Mettle of Honor (gxg)

Chapter 7

The sound of combat in the darkness up ahead brought the two girls to a stop. Small arms fire, interspersed with the loud crack of tank guns echoed through the woods. But, while it was dangerous, combat also meant that there should be allies too, because someone had to be shooting at the enemy. Sara crouched down, gently lowering Justice as well.

               "We might have a good chance to get out of here." Sara lowered the night vision goggles, but they were too far away to see any movement. Warfare is loud, and while they were getting closer to the origin, it was still too far to tell much. "How are you feeling, J?"

               Justice opened her mouth to say 'guilty' and then closed it. Truthfully, she did feel guilty, if only because her best friend had been carrying her and their gear for almost a week now through woods where an enemy soldier might pop out from behind a tree at any moment and over untold kilometers. She'd made sure that they conserved their rations, changed her bandages, checked her feet, and never once complained. Honestly, she felt like she'd never be able to repay her after going through all this.

               "I'm good. Ready for a damn shower and a cheeseburger though, so I hope you're right." Yeah, their rations had been running low, they hadn't eaten in over twelve hours, and they both reeked of dirt and sweat.

               "Don't say that!" Sara grumbled. "I could eat my own foot at this point, so talking about food might not be in your best interest." She paused to take in the view for a moment, then whispered once more. "I think we can move closer though, and then try to crawl from there."

               "Are you sure?" Justice was terrified that they would have come all this way just to be shot on the cusp of freedom.

               "Nope. But I can't see anything moving out there with the night vision goggles, and I don't think either of us want to crawl all the way there." Sara wasn't even sure Justice could crawl ten feet at this point with her bad foot and ankle, though maybe she could if she just used her knees.

               "Fine. But be careful. I'd rather just hide another day and see if we won the battle and not get shot."

               Sara shook her head. "Another day with almost no food might kill us. We'd be too weak to fight."

               "This is a pretty shitty situation."

               "What war isn't?"

               Justice could only shrug at that. "I guess we'll have to move forward then."

               Sara hoisted her back up, and then moved carefully through the woods once more. It wasn't hard to know which direction to go in, they just had to head towards the noise of battle. As they got closer though, they could tell that they were behind the enemy just by the sounds of the different weapons. As soon as Sara saw her first person, she crouched down and got Justice back onto the ground. Then she saw another person beyond that first one. Scouts maybe?

               "Okay, we have contact." Sara took a mental stock of their situation. They still had two of the 40mm grenades for her launcher, but she'd taken the launcher off of Justice's carbine to save some weight. They each had four magazines for their guns, the ones in them and three spares, which wasn't a perfect set up but still better than nothing. "I'm pretty sure they're the enemy."

               Justice thought about it for a moment. "Are they facing right or left?"

               "They're looking at something to the left."

               "Then you're right," Justice assured her. "We never passed the main road into Dieveniškės, so we're east of it. Our troops would be defending the road, so they have to be on the left. Bad guys to the right."