Judging from the damage that could be seen, and all of the sand that had accumulated around the machine’s monstrous tracks, the processor had been bombed during the early stages of the wars and had been abandoned thereafter. Could they hide inside? And wait for help to arrive? Yes, there was plenty of metal to protect them, and the stripper was closer than the rock formations in the distance.
Raynor skidded to a stop, flicked a switch, and spoke into the mic. “Sierra-Nine to Sierra-Six… . Come to Daddy. I have it. Over.”
The reply wasn’t what he was expecting. “Hit the throttle, Nine… . You have an inbound Hellhound at three o’clock!”
Raynor was still in the process of absorbing the words as geysers of sand jumped into the air all around him and there was a sudden roar as the enemy fighter flashed overhead. Raynor gunned the engine and sent sand spewing in every direction as he took off. The vulture caught a large pocket of air as it passed over the top of a dune and pancaked in twenty feet beyond.
The impact nearly threw Raynor off the bike, but he managed to hang on as the hover-cycle began to regain its momentum, and the Hellhound circled back. The distance to the stripper had been halved by then—but Raynor knew that the pilot was going to get a second chance at him. So he cranked the handlebars to the left. That caused the vulture to turn in on the fighter and made the Kel-Morian’s target that much smaller.
Since the vehicles were rushing at each other at a combined speed of more than three hundred miles per hour, the pilot had only seconds in which to score a kill. Raynor looked up, saw laser bolts coming straight at him, and marveled at how pretty the lights were as they plowed parallel furrows through the sand. A slight turn to the right was enough to steer the bike between the incoming beams as the Hellhound roared overhead.
That was Raynor’s cue to execute a sharp turn to the right and make a run for the protection offered by the stripper. The rest of the convoy was halfway across the open area by that time, each vehicle throwing up its own plume of dust, as they raced toward safety. The only exceptions were the APCs, which sat side-by-side, roof-mounted double-barreled gauss cannons stuttering as they attempted to bring the Hellhound down.
Then a bus came too close to a low-lying rock formation, ran up onto the ledge, and flipped over! The vehicle skidded for fifty feet on its roof, wheels still spinning, before finally coming to a stop. POWs were just starting to crawl out through the windows when the Hellhound came back to strafe the wreckage. The bus burst into flames and a column of oily smoke boiled up into the sky as if to mark a funeral pyre.
It was a terrible loss, but one that gave the rest of the vehicles enough time to circle around both ends of the stripper and seek safety between the processor’s mighty treads. It was darker in there, and cooler too, as Tychus exited the saber to find Raynor waiting for him. “They know where we are now,” Raynor said grimly. “Ground units are probably en route. Let’s bring the APCs in to block both ends of this hulk.”
It was a good idea, and Tychus was about to say as much, when an accelerated spike hit. The explosion wasn’t that big by military standards, but sufficient to blow a huge divot out of the sand just inside the north entrance and cause Tychus to change his mind. “Get the POWs out of those vehicles!” he shouted. “See the stairs to either side? Take them up and put them at the very center of this thing. And do it yesterday!”
“Where the hell did that spike come from?” Raynor asked, as the rangers hurried to obey Tychus’s orders.
“I don’t know,” Tychus answered grimly, as his cigar waggled up and down. “But I’ll bet we’re gonna find out.”
Ottmar and his Snakeheads were sitting atop a low ridge that ran east to west across the plain. The mineral stripper was clear to see about a mile ahead. Thanks to information provided by the Hellhound pilot, not to mention the thick black smoke, the fugitives had been easy to locate.
Ottmar panned the battlefield with his field goggles. Eight combat four-wheeled light attack vehicles (LAVs) led the charge. In keeping with the Komando’s motto, “Move fast and strike hard,” each LAV was armed with a fixed gun and was large enough to carry two armored soldiers. The four-wheelers could travel at speeds up to sixty miles per hour over a reasonably flat surface. That made them perfect for scouting, quick raids, and rat hunts like this one.
Two sloths followed close behind. Repurposed to function as tanks, the sloths had once been huge earth movers to which large caliber cannons had been fitted in place of dozer blades, along with lighter slugthrowers for anti-personnel use. Metal plates had been welded all around the circumference of the machines and were angled wherever possible in order to deflect incoming projectiles.
The rest of the unit, including the command vehicle, the comm-truck, the supply hog, the fueler, and the men required to defend them were almost ten miles to the rear. Having lost their battle with the Hellhound, both of the captured APCs were burning. The fighter, which was running low on fuel, was on its way back to base.
As the tanks fired on the stripper, the resulting explosions were little more than tiny flashes of light against the machine’s vast gray bulk. “Snake-One to all units… . Save your ammo,” Ottmar ordered. “The Confeds are inside that monster by now. Over.”
That was when the driver of the LAV to Ottmar’s right jerked spastically and a distant crack was heard. Then, with a ponderous dignity, the Snakehead fell sideways onto the ground. A sniper had seen an open visor and taken his shot. The rats had teeth!
The number two man on the right-hand LAV was behind the controls by then as Ottmar twisted his throttle and sent his attack vehicle surging forward. The key was to get in under the beast, kill any guards who might be waiting there, and fight their way upward. A simple matter, really—and one he would take pleasure in.
Ward could see the oncoming LAVs and knew what they hoped to accomplish, as he left the shadows and lumbered out to stand at the very center of the huge opening. Quad rocket launchers sat atop Ward’s squared-off shoulders, and a Kel-Morian gauss cannon was cradled in his arms. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, and there was a smile on his lips as targeting data scrolled across his HUD.
“Ward!” Tychus yelled over the comm. “Get your dumb ass back over here! That’s an order!”
But Ward couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of his wife calling their children in to dinner, and the music of their laughter, followed by a series of explosions as the Hellhounds bombed his village. He staggered as incoming fire sparkled against his armor, but was only marginally aware of the danger as he chose each target with care. Once the process was complete, Ward was careful to brace himself against what he knew was going to be a massive recoil. There was a satisfying whoosh as all eight of the rockets left their launchers at once, locked onto the heat generated by the targets they had been assigned to, and corkscrewed across the sky. The gauss cannon was up and firing by that time, an LAV exploded, and Ward gave thanks. He was a happy man.
Ottmar figured the man who stood legs apart at the very center of the opening was either very brave or very foolish—not that it made much difference, because in a moment he was going to be very dead!
Then he saw the flash of rockets being fired, the vapor trails they made, and knew what would happen next. There was little more than a couple of seconds in which to think about Hana, the children, and the brown lizard before a rocket blew Foreman Kar Ottmar and the man seated behind him to bloody bits.