Bounding Overwatch
"Jesus Danny." Butch got a shrug in response as he moved closer to get a good look at his handiwork, and just, to be uncharacteristically cocky, circled a gloved finger in the air over where the shots landed on that Salvesh. This one had some sort of jewelry on him, an engraved metal bracelet of some sort on one of the four arms. Danny took that right off him without any regrets and popped it in the old-fashioned canteen pouch he used to hold expended mags and other goodies.
He left the weapon -- too heavy to carry back. "Poodle" wasn't quite the right term that came to mind for a four-armed werewolf-shaped thing with reptilian scales and a pattern on them. It had a crest, male, but they knew that.
Once done with that bit of housekeeping, he checked the team out visually, to make sure there weren't dings on the paint or anything springing a leak. They were in a hostile enough environment that they were wearing masks. He checked his, he looked over K-ton's, Butch's and Serge's. He made sure they weren't bleeding or freaking. It was a quick few seconds check, but everyone looked relatively okay, considering they'd just gotten kissed. Then again, his fireteam was lucky -- everyone had combat experience. They'd cope with it later, in their various ways.
He eyeballed Park too. He'd taken a bell-ringer, but he was making sense so far, so that was that. It had to hurt, but pain was less of a concern than having the squad leader not tracking all the way. But the guy was joking about chicks,
"Relax Riddler, the Hentais," his short-hand for the Grathik,
"probably can take that from 'gruesome disfigurement' to 'dashing Heidelberg scar' for you.""Hey boss, I'll trade you," K-Ton cut in.
"Take it," he told K-Ton, as he worked the pouches open and handed the grenades over, gently.
The M32 was essential firepower for the squad, and that meant it was the responsibility of the fireteam to carry extra 40mm grenades for K-Ton.
Danny and K-Ton were just finished with the exchange, when the report came in from Koh, along with everyone in the platoon saying, 'fuck' at the same time. The order came down to start moving. Retrograde motion essentially meant that Danny, as point previously, traded that dubious honor for a new, equally dubious one. He'd never been down to more than a knee, ready to move.
He was rear-security now, along with Serge and his Negev, moving ahead of him. He'd run into this sort of thing in Syria, and it was the most nerve-wracking motherfucking job in the universe; you knew you had a tail, you were the guy that had to detect and deter them. Park didn't need to cut him the orders; he had pursuit deterrent munitions of the type used on Earth. When you were getting chased, you dropped them on your way back. Danny had four of them along. He pulled the pin on one, armed it and threw it toward the Salvesh they'd taken out. They had a self-destruct capability, which meant that it was theoretically civilian-friendly. It was meant to deny an area to pursuing foes during the emergency.
Once the grenade was thrown, it deployed tripwires. If disturbed, the mine launched into the air and then filled the effective radius with shrapnel.
And so, just as before, he laid them out. If nothing else, it'd perk the poodles' ears up and slow them down a bit, giving them more time.
"Butch, K-Ton, PDM's. Make them count," he told them whisper-quiet over the comms, his voice back down typical patrol-level volume after the firefight. It was their job to deter the enemy, and that was why he'd taught them, though K-Ton didn't need it, the utility of that particular nasty bit of business. The fireteam humped extra ammo, extra grenades and extra other things as a matter of course, and that meant a few extra PDM's.
Of course, it wasn't just throwing them randomly; they were the far right element, that meant throwing them, like a grenade, further out right to deter them from shifting too far. It was entirely possible that someone else was setting up fire missions that involved the use of Area Denial Anti-Personnel Munitions (ADAM) which were essentially the M86's that they carried writ large, packed into an artillery shell. But Danny didn't rely on that.
The movement seemed excruciating by action-movie standards; one fireteam shifted back, at a run, the other covered, and so on and so forth. But always with Danny's fireteam at the drag-ass end of it. His clothing was sweated through on his back, shoulders and every other place where sweat accumulated, but he paced himself on sucking down the water, a slow swallow at a time here and there to avoid cramping. There wouldn't be much water left by the time they were done, but at least they were shedding weight. Fireteam A was on the other end of point now, probably while the fucker that was bringing up the rear before was whistling all the way back as he guided the platoon to the rally-point.
Even though it was less than half a klick, it was a long way back. It was tempting to curse Collins, but the man had the right of it; elevation and cover.
When the A-10 started to go to work, Danny nodded to himself slightly. He would have hated to think that they'd gone through all that bounding overwatch for nothing. When something blew up that didn't sound like the A-10, followed by a howl of pain, he felt a grim bit of job satisfaction.
Maybe the Salvesh thought the Humans were out of surprises or something. They were about to find out that they had lots of different kind of surprises, all of them nasty.
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