Tales From the UPP Front - BotG (2)

[Desolane900]

Spoiler Alert: This is Chapter 2 of the Tales From the UPP Front series so it leaves off after Chapter 1. Don't worry about reading Chapter 1 though, since it's nice and short. Edit: Fixed with periods showing where a new line starts.
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Saul quickly slapped his helmet on his head, the big bucket-like M10 covering over half of his head. He had just gotten the straps buckled together before the dropship fell from the Halberd like a sack full of hammers. He felt all of his organs trying to escape through his blood filled head as the Cheyenne made the combat drop, the seat buckles holding him down. He watched another marine spill his lunch all over the roof, making the sound of a paintball hitting concrete and Saul was quickly thankful he hadn't eaten beforehand.
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The voice of the pilot droned information in his ear as the dropship leveled out and started a nosedive towards Unnamed Shitball, causing gravity to shift more towards the rear of the ship.
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"We're moving towards LnL 58 Sierra, 32 Echo. Confirmed hotspot in the middle of a bogland. Laser guiding phase system engaged by groundside forces. In our scopes."
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He blocked out the rest of her incessant monotone. She said hotspot but she sounded like she was giving a lecture at a college, her voice bored and flat. Another few marines sitting next to each other were laughing and cracking jokes about gooks while spouting off whatever Russian cursewords they knew as the pilot began repeating her shpeel.
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Saul was actually looking forward to landing and getting off the dropship, especially since the vomit was starting to stink up his end of the craft.
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The pilot had already finished her third loop of the same information she had went on about for the past few minutes by the time Saul felt the craft shudder, a loud groaning of machinery coming from behind him, vibrating the wall against his back. A loud clunk halted the groaning and vibrating only to have it replaced with the sound of something large flying through the air with a few dozen solid clunks coming from the distance.
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The pilot spoke into his ear, "Banshees away. We're counting thirty TSAM hits. Tracer crossfire still ongoing. We're ten seconds from the dirt, people. Look alive."
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Soldiers all around him began checking their straps, pouches, rifles, and helmets. He didn't feel a need to. He checked it all on the Halberd. The pilot counted down as the Cheyenne slowed down and began lowering, the seat buckles automatically unclipping from the marines in it's stomach. They all stood up and stared at the blast door as the countdown reached one, the door lowering with a low buzz screaming in the small bay.
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The horde of marines ran out into the bright light. A marshy clearing in a forest of green trees that arch towards the soft ground from stilt-like roots, smoke smoldering from numerous fresh craters dotting the landscape. Saul took all of this in within seconds before grabbing his rifle from the sling and searching for targets, a few of the marines around him going prone as the abrupt cough of dozens of MAR pattern carbines sounded off from his right, across the field in the tree line. The robust rifles got a quick retort in the form of the hacking laugh of M41A rifles from his left. Bullets pinged off the hull of the Cheyenne before it lifted off and left for orbit.
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He stood there, dumbstruck as he took it all in. People screaming for medics, the cracking of wood as trees took stray shots, the screeching of lead as rounds flew through the air around him. He heard a small insect fly past his ear, then another, before collapsing onto his side as something hit him in the head like a mule kicking. The familiar taste of copper filled his mouth before he touched the ground and his tongue hurt like hell. Cover! Trees! something in his head screamed at him while a body fell on top of him. One of the jokers from the flight down, and unfortunately his armor hadn't taken the hit like Freytia's did.
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He looked around and watched some other marines sprinting for craters or the treeline, some of them falling over like ragdolls or blocks of wood, depending on whether or not they survived the bullets hitting them. He shrugged the corpse off him and quickly checked the grunt's pouches, taking what ammo he could find and beginning his crawl through the flimsy long grass towards a nearby crater, gripping his rifle tightly and keeping his head down as he crawled through the muddy ankle deep water. Just like basic... Stay low...
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Saul rolled into the black crater and huffed with his teeth gritted, looking at the marines around him hunkering down. Two were some faceless nobodies but he recognized the third. Corporal Vlasis. She was tall and packed with enough muscle that she could easily take any other marine on in a fist fight. She had always hauled Saul out of any fires he was keen on starting and he would have considered her a friend had they not only met two months prior. She was covered in mud like the rest of the crater crew and he could see her perfect teeth clenched together through her sneer. She was glaring in the direction of the MAR fire looking like she was ready to run down the field and beat the UPP to death with her bare hands.
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"Vlasis!" He yelled over the cacophony of gunfire, "What's the plan!?"
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She glanced back at him and the other two marines, "We cut left out of this crossfire and flank these commie pricks! Then we blow 'em all to hell! Sound good!?" Her voice was powerful and loud, filled with a confidence only a natural born leader could have.
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The three Privates nodded and she began counting down from three, tensing and pointing her body towards the empty treeline.
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Something felt crazy about sprinting headfirst into a hail of bullets towards a bunch of flimsy trees forty meters away but Saul wasn't ready to sit in a hole and wait for another UD-4L to make a bombing run on him. As Vlasis yelled three, the fireteam of marines charged out of the makeshift bunker, stomping through the muddy water in a crouched sprint and trying to stay under the cover of the waist high grass. The treeline was getting closer but the bullets seemed to chase them with more intensity, whizzing overhead from both directions as if even the Colonial Marines didn't care who the squad was.
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One of the faceless nobodies had a lead on Saul but started dropping behind. He reached out and yanked the marine along by his vest, shoving him to the ground as they hit the edge of the forest and dived down himself, avoiding the bullets mutilating the trees around them. After a few seconds of raining death, the fire directed back towards the stalemate of a gun fight, neither side able to get any real leeway on the other either through inability to aim, see, or both.
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"Shit! I'm hit!" One of the marines, a thicker, heavyset man with brown eyes and a now very pale face, cried out.
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Vlasis walked over and hit him with a pneumatic autoinjector in his bicep before crouching and looking at the fresh wound in his leg, "It isn't that bad," she said. "The bullet went through and it didn't hit the artery."
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She took her helmet off, exposing her pitch black hair, and started tending to him while the other two marines scanned their surroundings, watching for movement. Saul blocked out their conversation but caught the wounded guy's name. Bowden. Which was still useless information. One useful thing was the flash of brown in the distance. He broke into a crouch and hushed the other soldiers, nodding towards the team of UPP soldiers a few yards away. If you pricks think you can just- The thought was cut short by the marine next to him firing at the enemy men, one fell quickly with his arm flying away in a bloody arc. Saul's rifle coughed as he followed suite, both marines firing bursts at the enemy and causing two of them drop into the murky water and float, the remaining two dropping to a kneel and returning fire. He didn't much care, he was short enough that he could stay inconspicuous when with his teammates. Sometimes being a head shorter than the other guys is a good thing.
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He ignored the bullets flying past him, one coming close enough that he could feel the wind on his neck as it passed, and took aim, finally dropping to one knee after the marine to his right fell backwards into a limp float, which would have looked like he was just relaxing in the swamp water if not for the red soaking into his BDU from underneath. Vlasis opened fire next, dropping one of the last remaining UPP and causing the other to start running as fast as he could through the knee deep water back towards his line of the woods. The Corporal wasted no time in putting two quick shots into his back, making him flop forward into the water with a splash.
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"That takes care of that." She grunted with satisfaction before turning back to Bowden and catching her helmet before it floated away. She checked his leg out one last time before nodding and putting the M10 on her dome. "You'll live."
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But Saul wasn't worried about the obese bulletsponge. He was too busy staring at the corpse of the marine next to him. Pale faced, purple lips. He was no stranger to death but having someone die right next to him like that? Three feet closer and he could have been the one floating face up on this backwater shit hole. The water was mixed brown and red around the guy's body, like some sick artist washed his brush in it. He thought he could hear someone talking but he couldn't focus. Couldn't take his eyes off the dead kid. Why couldn't he just look away? He didn't want to look..