Beginning Part-15

Wethers’ face paled a whiter shade of ill, and he seemed to suddenly realize there were worse things than dying in combat. A siege strength beam would be quick and easy. Whereas the mutated bugs that infested the charred and radioactive regions surrounding Chimbay would certainly consume his body from the inside out slowly, over a period of days or weeks. He had seen it happen to others, and he knew he would rather take a beam or a bullet.
Without replying, the corporal bunched himself into a spring-loaded ball, and charged around the blast wall before the doors, out into the arena of death. Revitz cursed and followed. The captured enemy camp occupied a low foot hill of the Smoking Mountains, which ranged north into the steppes of Mother Russia, and east into the Himalayas. It was a strategic prize because it was a lynch pin in the enemy’s defense of the areas that abutted the Aral Sea to the west. It watched over vital rivers and highways with its multiple air bases, and had been
heavily garrisoned by the Reds for years.
Many men had died on the flakes of its slopes and of the slopes that surrounded it. All in vain, until yesterday, when Allied M-Series combat drones had climbed the hills and slaughtered the entire garrison.