She thought she heard yelling, maybe her name being shouted, but couldn’t make it out for sure.
Then fire began to rain down from the surrounding buildings. Targeting the man and Lopez. Poorly trained snipers going for the kill. And her blaster was all but useless against ranged targets.
As they’d charged out of the building, she’d seen that some of the pros had been carrying blaster rifles. Weapons good for medium- to long-range engagements. She scanned the street near two dead men the armored man had shot down in their race to the curb and cover. But neither had those type of weapons. Their light blasters lay in the gutter nearby.
She checked her blaster’s charge pack. Without thinking she swapped in a new one and rolled over the hood of the sled she covered behind, firing into the three men she found waiting on the other side. She squeezed hard on the Jackknife, literally shaking it across them. Hundreds of needle-sized bolts shredded the men in red and black.
That was the last of the charge packs Rechs had given her. Her pockets were empty. But one of the downed pros had a medium-engagement blaster rifle with a scope on it. Looked like a Balt Optics x4. Good enough. She slithered under the sled’s open door to get to it, avoiding the blaster fire that smashed into the vehicle. Another pro had seen her pull that move, and he was responding.
She let go of the little Jackknife blaster, pulled the rifle off the ground and quickly checked its load.
Charge was solid. About three quarters full.
Lying on her back and with little regard for her own safety, she focused in on the first sniper team she could spot in the buildings above.
She landed the scope, checked that she was getting a good zero via the side-scroll telemetry within the picture, and pulled the trigger. Her target was leaning over the side of the roof, and her shot took the guy through the throat and sent a red spray up into the air behind him.
She scrambled to her feet, moving away from the bolts that were focused on the sled she’d been hunkered beside, and scanned for another team, tracking the incoming fire on the armored man and Lopez.
“Covering!” she shouted at Rechs through the clearing dust and crisscrossing blaster fire, hoping he could hear her.
* * *
Captain Hess hovered over the battle from the cargo deck of the SLIC gunship. He had directed the SLIC’s door gunner to pour fire on the freighter that had just landed.
“That’s the extraction vehicle! Rechs is working with whoever killed that legionnaire! Shut it down, Sergeant!”
The gunner had complied and swiveled the swing-mounted N-50 heavy blaster over toward the old freighter, pouring bright bursts of fire into her upper hull, targeting the propulsion system controls near the engines.
And then Hess spotted Rechs coming out of the building and had to restrain himself from spluttering with joyous rage.
He grabbed the gunner’s shoulder and tried to re-direct fire, indicating Rechs and the legionnaire on his back. “He’s moving the leej to the next safe house! Dust him!”
“I’ll hit the leej!” shouted the marine sergeant.
And then a typhoon of dust swallowed the street below.
Hess knew immediately that he was probably only going to get one more shot at Rechs when the dust cleared.
“Hold position!” he shouted at the pilot.
“Copy that, Captain Hess.”
Hunter Oh-Two kept the craft hovering above the dust storm. Somewhere down below, blaster fire opened up from a new source. Oh-Two called it in, wondering if the Legion had pushed in on their own. It definitely sounded like at least one SAB was laying it down.
And then the dust began to clear. Just a little, and just for a moment. And Captain Kirk Walters erupted with news that had him both excited and terrified.
“I have visuals on Reaper Actual! Oorah, Amanda!”
She was engaging targets, fighting for her life. The man Hess identified as Tyrus Rechs appeared to be trying to escape with the wounded legionnaire. And, strangely, the Soshie pros seemed to be doing their best to stop him. Hunter Oh-Two saw all this in an instant before the billowing dust thickened once more.
That’s when Hess delivered a stunning blow to the base of the skull of the marine crew chief operating the door gun. He knew getting the guy to fire at Rechs was going to be problematic after he’d balked the first time.
“Gotta do it myself,” Hess muttered as the crew chief dangled, dead weight pulling his safety line taut.
The Nether Ops agent took the stock of the weapon and shoved it into his shoulder, using the N-50’s targeting system to scan the swirling dust below where he’d last seen Rechs.
All he needed was a clear shot. Then he’d dump everything the N-50 had right on top of Tyrus Rechs. There was no way his armor could stand up to that. No way in hell.
64
As Rechs moved, the heavy legionnaire on his back groaned and coughed.
“Hang in there!” shouted Rechs. He opened up with the hand cannon on the sled nearest him. One of the vehicles with a mounted blaster. He shot the gunner a bunch and then continued, weaving through the vehicles to make the hulking shadow of the Obsidian Crow, looming in the gray murk of the clearing dust.
The HUD was still finishing its full reboot, but he had a tag on the marine’s biometric signature now. She was covering behind a sled and firing at the sniper teams in the buildings above.
“Marine!” shouted Rechs. “Follow me!”
He wouldn’t leave without her. He just had to get the legionnaire on board first.
He had just moved from the vehicle toward the marine when a fusillade of blaster fire from the forward-most sled in the convoy came racing to meet him. He dashed for cover behind another sled that was angled out and facing the entrance of the ruined building. Through it
