Madame Guillotine

confirmed by any external intel. Lay down weapons and surrender the officer. He’d even made up his mind to pull back for extraction as soon as he got gloves on the officer. No prisoners. Too much confusion. Things could go bad in the chaos. Just get the featherhead and leave. No KTF.
But the pro capture team had decided the play by opening fire first. So, it was going to be a fight. Plain and simple.
KTF in effect, only it was the other guys shooting first.
Shaker didn’t like that.
Beers, young and agile, moved like a rabbit, darting for cover behind a solid steel trash receptacle that suddenly took a fusillade of incoming, leaving molten scars along its surface. Cave merely dove and hit the ground, skidding forward and bringing his N-4 up to engage in the same instant. Within seconds he was dropping tangos who either hadn’t chosen cover or had come out from behind cover to lay down more fire.
Shaker hugged the wall, selecting full-auto and dumping a charge pack at everyone along the right flank. He made sure not to shoot near the captured flight officer, who was being held by two large thugs in red-and-black ninja gear and military-style tactical carrying harnesses.
Fifteen seconds of furious shooting saw three quarters of the capture team dead and the leaders scurrying back out of view. The technical sled, no longer waiting to be loaded up, was now moving at a high rate of speed over to a courtyard beyond the alley.
A mounted gunner oriented his weapon toward the legionnaires and opened fire wildly, spraying a wall well above Beers’s head and sending old brick raining down. Beers, who had picked up Cave’s six as the big leej surged for the alley, hit the mounted gunner with three shots in the chest.
Perfect trigger pulls.
Excellent grouping.
The shooter side of Shaker noted it all admiringly as he slapped in a charge pack and followed Cave and Beers into the courtyard, sweeping up the flanks for his position in the three-man assault. It was textbook form of a much-practiced SOP.
“On your six and loaded,” called out Shaker, letting his team know he was ready to cover them while they slapped in new charge packs.
Cave engaged two shooters on the right flank and took a direct hit to his armor. It hurt like getting hit by a flying jackhammer, Shaker knew that. He’d been hit before. But Cave, who stood six four, didn’t seem fazed in the least. Except that his arm was apparently broken and now useless. He let the N-4 hang limp in its sling and pulled his sidearm with his off hand. He fired at targets engaging them from inside a building on the right flank.
“Take out the driver!” shouted Shaker over the comm as he held off incoming fire from the left side of the courtyard.
“On it!” Beers shouted back.
Eager and amped up for payback, the kid ran forward quickly, not bothering to fire. He slammed into the side of the technical sled, bounced off of it, and with weapon up, began shooting into the driver’s compartment at point blank.
All that happened and now Shaker had a full confirmation they were in a whole lot of trouble, even though Beers and Cave seemed to be holding their own on the right flank. Because this was the point where Lightspeed’s vitals grayed out in his HUD. They’d walked into the ambush he’d feared was waiting for them. Only later than he’d expected it.
Fire was coming down on them from as high as the second and third stories. Shaker felt a blaster bolt sizzle past his shoulder and explode onto the old paving below. Then he heard Beers yell that he was “Hit!”
Shaker stumbled backward, pouring fire into a third-story corner window of a building that must’ve been built back during the golden age of the planet. It had a certain style, like the architect was proud of his work. Wanted to make something beautiful and timeless.
The stream of blaster fire ruined the window, splattered the shooter’s head, and caused him to pitch forward through the shards of melted and smashed glass down to the courtyard below.
An increase of fire chased Shaker to the side of the technical. It wasn’t cover for everything coming at the team, but it protected them from some angles at least.
When he turned his bucket to scan the left flank, he saw that Cave was down. The HUD display indicated what his eyes confirmed. Another team member gone.
The marine weapons officer, the featherhead, was also dead. They’d shot her through the head now that they had a chance to get a legionnaire. Cave must have gone for her thinking he could help.
They were still shooting his lifeless corpse as though taking target practice. Cave still gripped his sidearm, his body jerking with each new defiling hit.
“Sket!” Shaker dumped fire at the shooters taking potshots at the lifeless body of his friend. He drew a bright line of fire across the first story; that backed them off. But it had been wild, inaccurate, and stupid.
The N-4 was empty, and he pulled another charge pack in one deft motion. Anxiety and fear creep were gone. Leadership was out the door. All the decisions that could be made had been made, and they’d led to this short, violent firefight.
This was what he knew. Shooting and killing.
Beers crouched down beside him, shooting back from the front of the sled. Shaker could see a big smoking hole in the back of the kid’s armor. Below the melted armor lay burning synthprene and cooked flesh.
Must hurt like a son of a gun, Shaker thought as his fingers did the reloading trick of getting a new charge pack in without the slightest bit of thought. Part of his mind was struggling—still reeling that things had gotten this bad this fast. Kicking himself for not pulling back when he—
Shut the hell up, he yelled at himself.
And with a roar of “KTF!” he went out shooting, vowing to