Kuandu always thought that smoke grenades were more or less useless in a place like Drella. After all, there was so much rubble and dust that no one could see three feet in front of their face anyway, especially at night. But now Kuandu respected the smoke grenades more than his fragmentation grenades, which had run out an yesterday. Why? Because even though the smoke grenade couldn't do much on its own, it could, depending on the color, summon either an airstrike that would level an enemy position, like one of the many mansions in the area Kuandu was now fighting in, or else summon an artillery barrage that would drive the pirates away from an area for hours. The current record was, in fact, a day and a half, from the first barrage called in a few hours after they emerged from the tunnels. An entire city block was reduced to rubble and not single pirate had been seen in the vicinity since, which is why Xien, and most of the other squads that had joined them soon after the incident, had been using it as a base of operations. But since then the squad had been very careful with the blue smoke grenades, because artillery was brutally indiscriminate. Not only would helpless civilians be slaughtered in the barrage, but if you couldn't clear out fast enough, one of your own could be killed. That's what had happened to Daoxin.
"Two nines." Yuan said, showing his pair of cards, one nine and one six, to Sakura and Kuandu. The other nine had come from the three cards in the middle. Sakura cursed.
"One ace." She said, throwing her pair down. Her other card was a ten.
"Two kings." Kuandu said, throwing his pair down. Both kings had come from his hand. He smiled and took the heap of ten cantrs in the middle. He was on a winning streak, and had won seventy cantrs off of Sakura and Yuan in the past half hour. "Anyone want to play again?" Kuandu asked.
"No thanks," Sakura replied, "I think I've lost enough money to you for one day." Yuan agreed.
As Sakura and Yuan got up to leave, Xien shouted "We're under attack!" from his post. Immediately, the three of them grabbed their weapons and rushed to the makeshift barricades. Another two squads were already there, holding back the pirates. Kuandu ducked behind some of the rubble that made up the barricade and set up his M60 on top of it, then opened fire on the oncoming enemy. Xien, next to him, chucked a grenade, probably his last, out towards the pirates. It went off and nearby pirates scattered.
The pirates were sending the attack from a mostly shelled out manor nearby. Kuandu guessed there was a tunnel underneath it. It was one of the many manors that they had never fully explored. Kuandu began pouring a stream of bullets into the manor, but there was plenty of cover to hide behind, whole rooms that his M60 couldn't reach, and since more of the manor was safe than was exposed, the tunnel entrance was probably out of his line of fire.
"Kuandu, put a red smoke in that manor!" Xien shouted over the flying bullets.
"Sir, I'm all out!" Kuandu lied. He'd been sent on two of these suicide missions since coming to Drella. He didn't want to go on anymore.
"Here," Xien said, handing him one of his own red smoke grenades. "Go!" He shouted. Kuandu peered over the barricade. He'd have to run a stretch of twenty feet between the barricade and the first cover in the street beyond. "Covering fire!" Xien shouted, and took over Kuandu's M60, firing into the pirates nearest the stretch of exposed ground. Kuandu took in a deep breath, grabbed his AK-47, and leaped over the barricade, sprinting for the cover.
Bullets whizzed around him and above him, but miraculously he wasn't shot. His squad did their job well; the only pirates shooting at him were far away. Kuandu dived into the cover and crawled on his stomach towards the shelled out manor. He pulled out the smoke grenade he had been given. Red would call down an air strike. Kuandu had reached the end of his cover. The manor was still about ten feet out of his throwing range. He'd have to clear out a pirate machine gun nest about fifteen feet away and get into it. From there he'd be able to chuck the smoke grenade in easily.
Kuandu carefully raised his AK-47, trying to line it up perfectly with the heads of the two pirates in the nest. For the first time since he'd gotten it, Kuandu wished he had a more accurate gun than the AK-47. Kuandu said a silent prayer to whatever ancestor spirit may be listening and opened fire. One of the pirates went down immediately. The other, the one firing the MG, turned his head towards Kuandu. His eyes widened at the sight of an enemy soldier so close and he started turning the MG towards him, but he was shot dead before he could bring it to bear on Kuandu.
Kuandu sprinted into the nest. He was safe. He chucked the grenade into the manor, where it began giving off smoke. Apparently the pirates had figured out what smoke grenades meant, because most of them began running away. As they did, Kuandu was able to make his way back to the barricade without being shot at much. Three times, it seemed, he'd cheated death. How much longer before his luck ran out? And why did Xien seem so intent on getting him killed?
