The assault had hit a hard knot, and the knot was tightening.
COG soldiers tried to return fire, but their angles were bad. Every time someone leaned out, the turret punished the motion. A rocket struck a barrier and scattered fragments. Men ducked lower. Someone shouted for a flank that did not exist fast enough.
I saw Adam near the edge of the square, brace planted, weapon up, eyes locked on the turret. Collins was nearby, shouting into comms, trying to coordinate armour support that could not cross the open ground without being shredded.
The turret fired again, and the air shook.
I shot forward.
The wrecked tank sat between me and the turret, its armour plating torn and peeled back where the hit had opened it. I reached the hull and grabbed a slab of plating that had partially detached, thick metal bent out like the skin of a crushed can.
I pulled.
The plating ripped free with a grinding scream. It weighed enough that it should have anchored me. It did not. It came away in my hands as if the tank had been built from thin sheet.
UIR infantry noticed me then. Several began firing at my head and chest, trying to stop the thing that had just stolen part of a tank. Their rounds snapped off the metal plate and my armour. The impacts sounded louder now, focused, desperate.
I held the slab of armour like a shield and stepped into the open square.
The turret tracked toward me.
A sputtering sound lit the own courtyard.
The first rocket hit the shield slab and detonated with a violent punch that shoved my arms back. The metal buckled but held. The blast heat washed over the SPI plates and disappeared into the night. My boots skidded a fraction across gravel, then caught.
I kept moving.
The turret fired again. The second rocket struck the edge of the slab and tore more metal away. The shield became ragged. It still bought me distance.
I reached the point where throwing made sense.
I planted my feet, shifted the slab in both hands, and hurled it.
The slab cut through the air in a flat spin and slammed into the turret housing. Metal rang. The turret's mount buckled. Its rotation stuttered and then jammed, locked at an angle that exposed the underassembly.
I fired a short burst into the exposed section, then another.
The turret sparked, shuddered, and finally blew apart with a sharp internal detonation that sent fragments upward. The rockets stopped. The heavy rounds stopped. The square's pressure changed instantly, like a fist unclenching.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then the COG soldiers erupted.
They surged forward with shouts that sounded like relief disguised as aggression. Someone yelled something about the giant. Someone else repeated it louder. A tank that had been waiting for the turret to die rolled into the square and fired into the UIR infantry that had been using the platform as cover. The defenders broke.
The assault resumed with speed.
COG infantry poured toward the central block, rifles up, moving in practised formations. Adam pushed forward with them, brace grinding slightly with each step. He looked like pain had become background noise. Collins stayed close, still coordinating, still scanning.
I followed into the centre, the air thick with smoke and the stink of burned propellant. My armour was scuffed now, marked with impacts, dusted with residue. I felt warm under the plates, blood in the body moving fast, but not in panic. In function.
We reached the operations centre after the square fell. The interior defenders tried to hold for a few minutes, then their comms fractured and their lines collapsed into pockets. COG troops cleared room by room, disciplined and quick. The base's heart stopped beating as effectively as a heart could stop while buildings still stood.
Adam's voice snapped over comms.
"All elements, report," he said. "Confirm capture. Confirm objectives."
Replies came back in fragments. Control room secured. Comms equipment destroyed. Data retrieved or burned. Defensive positions cleared. Casualties, but manageable. Armour holding. Perimeter re-established.
Then Adam spoke again, quieter this time.
"The base is ours," he said. "Hold it until evac arrives. Good work."
The words carried weight. Not a celebration. Just closure, the kind a soldier gave himself when he needed permission to keep breathing.
I stood near him in the half-lit centre corridor, listening to the noise shift from combat to consolidation. Boots running. Medics calling for the wounded. Officers shouting for ammo counts and prisoner control. It all blurred into the usual shape of aftermath.
I looked down at my hands. The rifle felt small. The work had not.
Adam turned his head slightly and glanced up at me. He looked tired. He looked satisfied in the way only dangerous men looked satisfied.
"You are bleeding," he said.
I touched the edge of my jaw plate and felt dampness. A superficial cut, probably from shrapnel or debris. It did not matter. It still made me look like what I was to them, a large thing that did not die easily.
"I am fine," I said.
A few soldiers nearby cheered again, louder now, calling out for the COG giant as if naming me made me less unsettling. Others laughed, high and exhausted. Someone slapped my armour plate and immediately regretted it when the metal did not feel friendly.
Outside, beyond the compound wall, movement flickered on a distant rise.
My eyes caught it before my thoughts did. Two figures, prone, long rifles braced. Snipers. They watched from far out, far enough that most men would have dismissed them as shadows.
One raised something that glinted briefly. A camera lens, or an optic catching light at the wrong angle. They were documenting. They were not shooting. Not yet.
I lifted the Mk1 Lancer and aimed.
The distance was obscene. The figures were nearly ten kilometres out, a line most soldiers treated as myth. My vision made it look closer, not close enough to count eyelashes, but close enough to see posture and intent. The system stayed silent. The world narrowed.
I fired one shot.
The recoil barely moved my shoulder. The round travelled out into darkness and found its target. One sniper dropped out of view.
The second figure jolted and rolled, not cleanly. Injured. Not gone.
I fired again, and the second figure vanished behind the ridge.
Nearby COG soldiers heard my shot and assumed I was engaging a hidden threat. Several raised their weapons and fired in the same direction, sending bursts into the dark without optics that could make sense of what they were aiming at. Tracers arced uselessly. Someone laughed and shouted anyway, because people often did that when they wanted fear to look like confidence.
Adam's head snapped toward me. "What did you see?" he demanded.
"Snipers," I said. "Watching. Taking photos."
Adam's mouth tightened. That detail mattered more than the bodies. Photos travelled. Photos turned operations into propaganda and anomalies into rumours that grew teeth.
Collins moved up, eyes narrowed, trying to see what I had seen. He could not. Not at that range. He settled for trusting the pattern.
"Great," Collins muttered. "Now the UIR has a story."
The compound remained in COG's hands. The objective was held. The op centre had fallen. On paper, it was a success.
In the dark beyond the wall, someone crawled away with a camera and a wound. Somewhere else, someone would look at those photos and start making new plans.
I lowered the rifle and watched the ridge line until it became quiet again.