backlit by the raw energy raging inside the ravine.
“Four flyers heading your way,” Parker called.
Morton saw the orange symbols creep into his virtual vision.
“Can you close it down?” The Cat shouted.
“Not a chance,” Morton said. “One of them’s dead, the other two are still shooting.”
“Stop them!” Parker demanded. “How difficult can it be?”
“We’re coming,” the Doc said. “Parker, with me.”
“Oh, Christ.”
One final eight-meter hurdle jump over a horizontal tree and Morton landed on the rim of the ravine, his boots thudding into spongy soil up to the ankles. He was already pointing his hyper-rifle. A simple circular targeting graphic materialized in the center of his virtual vision. The sneekbots were triangulating coordinates for him. An alien armor suit slid smoothly into the orange circle, which immediately flashed green. Morton fired.
The hyper-rifle was designed with one purpose: to puncture the force field projected by alien armor. Even so, Morton was slightly surprised when the small atom laser’s half-second burst drilled clean through the suit, sending the alien flying backward three meters through the air to splash into the stream. Water closed over the dark shape, hissing briefly as the heat produced a small cloud of steam. How about that, the military got something right.
Rob was crouching beside him—presenting a smaller target silhouette. He fired his hyper-rifle. Morton found the last alien and shot it. The ravine was abruptly plunged into darkness again. Just a few serpent shapes of grass embers glowed where the alien patrol had made their stand. The damp night air was extinguishing them quickly.
“Who the hell are you?” a voice challenged.
“The cavalry,” Rob told him. “Your lucky day, huh.”
“Flyer overhead,” the Doc said. His voice was strangely calm. “You’re going to need covering fire, Morton.”
“No!” Cat warned. “Don’t!”
Morton’s telemetry display showed him the Doc launching an HVvixen. The slim missile accelerated at fifteen gees, its plasma exhaust piercing the air behind it like a runaway solar flare. It slammed into the flyer’s force field, flash-releasing its remaining energy. The flyer detonated into an incandescent spherical shock wave that billowed out at supersonic velocity to envelop its three partners. They exploded in furious twisting gouts of sapphire vapor.
“Gotcha, you bastards,” the Doc crooned.
“You retard motherfucker,” the Cat screamed. “You’ve just killed us all.”
“Only these bodies, Cat,” the Doc said lightly. “Your essence will have continuity.”
The dazzling lightstorm began to drain out of the night sky, dissipating into a thousand sparkling contrails that sank slowly toward the ground. Morton’s suit sensors picked out the three armored humans standing in the middle of the scintillation blizzard.
“Nice shot, man,” Parker said admiringly.
“Run,” Morton whispered. “Run now. Get out of there!”
One figure was already moving. The Cat: using her armor suit boost function to its maximum, accelerating her helter-skelter sprint to over sixty kilometers an hour. She was heading up the slope toward the roof of writhing cloud.
“Four more,” Parker said. “Make that six.”
“You mean ten,” the Doc said. “Morton, Rob, get the civilians out of here.”
“Yeah,” Parker said. “Protect and serve.”
The one surviving ambusher was walking unsteadily toward Morton.
“What was that? What is happening?”
“They’re not going to make it,” Rob said.
Five HVvixens shrieked into the night.
Morton jumped toward the survivor as vivid white light silently washed across them. “Get down. Get into the ravine.” He didn’t give the man any opportunity to argue. His suit arms closed around him, picking him up effortlessly. They both tumbled over the edge. Behind them, the devil’s own fireworks display filled the sky with carnage.
“Bad guys falling,” Parker reported, laughing gleefully.
“They found us,” the Doc reported. “More incoming. Shit. Eighteen. Four of them are big. New flyer type for your catalogue, Morton.” His suit’s sensors were relaying a stream of information. The data faltered as several beam weapons locked on to him. “You guys had better go for deep cover. Make this relevant, Morton. I’m counting on you.” He fired another HVvixen. It never got ten meters from his suit’s force field before the deluge of energy from the alien beam weapons ruptured it.
Parker’s screaming was loud in Morton’s ears as he was hurled through the air by the explosion. Telemetry showed him the man’s suit start to falter from the punishing overload.
“Get down to the bottom of the ravine,” Rob was saying. “We’ll be safe there.”
Morton hauled the ambusher along at his side as the two of them hurried down the last few meters of the slope to the rampaging water. He switched to active sensors, confident no one would ever notice. The stream was deep, at least a couple of meters. As far as his radar could see downstream the flow was free from any obstruction.
“Over here,” Parker called. He was broadcasting on every frequency his armor suit was capable of transmitting on. “Here I am, you bastards, come and get me.” Seven of the large alien flyers were approaching him, their weapons lashing out. “Eat this shit, and die.”
Morton plunged into the stream, taking the survivor with him. He expanded his suit’s force field to envelop both of them.
Parker triggered the two tactical nukes he was carrying.
A stratum of violent white light streaked over the top of the ravine, obliterating every color as its thick nimbus irradiated the ground. The churning water of the stream began to steam. Then the air shook, agitating the boulders. Small stones began to bounce down the slopes to splash into the water.
Morton and Rob were already well on their way downstream, tumbling around and around in the swirling rapids. It was a fast and chaotic ride, with the pair of them grinding through shallows and banging into the sides only to ricochet back into the main current again. Morton kept hold of the ambush survivor, struggling to keep the man above the foaming surface the whole time they jolted about.
The dreadful sheen of light drained out of the sky, leaving the restless clouds seething with lightning flashes. Ground tremors faded away.
“You okay?” Rob asked. He was ten meters ahead of Morton, riding down on his back, using his arms as rudders.
“Just trying to keep this guy alive.”
“How’s he doing?”
“I think he’s had better days. Sensors show he’s still breathing.” It was more like choking, but at least his weak thrashing showed he was still alive.
“We’re getting goddamn close to the town.”
“I know. But we’re almost at the bottom.”
Another two hundred meters brought them to the end of the stream, where it broadened out to gurgle over a wide, flat bed of stones before emptying into the Trine’ba. Morton came racing out of the last curve to hit the stones on his ass; he plowed through them for a short way before coming to a complete halt.
“Holy fuck,” Rob said. “We made it.”
“Congratulations.” The Cat’s voice oozed sarcasm. “Landed on something soft, did you? That part that does all your thinking.”
“Piss off, bitch.”
Morton’s virtual vision showed him the working sensor disks that were relaying Cat’s signal. There weren’t many left. When he accessed their visual spectrum feeds, they showed him a small crater glowing a venomous maroon where Parker had made his stand. Above it, a hole had been ripped through the clouds, where violet air hazed the swirling gap. Forests and spinnies scattered on the hills above the town had ignited and were now surging into full-blown firestorms; between them the ruined grass was smoldering. Smoke was rising to choke the narrow band of air between the ground and the clouds. None of the sensors reported any flyer activity.
The Cat was sheltering in a gentle fold high above the blast zone. Telemetry showed her suit was intact; its force field had protected her from the blast.
Morton let go of the man he was holding and climbed to his feet. The force field around the alien town was five hundred meters away. There was no sign of any activity nearby.
“I think we’re safe for the moment,” Morton said. “This might be a good time to leave.”
“Amen to that,” Rob grunted.
Morton looked down at the man who was still sprawled on the stones, panting heavily. His black clothes had been ripped in several places; the ebony skin beneath was grazed and lacerated.
“You all right?” Morton asked.
The man turned his head to glare up. “What? Are you making a joke?”
“Sorry. I’ve got a decent medical kit, but if you can walk I’d like to build some distance with Randtown before we stop to patch you up.”
“Merciful heavens, forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“What have you done?”
“Led more good men to their death. I take it you are responsible for that explosion? It was nuclear, wasn’t it?”
“One of my squad mates triggered it. He was stopping the flyers you’d attracted.”
“I see.” The man bowed his head until it was almost in the water. “Even more deaths must be carried by my conscience, then. And it was already a terrible burden. Truly, the fates must hate me.”
“I don’t think any of this is personal. My name’s Morton, this is Rob.”
“Thank you, gentlemen, I appreciate you saving me. Much good it will do you.”
“Pleasure,” Rob grunted.
