"Damn it!" the tech sergeant suddenly cursed.
Lu Yuan raised his watch, watching the second hand tick away. Outside the fire control command tower, gunfire blazed across the sky. The flashes from the light anti-aircraft pulse cannons alone lit up half the sky, while the sharp "zzt zzt" sound tearing through the air belonged to the close-in defense guns. Every minute they delayed meant a moment longer without control of the fire system, and the risk of failure for the assault was growing with each passing second!
"We're late. How much longer?" Lu Yuan swapped out a fresh magazine for his rifle, cocked it, and glanced outside. Enemy reinforcements were swarming toward them like a dark tide.
"The enemy comms encryption is still being cracked! It'll take at least five more minutes to hack in!" The tech sergeant, sweating profusely, worked frantically on a portable supercomputer, as red waveforms occasionally flashed across the screen.
Lu Yuan furrowed his brow, grim and cold. Over the comms, B Team's frantic voices came through, "The enemy's auto-fire is about to tear us apart! I need those guns offline, now!" The visual from his visor showed B Team huddled behind barricades, pinned down by anti-aircraft cannons firing straight at them with such intensity they couldn't even lift their heads.
"Five minutes!" Lu Yuan shouted, spreading his fingers wide at the tech sergeant, but the deafening burst of gunfire outside the hallway drowned out the distinct "thoom-thoom" of the paratrooper pulse rifles.
"The enemy is attacking!" shouted the paratrooper on lookout, his view immediately shared with the team.
Lu Yuan's visor displayed an enemy detection overlay, marking numerous red silhouettes approaching. He crouched down and moved to the edge of the hallway railing. Activating hyperspectral vision, he could see the advancing enemies forming a skirmish line beneath the command tower, even through a layer of reinforced concrete. It was clear that the fortress commander had finally realized this was an orbital strike. The paratroopers wouldn't have heavy weapons with them, and the weapon pods had landed in scattered positions. If the enemy wiped out the paratroopers before reinforcements arrived and regained control of the fire control tower, the situation could still be salvaged!
Five minutes!
"Yue Dong, Goat, take two people and hold the stairway!" Lu Yuan commanded, pulling out an infrasound generator. He tossed it down the stairwell amidst flying debris, and agonized screams immediately followed.
"Throw grenades!" Lu Yuan ordered.
Another paratrooper, support soldier Shen Zihua, crouched behind the railing, disabled the safety on a specialized kill grenade, and handed it to Lu Yuan. These weren't standard issue for the Confederation's infantry, only elite forces like Titan mechs and orbital paratroopers were equipped with them. The grenade locked onto any enemy targets marked in red on the identification system. With a burst of tail flames correcting its trajectory mid-air, the grenade made a sharp 90-degree turn, exploding amidst the enemies below, sending them flying.
The infrasound disruption stopped abruptly. Some enemies, even while suffering from ruptured eardrums, had managed to destroy the generator. Lu Yuan quickly grabbed a pulse suppression module from a teammate's backpack and attached it. The streaking meteors in the night sky were thinning out, and for now, the paratroopers were on their own.
With a nod to each other, Lu Yuan was the first to lean out and fire. Azure flashes erupted, sending three or four soldiers climbing the stairs tumbling back. Shen Zihua followed closely behind, and a few seconds later, Lu Yuan pulled back to reload. The paratroopers on the tower fired in shifts, maintaining tight control over the only route leading up to the command tower.
The fire control command tower at the heart of the fortress was of utmost importance. The enemy commander was going mad, throwing wave after wave of troops into the assault, even deploying powered armor units in a desperate bid!
There was a world of difference between infantry with or without powered armor. Even pulse rounds were barely effective against these mech troops advancing with alloy shields.
"Get the railguns! Set the gravity pumps to anti-gravity mode and throw them out! Everyone, suppressive fire!" Lu Yuan barked over the comms. If the mech infantry got close, two super jumps would be enough to scale the not-so-tall tower, and then it would be easy to deal with the lightly armed paratroopers.
Lu Yuan flipped open his rifle's ammo feed slot, stacking four pulse battery magazines and switching to rapid-fire mode. Several high-capacity pulse rifles fired furiously, trying to stop the advance of the mech infantry. Meanwhile, precious gravity pumps were thrown out one after another, covering the open ground below the tower.
A concentrated pulse volley knocked a shield from one of the mech soldiers, but it wasn't enough to expose the vulnerable core. Without a direct hit, the shockwave alone couldn't take down these tin cans.
But then the enemy actively disengaged their armor plates!
Lu Yuan's surprise turned to alarm. "Prepare for close combat!" he shouted.
Before the words had fully left his mouth, half of the mech infantry below the tower knelt down, while the other half stepped onto their steel-clad hands. Imperial "Grizzly" class powered armor, as the name suggested, was bulky and slow, but its strength was brutal. With ease, they launched their armored comrades into the air, bypassing the anti-gravity fields!
"Engage!"
With their armor plates open, they were no longer bulletproof. In a few quick blinks, three or four mech soldiers had been gunned down by the paratroopers, but the rest pressed on undeterred, smashing through the railings, some even grabbing paratroopers in a deadly embrace.
More mech soldiers landed outside the command room, and both sides, wary of friendly fire, lowered their guns. Lu Yuan dropped his rifle stock and drew his paratrooper's short sword, plunging into the melee!
Cold steel flashed blue as Lu Yuan sidestepped the incoming mech soldier, ducking under their charge and using the enemy's momentum to circle back into attack range. In the next second, his razor-sharp short sword pierced the unarmored side of the soldier's waist. With a vicious clockwise twist, he yanked it free, spraying blood from the wound as intestines, snagged on the sword's serrated edges, spilled out. The enemy collapsed, dead weight, as Lu Yuan's battle suit was drenched in blood.
Kicking aside the corpse, now a limp ragdoll, Lu Yuan pulled out a pistol from his leg holster and rose to his feet. The paratrooper combat suit sacrificed many features to withstand the brutal conditions of orbital drops, leaving them at a disadvantage even against mech soldiers stripped of their armor. Lu Yuan could only watch as one of his gunners was shot full of holes.
"Bang!" The 4.7mm caseless round from the Atlas-45 handgun hit the mech soldier's head too late. Lu Yuan blew it apart with a shot, but his comrade was beyond saving. Closing the gunner's bulging eyes, Lu Yuan gritted his teeth and yelled, "Hold the line! I'm gonna blow these bastards to hell!"
Lu Yuan picked up a single-use railgun, which had already been pre-loaded. At that moment, a wall of shields emerged at the far end of the hallway. Sliding to one knee, Lu Yuan fired the railgun, reducing the stairway entrance to rubble. Long after, the blue trail of the magnetic rail still lingered in the air.
Discarding the railgun, Lu Yuan reached for his rifle, but suddenly, a massive hand grabbed his ankle from a gap in the railing. Reacting instantly, he drove his short sword down, forcing the enemy to let go, though he still lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. A red-helmeted enemy soldier was already on top of him.
The red-helmet raised an enormous iron fist and smashed down. In a split second, Lu Yuan, instead of blocking or dodging, threw himself forward, taking the hit to the chest!
"Clang!" The steel fist crashed into his chest plate, sending a mouthful of blood up his throat. His chest ached terribly, but Lu Yuan had bet right—his chest armor held! The red-helmet immediately grabbed Lu Yuan by the throat, choking him until he was seeing stars, his neck bones creaking under the pressure. He groped frantically at his leg, but couldn't reach his short sword.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Caseless rounds pinged off the red-helmet's faceplate, causing sparks to fly. The enemy glanced up at the paratrooper who had shot him, grabbed a chunk of railing, and hurled it with such force that the paratrooper was thrown backward in a heap.
"Thunk!" The red-helmet suddenly froze, then furiously yanked out the short sword embedded in his thigh. With one hand still choking Lu Yuan, he hoisted him off the ground. Lu Yuan, undeterred, glared at the blue eyes behind the red-helmet's visor and spat a mouthful of blood onto the faceplate, enraging the enemy even further.
Lu Yuan's hands fell limply, his consciousness fading. Just as the darkness closed in, a familiar vibration passed through him. He gasped, finally drawing in a breath of air, coughing violently as the remains of the red-helmet's lower half smoldered next to him.
"Hold on, boss." A wave of searing pain jolted Lu Yuan's eyes open. Shen Zihua, carrying a railgun, injected