“Holy sket,” Abers says, shaking his head as he smiles at the big man. “You’re startin’ to come around, Lash.”
But Lashley is done talking again. He stares past me, eyes fixed on the inferno swirling around the destroyed koob vehicle column.
I feel like that’s where his soul is at. In the middle of the chaos; that’s where he always wants to be. The money is just a bonus.
“Look alert,” Brisco chimes into my comm. “That little boomy-boomy is probably gonna draw the attention of some zhee we’ve been monitoring on the other side of that pass to the northeast of your location.”
“Copy,” I say, and then turn on my team comm so Easy and Lana can hear me as well. “Command says watch for zhee out of the northeast.”
My guys start going over their kits, pushing aside their robes to get at charge packs and fraggers. Abers moves forward across the pile of dead koobs and begins to rearrange the corpses.
“Get me a nice flat surface, just in case,” he says.
We drive for a while, seeing nothing but the passing desert and distant rocks leading up to a small outcropping of mountains with a winding pass through a box canyon. And then I catch a glint of something metallic in the distance.
I pull out my macros and search for what caused the glare, almost maxing the zoom before I see what look like hover bikes skimming above the Kublar soil at high speed. I tag the location and send it to Command.
“I’ve got visuals on approximately nine hover bikes coming out of the northeast,” I say.
“Copy that,” answers Brisco. Which is better than the usual acknowledgements I get, like “yeah” or “mmhmm.”
I keep looking, and soon the distinctive features of the zhee—the blunted equine-like noses, pointed ears, and claw-like hooves gripping the throttles—are clear enough. “Confirmed zhee riders.”
“Yep. That’s them.”
Brisco’s flirtation with proper comm procedures is over almost as soon as it started.
“They’re coming after us, Command. Requesting close air support.”
“Sorry, Carter. I had two missiles on that observation bot and I used ’em both to blow the trucks. Figured I’d better keep visuals on you than bring it back in for a rearming, ya know?”
“Copy. We’ll handle. Carter out.”
If there’s a breakdown in this little private army of mercs, it’s situations like this. When guys like Brisco are operating tech they’re really not trained on. Sure, they know how to use what’s at their disposal as good as anyone. But they haven’t learned all the whys. And so they waste two missiles when one would have done the job just fine.
I key in my team. “Nine donks on speeders are on our six. This rig isn’t going to outrun them and Command’s got no more death from above for us today. Abers, you keep them honest while I check in with Mr. Surber. Lana—don’t crash.”
“As if,” she says from the cab.
Abers is all business. He’s got an N-18, something usually only the Legion plays with. There are some perks for a Marine out here that he wouldn’t have gotten in the Corps. He flips down the bipod and rests it on the back of a dead koob, lying on top of still more bodies as the truck speeds on.
I see him dial down the charge expenditure. N-18s are extremely powerful blasters, and the bolts they throw have enough kinetic energy packed in each discharge that they can blow off limbs at a very long distance. If you turn the charge all the way up, the energized bolt is so hot that it’s pretty much invisible unless you’re a species with enhanced vision or wearing some augmented visors. But Abers knows the same thing I do. The donks chasing us down are going to know where the shot comes from if they get that close. So why not get as much out of a charge pack as possible?
The donk speeder gang are picking up ground. Still well out of blaster rifle range, but dancing on the edge of death when it comes to what Abers can do.
“I’m not making out a clear priority target from the rabble,” I tell Abers.
“Just watch that lead donk, then.”
I focus my macros on the target. But the zhee on that bike is still a long, long way from us. “You’re not seriously going to shoot yet.”
But Abers doesn’t answer. And I know enough from the time we’ve worked together so far on this planet that he’s going into that box he places himself in when it’s time to make a difficult shot. I say box because that’s how he described it to me once. Like he’s inside a box, cut off from all light except what comes through the scope. That’s all he’s aware of. All he’s focused on. It’s everything he knows at that moment in time.
Krak-bdew!
The N-18 barks behind me and at almost the same moment I see the bolt blast through the target’s chest, leaving what has to be a twelve-inch hole. The donk goes down hard, pulling his speeder down with him until both zhee and machine are violently sliding and spinning up and down in a tumultuous wipeout.
The rest of the zhee riders turn behind them, their minds not yet catching up with what just happened. They’re still processing why their brother in the lead just went down so hard, he ain’t ever comin’ back up.
Abers nails a second one.
He actually hit the bike’s handle bar, but the force of the shot broke the handle off the bike and impaled its rider as the bolt redirected up into the donk’s muzzle in the instant before he, too, was pulled down to the Kublaren dirt.
That’s all it takes for the rest of the bikers to realize what’s happening. They peel off wildly, just missing crashing into one another as they decelerate and attempt to get out of Abers’s monstrous range.
“Nice shooting,” I say.
Abers
