Republic Reborn: Against the Stars and Stripes-Chapter 116: Old Men Trip Sometimes

The cultists didn’t have a chance.

They had been part of the group harassing our perimeter—firing potshots at the men from a concealed position. They were holed up in a narrow flood-control ditch that ran along the edge of town, now repurposed into a crude trench. The elevation drop and earthen banks gave them good cover, and they made the most of it, keeping our defenders pinned near the church. freёnovelkiss.com

They didn’t know we had circled behind them. Their attention remained locked on the church and the soldiers dug in around it. That was their first mistake.

I had taken the ten-man escolta with me for the flanking maneuver. Ten was small enough to move swiftly and quietly, but still large enough to mount a counterattack if anything went wrong.

We were crouched about ten meters from the ditch, behind a nipa hut raised slightly on bamboo stilts. Its walls were thin and brittle, and the roof sagged under years of sun and rain. The space beneath it was cluttered with firewood, a pile of discarded tools, and a few clay pots.

From the cover of the hut’s wall, Sargento Guzman leaned out. Without a word, he raised his rifle, aimed at the nearest fighter, and fired.

The crack of the shot echoed down the alley.

The cultist was hit square in the forehead just as he was slotting a bullet into his rifle. The round in his hand dropped with a light clink onto the pile beside him. His body slumped forward, limp, against the trench wall, head lolling at an unnatural angle.

The two others beside him spun around in confusion, but they were cut down instantly. Two of our men fired in quick succession. The bullets tore through the enemy’s thin cover of grass and wood, hitting center mass. The cultists collapsed without firing a shot.

Their blood mixed with the murky ankle-high water in the ditch, flowing in streaks along the canal’s length.

I wasn’t watching the ditch. My eyes were on the second-floor window of a nearby bahay-na-bato. It had a clear line of sight over the field where we now stood. Earlier, that was where the enemy snipers had pinned down Roque and killed one of the younger recruits. I had been keeping watch on it even before we moved in.

There it was—a glint of light. A rifle barrel slowly edged past the window frame, catching the morning sun.

I didn’t hesitate.

I raised my rifle and fired.

A scream rang out, followed by the crash of a body falling through the window. It hit the ground with a heavy thud and rolled to a stop on the dirt path.

"Run! Toward the door!" I shouted.

The soldiers jolted into action. Their boots slammed against the packed earth as they surged forward. From the compound, gunfire erupted again. Shots came from the narrow alley between the bahay-na-bato and the hut adjacent to it. Bullets chipped the stone walls and sprayed dust and gravel across the ground.

A few of it missing the soldiers by mere inches.

I clenched my jaw. This wasn’t what I expected. I had assumed we were dealing with farmers—hastily armed, poorly trained, disorganized. But these men weren’t firing wildly. They were using cover, coordinating shots, picking targets.

The recruit who was gunned down earlier on the steps of the church. Another who fell crossing the open yard. Roque barely making it out alive. These were marksmen. Trained or experienced—possibly both. Something about it all was off.

"Sargento! Suppressive fire!" I barked.

Guzman and two others moved to the edge of the wall and took position. They chambered rounds and on my signal, leaned out and unleashed a short but aggressive volley.

As soon as the first shots rang out, I and the rest of the escolta sprinted from cover.

My knees screamed in protest. My joints throbbed. But I pushed forward. We dashed across open space toward the stone house, boots kicking up dust and gravel. Gunfire snapped overhead. A round punched through a fence post just behind me.

I forgot the aching in my muscles, ignored the pain in my joints. I ran with everything I had. Buenavista wasn’t a city—not even close—but the intensity, the close quarters, the snipers hidden in stone houses, the ideology-fueled fanaticism—it reminded me of Seoul. I had been there when we took it back from the Norks... and when we lost it again. I had tasted this kind of chaos before.

Then, like a whip crack—everything stopped.

Something slammed into the side of my head, and I was thrown to the ground.

Dirt scraped my cheek. My ears rang. For a moment, I thought it was over. But the pain said otherwise. I was alive. Barely.

My vision swam. Everything spun. Voices became distant and garbled. I was alone in a spinning world of confusion and ache.

I touched my temple. My fingers came back wet and red.

Blood.

A graze.

My cap was gone. I blinked through the blur and spotted it a few meters away—flung near a wooden barrel. The band was torn open where the sampaguita had been sewn in.

I growled under my breath and started crawling toward it.

A firm hand gripped my arm and yanked me back. I was dragged across the ground behind the stone wall of the house.

I looked up.

Sargento Guzman. His face, pale and stricken with worry, stared down at me. It pulled me out of the fog.

Around me, the other soldiers looked equally shaken. Fear, raw and unguarded, was etched across their faces—more fear than I had seen on them all morning.

I had let my emotions blind me—and at the worst time.

Gunfire still cracked all around. It hadn’t stopped.

Cloth tore beside me.

Guzman had stripped off his jacket and was tearing a strip from the shirt underneath. He pressed a thick piece to the wound, staunching the flow. Another soldier knelt beside him and tore fabric from his camesita. Together, they wrapped a crude bandage around my head, tying it tight.

I sat still for a moment. The throbbing dulled. My vision began to settle.

Then I stood—slowly—my legs unsteady. Guzman held my elbow to keep me upright.

"Forgive me, mi soldados," I said quietly, looking at their faces. I had marched with these men from Caloocan to Cavite. I had watched them sweat and bleed as they help my work in a province far from home. In just a few months, it felt like they’d been with me for years.

"What are you talking about, Heneral?" Guzman grinned. "Old men trip sometimes. That’s normal."

I let out a short laugh, pressing the bandage tighter. "You’re right, Sargento."

Laughter followed from the others. Brief, but genuine.

For a second, the war felt far away.

But only for a second.

Then came a voice—muffled but loud—from inside the house.

"We surrender!"