The voices of the pursuing assassins drew nearer and nearer. Many men were crashing through the corn.
“They’ve got to be crazy, coming after us like this,” Lanners whispered.
“Not crazy, Lee, desperate. They are going to kill us or die in the attempt. Let them all get out into the open so we’ve got clear shots. Shoot when I do. Damnit, Locker, why didn’t you pick up—?”
The first ambusher stepped out from between two stalks of corn about twenty meters from where the trio had crossed the cleared space. He carried a shotrifle in the low-ready position, the weapon angled at about 45 degrees to his body, finger off the firing lever. He stepped cautiously onto the grassy area and held up a hand for the men behind him to stay there. Slowly, he advanced to the middle of the pathway, glancing from side to side, looking for a sign to tell him where the three had crossed. The wind began to blow. It blew toward them, from the direction of the road where the ambush had taken place. The corn was dry. A whoosh ing roar began to make itself heard. Lavager’s heart quickened. The ambushers were between two fires now!
“Coom,” the man said. Eight or ten more men—Lavager didn’t bother to count them—all heavily armed, stepped out into the cleared area.
The first shot Lavager fired was a fléchette round. It hit the first man squarely in the middle of his chest, shredding his torso and knocking him over backward. Now Lavager and Lanners pumped rounds into the men as quickly as they could work their weapons’ actions. The ambushers began firing back, their first shots high, cutting off the tops of the cornstalks, but as they got control of the situation their shots began to hit all around the two, who rolled into new firing positions—but in the few seconds it took them to reacquire targets, at least five more men emerged from the other side of the path and began sending accurate fire into their old positions. The remaining men began advancing, firing every step of the way. Lavager’s shotrifle was empty. He drew his sidearm and, using both hands to steady the weapon, pumped shots into the oncoming men, but they were wearing protective armor or were hopped up because none went down!
Suddenly, from about a hundred meters to the right of where the two lay, rifle fire began lancing into the advancing line of assassins and they began to falter. Lavager glanced over his shoulder. It was al-Rashid!
He was walking calmly toward them, firing from the hip. The surviving attackers, about five of them, had enough. They turned and ran back into the corn, but moments later they began screaming as the fire got to them. One managed to stumble back out into the pathway, his body engulfed in flames. He whirled in agony, every inch of him aflame. Lavager shot him in the head.
“Franklin!” Lavager embraced his chief of security. “Ugly as you are, I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight!”
Lanners came up and started thumping al-Rashid on the back.
“They got our car,” al-Rashid gasped, “rocket-propelled grenade, I think. I was thrown out by the initial blast. They got all my men, all of them,” he sobbed. He’d been wounded. The bleeding from cuts on his face and neck had stopped and his left arm, although he could still use it, was peppered with shell fragments. He sat down heavily. The fire raged in the corn just a few meters away. “When the hell is the farmer going to turn on the water?”
Lavager helped al-Rashid to his feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Lee says there’s a road on the other side of this field. Uh, where’s Ollwelen?” He looked around. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen the general.
“I saw him running southwest, toward the city,” Lanners answered with a shrug. Lavager swore. “Let’s find that road, it’s getting too hot in here.”
They had made their way only a few hundred yards farther when the irrigation system suddenly sprang to life. “Allah!” al-Rashid shouted, extending his arms toward heaven. “You exist after all!” They threw themselves into the streams that spurted up from the pipes and drank in the cool liquid. “Is this water drinkable?” al-Rashid asked between gulps.
“Who cares, Chief?” Lanners answered. “We have medical insurance!”
“Lee,” Lavager said, “I was going to give you Franklin’s job, until he upset my plans by miraculously reappearing from the dead, but don’t worry, I’ve got plans for anybody who’s got guts like you,” and he filled al-Rashid in on what had happened to them.
“Where do you think Ollwelen got off to, sir?” al-Rashid asked. Lavager didn’t answer immediately. “Maybe he went for help?” his voice dripped with sarcasm. Al-Rashid didn’t reply. He knew how close the two old soldiers were, but could see something had come between them. He didn’t want to get involved, but he sensed that he would. They reached the road at noon. It stretched away in both directions. Nothing stirred on it. “How far are we from the Cabbage Patch?” Lavager asked.
“I’m not sure, sir. Twenty kilometers, maybe less. I think we were more than halfway there when the ambush hit.” He shook his head and staggered a step or two. “I-I’m not sure whether this road runs parallel to our route or at an angle to it or even if it joins up with the main highway. I-I think it does but my memory’s a little fuzzy just now—”
Lavager sat down along the shoulder and the other two joined him there. “How long will it take for us to walk there?”
Lanners shrugged. “In our condition? I don’t know. Hours anyway.”
“I can make it,” al-Rashid protested, but he knew that Lanners hedged his estimate because it was obvious that his wounds would slow them down.
“We’ll make it,” Lavager assured them. “That guy back there, that scout, the first one to come out of the corn? Lee, did you recognize his accent?”
“Yessir. South Solanum. That’s the way they talk down there. ‘Coom’ for ‘come.’ Unmistakable. He was from South Solanum.”
“Yes.” Lavager nodded. “Those rotten bastards. You know what they were, don’t you?”
“Yessir. They were there to ambush any relief column that might have come down the highway. Someone’s attacking the Cabbage Patch, sir.” He thought for a moment and then: “Or, it was prearranged to get you. Someone must have known you’d be coming.”
Lavager didn’t reply at once because that dark thought had already occurred to him. “Right. Maybe. And here we are. No communications, no transportation. Franklin? Franklin?” he turned to al-Rashid but his security chief had passed out.
On the New Granum Road, Midway Between New Granum and Spondu
By the time General Locksley Ollwelen reached the road he was exhausted. He collapsed on the shoulder, gasping for breath. It had all gone wrong, terribly wrong! That bastard, Germanian, had double-crossed him! Worse, Lavager was still alive, or had been when Ollwelen had disappeared among the corn rows. Now, behind him, the fire raged. He got unsteadily to his feet and staggered along the road back in the direction of the city. Eventually he would run into someone on the road, or reach one of the farms where he could find transportation. He could not show up at the home of the farmer who owned the cornfield. Too close to the scene of the crime and if Lavager had survived, he’d head there himself. The next nearest farmstead was some kilometers from where the ambush had taken place. If no vehicles came along he would just have to walk there. Then, once back in the city, he’d gather his loyal generals and start the coup he knew he’d have to undertake to survive after what had just happened. He’d find that Germanian person too, and talk about the trials of Job! He’d “Job” that sonofabitch!
From far down the road a tiny speck was approaching. Ollwelen’s heart leaped. He stepped into the center of the road and waved his arms. Gradually the speck resolved itself into a vehicle. As it neared he saw it was a passenger car, not a farm vehicle. Excellent! He’d get the driver to turn around and take him back to New Granum. He waved his arms furiously and the vehicle came slowly to a stop. A woman was driving. She appeared to be alone. Her hair was blond and cut very short in a masculine style.
“This is an emergency!” Ollwelen shouted, running to the driver’s si
de. The young woman looked out at him. He was disheveled, covered in dust and his face streaked with perspiration. “Sure looks like it,” she said. Her voice was sweetly melodious.
“I need to get back to the city as quickly as possible, er, Miss,” Ollwelen gasped. He did not see a wedding ring on the woman’s delicate fingers. “If you will turn around and take me back there I’ll make it worth your while, I really will.” He leaned against the frame of the vehicle. Perspiration poured off him.
“Get in,” she said. Gratefully, Ollwelen crossed to the passenger’s side and climbed in. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said, turning to face the driver. She reached across and deftly slit his throat with the tiny surgical blade concealed in the palm of her hand. He gasped and spasmed violently. The big woman leaned across Ollwelen’s spasming body, placed one muscled arm firmly around his head and pulled it back to further expose his throat while with her right hand she worked the blood-slick blade expertly across his throat, making sure both carotids were completely severed. Ollwelen gurgled and thrashed helplessly, his hot blood spurting over the woman’s clothing as air whistled eerily through his severed windpipe. In moments it was all over. The woman’s forearms and the front of her dress were covered in gore. She put one hand to her mouth and licked the blood, then she opened the passenger door and shoved the body out into a ditch. A few kilometers down the road she pulled off onto an access road. She cleaned herself up, with a double handful of moist towelettes, changed clothes, and transferred to her own car after setting the time fuse on an incendiary device she placed in the stolen vehicle. Driving back to New Granum, the windows down, the warm air rushing through the vehicle, elation washed over her. She loved hands-on work. She’d drawn the town-side security team and thought it’d be boring. She wondered how the action team had let that one slip through. Oh well, her gain! Whistling a happy tune, she drove on down the deserted highway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Command Bunker, the Cabbage Patch, Near Spondu, Union of Margelan, Atlas
Major Principale, commander of the defense garrison, gripped the comm to headquarters in his hand though it had become useless once the tower went down. He gaped at the one-sided fight on his monitors. Where are they? he demanded of himself. How did they get in without being detected? But he had no answers. He couldn’t see anything on his monitors that hadn’t been visible to the slaughtered troops involved in the brief firefight—except for a few smudges in infrared. But he could tell where all those bits of star-stuff had come from, and they came from where the faint smudges were.
“Towers three, five, seven, nine, eleven,” he ordered into the local comm. “Saturate the ground between Lab Three and the power plant. Now! ” Those were the only guard towers that had a view of the area between Lab Three and the power plant where the smudges were concentrated—the defensive layout had been designed to defeat a force attacking from outside, not from a force already inside the fence. Five assault guns began to send plunging projectile fire into the ground between the two buildings and immediately beyond them.
Major Principale looked at his layout again and snapped orders to the four bunkers that also had an unimpeded view of the target area. The crews in the bunkers manhandled their guns to the bunker entrances and began firing. One of the four put out grazing fire, no more than a meter above the ground, the others fired high enough that the Marines were easily able to stay low enough to avoid their projectiles.
Defenders, the Cabbage Patch
The Margelan officers and sergeants yelled confused orders to the confused troops of the reaction force from Barracks Two as they spread out to seek cover from the plasma bolts that were burning holes through their ragged ranks.
“First squad, fire toward the Lab One door!” a sergeant bellowed, then collapsed when an instantly cauterized hole appeared in his chest. Three of his six soldiers were hit, two fatally, before they could turn their weapons on the lab door.
A lieutenant stood, jerking his head about in near panic, straining to spot who was firing the bolts of blazing fire that were slaughtering his troops, but he couldn’t see anyone where the bolts seemed to come from! All he could see in the floodlit night-turned-day was the eye-searing afterimages of the plasma bolts—and his own men dropping with holes burned through their bodies or thighs, or with arms or lower legs burned off.
In a rage, the lieutenant screamed out for his men to follow him in a charge into the fire to find the enemy. He led the charge but only half a dozen of his men followed. They lasted long enough to see him fall with half his neck burned away by one blaster bolt, and two others punch bloodless holes through his torso—then they fell as well, killed by the withering fire from seventh and eighth squads. The initial ferocious firefight lasted less than two minutes. Only three of the soldiers from the reaction platoon remained alive and uninjured, and they weren’t killed only because they threw their weapons away and found cover from the Marines’ blasters. Most of their companions were dead; the rest were severely injured, even missing limbs.
“Section leaders report,” Lieutenant Tevedes ordered on the open platoon circuit. The section leaders called for squad leaders’ reports.
The only reports that meant anything were first, seventh, and eighth squads, the only squads that were involved in the firefight.
The lone casualty was Lance Corporal Thalia, who was bleeding where his nose hit the front of his helmet when he collided with the first soldier of the reaction force. The Marines didn’t have time to feel any relief, though; neither did they have time to begin planting the rest of their charges as every tower and bunker that could see it began firing into the area between and around the power plant and Lab Three. Marines
“Move!” Tevedes shouted into the platoon circuit. “Get out of the killing zone!” The section leaders echoed him, the squad leaders also snapped commands to move, move-move-MOVE !
“First squad, with me!” Tevedes ordered. He and first squad raced doubled-over due south, straight at a bunker that was firing directly between the power plant and lab. Tevedes wasn’t concerned with the fire coming from the bunker, it was one that was firing too high. First squad sprinted with him. When they reached the side of the barracks the reaction force had come from, Tevedes ordered, “Take that gun out.”
First squad opened fire on the assault gun visible in the bunker’s entrance. The gun let out a long burst as its barrel swiveled skyward, then it fell silent with its crew dead.
“We have to take out the towers that are shooting,” Tevedes gasped into first squad’s circuit.
“Which one do you want first?” Daly asked. He understood that the plunging fire from the towers was more dangerous than the grazing fire from the bunkers. He was already at the corner of the barracks, looking around it to see which was the nearest tower firing into the kill zone.
“Go to the right,” Tevedes ordered. Then he raised Gunny Lytle on the command circuit. Lytle had gone north. Tevedes told him to take a squad and knock out the firing tower farthest to the west, then work his way clockwise.
“Already on it,” Lytle replied.
The crack-sizzle of blaster fire broke out to Tevedes’s right as first squad opened up on a firing tower. The tower fell silent.
But Tevedes wasn’t satisfied, he wanted to be positive the tower was out of the fight.
“Let’s knock it down,” he ordered first squad. He fired his blaster at one of the tower’s legs a man’s height above the grounds. The four Marines of first squad concentrated their fire on the same spot. The five blasters fired bolt after bolt into the plasteel leg until it overheated and sagged.
“Next tower,” Tevedes said, and began sprinting toward the now-leaning tower. It crashed to the ground seconds after they passed it. The next tower firing was two hundred meters away when Tevedes stopped first squad. They quickly put it out of action, but didn’t bother toppling it. By then the fire pouring into the killing zone between the power plant and the lab was almost stilled; Gunny Lytle a
nd fifth squad had also knocked out two of the towers firing into it.
But more fire plunged into the complex and arced above the ground as the rest of the towers and bunkers joined in, their crews firing at every shadow and imagined movement.
“Take out that gun,” Tevedes ordered when he and first squad took cover behind a bunker after taking out a third tower. The crew in the bunker had turned their assault gun around and was spraying grazing fire across the compound to the left of the power plant, in an area where some of the Marines were. Then, “Section leaders, report!”
Before Daly could give orders to his men, Lance Corporal Wazzen scooted around the front of the bunker to approach its entrance from the other side—which exposed him to fire from that direction. As soon as he got to the opposite side of the bunker, a randomly fired burst from an assault gun on the east side of the compound pounded into the side of the bunker, shredding him. Daly swore, then crawled around the corner of the bunker and jammed the muzzle of his blaster past the firing assault gun and began firing blindly. Screams followed his first three blasts; he fired a few more, moving the barrel each time, before withdrawing his blaster. Nobody tried shooting through the aperture in the bunker’s front, where it would normally fire from—they knew the bunker’s entrance had to be a staggered tunnel and they wouldn’t be able to hit anybody in it from the front.
Command Bunker
Major Principale compared the locations of the faint infrared smudges with the positions it appeared fire was coming from—they seemed to match one-for-one. He ordered his gun crews to use their infras to locate and fire on the faint smudges. He began directing fire from the guns that couldn’t see the smudges onto those he could see.
Marines
“First squad, one KIA,” Daly reported to Staff Sergeant Suptra, after taking out the bunker. But Suptra didn’t acknowledge.
Neither did Staff Sergeant Bos, the second section leader, respond to Tevedes’s call for the section leaders to report.
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