Chapter 9 - The Siege of Sector B
"They found us," Colonel Sterling barked, moving with incredible speed for a man his age as he yanked a heavy tactical shotgun from a wall rack and chambered a shell. "The exhaust vent on the western side must have emitted a thermal trace when we powered up the mainframes."
"How many?" I demanded, sliding my rifle bolt forward and stepping toward the reinforced blast door.
"Motion sensors indicate at least a dozen heavily armed operators," Sterling replied, checking the digital floor grid. "They’re using thermal breaching charges on the outer bulkhead."
General Vance stepped up beside me, pulling a sidearm from a tactical chest rig. "They aren't here to capture us this time, Sergeant. They're here to erase the archive and leave nothing behind."
Boom!
A deafening explosion echoed through the concrete corridors, followed by the screech of twisted steel as the outer security bulkhead gave way to a thermal charge. Acrid white smoke began to billow under the gap of our heavy iron blast door.
"Take the console data!" I shouted to Colonel Sterling. "Download the master ledger onto a portable drive right now! General and I will hold the choke point!"
Sterling didn't argue. He slammed a ruggedized thumb drive into the terminal port as the download progress bar raced across the screen.
I dropped to one knee behind a heavy steel workbench facing the corridor entrance, leveling my rifle sights at the blinding wall of smoke rolling into the room. Beside me, General Vance took position behind a stack of archive crates, his breathing calm and steady.
"Contact front!" I yelled.
Dark, silhouetted figures burst through the smoke, clad in tactical black vests and night-vision gear, their rifles sweeping the room.
I squeezed the trigger, firing a controlled three-round burst that caught the lead operative in the center of his chest plate, spinning him backward into the wall. General Vance immediately followed with precise, suppressive fire, dropping a second operative as the hallway erupted into a deafening storm of muzzle flashes and ricocheting lead.
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"Suppressing fire! Keep them out of the mainframe room!" I shouted over the roar of gunfire, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one into my rifle with practiced, lightning-fast precision.
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