Kydd had been forced to jettison his armor and initiate its self-destruct device when its control system crashed. He looked small standing next to Tychus. “Don’t let him do it, Sarge… . The last time he drove one of those things we wound up in jail.”
But it was too late as an overmedicated Jim Raynor waved and took off down the road. His voice could be heard over the comm in the saber. “I’ll scout ahead,” Raynor said, “and let you know what to look out for.”
Tychus swore as he saw an Avenger chasing a Hellhound across the valley, gave orders for everyone except Ward to shuck their armor, and did so himself. It was too bad, since the hardskins would have given his people an edge in a head-on fight, but they were too large for the already crowded vehicles and wouldn’t be able to keep up no matter how fast they walked or jogged. But there’s an exception to every rule, and since Ward had the capacity to launch eight independently targeted rockets, he was ordered to ride in truck one.
Having freed himself from his suit, Tychus entered the saber, snatched a mic off its clip, and gave the necessary orders. “Keep the vehicle ahead of you in sight, but stay three truck lengths back, and kill your headlights. The comms can be monitored by the enemy… . So don’t use them except in an emergency. Over.”
Zander gunned the engine and put the saber in motion. They had a long way to go, and the clock was ticking.
THE DISPUTED ZONE, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II
As part of Overseer Brucker’s regiment, it was the Kel-Morian Snakehead Komando’s mission to keep a close eye on the northern sector of the zone, send in regular intelligence reports, and interdict any Confederate patrols that happened along.
The unit was camped in and around a scattering of house-sized rocks, with a clear free-fire zone all around, and good visibility for the sentries perched atop of the biggest boulders. So Foreman Kar Ottmar felt reasonably secure inside his boxy command vehicle as he typed another letter into his hand comp. He couldn’t send it of course, not until the Komando returned to base, but doing so every night was part of a long, frequently interrupted conversation with his wife, Hana.
He could imagine her getting the electronic letters ten or fifteen at a time, and the flicker of firelight on her pretty face as she read them aloud to the children. He never spoke of the fighting in hopes that his family would never face the horrors of war. So he was telling them a story about the dusty brown lizard that had taken up residence in one of his hats, and what the reptile liked to eat, when a comm technician rapped on the half-open door. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but Assistant Overseer Danick is on the horn. He sounds pretty upset. It seems the Confeds attacked KIC-36 and laid waste to it.”
Ottmar swore silently as he hit “save” and left the lizard story half-told. The comsat truck was parked about fifty feet away and protected by light-dispersing camouflage netting. A minute later he was inside the vehicle and sitting on a fold-down seat. A bare-breasted pinup named Viki smiled down on him from her spot just above the comsat terminal as he pulled a headset down over his head and adjusted the lip mic. “This is Snake-Six. Over.”
“The bastards dropped out of the sky!” Danick proclaimed, as if such a thing wasn’t fair. “They weren’t wearing parachutes, they were using some kind of flying armor, which enabled them to land with pinpoint accuracy. We’re still in the process of sorting everything out, but it’s clear that Overseer Brucker and about forty of his guards are dead, with ten WIAs, and major damage to the base.
“That’s not the worst of it, though,” Danick continued hotly. “The Confeds freed the POWs and they’re headed your way! I want you to stop them, Kar… . More than that, I want you to kill every one of the bastards and leave their worthless carcasses to rot in the sun! Do I make myself clear? Over.”
Ottmar could visualize the lick of hair that would be hanging down across the other man’s forehead, the bulging intensity of his eyes, and his slightly purplish lips. “Yes, sir. Very clear. Over.”
“Put your comm tech back on the line,” the assistant overseer instructed. “We’ll feed you everything we have on the column’s position and direction of travel.”
“Yes, sir,” Ottmar replied, and surrendered the headset to the comm tech.
As the officer stepped down from the truck, he wasn’t surprised to find Taskmaster Kurst waiting for him. Somehow Kurst always knew when something was about to happen. He was a big man with a walrus-style mustache and a lantern jaw. “Sir?”
“The enemy laid waste to KIC-36—and killed fifty of our men. Rather than give aid to the wounded, the bastards shot them. We’re going to hunt the slimeballs down! I want the Komando combat-ready thirty minutes from now.”
The exaggerations were intended to motivate the troops, and judging from the anger in Kurst’s eyes, the strategy was working. “Yes, sir!”
Ottmar smiled grimly as the taskmaster departed. The Confeds might have some fancy armor, but they were burdened with hundreds of POWs, and a long way from Confederate lines. He and his Snakeheads were going to find the degenerates and make them sorry they’d ever been born.
The drugs were beginning to wear off, and Raynor was exhausted as the sun rose in the east and he guided the vulture out of a canyon and onto a flat plain. He’d been riding the hover-cycle for hours by then and felt like an old hand as he cut power and let the machine coast to a gentle stop. What had been a single road now split into three well-defined tracks.
Stiff fingers fumbled for the stimpack, found it, and slapped the device against the back of his neck. It buzzed softly. That meant it was empty, so Raynor threw it away. Damn. All the places where Moller had stuck needles into his body hurt like hell.
The saber rolled up to a point about twenty feet away and came to a stop. Tychus climbed out, eyed the sky, and lit a cigar. Puffs of smoke trailed behind him as he made his way over to the hover-cycle. Raynor, who had just taken a long pull from a water bottle, gargled and swallowed. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”
“Yup,” Tychus acknowledged. “We sure as hell are. That’s why Vanderspool wants us to find a defensible spot and hole up.”
“What for?” Raynor demanded. “Why can’t they send some dropships to pick us up here?”
“There’s a shortage,” Tychus answered laconically. “That’s what Colonel Shit-for-brains claims anyway. We lost too many dropships last night and they have to bring some in from the north.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful,” Raynor responded. “I guess I’d better go find a hole for us to crawl into.”
“You do that,” Tychus said agreeably. “And Jim …”
“Yeah?”
“Find it soon. Most of our vehicles are running on fumes.”
Raynor swore, pulled a pair of goggles down over his eyes, and gunned the engines. The vulture fishtailed as it took off and raised a rooster tail as it sped west. Various rock formations could be seen in the distance, and Raynor was trying to figure out which one of them was closest when something caught his eye almost directly ahead. It was too symmetrical to be natural, yet so large he couldn’t believe it was man-made until he topped a rise, and the entire machine came into view.
It was roughly the size of a thirty-story office tower laid on its side. And, judging from the enormous tracks that were partially buried in the sand, the enormous device was a so-called “mineral stripper,” a mobile processor that could “eat” a fifty-foot-wide strip of ground as it crawled across the surface of a planet, extracting the minerals, and process them on board. Waste materials were fed out the back as trucks pulled up alongside to receive the ore and carry it away. The words RAFFIN BROTHERSMINING were printed along the stripper’s rusty flank in letters twenty feet tall.