“Done,” Tomás said, and a new overlay bled across the corner of my display. It appeared as a three-dimensional diagram I could spin in real time with a mere thought, a perfect rendition of the boulevard in complete disarray. No blocks, no standing cranes, no static cover to allow for easy movement. Just flat rubble, open area, and an opportunity.“I ran it twice,” he went on. “Drop the western blocks first, and we close their cleanest approaches. That will force anything that wants to reach out to us into the open. Mind you, it’ll cost us half of our heavy ammunition to do it.”“What’s the likelihood of this working?”“Better than if we do nothing.” I held on to the overlay a half-second longer. Though we were up a mech — though I didn’t imagine that would last — they held the initiative and positional advantage; one sacrificed pawn makes it all worth it for them.A skirmisher with nowhere to skirmish is just a fast target, Marcus. Take their paradise away from them.“Do it,” I said. “I don’t want there to be an east boulevard anymore. Direct all heavy firepower, small arms and flanking will screen in case they realise what we’re doing.”A platoon-wide acknowledgement made it clear through the link, a feeling of positivity bleeding into my conscious mind. The corners of my lips began to curl into a smile before the moment was ruined; my commlink began to blurt out static, cutting in and out of sentences from an unfamiliar voice.“Go— this — damn thing— on?” The strange voice slowly became more legible as I began to realise what it was.Shit, they’re patching into our comms. Do they have an EWAR deviation?!I felt a collective flinch from the support unit in the back; it was their job to keep electronic warfare far away from our collective systems. The fact that they’d patched onto us was a failing on their end, and the fact no one had noticed until now… Well, that was (...)