“Everybody out,” Kafari said grimly. “And let’s hope to hell that was just the wires coming down, not the power plant. Or the dam.”
They moved wordlessly in the dark, fumbling open the door, then snatched up weapons and as much food as they could carry strapped to their backs. Kafari led the way up the stairs, checked the barn cautiously, then poked her head through the barn door. She didn’t see anything that looked like it might shoot at them.
“Okay, troops,” she muttered. “Looks like this is it.”
Kafari headed toward the canyon wall, knowing there would be at least a few steep, narrow footpaths they could climb. There were game trails, used mostly by wildlife native to the Damisi Mountains, paths that were the favorite haunts of gollon and jaglitch. At the moment, the danger of staying on the canyon floor far outweighed any risk from Jefferson’s inimical wildlife. With any luck, all the noise would’ve driven every wild thing for kilometers around into dens and bolt-holes. Lips set in a thin, grim line, Kafari led the way up into the high country.
Chapter Seven
I
“Keep shooting, Sonny,” Simon said tersely.
The final Yavac Scout between themselves and the entrance to the box canyon housing Klameth Canyon Dam had just blown apart under Sonny’s guns, leaving them a clear field to hunt the sole-remaining Heavy class. “It’s in there, listening. If it hears sudden silence, followed by our treads headed its way, it’s going to blow that dam and take us out with it.”
Sonny fired his guns steadily, aiming backwards, now, blowing the remains of every Yavac still in sight into smaller and smaller shards. He took carefully aimed shots forward, as well, hitting already-demolished barns, so the glare of their energy weapons would precede them, as it would have in actual engagements against a mobile enemy. The Bolo surprised him, taking the initiative to rebroadcast recordings of Deng transmissions, shouts for help, perhaps, or curses against the humans destroying them.
And all the while, he raced forward, gaining the entrance to Dead-End Gorge, as locals called the box canyon, in less than sixty seconds. They had to plow through the wreckage of a house to reach the entrance. Simon hoped to hell they hadn’t crushed any survivors, on their way through.
A drone, launched ahead of them, poked its head around the corner, giving them a split-second view of the Yavac. It crouched like a bloated tick in front of a breathtaking fall of white concrete that splashed into the ground between towering rose-toned cliffs. Water poured down the spillway from the deep reservoir behind it. The power plant was intact, but the Yavac had destroyed the towers supporting the high-tension wires that powered the canyon’s homes, farms, and packing plants. Judging by the temperature gradiants registering on Sonny’s sensors, the destruction had just been wrought within the past two or three minutes.
“Can you kill their main guns with indirect fire, from here?”
“Not with enough certainty to cripple it before it attacks the dam.”
“Charge it, then. Fast.”
They whipped around the corner at battle speed, rattling Simon’s teeth in his jaw. Sonny’s guns were already locked on, the targeting computers having taken their data from the probe overhead. The forward Hellbore snarled, rocking them on their treads. The Yavac’s main gun blew apart, melted off at the turret. Infinite repeaters sliced off half its legs, sending it crashing awkwardly to its left side. It was firing back at them, wild shots that splashed off Sonny’s screens. Then it launched a missile, almost point-blank, at the dam. Sonny’s infinite repeaters slashed out, caught the casing scant centimeters short of the concrete wall. The warhead detonated in the air, rather than inside the concrete, as intended. A fireball scorched the dam, rising in a tongue of flame that turned the water pouring down the spillway to steam.
Then Sonny’s Hellbore barked again and the Yavac’s turret blew apart. Debris scattered, smashing into the base of the dam and the rose-colored cliff beyond. Simon winced, hoping to hell the pockmarks gouged into the concrete hadn’t cracked it too deeply. A final savage snarl from Sonny’s Hellbore and the Yavac was finished, melted to slag in the middle and smouldering on either side, legs and guns motionless except for the crackling of flames and the wavering heat of smoke rising from the ruins.
Sonny’s guns, too, fell silent. Simon dragged down air, relaxed his death grip on the command consoles under his hands. “Sonny,” he said hoarsely, “that was some hellacious fine shooting.”
“Thank you, Simon,” the Bolo said quietly. Sonny knew as well as he did just how close they’d cut it, swatting down that missile.
“Can you get a structural reading on that dam?”
“Scanning with ground-penetrating radar. I detect no deep structural cracks. The surface is pitted, but the structure is sound.”
A deep sigh gusted loose. “Oh, thank God.”
He glanced at the situation reports coming in from Jefferson’s artillery crews and nodded to himself, satisfied that the last few Yavac Scouts scattered through this maze of gorges would be shot down within a few minutes. The battle was as good as over. All that remained, now, was picking up the shattered pieces and rebuilding. He thought of Etaine, of Renny’s ghastly ashen face, thought of Kafari Camar and Abe Lendan, and wondered if he would ever see any of them again. And if he did, would any of them have the courage and the strength to start over? With warm spring sunlight and blessed silence pouring down across them, Simon couldn’t imagine a better spot in which to try. Very quietly, Sonny turned his bulk around, grinding the Yavac into the ground under his treads, and left to hunt for survivors.
II
There was a trail, of sorts, faint enough it barely qualified and so obscured by rising smoke she lost it and had to backtrack a couple of times to regain it. The smoke gave only the illusion of concealment, however. Kafari knew that much about high-tech warfare. Their body heat would glow like a neon beacon and motion sensors would pick up every shudder of their lungs as they struggled up the cliff face. The climb was sheer agony. Kafari had done a lot of rough camping and hiking, but she’d never made such a murderous climb in her life.
Knowing the president’s life depended on her decisions didn’t add to her peace of mind, either. She could hear soft gasps and half-muttered curses as Abe Lendan struggled up the trail behind her, wincing at each rough handhold that scraped his fingers raw. Kafari’s hands were bleeding. So were her knees and one cheek where she’d slipped down a near-vertical stretch. She’d slithered to a stop only when her feet hit Abe Lendan’s shoulders and then, only because he dug in with feet and fingertips to halt her fall. She’d lain there for a moment, shaking and gasping, then struggled up, again. The weight of the guns slung across their backs only added to the misery, but Kafari wasn’t about to leave them behind.
They’d gone maybe two hundred feet straight up when a cataclysmic roar shook them from the direction of Dead-End Gorge and the dam. Blue flame shot skyward, burning its way up out of the gorge and turning the smoke incandescent. Kafari plastered herself against the rockface, trying to sink down into it. She could hear Aisha’s voice somewhere below her, praying out loud between the booming of Olympian guns and the cracking echoes that slammed from one cliff face to another. The sound, alone, crashing down against them, was like a giant fist against their flesh. Dinny was crying, in great sobs of terror. So was Kafari.