by Leo Champion
* * *
Sprinting bent over with his rifle ready, Mullins ran forwards through the rocky ground, praying the guys in the blockhouse – there were at least two he could see through his scope, too far away to hit as they approached to within half a mile of the waystation – didn’t look north.
Praying that they’d get there in time. It was a bad plan – there was no such thing as a good plan when four men were attacking thirty-six – but it was what they had.
With Mondragon, he split off from Lennon and Bogdanov. Within half a mile he was running crouched over, bent almost double amidst the rocks as his boots pounded amidst the sandy ground. The heavy black M-25 was in his hands, safety off and a round chambered; his finger was not quite on the trigger but he was ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.
This close, shooting would warn their friends at least – but it would still be a bastard of a fight and one that, outnumbered as they were, would end badly.
“This way,” Mondragon gestured left as they got closer to the buildings. His own rifle was held high, at his shoulder, as he crouched like Mullins and ran forwards.
If we see anyone, Mullins thought, kill him. And be damned with the plan.
Lennon’s briefly sketched-out plan wasn’t a suicide pact, but it would suck for the other two if Mullins and Mondragon had to fire first.
Outnumbered nine to one until the ambushed people could react, it was going to suck for all four men after they fired.
All Mullins hoped was that they would beat Janja, Jorgenson, Mandvi and the others to the ambush. It would really suck if Kaggs and his men got to fire first.
* * *
Billy Kaggs looked through his scope at the oncoming party. Yes, that was definitely a bitch there. Definitely a hot bitch.
They were within a few hundred yards, blithely marching forwards with no idea what was awaiting them in the trenches dug in amidst the rocks. Taking the easiest path up, the way he’d hoped but not really expected them to. Whoever was in charge – probably that gesturing guy in Army desert uniform – was an idiot.
Not that Kaggs minded.
“Stay calm, Willie,” Kaggs said. “Don’t fire until I do, when they’re right by us. And pass the word. I want the bitch alive.”
“Until they get it close. You hear that, Fred?” Willie asked.
“Tell the other trench. Nobody fires until I do and I’ll gut any man who shoots at the bitch,” Kaggs told Vishni.
There was a small group in the blockhouse too. Kaggs had a field telephone wired from them to the dug-in ambush positions and now he picked it up.
“Simon? Nobody fires until I do, clear? And nobody shoots the bitch.”
“There’s a bitch with them?” Longneck Simon asked.
“See for yourself. Air Force uniform. I want her alive.”
“Keep the bitch, nobody fires until you do. Got it.”
Kaggs licked his lips. It had been too long since he’d had a woman.
* * *
Lennon raised his rifle high as he reached the outermost building of Diamond North, slamming his body against the northern side of a blocky prefabricated building. Mullins and Mondragon were doing the same thing, he could see, about a hundred yards west, toward the ambush.
So far, no shooting. He’d been dreading that thought, racing against it; the sound of a fusillade from the ambush, that would – if the ambushers were halfway competent, and the Black Gangers had been through Chauncy, finished it most of them – mean the deaths on the spot of his friends.
But his group had the advantage of surprise right now, an unexpected counter-attack from an unexpected direction. That advantage was the only edge he had, and it might be disastrous to squander it.
Besides, it wasn’t going to be long now. At all.
Lennon looked around at Bogdanov: Ready?
Bogdanov, his pistol held in a double-handed grip, nodded tersely.
Lennon checked the fragmentation grenade in his hand, ready to pull the pin. Ready.
Rifle raised high, he threw himself from behind the building and ran for the blockhouse. Go!
* * *
Mullins and Mondragon slipped between two buildings, ready to shoot in case anyone appeared, hoping not to have to.
Mullins was painfully aware of the blockhouse with its clear avenues of fire along the avenues of the waystation, and the fact that unlike Lennon and Bogdanov, he and Mondragon were on the eastern side of Diamond North, the direction the ambush was being set.
“This looks like the central avenue,” Mullins said, stopping one building short of it and pointing. They were about in the center of the place by Mullins’ estimate, and the avenue ahead was a significantly wider than usual gap between the buildings.
Mondragon responded with a curt nod.
The two men readied themselves to get into position.
* * *
“I have a bad feeling,” Jorgenson muttered to Hill as they came within a couple of hundred yards of the prefabricated buildings. “Something feels wrong.”
Hill nodded. They were bringing up the rear of the group, with Reuter and the Black Gangers carrying him immediately ahead, then the doctor and Corporal Alvarez.
“Like you get when someone’s watching you?” Hill murmured back.
“Yeah,” Jorgenson said.
“It’s not just you. I thought I saw a scope or something reflect from up ahead, for a second. Be ready for something, Jorg.”
* * *
Kaggs aimed down the scope at the lieutenant-colonel, the project leader. It might do to save that one for a little torture, but he knew the other men would be firing at the man as well and he wanted his shot to be the one to kill the fuck.
Behind him were the others, marching in a line. A hundred yards away, following behind the lieutenant-colonel without a damn care in the world. Stupid like that deserved to die, he thought with contempt.
His finger tensed on the trigger, breathing slowly.
Just a little closer…
* * *
Lennon threw himself against the outer wall of the blockhouse, listening for whether anyone in there had spotted him. He hoped – he was very much counting on the fact – that the people in there would be focused on the upcoming party. Looking east, not north.
Certainly there was no sign anyone up there had spotted him.
Bogdanov moved toward the door of the blockhouse, which Lennon had seen was open, facing west. He flattened himself against it, ready to kill anyone on the ground level.
To kill the people on top—
Lennon pulled the pin on the fragmentation grenade in his left hand, transferred it to his right and for two agonizing seconds – one one-thousand, two one-thousand – cooked it ticking in his hand before hurling it up toward the top level of the blockhouse.
He watched it arc up, dreading just a fraction of a second’s error in the timer. Or a tiny problem with the angle of his throw, because he did not want that thing exploding fifteen feet above his head.
It disappeared over the edge of the blockhouse parapet while Lennon crouched, turning away and bracing himself.
There was enough time for the start of a surprised shout when the grenade exploded with a deafening blast.
Time slowed down as someone inside the blockhouse, on the lower level, shouted.
“Go!” Lennon shouted at Bogdanov, running for the door.
Bogdanov’s pistol boomed twice and then Lennon was throwing himself through, taking the right of the room. A man, the one Bogdanov had just shot, was collapsing from his knees to his face with a nasty wound in his neck.
A tight spiral staircase, of stamped steel, led up to the parapet level of the blockhouse. There didn’t appear to be any sound from up there.
Bogdanov gestured at himself, then up the staircase.
Lennon, who didn’t completely trust the Black Ganger – he didn’t want the man, armed, behind him if it was avoidable – nodded. Please.
Bogdanov moved his boots st
amping up. There were no shouts.
“Clear, corporal!” the Black Ganger called as, outside the blockhouse in the direction of the ambush, more shooting erupted.
* * *
The grenade had been Mullins’ and Mondragon’s signal. It would mean that if whoever was in the blockhouse – probably marksmen, if whoever was in charge of these bastards had any idea what he was doing – was neutralized at best and being-engaged at worse.
Meaning it was safe to come out into what would have been their line of sight, looking west down the avenue at the trenches of the ambush. You could see right down them, fifty feet away; rough men in the remnants of Black Gang, regular Legion and MP uniforms, plus skins some of them had apparently taken from nomads.
They were facing east toward the party of Mullins’ friends terrifyingly close, a hundred feet away themselves, although some of them were starting to turn toward the blockhouse.
Mullins, in a firing stance on one knee, looked down the M-25’s scope at the nearest man, pulled the trigger. Bang, and that man went down with a bullet in his throat.
He moved his scope a fraction over to the next man.
Bang, and a second bullet went through the back of that man’s head.
It was like a shooting gallery, he thought as his mind as he and Mondragon worked their fire down the exposed trenches.
A third man went down, but the rest were hitting the dirt and going for cover. Some were firing their weapons and it looked like the ambushed people had hit the dirt themselves.
A burst of fire whipped ahead of Mullins’ boots as the ambushers started to realize they’d been hit from the other direction. Started to react to this threat.
Mullins shot down a fourth man and, a bullet skimming past his head way too close for comfort, threw himself back behind cover.
Fire slashed past where he and Mondragon, who’d been firing bursts, had been. Mondragon slammed a new magazine into his rifle. The other side wasn’t just shooting – a few men were shouting, probably coordinating themselves.
He didn’t want to be right here when they charged.
With a head-gesture toward the narrow alley between two buildings further in, Mullins ran for that alley. Mondragon, his rifle covering the direction they were just leaving, ran after him.
* * *
The grenade explosion behind him had surprised Kaggs enough to lower his gun for a moment, and then the shooting had started. For more than a second he thought it was some undisciplined lunk on his own side – the shots were coming from that direction, and the blockhouse – and his reaction began as anger.
Then a man fell, shot through the back of the head, four feet from Billy Kaggs. As the man crumpled with most of his face the site of a nasty exit wound, he realized oh shit.
As he fell. Someone had gotten into Diamond North around them; they were being attacked from the other direction.
Men were firing in both directions; some of them at the party they’d originally ambushed, who had hit the dirt and were scrabbling for cover behind rocks by the sides of the path.
More, as Kaggs’ surprised group got their shit together, were firing into Diamond North, down the alley a pair of men had just ducked away from, amidst a hail of fire.
Two of them. Maybe more.
There’d been that explosion, and now there was hostile fire coming from the blockhouse. It took Kaggs a moment to realize what that meant: the grenade had been the blockhouse. Longneck Simon and the two men with him were probably dead.
Well, Simon had been a creep anyway. What concerned him now was the fire coming from the blockhouse, which overlooked the ambush positions in a dangerous way.
Attacking into Diamond North would expose them to fire from the east, from the group they’d been about to ambush – but they were further away and maybe as surprised as he’d been, and would probably keep their heads down if he gave them cause to.
“You and him,” Kaggs gestured at Willie and another man, who held an M-10 submachinegun, “cover east. Keep their heads down.”
“Got it,” the two men shouted back, over the din of irregular gunfire.
“The rest of you” – Kaggs raised his voice as he got to his feet, struggling out of the trench with his rifle held in one hand – “follow me! Get the ones inside the place first!”
He’d lost a few men, but even with Willie and Lews busy covering what had just now become this group’s rear? He still had a good twenty-five or so effectives left, against what had to be only a small group inside Diamond North.
They’d overwhelm the fuckers and then turn back to the main ambush, swinging around the pinned group from the north and south themselves. Kill them all except for the bitch, who’d soon be wishing she was dead.
But first to deal with the new threat. Up close, with overwhelming force.
Men climbed out of the trenches and foxholes to follow him into Diamond North.
* * *
Janja had been ready to hit the deck. Like, he suspected, the other experienced men of the group he’d had a bad feeling, a sense of being watched as they came up along the semi-cleared path toward Diamond North.
Then, out of nowhere, there’d been an explosion on top of the blockhouse in the center of the waystation. Shooting had started from amongst the prefabricated buildings, but by then Janja had been flat on his face.
The colonel, the pilot and the doctor were half a second behind the rest of the group to drop, but by the time Janja was looking forwards again – rifle brought instinctively to his shoulder, ready to fire – the whole group was on the ground, a couple of the smarter Black Gangers already inching toward cover by either side of the path.
Someone had been lying in well-prepared foxholes to ambush Janja and the group, but someone inside the prefabricated buildings had thrown a grenade onto the top of the blockhouse and was now firing at those ambushers from there, and apparently from somewhere inside the group of prefabricated buildings.
Bullets whipped over Janja’s head, not too far above his head. He started moving sideways himself, toward better cover; there was a nice rock not far from him.
Someone in the ambush bellowed a command; men started to boil out of the ambush foxholes, guns and blades waving as they charged into the waystation, away from Janja and that group.
Their backs nicely exposed—
Janja raised the rifle for a quick shot. Missed, damnit.
An answering bullet whipped past his head. Another one whanged into the ground a foot from his face, ricocheting off the hard-packed rock.
They were being covered. And one man there had his eye on Janja; it would be suicide to raise his head again in that location.
Instead he rolled sideways a few times, going for that nice rock. He could hear other men coming up behind him.
In his head he fixed where he thought the guy firing at him was. Come up from a new direction, hope he’s exposed, if he doesn’t then keep my sights on him and hope he makes the mistake I’m avoiding…
That he was pinned didn’t mean he had to like it.
* * *
Lennon, crouching on top of the blockhouse, got off another shot at one of the renegade Gangers as they ran from the prepared trenches into the Diamond North area. The round missed, ricocheting off the metal side of a prefabricated building.
The blockhouse had great fields of fire down the waystation’s four main avenues, but beyond that – no good. The bastards could work their way between the buildings just fine otherwise, blocked by those buildings from his fire.
“Corporal.”
Bogdanov was breathing hard, crouched with a blood-greasy M-25 rifle he’d taken from what was left of the two men on top of the blockhouse.
Those two men had been shredded by the grenade, with blood and gore splashed across the top of the blockhouse so thickly Lennon’s boots were an inch deep in it. Looking down his scope or over the parapet was, to Lennon’s mind, a lot more comfortable than seeing the carnage in his immediate vicinity.
/> “Yeah?” Lennon asked. Bogdanov, who’d gone over the remains of a corpse for more M-25 ammo, was filthy with blood. It hadn’t stopped him from doing his job, and he wasn’t looking away from the parapet now.
“They’ve got grenades too. Suppose one of ‘em gets close to us like we did? Slips around one of the buildings?”
“Then you chuck it off.”
Bogdanov was being a good man on his scope, now covering the northern main avenue. Lennon got back to his, covering the south. Snapped off another shot at a running man, who fell sideways into cover.
Lennon gave that one about a fifty-fifty; he might have winged the guy.
“We’re a little focused here,” Bogdanov commented. Both men were looking down their rifle sights, ready to fire. There wasn’t much they could do from this position beyond cover the angles.
And hope nobody got around behind them.
“What if they come like we did, from another way? Or just cook the grenade first?”
Lennon didn’t look up from his scope. The Black Ganger was right; the two of them were in a bad situation, almost as bad as Mullins and Mondragon right now were. Mullins and Mondragon could at least move, could retreat; he and Bogdanov were a static target.
The ambush had been disrupted but his group was now the focus of the escaped convicts’ anger, and they were outnumbered badly against that force.
“Then we die,” Lennon said flatly. “So let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
* * *
Mullins fell back in the direction of the blockhouse, toward another corner of the buildings, when his peripheral vision noticed something that made adrenaline surge.
A man with a pistol lunging out from the direction he’d been heading, the pistol aimed at Mullins’ head six feet away as Mullins turned—
