Beginning Part-13

Clearing the final security post, they stood beside a pair of sentries before the yet sealed barricades. Each could feel the whump-thump of murderous shelling and hear the crackle-snap of high-energy beam weapons just beyond the exterior wall.
“The enemy sure is pissed off that we took this place away from them yesterday,”
Groaned Wethers. “What a mess! I had never seen so much blood and guts and body parts until we climbed up here yesterday all of it theirs.”
“I heard,” shouted Revitz above the sounds of combat that were raging just meters away from their safe shelter.
“Yeah, well, you should have seen! You think the Reds are gonna be nice about taking this place back again? After THAT? You think they want prisoners?! I bet my mother’s good china that they’re massing in force out there right now. This shelling and all those beam weapons? They’re just to keep us busy! They’ll be coming in numbers, maybe now, maybe tonight! And when they do, this brigade won’t stand a chance! We’ll all be dead men this time tomorrow!”
“Make your point, corporal, we have work to do!”
“What I’m trying to say, sir, is... we should NOT go out that fucking door!”
“Where are the drones?”
“Isolated at the far end of the compound!”
“Can we get there without going out this door?”
The corporal swallowed and shook his head. So Brash put his right forefinger through the trigger guard of his slung weapon, and subtly asserted its presence. “Then we go.” Wethers swallowed again and nodded reluctantly. “Okay. But if I get killed, sir, and you don’t, then you had better pray there is no after life. And if you get killed and I don’t, well, sir, I hope you won’t bear me any ill will when I leave your ass where you fall and immediately forget all about you!”