Wahid’s voice was even farther away.
Mallory turned away from the helmet and pulled himself up to the edge of the bowl so he could look out at the village.
The half of the buildings that still stood, burned. Even the dead trees were on fire. The sky had turned gray-black with smoke, and ash fell like damned snow. On the ground, bits of armor and burned human remains mixed with broken wood and stone. Within the wreckage of the town before him, the only movement he saw came from the licking of flames.
The Maiden statue had been blown into several fragments, and her two sisters had fallen over into a two-meter pile of debris. Despite his leg’s protests, he ran for the pile of broken statuary which offered at least the illusion of cover. He fell against the Crone’s breast and braced his gamma laser against the Mother’s broken left thigh.
He peered over the mound of debris, looking down what had once been the main street of Samhain. The town was fogged by smoke, and a massive fifteen-meter crater, flanked by burning buildings, dominated Main Street. He saw several intact suits of armor scattered on the ground, but none moved.
The heat from the fires burned Mallory’s cheeks, and it now seemed that every single structure in the village was completely engulfed.
As long as these buildings had been drying out in the desert air, this whole place was a tinderbox. If there was anyone alive in the town proper, they had other concerns right now. A powered suit might isolate someone from the flames, but the onboard life support could only moderate the temperature for so long.
Mallory slid down to the ground at the base of the rubble.
Back across the courtyard, he saw Wahid in a similar position at the base of a half-blasted statue. Smoldering debris covered the sand between them. He waved, and Wahid waved back, apparently unhurt.
Mallory looked down at his leg. An ugly black length of metal, about as thick as his little finger, stuck out of his thigh about fifteen centimeters or so. Mallory winced as he thought of how his movements must have jammed the shrapnel even deeper.
The implants gave their host an edge, but came with a pretty big downside. Pain might be inconvenient in combat, but it had a purpose. He put a shaking hand on the wound to keep pressure on it. He wasn’t going to pull the shrapnel out until he had a medkit handy to deal with any torn blood vessels.
He felt pressure in his left shoulder, and looked down to see blood drenching his sleeve from his shoulder down. Not good.
He set down the laser to move his right hand to put pressure on that injury. Nothing stuck out of it, and the hole was relatively small, but the amount of blood and his light-headedness made him think that the wound might have clipped an artery.
In a strangely detached way he thought,
The world around him was silent except for the distant crackle of flames he barely heard over the ringing in his ears. Above him, the sky churned, a swirling cauldron of smoke, ash, and embers.
He wondered what had happened to the aircraft.
He blinked and saw Wahid standing over him. After a moment of disorientation Mallory realized he was flat on his back.
Wahid took a canister and sprayed a bandage on Mallory’s shoulder. The bandage wrapped his skin in a tight frigid embrace as it compressed the wound and sealed it against blood loss. Mallory felt him inject something in his arm, and he closed his eyes again.
Parvi flew the fighter around the perimeter of the smoldering remains of Samhain, watching her sensors for any potential backup for the hostiles. But no new contacts appeared on any of her screens, and as she orbited the burning commune, the contacts she had already acquired slowly began graying out.
When she was certain the area was secured, she sent an encrypted burst message to Mosasa and slowed the fighter to come in for a landing near the two remaining live contacts.
