Michael shifted fire. He settled his optical sight on the cab of the oncoming truckbot. Its sole occupant stared open-mouthed at the carnage ahead. Michael squeezed the trigger and put two rounds into the man’s face, dropped his aim to put a long burst into the engine compartment, and emptied the last of his magazine into the camouflaged cover over the truck bed. The truckbot wobbled and swayed before it too shuddered to a halt, but not before its nose had rammed into the bullet-ridden wreck of Colonel Farrah’s mobibot and shunted it another 20 meters down the road.
Michael changed magazines and returned to the attack. A blizzard of fire flayed the truck and anyone stupid enough to try to get to his side of the road. But the Hammers were getting their act together. A significant amount of fire was already coming his way, and now the heavy chatter of machine gun fire joined the assault rifles. Rounds smashed at the rocks around him. Razor-sharp fragments of rock spalled off the rocks around him, stinging and burning when they hit his arms and face. The noise and confusion grew. Microgrenades arced across the road and exploded with ear-splitting cracks that filled the air with dust and the acrid smell of high explosive.
The mobibot’s microfusion plant blew, followed an instant later by the truck’s; the two blue-white balls of light and fire hurled debris in all directions. The concussion was so violent that it picked Michael up and threw him bodily backward; he was left stunned and deafened.
For a moment there was a silence. The respite did not last. The Hammers resumed their attack with full fury.
With an effort, Michael forced his brain back to work. He swore under his breath as he watched the second truck screech to a halt. Troopers spilled out of the back. Michael sent a hail of fire into them, chasing the men off the road into cover. But it was hopeless; there were simply too many of them, and they knew what they were doing. Under cover of heavy suppressing fire, Michael could see one group working its way left past the wreckage of the mobibot; a second was moving to his right. They’re flanking us, he said to himself. Come on, Sergeant Shinoda; it’s time to move.
Shinoda had been listening; she stopped firing. Michael put a single sustained burst into the Hammers, then squirmed and rolled away He scrambled to his feet and ran around the base of the reef to where Shinoda waited. He shot past her. “Go!” he shouted over the noise as he led the way along the path he had scouted earlier. The volume of fire thrown at them dropped off as they moved away from the road.
A Hammer drone arrived and settled into orbit overhead. Within seconds, hostile fire flayed the air around them and microgrenades ripped ground and vegetation apart. Michael flinched as a wayward round tore at his hair and a second seared an agonizing path across his left shoulder, the pain short-lived as his neuronics dumped neural blockers and painkillers into his system.
“Bastards saw us,” Shinoda yelled.
“No kidding,” Michael muttered. He forced his body to run harder. Now he jinked and swerved around rocks and trees. Shredded leaves and branches rained down on his head as the volume of fire intensified.
“Dumb fucks are letting that drone get way too low,” Shinoda shouted. “We can take it, but we’ll only get one chance, so make it count.”
“Got it,” Michael said. The drone was impossible to miss; its 4-meter wingspan and chunky body orbited barely 200 meters overhead.
“On three … one, two, three!”
Michael skidded to a stop. He swung his rifle up, struggling to keep it steady with only one arm. His sight locked onto the drone, and he pulled the trigger the instant the red aiming point settled, his burst joining Shinoda’s. Their rounds smashed home even as the controller sent the drone rocketing skyward. “Fuck it,” Michael said. “We’ve miss-”
They hadn’t missed. With a sharp crack, the drone’s microfusion plant lost containment in an eye-searingly bright ball of blue-white light that bleached all the color and contrast out of the bush around him.
“Nice shooting,” Shinoda said. “Now go!”
Michael needed no encouragement. The Hammers would have more drones backed up by ground-attack landers on the way, and they’d almost certainly put a blocking force ahead of them. On he ran; his mouth gaped wide open as he fought to feed air to lungs that screamed in protest. All that mattered was to keep moving. If there were drones overhead, if the Hammers were getting close, if he was being shot at, he neither knew nor cared. Shinoda led the way now; her pace was relentless, and Michael knew he had to keep up with her. She was all that kept him moving. If he fell back, he was finished.
Without warning, the ground only meters ahead of them vanished beneath a hail of destruction that shattered everything in their path. Their headlong rush to safety came to an abrupt halt as they scrambled for cover.
“Lander-” Shinoda shouted before the howling roar of a light attack lander swamped the rest of her words. The blast from its main engines ripped the air apart over their heads. Its huge black bulk banked and climbed away under full power to clear the reef, its starboard wingtip so close that Michael felt he could almost reach out and touch it. “We’re trapped,” Shinoda went on once the lander had gone. “If we keep moving, they’ll spot us.”
“So what do we do?”
“Best we can do is go to ground,” Shinoda said. She turned to head for the tumbled mass of boulders that fringed the base of the rock reef. “Come on; this way.”
“That’ll work?” Michael asked with a frown.
“I doubt it, but I can’t think of anything better. Here,” she said. She squeezed herself into a narrow fissure between two huge rocks. “This will do.”
“So what’s the plan?” Michael said as he followed her in, wriggling and pushing. The crack was tight. He had to roll onto his side to keep his injured shoulder off the rock wall, praying as he went that none of the Hammers had seen them vanish.
“Hopefully they don’t know we’re here,” Shinoda said, gasping for air, “but if they do, then we’ll just have to take as many of them with us as we can.”
“That’s one hell of a plan,” Michael whispered. He lay facedown in the dust to let his legs and lungs recover. With an effort, he lifted his head to look around. Shinoda had picked well. A massive boulder protected them. It lay propped against the rock wall, leaving a clear space a couple of meters wide.
Shinoda had wormed her way over to a second split in the rock and worked her way into it. She pulled back. “Too small to get through,” she called over her shoulder, “but a great firing position.”
Which means, Michael thought, our only way out is the way we came in.
They were trapped. This was the end. There had to be at least forty PGDF troopers in those first two trucks. Even allowing for casualties, he and Shinoda were badly outnumbered, and that was before reinforcements turned up. As they would. And when they did, it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.
Shinoda rolled over and sat up. Her shoulders heaved. “Fuck me dead,” she muttered, “I never want to do that again.” She turned. “We’ll-oh, crap,” she whispered when she saw the blood-drenched mess that was Michael’s left shoulder. “When did that happen?” she asked.
“A while ago,” Michael said, “but it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Let me see,” Shinoda said. She crouched down, knife in hand, and sliced the arm of his shirt open. “Hmm, you’re right; it’s nothing too serious. I’ll get foam and a field dressing on it,” she went on, rummaging through her pack.
“Shiiiit!” Michael hissed through clenched teeth as the woundfoam seared its way into the wound. “Hey, watch it! That stuff hurts.”
Shinoda took no notice of Michael’s protests. She secured the dressing and patted him on the cheek. “That’ll do for now,” she said. “Okay, pay attention. You cover left, I’ll cover right, and remember: Let your chromaflage and this baby-” She patted the rock. “-do the work. Move as little as possible and let me know if anyone looks like he’s going to cause us problems. And do not open fire until I tell you to, understood?”