Not all of the eight rockets found their targets, but five of them did, and that was sufficient not only to blunt the Snakehead attack, but to leave the survivors without sufficient transportation.
Ryk Kydd, who was up on the processor’s stern observation deck, could see the stranded KMs and the burning vehicles. He was very unforgiving. Three shots rang out—and three Kel-Morians fell.
But the sloths were still in commission, as were three LAVs, and they were damned hard to hit as the four-wheelers wove in and out.
Ward was shooting at the sloths with the gauss cannon, but he was out of rockets, and it was a waste of time. But he stood there blasting away until Tychus dashed out into the opening and tackled him. Nobody other than Tychus would have been strong enough to snatch an armored man off his feet and push him to safety, even as the beneficiary of his kindness threatened to kill him.
Then the enemy was inside the tunnel as two four-wheelers entered, firing as they came. Two rangers threw up their hands and went down as a hail of spikes punched holes through their body armor.
But their short-lived success was over as Raynor pulled out from behind a parked truck and followed the LAVs toward the other end of the tunnel and the daylight beyond. The vulture’s grenade launcher made a steady chugging sound as it lobbed grenades straight ahead.
Raynor wasn’t very skilled with the weapon since he’d never had an opportunity to fire one before, but it turned out that he didn’t have to be, as one of the four-wheelers took a direct hit, and the second ran into a pair of explosions that sent it skidding out of control. Black smoke whipped past as the vulture carried him around the wreckage and out into the open area beyond.
Meanwhile, as the first sloth came to a halt beneath the stripper’s massive bulk, Harnack was there to greet it. He was wearing goggles, and carrying a captured shotgun as he dropped onto the vehicle’s rear deck from a catwalk above.
There was a loud clang as the top hatch opened and fell against steel. That was the moment when the Kel-Morian saw Harnack’s face grinning down at him. Harnack’s grenade fell inside, rattled as it fell into the compartment below, and wound up just a foot away from the reserve ammo locker.
Harnack jumped off and was fifty feet away by the time the ammo blew. The explosion also damaged the second sloth, which continued to shake convulsively as rounds cooked off inside the wreckage.
Only two of the LAVs were still operational at that point, and both of them made a run for it, as half a dozen Avengers arrived on the scene and attacked them from the air. Both vehicles were destroyed in a matter of seconds.
Suddenly all sorts of orders were coming in as ten dropships appeared and began to land one after another. The first dropship to touch down disgorged eight armored soldiers, who immediately went to work rounding up the POWs.
Meanwhile, Tychus, Raynor, and Harnack began to make their way out from under the gigantic crawler. Moments later Kydd, Zander, Ward, and Doc fell in behind them. Together they walked out of the tunnel and into the sunlight beyond. The job was almost finished—but there was one more thing to do. Find the rest of the Kel-Morian attack group and kill them.
Thanks to the tracks the sloths and the LAVs had left behind, it wasn’t all that difficult to find the rest of Foreman Ottmar’s Komandos. The unit’s support vehicles plus two LAVs had taken shelter under a protruding rock shelf where they would be in the shade and invisible from above.
It was a pretty good hiding place, all things considered, but not good enough to protect the KM soldiers from the heat-seeking missiles fired by a pair of Avengers, or the troops that landed shortly thereafter. The fueler was on fire, the comm-truck was badly damaged, and bodies lay scattered all about. “Check the bodies to make sure they’re really dead,” Tychus ordered. “And we are taking prisoners, so mind your manners.”
Raynor could have remained on the dropship, but couldn’t stand to sit there while the rest of the team hit the dirt. So he followed them into the shadow cast by the outcropping of rock, saw the undamaged command vehicle sitting off to one side, and drew his pistol.
The door was partially open, but he was careful to approach at an angle, so he could see inside. “Hello? Anybody there? If so, put your weapons down and come out with your hands on top of your head.”
There was no response. So Raynor made use of the pistol barrel to push the door open, and took a moment to peer into the relative darkness, before climbing a set of fold-down stairs. It was hot inside the truck, very hot, and once Raynor was sure that the vehicle was empty of people, he wanted to bail out. But first there were some files to go through. The intel people would want to look at any reports, maps, or other official documents that were accessible.
Raynor had just opened a camo-covered briefcase, and was shoving files inside, when he came across a hand comp. A single touch was enough to turn the device on. The document that blossomed on the screen was a letter from one of the KMs to a woman named Hana. His wife? Yes, he thought so. But rather than the sort of letter that one might expect a soldier to write, Raynor found himself reading a story about a lizard. A tale clearly intended for the author’s children.
Raynor scrolled to the bottom of the document, saw that the story was unfinished, and shook his head sadly. It was hard to believe that the man who had written the letter was all that different from the people Raynor served with every day. That wasn’t what the government claimed, though. According to the Confederacy, all of the KMs were monsters. Brucker was—no doubt about that. But this guy? Raynor wasn’t so sure.
He shoved the hand comp into the briefcase, followed by a personnel roster, both of which would be eagerly welcomed at Fort Howe.
While Raynor continued to fill the briefcase, a tiny brown head popped up from the boonie hat that was resting on a side shelf. After checking its immediate surroundings for signs of danger, a small lizard emerged and darted out of the hat. Its mottled body was motionless for a moment, as its tongue tasted the air, and its nearsighted eyes stared at the area directly in front of it.
Then the lizard was off, scurrying the length of the shelf to the point where it could jump down onto a tool box, and from there to the floor. After that it was a short run to the open door, the fold-down stairs, and the hot sand that waited beyond.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“They fell from the heavens, and they fought like hell to free the Confederate POWs held deep inside KM territory. No one else could have done it. No one else did. That’s how the Heaven’s Devils earned their name.”
FORT HOWE, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II
It was late afternoon as a necklace of dropships snaked around Fort Howe, turned toward the south, and landed in quick succession. Moments later ramps went down, field ambulances raced out to meet the newly arrived dropships, and medical personnel rushed aboard. Not only were there wounded to care for, but POWs as well, some of whom were in very bad shape. Then and only then were the troops allowed to make their way down onto the tarmac.
Doc tried to convince Raynor to ride in an ambulance, but he refused, insisting that he be allowed to exit the aircraft with the rest of his platoon. Of the thirty-five soldiers who jumped over the Kel-Morian base, only seventeen were still alive and three of them were wounded. So the bedraggled group that followed Tychus across the concrete toward the buildings beyond wasn’t much larger than a full-strength squad.