No Gods, Nor Masters

Falmart on Fire

In another part of the Front, though to nobody's real surprise, the enemy continued probing attacks against their positions. A platoon of the VDV and Ukrainian Mechanized Infantry held down a crossroad toward the Northern Desert. In the back, the two Eastern units' mortar teams laid down a rain of 120mm shells toward the enemy that tried to advance on them from the forests.

Two soldiers, a man and a woman, each carrying their country's specific variant of the Dragunov SVD, fired toward the silhouettes that moved toward them, while their officers talked. AK-12s and modernized 74s barked in unison, emerald tracers lighting the night while rounds rang through from the belts of PKMs.

Beside them, Romanians armed with very similar rifles and very different, NATO-standard medical kits tended to the wounded whose bodies were pierced by 14,5mm sniper rifle rounds from god knew where in the Forest. Their supporting infantry fighting vehicles let loose from their 30mm autocannons, with the BMD-4s firing their 100mm guns.

Explosions rocked the ground and shook and shuddered the terrain, ripping trees from their roots or tearing them to mere shards. Calm as a cucumber throughout all of it after having faced the worst versions of this, namely Covenant plasma bombardment, Iris 'Camgirl' Thompson zeroed in on one of the Allied Snipers.

She kept a steady hand on the grip of her SRS-95, an older model of the Misriah Sniper Rifle System, eyes peering down the digital scope's screen until the dot in the center aligned and she read a scarlet mark. She squeezed the trigger and the head of the Russian sniper blew clean off, courtesy of the 14,5mm round from her rifle, a red mist rising in the sky and his helmet, drilled by a hole right in the forehead, flying high.

She crawled back, watching rippling fire tear through the trees around them, then turning around and crawling to reposition. She couldn't get a bead on the vehicles and even if she did, she wouldn't be able to penetrate the turret. The damn things were hull down somewhere on the flanks of the allies' positions. She'd expended her team's AT trying to take out a runaway tank, what looked like a very modernized T-80 of some kind.

Both missiles had missed and the older system they stole off of a convoy they'd raided days earlier apparently didn't have the Tandem warhead necessary to penetrate the explosive-reactive armor on that thing's sides. It nearly cored one of the Humvees they got for cheap, too, that motherfucker. She repositioned next to a tree at a slightly higher elevation, perching her rifle's bipod on it and aiming for another rifleman, only to yelp as the female Ukrainian with the DMR had just zeroed in on her and caused a bullet to skim over her head.

Before she could return fire, the 30mm cannon of one of the Ukrainian BMP-2s traversed and raised to meet her. She gasped, rolled off to the side and let out a guffaw as the high-caliber explosive rounds splintered the tree over her head. She landed in a hole next to one of her comrades, a former Marine with an MA37 in hand.

As she slid down into the hole and checked her ammo, she said, "Motherfucking Ruskies are persistent," in a mumble. She slammed a fresh mag in, slung the rifle onto her back and grabbed her own MA5k Carbine off her back, trying to poke her head out. A round impacted right in front of her, spraying dirt in her eyes and causing her to swear up a storm.

"Looks like that persistence nearly got your head taken off, boss," The man spoke as he poked out and blind-fired over his cover, bursts of 7,62x51mm rounds raking the air and dirt in front of and around the troops. She let out a sarcastic laugh, poked out and fired a burst, too, kicking up dust and debris the opposite direction.

A magical spell flew past her and struck the cover of the Russians and Ukes, then another blast that shuddered the entire forest hit. She heard a Russian yell something about their Mortars, then sighed and said, "About as good a time as any," before putting her hand up to her radio, clicking it on and barking, "All troops, fall back to the transports! We harassed these pricks enough!" then looking at her buddy and grabbing him by the collar, "C'mon, Tombes, we're getting the fu-"