Dust and ceiling panels rained from above. The situation board wobbled before it crashed onto the Staff officers and shattered. The room went dark. The comm — proofed against such things — sent eerie colored shafts of light through twisting dust. For long moments, Henck lay stunned, nerves spasming, brain reeling with aftereffects. His heterodyning ears picked out the sound of the Staff Third hacking and coughing as he puked.
Henck got to his hands and knees, working his jaw to clear his ears of the wretched ringing.
"Blood and dung!" the Second spat. "That was a close one."
"Get me orbital," Henck grated. "They should be able to follow that one back to the projector. I want that position burned down to molten slag."
Staff Third tried to climb up to the comm board, wavering and staggering as he careened to the wall where he leaned limply. Glass crunched under his weight.
The pounding of feet could be heard on the lower floors, loud in the sudden silence. Somewhere a blaster crackled. Shouts broke out.
"What the corrupt hell?" Henck squinted in an attempt to focus his eyes. His scattered thoughts refused to coordi nate, but he knew instinctively that something had gone terribly wrong.
Staff Second had rolled over to sit up, head cradled in
his hands. "Wish to God that grav shot had missed. My skull's splitting!"
More blaster fire erupted in the hallway. Henck gasped as his stomach heaved and he vomited the last of his disorientation into the dust from the cracked
ceiling. He looked up as the door splintered inward from a pulse shot that sent slivers and pieces clattering through the debris on the floor.
Something's very wrong. I've got to act… get my wits together and. and.
"Rotted Gods!" the Staff Third blared as he looked through the hole blown in the door. His mouth dropped open, eyes wide, expression contorted by horror as his fingers settled on his pistol butt. For some reason, he couldn't seem to get the coordination together to pull his weapon.
The sight engraved itself forever on Henck's brain as he watched the last security guard's body buck and explode in a haze of pink before the remains plopped limply to the floor. A severed arm flopped into the room.
He was still blinking as the black snouts of blasters poked around the corner. Then armored soldiers appeared behind them.
"You! First Henck!" a sharp voice called. "Yeah, we know who you are. You've got five seconds to put your hands over your head! Surrender, or die, friend!"
Henck started to shake his head, hearing other boots beating their way in from the back. The rear door, too, splintered under pulse fire. More grimy, armored soldiers came crashing in, blasters backed by stony expressions. They covered the room, heavy weapons shouldered, eyes hot and angry.
"First Henck, do you surrender?" the man called, stepping through the wreckage of the main door. He wore a Section First's chevron on his arm. Others poured in after him, surrounding Henck and his officers where they stared up in stunned disbelief.
Suffering to lift his hands, Henck nodded, dazed. How could this possibly be happening? Another urge to vomit, unrelated to the gravity flux, curled around his gut.
The young Section First grinned before he pulled up one of the spilled chairs and sat down before the comm. He pressed a stud and talked confidently into the system:
'Sink? Hope you can hear me. Mac, here. We've got
Kaspa. Looks like the Twenty-seventh Division is history, Boss." Mac paused as a faint voice that Henck coudn't make out replied. Then Mac added, "Tell Shiksta that shot was perfect! Building shielded us from most of it, but we're a little woozy."
Henck tensed and trembled as strong hands pulled him to his feet. His mind reeled as other hands stripped off his weapons and armor. The floor felt cold on his unsuited feet as they tied his hands with binding straps and led him out into the cool Kaspan night.
Hauws — with the remains of his Group — staggered up the steep slope, gasping and panting. Smoke-streaked and filthy, they stumbled upward through the gray-black angular boulders that littered the slope. Between them hung a huge four-man blaster that they toiled to lift over the rocks and fallen trees. Hauws had broken away from his Section with twenty men and women. Fifteen of those lay dead on the slope below — picked off one by one by blaster fire and bombardment.
"Down!" Private Buchman screamed — and they flopped to the ground just as a high whistle ended in a loud crackbang! Shrapnel chipped fragments off the rocks they huddled in, while a haze of yellow-green vapor hissed, marking the ghostly shrapnel trails.
"Don't breathe!" Hauws ordered as the poison gas laced the air around them. "Faces in the dirt!" They waited while the streamers of vapor drifted to the east with the breeze. Anxiously, Hauws lifted his head, peering around with owl eyes.
"That's it. Lets go!" He slapped the man next to him. "C'mon, c'mon!"
"Blaster's all right," another private reported. "All systems are go!"
"Let's roll, people!" Hauws bellowed, grabbing up his carry handle, feeling the heavy weapon lift unevenly.
"Fred's dead," Johey called. "Looks like a bit of that poisoned shrap got him in the leg."
"Keep away from that shit!" Hauws ordered. "Don't get
close to that hole, one whiff — or even a touch of that tainted shrapnel — will kill you as dead as Freddie! Let's move."
They struggled up the slope, fighting time and gravity as the sun slanted toward the horizon. In the back of each mind lay the knowledge that the Third Ashtan was trying to line up another long shot like the last one.
Behind them and below, masked by the pine-thick brushchoked draws and gullies under the ridge, periodic concussions and faint flickers of laser and blaster light lashed back and forth as the other two Groups of Hauws' Third Section fought a desperate rearguard action to buy them time, to hold off the hordes.
"Another fifty meters, people," Hauws gasped, back cracking under the weight, lungs fire-pained. Sweat trickled in itching tracks down his face. Heat and stink rolled off his tired staggering body.
"Think. Sink's still… out there?" someone puffed.
"He. better be," Hauws panted and coughed. " 'Cause if the damn Regans… got him… I'm gonna make. somebody pay."
"Damn right," another panting, staggering soldier agreed.
They heaved and struggled for footing in the loose dusty colluvial gravels near the top. Slipping and cursing, they wound between the scrubby pines.
Fifty yards to their left, the air crackled as pines and firs exploded into toothpicks — rock and dust blasting out and up in an earth-shaking upheaval that battered them to the ground.
"Regan bastards!" Hauws spit, blinking in the dust as rocks and debris cascaded around him. He looked up, eyes red in his black-skinned face. His voice came in wheezing gasps, "Blessed Gods, just get us to the top of this pusrotted ridge. Just that far. Then give us time for one lousy miserable shot with this heavy son of a bitch and I'll come screw the daylights outta each and every one of your little Priestess girls for the rest of my life!"
Smaller pebbles and grit were settling on them now. "C'mon, another fifty meters, people!" And they staggered on, aware that hostile IR sensors were seeking from down below. Hopefully, for the moment, those seekers would be
fooled by the hot spot where the particle gun had riven the mountain.
"Ten meters," Hauws gasped, his throat making whistling noises. His muscles had become quivering rubber under the strain, his feet slid in the loose dirt. "By the Foul Bastard's balls, my throat's never been this dry in all my life." Then, "Five meters!" And they were at the crest.
"Johey," Hauws grunted, "Take point. See what's on the other side. "
" 'Firmative.
They pulled and wedged the big blaster behind a solid looking outcrop, unslinging shoulder weapons and crouching in the rocks as the private, face sweat-shiny, mouth open as he panted, crept over the top.