Wordlessly, the group readied itself, pulling chromaflage capes on over lightweight body armor and checking weapons, surveillance gear, food and water, and helmets.
“All set?” Willems said.
Michael and Kallewi nodded.
“Good, we … oh, crap!”
The shadow of a light assault lander blackened the road ahead, the crackling blast of its main engines shaking the mobibot bodily as it climbed steeply away. “I think we are about to be sprung, team,” Willems said.
“Looks that way,” Michael said. “That’s a Hammer lander, and I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Nor me.”
Kallewi pointed to an outlying clump of rocks off to the right of the road. “There!” he said urgently. “It’s our only chance. Stop!”
Willems slammed the brakes on, the mobibot skidding to a halt. “Out!” she shouted.
Grabbing his pack, Michael did as he was told. Eyes locked on the dwindling shape of the lander, he ran hard for the shelter of the rocks, his chromaflage cape blurring his image into a shapeless, rippling simulation of the desert around him. When the mobibot sped off toward Algal Springs, he saw that the lander was turning back. With a feeling of dread, he redoubled his efforts, goading his damaged leg to move faster, sliding into the safe embrace of the rocks, Kallewi and Willems piling in after him.
Without another word, Kallewi took control. “Okay, I think they’ll waste some time checking the mobibot out. When they find it’s empty, they’ll backtrack through their holovid records. Once they do, it’s only a matter of time before they spot where the mobibot dropped us off. So single file and go like hell for the hills. There”-he pointed to a tumble of broken rock cascading down onto the sand-“if we can get into that lot and keep climbing, the Hammers won’t be able to get behind us. If we can hold them off until dark, maybe we’ll get a chance to disengage and slip away. Let’s go.”
They almost made it before Kallewi’s shout drove them into cover behind a pair of house-sized boulders. Michael dug down into the sand with frantic desperation. The world erupted around him as the lander’s 30-mm hypervelocity cannons fired a blizzard of depleted-uranium slugs, the appalling racket forcing Michael to dig even deeper, rock splinters tearing the air apart around him. “Oh sweet Jeezus!” he screamed; sudden blind fear swamped him, his body shaking uncontrollably while he ripped at the dirt, a frantic, tearing rush to get somewhere, anywhere, safe.
No sooner had it started than the Hammer attack stopped, the only sound the fast-fading roar of the assault lander as it climbed away under full power.
Kallewi climbed back to his feet. “Let’s go, come on. They don’t have a clue where we are, otherwise we’d be dead, but we cannot hang around.”
Nerves jangling and badly shaken by the attack’s ferocity, Michael glanced around as Kallewi led off. Banked hard over, the lander was turning in for another run. He was relieved to see that Kallewi was right. As it steadied, Michael saw that the lander would make its next run in front of them, far enough ahead of the group to be a complete waste of ammunition.
“Morons,” Kallewi shouted, waving them to take cover. “They should have dropped their marines first to cut us off instead of hosing down the rocks, hoping to get lucky. Once it’s finished this run, we have to get well up into the rocks. We may not get another chance to get off the sand. That gully at my two o’clock. Get in there and keep going.”
Michael needed no encouragement; hands grabbing at the dirt, he ignored the earsplitting racket as the lander roared low across the ground ahead of them. Its cannons ripped the air apart. Cartridge cases-twin cascades of plasfiber flashing white in the morning sun-poured out of the turrets and into the lander’s slipstream. The instant it passed, Michael was on his feet and running through the dust cloud raised by the lander’s strafing run. By the time the lander climbed away, Michael had made it into the gully, its gravel bed leading up into the rocks, the air acrid with the smell of cannon-smashed stone, clouds of dust twisting slowly away in the still air. Gravel gave way to rocks, and Michael scrabbled and clawed his way across and around them in a frenzied rush to get away while behind them the lander dropped to the ground to disgorge its cargo of marines.
“Cover!” Kallewi yelled seconds before rifle fire slashed through the air over their heads. “On me.”
Michael crawled after Willems to Kallewi’s position, safely tucked behind a massive boulder; lungs heaving, he was happy to lie there for the moment. “Right, what they’re going to do is this. Judging by where they’ve landed, I’m pretty sure they only have a rough idea of where we are. The marines will form a skirmish line parallel to the rocks and move in, hoping to herd us into a position we cannot”-Michael flinched as more rifle fire smashed into the rock wall above them-“retreat from. They’ll use landers to move us out into the open if we look like we’re getting too dug in. That, of course, is if they can ever find us, which is something I won’t let happen.”
Kallewi paused to catch his breath. “All we have going for us is mobility and our chromaflage capes,” he continued. “Hammer marines with combat optronics will find us hard to spot.”
“Surveillance drones?” Michael asked.
“Their optronics are no better. Leave them to me. I might be able to bag a few if they get close enough. The key is to move fast and smooth, and for chrissakes, don’t stop in the open even if they start shooting. Remember, they probably can’t see you. When in cover, take any targets of opportunity. Two shots maximum-any more and their hostile fire indicators will localize your position-then get away fast. If they get too close, we’ll stop and knock a few of the bastards down. That should encourage the rest to hang back. Okay, let’s go!”
Ducking and weaving, the group set off. Quickly, Michael settled into a routine-move, pause, move, pause, move-until he lost track of time, distance, and height, the group forced on by Kallewi’s relentless drive. Occasionally they had the chance to fire back: a welcome break, an opportunity to give protesting legs and lungs time to recover while they reminded the Hammers they were not out for a stroll in the hills.
The day wore on, and the tactical advantage shifted slowly in their favor. The higher they climbed, the more they overlooked the Hammers and the easier it became to pick off an unwary marine. Bloodlust replaced fear. Carefully, Michael adjusted his aim until his latest victim’s throat, exposed in a thin strip between helmet and body armor, sat in the center of the sighting ring in his neuronics, the rifle a seamless extension of his body. He breathed in, paused, and fired. He grunted with satisfaction when the Hammer marine fell backward. Working fast, he switched modes on his rifle and fired a microgrenade at a second who he assumed was tucked away safely behind a large boulder, the flat crack when the grenade went off rewarded by screams of pain.
“Incoming!”
Michael threw himself into a shallow cave below a boulder the size of a house. A Hammer lander howled past to unload a pattern of fuel-air blast bombs across the hillside, the latest attempt by the Hammers to blow them out of cover and, like all the rest, with too much hillside for the fleeing Feds to hide in, no more successful.
Not that Michael cared much anymore. Each attack had chipped away at his determination to keep going, and this, the latest in a long line, was closer than most. Afterward, he would swear the shock wave lifted the giant rock off the ground, its brutal power smashing into his body, the concussion so violent that he grayed out for a while. When he recovered, a frightening silence overlain by a ringing in his ears greeted him, the air in the cave filled with dust. His blast-battered brain refused to work properly. Suddenly, it was all too hard, and Michael gave up; he could not keep this up any longer. He lay there, stunned into immobility. He could not bring himself to move even though he should, he must. But he had had enough. If the damn Hammers wanted him, all they had to do was come get him. His head slumped down onto the ground.
Kallewi crawled into view. He grabbed Michael’s shoulder and started to drag him out from under the boulder. “Come on, let’s go. Move,” he hissed. “We need to move. Come on.”
Close to spent, Michael struggled to look up. Kallewi was a mess, his chromaflage cape torn, his helmet scarred by rock splinters. Michael noticed a thin trickle of blood running down Kallewi’s left arm to drip onto the ground. For some reason, the blood made him angry, made him want to keep killing Hammers. Where the sudden resolve to keep fighting came from, Michael had no idea, but it was enough to get him moving.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled, crawling after Kallewi and out of the cave. “How’s Willems?”
“She’s fine. Let’s move. I know that felt real close, and it was, but the stupid bastards still dropped their damn bombs closer to their guys than to us. It won’t stop them, though. Hell knows, they’ve got plenty of marines to spare. Another lander’s just arrived with reinforcements. Come on, we need to keep moving.”
Head down, Michael forced himself to follow Kallewi uphill to where Willems waited, tucked away at the back
