And again and again and again . . . until the dead lay five and six deep and there was no living thing in all the blasted nightmare of that valley of death.
Sergeant O'Brian heard the sudden explosion of combat far behind him, but his attention was on other things. His squad squatted and crouched in firing positions along the shallow, razor-backed ridge, and he peered through his binoculars at the cave mouth across the ravine below him.
The nose of an aircar protruded from it, and his jaw tightened as he saw the pulser muzzles like tusks on either side of the front gear well. The sleek vehicle bore no markings that he could see, and the presence of those heavy weapons made it illegal even if it had once been properly registered. The problem was what he did about it. He was no cop, and with the horror of the NPA skimmer fresh in his mind, he was in no mood to act like one.
He grunted decisively and hit the button that flipped the binoculars up out of his way.
"Hawk-Three, Falcon-Three-Three," he said into his com. "Are you ready to nail them if they bug out?"
"Affirmative, Falcon-Three-Three," the pinnace's commander replied. "But we're not going to leave much in the way of evidence if we do."
"Understood, Hawk-Three. We'll try to keep them on the ground, but stay on your toes."
"Will do, Falcon-Three-Three. Luck."
"Thanks." O'Brian shifted back to the squad net. "You see that overhang above the aircar, Stimson?"
"Yo, Sarge," the plasma rifleman's reply was laconic, almost bored-sounding, but O'Brian wasn't fooled.
"I want that cave plugged with the aircar inside it. It may be evidence, so I don't want it destroyed, either. Think you can drop the overhang on its nose?"
"Might be able to," Stimson said thoughtfully, "but that's mighty thick rock, an' I wouldn't care to bet money on doin' it from up here. This baby of mine don't have all that much penetration, and the angle's bad from here. I prob'ly can if I get a little lower, though, Sarge."
"Can you do that without being spotted?"
"He can work around the north end of the ridge, Sarge," Hillyard suggested. "It tails off in some broken ground and boulders down that way."
"Sounds good to me, Sarge," Stimson agreed.
"Do it, Stimson."
"On my way."
O'Brian grunted in satisfaction, but his armor sensors were already picking up revving turbines, and there were other machinery noises, coming both from that cave and an equally large cave mouth just below it. There might be more aircars in there, or even ground vehicles.
"Hadley, you watch that lower cave," he said. "If anything starts to move out of it, nail it, and the hell with evidence."
"My pleasure, Sarge."
"Sharon, when Stimson takes out the aircar, I want you to take the rest of your people in to cover that smaller cave to the left. Bill, you take Parker and Lovejoy to that one on the extreme right. Turner and Frankowski, you're with me on the one in the middle. Hadley and Stimson will lie back to cover us. Everyone copy?"
A chorus of assents came back, and he made himself wait in patience while Stimson slithered cautiously into position. It seemed to be taking forever, though he knew the delay felt far longer than it was. The thunder of weapons from the south grew even louder, and he bit his lip as its intensity registered. There must be even more of the bastards than they'd thought. He tried not to remember what the Stilties had done to those poor damned NPA types, tried not to think about them doing it to his own people, and concentrated on the task in hand.
"In position, Sarge," Stimson's voice said.
"Then take 'em out," O'Brian grated, and an eye-aching gout of incandescence flashed below him.
The plasma bolt liberated its energy almost instantaneously against the lower edge of the stony outcrop. Vaporized soil and glowing quartz gravel erupted away from the searing impact, but the outcrop held . . . for a second. And then another bolt smashed into the glowing hole. A second scoop of rock and earth vanished, and the massive stone ledge broke loose and crashed downward across the cave mouth. It crunched into the aircar, blocking the cave and smashing through the fuselage just behind the nose like a blunt guillotine, and O'Brian was on his feet.
"Move in!" he shouted, and his armored squad hurled itself forward in instant response.
O'Brian covered the distance to the central cave mouth in less than thirty seconds, diving aside to cover himself against any waiting weapons behind a shoulder of solid rock and dirt. He stabbed a quick look at his display and grunted in satisfaction. They were all closed up against their objectives. Now someone had to poke his head inside and hope to hell no one blew it off.
"Watch my ass, Turner," he growled, and thrust himself cautiously around the edge of the opening.
A narrow, rough-walled gut, more like a tunnel than a cave, opened before him. He moved down it slowly, rifle ready, sensors probing, and grunted again as he picked up additional power sources ahead of him. So. This was the base they'd been looking for . . . and somewhere up there were the bastards who'd given the Stilties their fucking guns. His lips drew up in a hungry smile at the thought, but he made himself maintain his slow, cautious pace.
The cave swung to the left and opened out, and light glowed around the bend. He sidled up to it cautiously, and his eyes narrowed as he saw a dozen coughing humans crouched behind out-thrust swells of rock and piles of off-world freight canisters and cargo-handling equipment amid the fog of dust and smoke Stimson's shot had blown back into the cave. It looked as if they'd been loading the aircar for a frantic evacuation, but there'd been a change in plans, O'Brian thought coldly. They weren't going anywhere now.
Most of them wore unpowered body armor, and he saw some fairly heavy weapons down there, as well as sidearms and half a dozen pulse rifles. On the other hand, his people were in full battle armor, and none of those bastards knew he was here above them yet, now did they?
He started to squeeze his trigger, then stopped. He was no cop, but he supposed the brass would like prisoners. And physical evidence.
"Solid shot only," he murmured over his com. "Try not to tear things up too badly if you have to shootthey're gonna want evidencebut don't take any stupid chances."
Acknowledgments came back to him, and his own little finger squeezed, switching over to the non-explosive rounds in the secondary magazine. He drew a deep breath and eased further forward, keeping as low as he could while Turner slid up to his right. She moved as carefully and quietly as he and settled down in position to watch his back. He and the private looked at one another, and O'Brian nodded.
"Throw down your weapons!" he barked suddenly. His voice boomed and roared through the cavern, hugely amplified by his armor's external speaker, and the people before him jerked in surprise. Faces swung towards him, and two or three of them dropped their weapons, raising their hands in sheer reflex.
"No, Goddamnit!" someone screamed. Heads whipped around, and blinding light and searing heat flashed from the cave wall three meters to O'Brian's right as the man who'd screamed fired a plasma carbine desperately in his direction. The sergeant didn't even blink, but his eyes glowed with a hard, vicious light. He didn't repeat his surrender demand. His rifle muzzle angled slightly to the right, and he bared his teeth as he squeezed the trigger twice with cold deliberation.
The non-explosive darts screamed across the cavern at two thousand meters per second, and Tadeuz O'Brian was qualified Expert Marksman with the pulse rifle. Body armor slowed them, but it couldn't possibly stop them at such a short range, and they struck precisely where he'd intendeda centimeter below Colonel Bryan Westerfeldt's navel.