The Avengers had regrouped by that time and took off after the Hellhounds. One of the enemy fighters took a hit from a missile, roared over the camp, and slammed into the hill designated as “Charlie.” The fighter was carrying a full load of ordnance plus lots of fuel. The resulting explosion shook the ground and a red-orange fireball floated up into the sky as members of the STM platoon rushed to collect the POWs.
And that was when they discovered that, having been tipped off by Raynor, the prisoners had organized themselves into small groups and were ready to board the dropships. The weakest POWs had been spread across all of the groups so that the stronger ones could assist them, and all the “platoons” were gathered near the Kel-Morian landing pads waiting for ships that weren’t coming. It was a bittersweet sight for Raynor, who was determined to finish what he started.
High on the stimpack Doc had given him, Raynor insisted on taking charge. He could see the drug’s appeal for the first time; it seemed to erase his pain, at least for a little while. The mental anguish he’d just suffered would take more than a drug to ease—but there was no time to think about that now.
Raynor knew where the camp’s factory was, and led a posse that consisted of Zander, Doc, and a couple of STM troopers to the low-slung structure. And just in time, too … because as he and his companions jogged up the road Raynor saw headlights and knew some of the KMs were going to make a run for it. “Stop them!” he shouted. “But don’t destroy the vehicles.”
There was a sharp exchange of gunfire as the groups clashed. Some of the KMs—those who’d been on guard duty when the attack began—were wearing armor. The rest were wearing vest-style chest protectors. As the defenders charged, Ward fired a salvo of rockets at them even as Harnack opened up with his flamethrower. There were three overlapping explosions, so only two of the armored KMs staggered out of the raging inferno, and they were on fire. The STM troopers triggered their gauss rifles and the enemy soldiers fell.
As Raynor stepped under a harsh light and bent to retrieve a Kel-Morian assault rifle, he heard a powerful engine start. Zander shouted, “Watch out!” and Raynor found himself pinned in the glare of two headlights as tires screeched and a huge saber command car barreled straight at him!
Raynor threw himself to the right, felt a searing pain as the loose gravel ripped some skin off, and fired a short burst. The fact that a bullet whipped through the driver’s side window and blew Taskmaster Lumley’s brains out was a matter of luck rather than marksmanship.
But the effect was the same as the vehicle swerved, skidded, and came to a halt. By the time Raynor got up and rounded the back of the vehicle, Overseer Brucker was out of the car and waddling away.
“There! Behind the car!” Doc shouted.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Raynor yelled as he scrambled toward Brucker, positioning himself within range, but the Kel-Morian officer kept going. Then, before Raynor could pull the trigger, Zander fired a single shot. Brucker stumbled and fell.
Doc had chosen to shuck her armor because it was difficult to treat patients with the hardskin on. By the time Raynor reached them she was already kneeling next to Brucker with her medical pack opened at her side. A red stain could be seen on the officer’s right thigh and he was gritting his teeth in pain. “It looks like the bullet missed bone,” Doc said matter-of-factly. “He’ll be fine.”
“That’s Overseer Brucker,” Raynor said, “the guy the POWs call ‘the Butcher.’ They’ll be thrilled to hear that he’s going to recover.”
“I need to slip a plastiscab bandage in under the exit wound. Do me a favor, reach under his knee and lift it up.”
“I should have shot you,” Brucker said bitterly, as Raynor lifted the officer’s leg.
“Yeah, life is filled with missed opportunities,” Raynor observed.
“Thanks,” Doc said. “You can put it down now. And Jim …”
“Yeah?”
“Once you find some clothes, track me down. I’ll give you some more happy juice and put antibacterial dressings on the worst of those needle holes.”
“Okay,” Raynor agreed as he eyed a trooper. “You’ll guard him?”
“Sure,” the other soldier agreed. “No problem.”
As Raynor left, Doc applied a plastiscab bandage to Brucker’s entry wound and taped it in place. Then, having removed a disposable syringe from her bag, she withdrew ten cc’s of clear liquid from a small bottle. “What’s that?” Brucker inquired.
“It’s a painkiller,” Doc replied, as she examined the inside surface of Brucker’s arm. The light was poor, and the patient was obese, so it took a moment to find a vein. But once Doc had it the needle went in smoothly.
That was when she leaned in close. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Colonel Vanderspool asked me to give you this message… . If you thought you could get your grubby little hands on his trucks, you thought wrong. Attacking Fort Howe was a serious mistake, and the last one you’re ever going to make.”
Brucker’s eyes opened wide and he tried to jerk his arm away as he realized what was going to happen. But it was too late by then. The poison was already in his bloodstream. He jerked convulsively, tried to say something, and died.
“Damn it!” Doc said regretfully, as she got to her feet. “The fat bastard had a heart attack! Oh well, you can’t win ’em all. Drag him off the road, Max… . The last thing we need is a speed bump.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“This week’s program lineup showcases the heroism, valor, and strength of all our fighting men and women. Tune in to Courage for the Confederacy at 2100, followed by the acclaimed documentary series Honored Few at 2200, only on UNN, your home for up-to-the-minute information, analysis, and commentary on the war.”
Max Speer, Special Evening Report from the Front Line for UNN December 2488
KEL-MORIAN INTERNMENT CAMP-36, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II
Having captured the factory, the next challenge was to assemble a convoy and load it. Once Zander completed a quick inventory of what was available, Tychus learned that he had six trucks, two buses, two tracked, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and a saber command car at his disposal. So he put the saber at the head of the column, followed by an APC, the trucks, the buses, and the second armored personnel carrier.
Three members of the STM platoon had been killed in crash landings, and two had been taken out subsequent to touchdown. That left Tychus with thirty-one of his own people, plus a dozen rangers who had been lucky enough to survive a dropship crash. That gave him a force of forty-three soldiers to protect some three hundred POWs, roughly ten percent of whom might be healthy enough to fight, and were busy arming themselves just in case.
Could the convoy break through into the zone? He hoped so. The only alternative was to stay at KIC-36 and wait to see who would arrive first. A contingent of Kel-Morian troops? Or some Confederate dropships? Given the fact that they were well inside Kel-Morian-held territory, it would have been silly to put his money on the dropships.
There was a sudden roar as gravel flew in every direction and a dusty vulture hover-cycle came to a stop. Not only was Jim Raynor at the controls, he was wearing goggles he’d acquired with the vehicle, a collection of garments scrounged from the factory’s locker room, and a pistol he had taken off a dead pit boss. There was a big grin on his face as he revved the engines. “Look what I found!”
Kydd had been forced to jettison his armor and initiate its self-destruct device when its control system crashed. He looked small standing next to Tychus. “Don’t let him do it, Sarge… . The last time he drove one of those things we wound up in jail.”
But it was too late as an overmedicated Jim Raynor waved and took off down the road. His voice could be heard over the comm in the saber. “I’ll scout ahead,” Raynor said, “and let you know what to look out for.”
Tychus swore as he saw an Avenger chasing a Hellhound across the valley, gave orders for everyone except Ward to shuck their armor, and did so himself.
It was too bad, since the hardskins would have given his people an edge in a head-on fight, but they were too large for the already crowded vehicles and wouldn’t be able to keep up no matter how fast they walked or jogged. But there’s an exception to every rule, and since Ward had the capacity to launch eight independently targeted rockets, he was ordered to ride in truck one.
Having freed himself from his suit, Tychus entered the saber, snatched a mic off its clip, and gave the necessary orders. “Keep the vehicle ahead of you in sight, but stay three truck lengths back, and kill your headlights. The comms can be monitored by the enemy… . So don’t use them except in an emergency. Over.”
Zander gunned the engine and put the saber in motion. They had a long way to go, and the clock was ticking.
THE DISPUTED ZONE, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II
As part of Overseer Brucker’s regiment, it was the Kel-Morian Snakehead Komando’s mission to keep a close eye on the northern sector of the zone, send in regular intelligence reports, and interdict any Confederate patrols that happened along.
The unit was camped in and around a scattering of house-sized rocks, with a clear free-fire zone all around, and good visibility for the sentries perched atop of the biggest boulders. So Foreman Kar Ottmar felt reasonably secure inside his boxy command vehicle as he typed another letter into his hand comp. He couldn’t send it of course, not until the Komando returned to base, but doing so every night was part of a long, frequently interrupted conversation with his wife, Hana.
He could imagine her getting the electronic letters ten or fifteen at a time, and the flicker of firelight on her pretty face as she read them aloud to the children. He never spoke of the fighting in hopes that his family would never face the horrors of war. So he was telling them a story about the dusty brown lizard that had taken up residence in one of his hats, and what the reptile liked to eat, when a comm technician rapped on the half-open door. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but Assistant Overseer Danick is on the horn. He sounds pretty upset. It seems the Confeds attacked KIC-36 and laid waste to it.”
Ottmar swore silently as he hit “save” and left the lizard story half-told. The comsat truck was parked about fifty feet away and protected by light-dispersing camouflage netting. A minute later he was inside the vehicle and sitting on a fold-down seat. A bare-breasted pinup named Viki smiled down on him from her spot just above the comsat terminal as he pulled a headset down over his head and adjusted the lip mic. “This is Snake-Six. Over.”
“The bastards dropped out of the sky!” Danick proclaimed, as if such a thing wasn’t fair. “They weren’t wearing parachutes, they were using some kind of flying armor, which enabled them to land with pinpoint accuracy. We’re still in the process of sorting everything out, but it’s clear that Overseer Brucker and about forty of his guards are dead, with ten WIAs, and major damage to the base.
“That’s not the worst of it, though,” Danick continued hotly. “The Confeds freed the POWs and they’re headed your way! I want you to stop them, Kar… . More than that, I want you to kill every one of the bastards and leave their worthless carcasses to rot in the sun! Do I make myself clear? Over.”
Ottmar could visualize the lick of hair that would be hanging down across the other man’s forehead, the bulging intensity of his eyes, and his slightly purplish lips. “Yes, sir. Very clear. Over.”
“Put your comm tech back on the line,” the assistant overseer instructed. “We’ll feed you everything we have on the column’s position and direction of travel.”
“Yes, sir,” Ottmar replied, and surrendered the headset to the comm tech.
As the officer stepped down from the truck, he wasn’t surprised to find Taskmaster Kurst waiting for him. Somehow Kurst always knew when something was about to happen. He was a big man with a walrus-style mustache and a lantern jaw. “Sir?”
“The enemy laid waste to KIC-36—and killed fifty of our men. Rather than give aid to the wounded, the bastards shot them. We’re going to hunt the slimeballs down! I want the Komando combat-ready thirty minutes from now.”
The exaggerations were intended to motivate the troops, and judging from the anger in Kurst’s eyes, the strategy was working. “Yes, sir!”
Ottmar smiled grimly as the taskmaster departed. The Confeds might have some fancy armor, but they were burdened with hundreds of POWs, and a long way from Confederate lines. He and his Snakeheads were going to find the degenerates and make them sorry they’d ever been born.
The drugs were beginning to wear off, and Raynor was exhausted as the sun rose in the east and he guided the vulture out of a canyon and onto a flat plain. He’d been riding the hover-cycle for hours by then and felt like an old hand as he cut power and let the machine coast to a gentle stop. What had been a single road now split into three well-defined tracks.
Stiff fingers fumbled for the stimpack, found it, and slapped the device against the back of his neck. It buzzed softly. That meant it was empty, so Raynor threw it away. Damn. All the places where Moller had stuck needles into his body hurt like hell.
The saber rolled up to a point about twenty feet away and came to a stop. Tychus climbed out, eyed the sky, and lit a cigar. Puffs of smoke trailed behind him as he made his way over to the hover-cycle. Raynor, who had just taken a long pull from a water bottle, gargled and swallowed. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”
“Yup,” Tychus acknowledged. “We sure as hell are. That’s why Vanderspool wants us to find a defensible spot and hole up.”
“What for?” Raynor demanded. “Why can’t they send some dropships to pick us up here?”
“There’s a shortage,” Tychus answered laconically. “That’s what Colonel Shit-for-brains claims anyway. We lost too many dropships last night and they have to bring some in from the north.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful,” Raynor responded. “I guess I’d better go find a hole for us to crawl into.”
“You do that,” Tychus said agreeably. “And Jim …”
“Yeah?”
“Find it soon. Most of our vehicles are running on fumes.”
Raynor swore, pulled a pair of goggles down over his eyes, and gunned the engines. The vulture fishtailed as it took off and raised a rooster tail as it sped west. Various rock formations could be seen in the distance, and Raynor was trying to figure out which one of them was closest when something caught his eye almost directly ahead. It was too symmetrical to be natural, yet so large he couldn’t believe it was man-made until he topped a rise, and the entire machine came into view.
It was roughly the size of a thirty-story office tower laid on its side. And, judging from the enormous tracks that were partially buried in the sand, the enormous device was a so-called “mineral stripper,” a mobile processor that could “eat” a fifty-foot-wide strip of ground as it crawled across the surface of a planet, extracting the minerals, and process them on board. Waste materials were fed out the back as trucks pulled up alongside to receive the ore and carry it away. The words RAFFIN BROTHERS MINING were printed along the stripper’s rusty flank in letters twenty feet tall.
Judging from the damage that could be seen, and all of the sand that had accumulated around the machine’s monstrous tracks, the processor had been bombed during the early stages of the wars and had been abandoned thereafter. Could they hide inside? And wait for help to arrive? Yes, there was plenty of metal to protect them, and the stripper was closer than the rock formations in the distance.
Raynor skidded to a stop, flicked a switch, and spoke into the mic. “Sierra-Nine to Sierra-Six… . Come to Daddy. I have it. Over.”
The reply wasn’t what he was expecting. “Hit the throttle, Nine… . You have an inbound Hellhound at three o’clock!”
Raynor was still in the process of absorbing the words as geysers of sand jumped into the air all around him and there was a sudden roar as the enemy fighter flashed overhead. Raynor gunned the engine and sent sand spewing in every direction as he took off. The vulture caught a large po
cket of air as it passed over the top of a dune and pancaked in twenty feet beyond.
The impact nearly threw Raynor off the bike, but he managed to hang on as the hover-cycle began to regain its momentum, and the Hellhound circled back. The distance to the stripper had been halved by then—but Raynor knew that the pilot was going to get a second chance at him. So he cranked the handlebars to the left. That caused the vulture to turn in on the fighter and made the Kel-Morian’s target that much smaller.
Since the vehicles were rushing at each other at a combined speed of more than three hundred miles per hour, the pilot had only seconds in which to score a kill. Raynor looked up, saw laser bolts coming straight at him, and marveled at how pretty the lights were as they plowed parallel furrows through the sand. A slight turn to the right was enough to steer the bike between the incoming beams as the Hellhound roared overhead.
That was Raynor’s cue to execute a sharp turn to the right and make a run for the protection offered by the stripper. The rest of the convoy was halfway across the open area by that time, each vehicle throwing up its own plume of dust, as they raced toward safety. The only exceptions were the APCs, which sat side-by-side, roof-mounted double-barreled gauss cannons stuttering as they attempted to bring the Hellhound down.
Then a bus came too close to a low-lying rock formation, ran up onto the ledge, and flipped over! The vehicle skidded for fifty feet on its roof, wheels still spinning, before finally coming to a stop. POWs were just starting to crawl out through the windows when the Hellhound came back to strafe the wreckage. The bus burst into flames and a column of oily smoke boiled up into the sky as if to mark a funeral pyre.
It was a terrible loss, but one that gave the rest of the vehicles enough time to circle around both ends of the stripper and seek safety between the processor’s mighty treads. It was darker in there, and cooler too, as Tychus exited the saber to find Raynor waiting for him. “They know where we are now,” Raynor said grimly. “Ground units are probably en route. Let’s bring the APCs in to block both ends of this hulk.”
Heaven’s Devils Page 24
