They’d secured the Beta site as best they could for the moment, and were proceeding to clear the city. Excaliburs had been left behind at both manufacturing sites along with some of the Abrams MBTs to provide security, so they now had two fire bases to call on. As it turned out, they’d already located stockpiles of munitions for both.

No rounds for their assault rifles, unfortunately, but those weren’t exactly scarce. They were just getting harder to have airdropped in.

“Spread out, scan everything,” he ordered as they began to move into the ruins of the city, fires still burning where gas mains had been ruptured, a thick smog of smoke clogging everything. “If it moves and it’s hotter than thirty-two degrees, kill it.”

The others acknowledged and they began moving into the debris field, circling around the impact craters formed by the devastation from above. The Kilo Kilo strike had flattened entire blocks, partially because many of the old buildings had been there for close to two centuries, and some even longer.

The shattered remains made movement easy, but also provided an unfortunate supply and variety of hiding and ambush positions for the enemy to utilize. It was slow and dangerous work, but had to be completed and completed properly because to miss even one of the enemy was to court disaster.

“Good God. The bridge is still standing,” Siobhan said softly as they moved.

Eric scanned the construct briefly, but had to agree that it was indeed standing, and even looked pretty solid. The bridge connected Detroit with Windsor, one of a few connections that effectively made the whole area one massive metropolis. They’d hammered Windsor just as hard with the Kilo Kilo strikes, and two of their objectives were on that side of the river, so he was just as happy they had an easy way across.

The suits and EXO-13 could cross regardless, of course, but being able to call on some heavy backup like the Abrams would be nice, particularly since they’d flattened most of the buildings that might get in the way of the big tanks.

The squad flinched as a burst of auto fire tore through the air, all of them half crouching, even Eric in the EXO-13, and looking around. When he found the source, Eric swore, twisting the big walker around and launching himself across thirty meters of open space in a single leap.

He landed hard just meters from the Drasin that had come surging up out of the rubble and grabbed one of his men. Eric drew a bead, haloing the alien in his HUD, and fired off a short burst into the far side of the beast. The rounds from his tri-barrel tore into the Drasin, distracting it from the man it had held up two meters off the ground. The creature spun on Eric, who realized that perhaps he’d gotten a little too close.