Mortar fire. Incoming. Roland’s hindbrain ran the calculations, estimated it at around eight miles out. He sat up straight, senses focused toward the sound of the fire. Bigsby and Azime reacted the same way. They’d clearly splurged on the good ears. The rest of the team didn’t seem to have heard.

“There’s shooting ahead,” Azime said. “60mm mortars.”

“Kit up, folks.” Bigsby added as he pulled his own S-30 Barrett assault rifle from its resting spot on the wall behind him.

Krump. Krump. FWOOM! FWOOM! FWOOM!

“The fuck was that?” Azime cocked an eyebrow. Her left ear twitched. Her tan, lean face flushed red with excitement, “I don’t recognize that one.”

“Me either,” Bigsby grunted. The other post-human looked to Roland with clear frustration. “You recognize that?”

Roland did.

“It’s an M142,” he said. “Mobile rocket artillery. Antique, U.S. military issue.”

Will looked over to Bigsby, confused, “I’ve never heard of anything like that in the SDF’s armory.”

“It’s not the SDF,” Roland explained, slurring his words more than a little. The opiates had just started to hit. Holy shit I love dilaudid, he thought. “That’s incoming. Can’t you tell?” he asked.

“Not, uh. Not from this distance.” Azime answered. She glanced awkwardly over to her partner. Nadine put a hand on her thigh and squeezed.

“Could you not be monstrously fucked up when we’re about to go into battle?” Bigsby asked. He seemed angry. Roland debated offering one of his handfuls of pills. He decided he’d much rather save them for later.

“First off, I didn’t sign up for battle,” he explained as he popped and chewed a pair of morphine tablets. “Second, we still got about, almost eight miles before we hit the front. Plenty of time to sober up.”

“Eight miles?” asked Sardar. “The Richardson Line is fifteen miles out.”

More mortars krumped in the distance. Roland heard blossoms of heavy machine-gun fire too, and the hum of dozens of assault drones.

“Hey Bigs?” the voice of the APC’s driver crackled over the vehicle intercom. “There’s a lot of craziness coming in from the main SDF channels. It sounds like a major assault. The Martyrs have pushed all the way to Deep Ellum. Some of the field commanders are talking about a full retreat.”

“Jesus–”

“–Shitting–”

“–Christ.”