Confi?dent that the immediate area was safe, Byap led his troopers into the lock and tapped a series of numbers into the human-style keypad. Sunlight splashed the lock’s interior and threw shadows against the back wall as the hatch cycled open. As Byap led the fi?le out onto the treacherous hillside, he knew speed was of the essence if he and his troops were to circle around and take the enemy by surprise. The Ramanthian knew that the ensuing battle would constitute little more than a gesture, but he wanted to die with honor. Such were Subcommander Byap’s thoughts as a .50-caliber bullet left the barrel of Private Mary Volin’s sniper rifl?e, sped through the air, and snatched a trooper off his feet. “That was a good one,” Dietrich commented, as he stood. The noncom’s face shield made the binos more diffi?cult to use, but the dappled body armor that the chits wore was easy to spot against the light gray scree.
Byap saw the trooper spin away, knew the bullet had originated from somewhere below, and spotted movement as a tiny fi?gure rose to look up at him. “There!” the offi?cer said, as he pointed at the alien below. “Kill him!”
And the Ramanthian troopers tried, but the second squad was more than a thousand yards away, which put the legionnaires well beyond the effective range of the Ramanthian Negar assault weapons. That left Volin free to peer into the 10X scope, pick her next target, and send a second armorpiercing slug spinning upslope. Byap swore as another trooper went down. Then, knowing that he had no choice but retreat, the subcommander turned and began to scramble uphill. The movement brought the offi?cer to Dietrich’s attention. “See the bug who’s leading the rest of them uphill?” the noncom inquired conversationally.
“Kill him.”
And Volin tried. But a sudden breeze came in from the west and gave the speeding bullet a tiny nudge. Not much, but enough to knock the slug off course, and momentarily save Byap’s life. But the 706.7-grain projectile still took the subcommander’s left arm off, turned him around, and dumped him onto the scree. And it was then, while staring up into an alien sky, that Byap remembered the remote. Time seemed to slow as the Ramanthian fumbled for the object and fi?nally found it.
The suit had sealed itself by that time, cauterized the terrible wound that he had suffered, and was busy pumping drugs into the offi?cer’s circulatory system. That made it hard to think, but the offi?cer forced himself to focus, as he struggled to break the remote’s safety tab. A simple task given two pincers, but diffi?cult with only one, especially when the enemy was shooting at you. Finally, having made use of a neighboring rock to break the tab off, Byap gave the device a squeeze.
There was no response at fi?rst, or that was the way it seemed to the Ramanthian, as troopers continued to fall all around him. But then the earth shook, the entire air lock was blown out of the hillside, and the scree began to move. That was when Byap knew his efforts had been successful—
and that the gates of paradise would open before him. Having forced his way into the mine, Santana expected to encounter stiff resistance from the Ramanthians and was surprised when nothing of that sort occurred. There was something oppressive about the rock walls that closed in around the legionnaires as the throatlike passageway took them deeper underground. What little bit of comfort there was stemmed from the fact that while small, his force packed plenty of fi?repower. Occasional lights cast an ominous greenish glow over tool-ripped walls as the fl?oor sloped steadily downwards.
As the squad pushed deeper into the mine, and his T-2’s powerful headlamp pushed its way into various nooks and crannies, Santana was careful to record everything his suitcam “saw.” That included the Ramanthian-made vehicles that were parked in turnouts, “bug” script that had been spray-painted onto the walls, and occasional sorties into side caverns stuffed with supplies. All of which would be of interest to Intel. But all the while the company commander couldn’t escape the feeling that he and his companions were under surveillance as the T-2s monitored their sensors and their lights probed the murk ahead. But there was nothing to see until the trap closed around them. The mine was a maze of cross tunnels and vertical access shafts. So by hiding two levels above the main tunnel, and dropping spiderlike into the main passageway, the Ramanthians were able to land behind the legionnaires and thereby block their escape route. That was the plan anyway, and it would have been successful, had it not been for Lieutenant Zolkin. Having been assigned the drag position, and given strict orders to “. . . Watch our six,” the offi?cer’s T-2 had been forced to walk backwards much of the time.
Even so, if the offi?cer hadn’t been so clumsy as to drop a bag of grenades, which he was then forced to jump down and retrieve, Nohar might have been able to land his fi?le undetected. But such was not the case as Zolkin lifted the sack, saw a space-armored Ramanthian appear out of nowhere, and threw a grenade up corridor. All without pausing to think about it. The enemy trooper was blown to smithereens, and Zolkin was back on Tebo before the rest of the squad could respond. The sequence of actions earned the platoon leader a precious “well done” from Santana.
Thanks to the early warning, the legionnaires were able to fi?ght their way back toward the main lock even as a dozen heavily armed troopers fell on them, and the interior of the mine shaft was transformed into a hellish nightmare of strobing muzzle fl?ashes, exploding grenades, and wildly swinging lights. “Form on me!” Santana ordered. “Pull back toward the lock!”
Having only a small force of T-2s, and facing an unknown number of enemy troops, Santana knew he was in trouble. The decision to enter the mine had been a gamble, one he regretted, so it was time to salvage what he could. Once the ambush site was behind them, the offi?cer ordered the T-2s to turn and fi?re as a group, before making a run for the lock. And it was then, as the cyborgs began to pick up speed, that the ground started to shake. Clouds of dust and smoke were injected into the main tunnel even as slabs of rock fell from above and holes opened in the fl?oor. And that’s where Staff Sergeant Carol Yanty and her T-2 went, as a fi?ssure appeared in front of them, and Private Su Hopson stepped into the hole.
Santana, who had intentionally stationed himself at the tail end of the fl?eeing column, swore as the twosome disappeared and daylight appeared up ahead. “Run!” the offi?cer shouted, as a wall of smoke, dust, and fl?ying debris began to overtake the legionnaires from behind. “Run like hell!”
But the T-2s needed no urging, and were already moving as quickly as they could when the fi?nal charges went off, and a plug of poisonous air helped expel them from the mine. It was dark inside the dust cloud, but the cyborgs could “see”
with their sensors and were able to keep going until the smoke fi?nally cleared and it was possible to stop. Dekar turned to look back, which meant Santana did as well, not that there was much to see. A pile of rubble marked the spot where the entry lock had been. The dust cloud was starting to disperse and the hill off to the right had been scarred by a new landslide.