Athena gritted her teeth. She’d been watching the cloud of smoke enveloping Knossos and Thebes fighting it out, but couldn’t find a clear shot. Thebes was mindful to always keep Knossos between him and Athena’s line of fire. She could hear the staccato coughs of pistol fire from somewhere behind the flier. The Blue Team was making significant ground off the back of Vreta’s smokescreen tactic, meaning the two duelling operators had been largely left behind by the rest of the Marines. 

“I’ll have to change positions to fire inside. Keep me covered.” Athena got up and began running across the street, just when gunfire erupted from apartments on the ground floor. She was hit half a dozen times in a second, and her shield nearly broke. She dived onto the floor, crawling behind a flier. The rest of the drop troopers who’d been killed inside the apartment building floated past her. 

“Alright. I go win this.” Kjartan begrudgingly boomed. He started to run down the length of the bus, shielding himself from energy fire. But he screeched to a stop when someone shouted over the din of shooting. “Hey, big man!” He turned, and saw Carthage on the steps by fire exit into the apartments. She held her extensible launcher in her hands, pointed straight at him. Kjartan only had time to bellow the first syllable of her name before a high-explosive rocket fizzed past him and into the bus.