'The ghosts…'
Elvis dropped a frag grenade into an airshaft, but it bounced back out. Shutters had closed the aperture. He kicked the grenade like a soccer ball, and it exploded in the air above a Marie Walton, spreading her out on the concrete like a throwrug.
He had heard rumbling from underneath the firing ground. Whoever was down there was fortifying themselves pretty heavily.
Three minutes to go before Marcus struck.
Raimundo was a berserker in battle. His chaingun chattered in one hand, while the other lifted a Donny to his forest of teeth, and his feet tore at a fence.
Elvis knew he had lost a lot of his people in the first wave. He had expected that. In the main, they had died well.
He'd been scratched by flying shrapnel, and was bleeding.
A Donny came at him, smiling placidly. Elvis sprayed the creature with bullets, using his burpgun. It staggered back under the multiple impact, its skin and clothes exploding as each slug slammed into its unreal body. It jitterbugged twenty yards backwards, and fell. It was still kicking, but it couldn't stand up.
A trio of Maries, their hairdos wobbling, took down an indentee with a toadish cast to his features and tore him apart with immaculately manicured bare hands. When he was sure the indentee was beyond help, Elvis tossed a frag into the grouping, and threw himself down as they blew up in a cloud of flame and flesh.
A halftrack went head to head with Raimundo. The saurian got his arms hooked under the ve-hickle and lifted it up off the ground. Its treads flapped loosely as Raimundo tore the machine apart. A Donny, the life ripped out of him, flopped in the driver's seat. Raimundo tore away iron plating to get to the tasty morsel.
A Josephite Black Hat rolled by like a wheel. Was there a wind rising? No, it was a spidercopter.
Hovering over the base, it laid down covering fire, seeming not to care whether defender or invader took it. The nose nozzle squirted burning napalm, and the flames spread.
Elvis signalled to Raimundo. They would have to put the copter out of action before Marcus hit.
One minute, ten seconds.
Elvis bent over and ran towards a half-assembled field mortar. There was a dead indentee by it. He hunted around for the missing struts, but couldn't find them.
Raimundo roared, and stamped over.
Elvis would have to pull a bluff. He took a rocketshell and dropped it into the mortar tube, then made a great play of fiddling with the sights, taking an eyeline on the spidercopter's nose.
The pilot saw him, and the copter eased forwards. A marksman hung out of the door, trying to draw a bead on Elvis. He signalled the pilot to take the craft lower.
Elvis twiddled with the sights, bringing the useless weapon to bear.
Forty-five seconds.
The spidercopter was just fifteen feet off the ground now, and the marksman would have a clear shot
It was close enough.
Raimundo reared up, and pulled the marksman out by his ankle, biting his foot clean off. The man hit the hard ground like a potato sack, and Elvis heard bones splintering. Raimundo trampled him with a horned heel, all the while reaching for the spidercopter's runners with his arms and jaws.
The pilot tried to take the ve-hickle up out of range, but the two-ton dinosaur hung on, shouting obscenities in Spanish.
The copter tipped up, its blades slicing dangerously near Raimundo's head. His skin was thick, but he'd need six-inch durium plate if the blades got to him.
Josephites fell out of the copter, crunching against the ground, screaming. Elvis took an automatic rifle from the dead indentee, and shot at the durium-laced plexibubble. The transparent material didn't shatter, but whitened where the bullets hit. The pilot was struggling with the stick.
Raimundo's tail lashed the ground, finishing off fallen Josephites. He had a dozen shallow bullet wounds up his spined back.
Fifteen seconds.
There was a wrench, and the copter came out of the sky. Its blade ground into the concrete and snapped, spinning away. Raimundo heaved, tossing the heavy mass as far away from him as possible.
The copter rolled over twice, its bubble cracking in half, and exploded.
Raimundo was hurled off his feet, and Elvis was sure the dinosaur was extinct, but he rolled in a surprisingly neat ball, his tail tucked over his head, and came up roaring defiance.
'Freakin' A, maaaaann! The chopper ees come a cropper!'
Five seconds. Elvis shot a running Josephite, bringing him down. He was holding a grenade, which went off as his fingers relaxed.
'Righteous, guitar maaaan!'
Raimundo was triumphant, indestructible.
'Less kick som' Black Hat ass, homes!'
Now.
ZOOT SUIT: AARDVARK.
Addams was on the ball. She kept going, despite the press of ghosts crowding around her console position.
Fonvielle stuck by her, ready to protect the Black Hat from the ghosts if their mute, motionless threat turned to action.
Grissom was there, and Gagarin, Collins, Capaldi, Rusoff, Kuhn, Breedlove, Griffith. The others were turning up by the. moment, taking on ever more solid shape.
WATUSI: CRUSOE.
Even the Prezz could see them now. And the rest of the Black Hats.
'What's going on?' asked the Prezz.
The First Lady's brown face was grey with dread. She saw them even more clearly than Fonvielle.
BESOM: FRIENDSHIP.
Behind the Prezz, two new shapes took form. Poole and Bowman, lost in deep space since '68. At least their presence here confirmed their deaths aboard the Jupiter Probe.
Al Tracy, the first dead man on Mars, was sitting at an unmanned console, his hands filling out. Soon, the ghosts would be solid enough to intervene.
ZODIAC: SPENCER.
'Gus?' Fonvielle said to Grissom. 'Not now, no…the Dream. You died for it. You can't betray it now.'
Grissom looked him full in the face, and mouthed a word.
ANGELUS: CINCINATTI.
Grissom's thin, black lips moved again. Fonvielle couldn't read them.
'The Dream, Gus. The Dream is alive!'
Grissom didn't look like Fred Flintstone any more. His fishy skin was turning rancid, getting soft. His mouth worked, repeating over and over again…
'Betrayer,' the ghost croaked.
It was like a rabbit-punch in the belly.
The Prezz had a pistol out. He walked across, and jammed the gun to Grissom's head. The barrel sank into the ghost's skull. The Prezz wasn't sure whether to fire.
SANDALWOOD: LARGESSE.
'It's cold,' the Prezz said, his fingers passing through Grissom's face, making ripples.
The First Lady was beside him, pulling his hand out of the dead astronaut.
Grissom looked at the First Lady, and the ghost of a smile appeared on his dead face.
TOPEKA: DUKE.
There was an explosion topside, and the whole bunker shook. Only the ghosts kept their footing. Fonvielle blundered against Tracy, and felt the shiver running up his arm as he brushed the astronaut's insubstantial form with the back of his hand.
Gagarin had his hands around Addam's throat, but she was resistant. She still couldn't see the ghosts, and so
