attackers had been when Tao-ling tackled him. On the ground to the south. That meant they had to climb at least three ramps. So whoever was firing at the door was covering them until they could get here … probably with a demolition charge that would turn them all to hamburger.
“We’ve got to get ourselves a field of fire,” he grated. His automatic was a toy compared to what was coming at them, but it was better than nothing. And anything was better than dying without fighting back.
“I agree,” Tsien said flatly.
“All right. Tao-ling, you pop the hatch. Al, I think they’re coming up from the south. You can cover the head of the ramp from where you are. Tao-ling, you get over here with me. We’ll try to slow ’em down if they come the other way, but Al’s got our only real firepower.”
“Yes, sir,” Germaine said, and Tsien nodded agreement.
“Then do it—now!”
Tsien hit the button and rolled across the floor, coming up on his knees beside Hatcher. They both flattened against the wall as yet another burst screamed into the room, and Hatcher cursed as a ricochet creased his cheek.
“Can you get that sniper without getting yourself killed, Al?”
“A pleasure, sir,” Germaine said coldly. His eyes were unfocused as his implants sought the source of the fire, then he crouched and took one step to the side. He moved with the blinding speed of his biotechnics, and the grav gun hissed out a brief burst, spitting three-millimeter explosive darts at fifty-two hundred meters per second.
Quang swore as his covering fire died. So, they had at least one of the cursed grav guns. That was bad, but he still had twenty-five men, and they were all heavily armed.
He had no idea how the rest of the attack was going, but Tsien’s reactions had been only too revealing, and the only man who could identify him must die.
His men pounded up the ramp ahead of him.
Her name was Litanil, and, disregarding time spent in stasis, she was thirty-six. It took her precious moments to realize what was happening, and a few more to believe it when she had, but then cold fury filled her.
Litanil hadn’t thought very deeply when Anu’s people recruited her, for she’d been both young and bored. Now she knew she’d also been criminally stupid, and, like her fellows, she’d labored with the Breaker’s own demons on her heels in an effort to atone. Along the way, she’d come to like and admire the Terra-born she worked with, and now hundreds of them lay dead, butchered by the animals responsible for this carnage. She didn’t worry about why. She didn’t even consider the monstrous treason to her race the attack implied. She thought only of dead friends, and something snarled inside her.
She turned her power bore towards the fighting, and her neural feeds sought out the safety interlocks. It was supposed to be impossible for any accident to get around them—but Litanil was no accident.
Allen Germaine went down on one knee, bracing his grav gun over his left forearm, as the first three raiders hurled themselves over the lip of the topmost ramp, assault rifles on full automatic.
They got off one long burst each before their bodies blew apart in a hurricane of explosive darts.
Litanil goosed her power bore to max, snarling across the stony plain at almost two hundred kilometers per hour. Not even a gravitonic drive could hold the massive bore steady at that speed, but she rode it like a bucking horse, her implant scanners reaching out, and her face was a mask of fury as she raised the cutting head chest-high.
Private Pak Chung of the Army of Korea heard nothing, but some instinct made him turn his head. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the huge machine screaming towards him. Rock dust and smoke billowed behind it like a curdled wake, and the … the
The last thing Private Pak ever saw was a terrible brilliance in the millisecond before he exploded in a flash of super-heated body fluids.
General Quang cursed as his three lead men died, but it had not been entirely unexpected. It must be the American’s African aide, yet there was only one of him, bioenhanced or not, and the ramp was not the only way up.
“They’re spreading out,” Germaine reported. “I can’t get a good implant reading through the ramp, but some of them are swinging round front.”
“There is a scaffold below the edge of the platform,” Tsien said.
“Damn! Remind me to detail armed guards to each construction site when we get home, Al.”
“Yes, sir.”
Litanil wiped out Private Pak’s team and raged off after fresh targets. Ahead of her, half a dozen bioenhanced Terra-born construction workers armed with steel reinforcing rods and Imperial blasting compound began working their way around the flank of a second assault group.
Quang poked his head up. This was taking too long. But there would still be time. His men were in position at last, and he barked an order.
“Down!” Germaine shouted, and Hatcher and Tsien dropped instantly as the stubby grenade launchers coughed. Two grenades hit short or exploded against the outer wall; the third headed straight into the door, and Germaine’s left hand struck it like a handball. The explosion ripped his hand apart, and shrapnel tore into his chest and shoulder.
Agony stabbed him, but his implants stopped the flow of blood to his shredded hand and flooded his system with a super-charged blast of adrenalin. The first wave came up the ramp after the grenades, and he cut them down like bloody wheat.
Hatcher fired as a head rose over the edge of the scaffolding. His first shot missed; his second hit just above the left eye. Beside him, Tsien was flat on his belly, firing two-handed. Another attacker dropped.
A sudden burst of explosions ripped the dusty smoke as the construction workers tossed their makeshift bombs. The attack squad faltered as three of their number were blown apart. A fourth emptied a full magazine into a charging man. He killed his assailant, but he never knew; the steel rod his victim had carried impaled him like a spear.
His six surviving comrades broke and ran—directly in front of Litanil’s power bore.
Eight more of Quang’s men died, but a ninth slammed a heart-rupturing burst into Allen Germaine. Major Germaine was a dead man, but he was a bioenhanced corpse. He stayed on his feet long enough to aim very carefully before he squeezed the trigger.
Gerald Hatcher swore viciously as his aide toppled without a sound, grav gun bouncing from his remaining hand. Bastards!
It wasn’t enough, and he knew it.
