She looked at me with concern in her eyes, and I couldn’t help but notice her hands were shaking. “As simple as that?” She asked.
I tried to put on a sympathetic face. “It’s never that simple, Helena. It’s damn complicated actually, but if we don’t do what we have to do here, we may not make it home to regret it later.”
She nodded a few moments later, turning her attention back to her rifle to fidget with her scope.
***
Five minutes later, we saw the tip of the mob, led by rebel Praetorians, still clad in their ceremonial white togas. As I guessed, the plebeians were armed with pitchforks and torches, but also had clubs, axes, old swords, and other simple tools. They wouldn’t be an issue, but the Praetorians, as powerful as any military group, was another matter.
“Sir,” I called to Vincent. “Tangos inbound. ETA two minutes. Permission to engage?”
“Granted.”
And with that, Helena and I began to rain fire down upon the unsuspecting Romans.
At first, they took little notice of the fact that many of their co-conspirators were dying around them. I let Helena do most of the work in the beginning, her DSR- 1 and 10x scope far more accurate than I was with my ACOG. With it, she was able to surgically pick off men marching along the exposed flank of the column. She never shot two men standing next to each other, and was so far, was only targeting soldiers.
After a few dozen Praetorians had fallen over the stretch of a few blocks, the rebels began noticing what was happening, and started to panic. Most had no idea that we, and not the gods, were to blame for the deaths, and many civilians fled out of fear.
But not many.
The vanguard’s next step dissuaded far more, as they triggered the first of Santino’s claymores. Each claymore was designed to explode in a hundred and forty degree arc, and was loaded with tiny pieces of shrapnel. Within seconds, dozens more were either dead or on their way towards the pearly gates. Crazily, the mob pushed on, still thousands strong despite the casualties and desertions. No longer hindered with the need to preserve the element of surprise, I opened fire in controlled bursts that sent maybe a hundred men to the grave. Combined with Helena’s pinpoint strikes, we racked up an impressive kill count before they even reached the house’s courtyard.
“What is it Americans say? Like shooting fish in a barrel?” Helena observed, disgust emanating from her voice.
“Yah, or like ancient Romans in the street. Real heroic.”
Helena mumbled an agreement, but didn’t stop firing.
By the time the second claymore exploded, the mob had just reached the house’s gated courtyard. Even so, their line still snaked around behind the house, offering Helena and me a few stragglers to pick off.
We left the civilians.
Without any more targets of opportunity remaining, I patted Helena on the shoulder, letting her know that I was falling back.
“Stay here and watch out for a flank. I’m going to see if I can help out front. If you need me give me a shout on the radio.”
She turned and gave me a smile and a nod, but quickly focused in on her sights again, one hand on the trigger, the other reaching for a bag of ammunition.
I turned and headed back towards Vincent, checking my ammo as I went, hearing a third claymore go off in the background. I had carried ten loaded magazines in my vest, but found each lying empty in my dump pouch. As smoothly as I could, I replaced my empty magazine pouches with fresh mags from my go-bag. Hopefully, I’d have time to reload my empty ones before the main assault.
Vincent and Santino were still standing in the doorway, waiting for the action to come their way. Since the area was still calm, I made a quick detour to the assault bag I had thrown in the corner, and retrieved a small box of ammo. Walking over to the swim pair, I started reloading empty mags.
“What’s the situation on your front, Hunter?” Vincent asked.
“Between our sniper fire and claymores, I’d estimate around three hundred dead or injured,” I reported, securing one of my freshly reloaded mags back in my go-bag, and retrieving another empty one from my dump pouch. “Maybe another hundred have fled. Most of the casualties are Praetorians, and the deserters, civilians.”
“Anyone trying to sneak in?”
“No, sir. I think we’ve effectively scared the shit out of them.”
“So far, so good then,” he said offhandedly. “Wang says we still need to hold out for an hour or so before we can move Caligula. He’s breathing easier, but little else has changed.”
I nodded, apathetic.
Santino spoke up next. “When I was out planting claymores, only three by the way, I managed to send up my drone. We should be receiving aerial footage any second now.”
My eyepiece flashed indicating new intel.
“Bingo,” Santino said.
Sighing at my friend, I tapped my sleeve, and called up the information. Displayed on my lens was a thermal video of the street below. It showed a huge mass of whites, oranges, and reds, indicating live bodies, but trailing behind it was an intermittent string of cooling corpses colored green, blue, and black. We had done more damage than I thought, but I also saw there were many more bad guys than we had originally estimated as well.
“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t think the road was that wide. There may be twice as many men out there than we originally thought.”
Santino and Vincent were likewise looking through their lenses, their faces grim.
“We’ll deal with it,” Vincent said. “When Bordeaux reports contact we’ll…”
The radio crackled to life. “Sir,” Bordeaux’s voice came in strained and distant. “Enemy contact at the gate. The mob has a ram, but many are attempting to scale the walls. We could use Strauss and Hunter up here.”
I looked at Vincent.
“Go,” he said. “Strauss…”
“I’m on my way,” she called as she passed by, having already heard the transmission.
We passed through the atrium together, which we found packed with loyalist Praetorians. Most had worried expressions on their faces, looks of defeat and an utter lack of hope, but as we walked by, many perked up at the sight of us. While some of it could be owed to Helena’s presence alone, I would bet many found us to be more than just symbols of hope, but agents of the gods themselves, sent to protect them in a time of crisis.
Sadly, the truth wasn’t that we were sent to help stop the crisis, but that through our own blunderings, really just mine, we were one of the primary causes of it. No sense telling them that.
Near the entrance, I noticed Gaius and Marcus watching the ever growing mob of protestors outside the gate. Unlike many of the Romans inside, these two were stoic and confident. Their eyes still showed they were willing to fight to the death if need be. They saw us approach and turned to speak.
“Lieutenant Hunter. Lieutenant Strauss,” Gaius greeted, the slightly senior ranking of the two.
I smiled at their use of our ranks. Over the past few months, my friends and I had spent lots of time chatting with our Praetorian guards, mostly about each other’s cultures and peoples. One of the few things we did speak openly about was our military, along with our ranking system. Romans, no strangers to the chain of command, used a very similar hierarchy of command ranks. During our discussions, we managed to lay out the foundation that a lieutenant was of equal rank to a centurion, a captain was about equal to the highest ranking centurion in each legion, a colonel would be a tribune, and a general was known as a legate. Having synced up our chain of commands, the Romans insisted on treating us as though we were their own officers.