making
sure everyone was obeying his withdraw order. Satisfied, he tapped
his com to Black’s line. “Blackie, I’ll be going in with the
engineers in a few. You’ll be in charge out here while I’m in the
base.” With the rest of the battalion was positioned on the
northern perimeter, Taylor was in command around the base itself.
“If anything gets through the outer defenses, you need to keep