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# CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"NPA Control, this is Falcon. Inbound. ETA the source of Sierra-One-One's last signal three minutes. Have you any more information for us?"

Captain Nikos Papadapolous glanced back over his shoulder while he waited for a response. Despite the cramped confines of the pinnace, Sergeant Major Jenkins and Lieutenant Kilgore had most of Third Platoon's three squads into their battle armor already. Other Marines, bulky in unpowered body armor, were paired off with each battle-armored trooper, running check lists on external monitors, and a background chatter of crisp commands and metallic equipment sounds filled the big troop compartment.

Surgeon Commander Suchon sat just behind the captain, hunched forward in her seat. Her dark face was sickly pale, and she clutched her emergency medical kit to her armored breastplate with clawlike hands.

"Falcon, NPA Control," a voice said suddenly, and Papadapolous turned back to his own panel. "Negative information."

"NPA Control, Falcon copies. No additional information. We'll keep you advised."

"Thank you, Falcon. And good hunting. NPA Control clear."

"Falcon clear," Papadapolous responded, and turned his attention to the map display at his elbow. They couldn't know precisely where Sierra-One-One had gone down, but they had a pretty fair idea. Unfortunately, the terrain looked uninviting, to say the least. Someone paused beside him, and he looked up to see Ensign Tremaine.

"Our scanner people are picking up a couple of energy sources down there, Sir," the ensign said. "We've already relayed the data to NPA Control."

His face was taut, but he leaned forward almost diffidently to press buttons on Papadapolous's map display. Two light dots appeared on it, separated by just over five kilometers. Both were faint, but one flickered much more weakly than the other. The captain studied them for a moment, brow furrowed, then tapped the flickering one.

"That's Sierra-One-One," he said positively.

"How can you be certain, Sir?"

"Look at the terrain, Mr. Tremaine. This one—" Papadapolous tapped the display again "—isn't just weaker, it's in the middle of a valley that offers the only flat ground within klicks, but this one—" he tapped the other dot "—is right on top of a hill. Or under it," he added in a thoughtful tone.

"Under it?"

"It's only a trace source, Mr. Tremaine, and solid ground makes a pretty good shield against sensors. Burying it would make sense, but if that's what they did, they didn't do a very good job. We see it, and something brought Sierra-One-One down where the Stilties could get at her. They may have picked up this other source and come in for a closer look."

"I see." Tremaine stared at the suspect light, young face hard as he remembered another raid on a power source in the Outback. He rubbed his chin, then looked back at the Marine. "You think it was a decoy? That they sucked the NPA in on purpose?"

"It's possible," Papadapolous agreed, "but I'm inclined to think it was just sloppiness. I can't see any reason they'd want to start their 'insurrection' way out here in the boonies. Can you?"

"No, Sir. But with your permission, I'll detail one of the pinnaces to keep an eye on that source. That'll still leave two of us to support your people, but if someone down there did attract the NPA's attention on purpose and tries to bug out, we'll nail him."

"I think that's an excellent idea, Mr. Tremaine," Papadapolous said. "In fact—"

"Falcon, this is NPA-Two." Barney Isvarian's voice drew the captain's attention back to his com link.

"NPA-Two, this is Falcon. Go ahead." He said crisply.

"Nikos, we're still fifteen minutes out, but I'm looking at the Navy's sensor data. I think the source to the west has to be our people. Do you concur?"

"Affirmative, Major."

"What are your intentions?"

"I'll be dropping my first squad of scouts in—" Papadapolous glanced at his chronometer and checked it against the status board on Third Platoon's first squad "—ninety-five seconds. They'll secure the area around the suspected crash site and check for survivors as their first objective. The remainder of my people will be going in twenty klicks south-south-east along Ridge One-Three-Five. We've got a nice, long valley running north-south to that point, and it's got steep sides. We'll try to form a stopper to hold the enemy in it, then turn it into our killing ground."

"Understood. I've got two companies with me. I'll drop one of them with your main force, then use the counter-grav to swing the other north. Maybe we can come in behind them and pin them between us if they try to run." There was a pause, and Papadapolous braced himself for the question he knew was coming. It came very softly. "Is there any sign Lieutenant Malcolm's people are still alive down there, Nikos?"

"Negative, Major." Papadapolous's voice was flat, and Isvarian sighed over the com.

"Do your best, Nikos," he said.

"We will, Sir." A harsh buzzer snarled, and a bright light flashed over the pinnace's troop hatch. "We're dropping the first squad now, Major. We'll keep you advised. Falcon clear."

Sergeant Tadeuz O'Brian stepped through the yawning hatch into a thousand meters of air as the pinnace flashed on past him. He plummeted downward, the rest of his squad close behind him, and popped his grav canopy. It wasn't a regular counter-grav unit—there wasn't room for that. Instead, it generated a negative-gee force at the far end of its attachment harness, and he grunted involuntarily as an enraged mule kicked with vicious power. But O'Brian was used to that. He didn't even blink. Instead, he hit his armor thrusters and turned in midair, the movement almost instinctive after endless hours of armor drill, to align his sensors and built-in electronic binoculars on the smashed NPA skimmer. Even a scout suit's systems weren't good enough to get a reading through the shattered hull, but the sergeant's face tightened as the bodies sprawled all about it registered.

There must have been three or four hundred dead Stilties strewn across the mossy ground, most of them mangled and torn by the heavy pulser darts of the skimmer's dorsal guns. They weren't alone, and O'Brian controlled an urge to retch as he saw the first human body. It looked as if at least one of the NPA troopers had tried to make a run for it and been caught in the open; his weapons lay near the grisly ruin which had once been a man. O'Brian prayed that he'd already been dead when the Stilties reached him, but the knives driven through his limbs to pin his eviscerated body to the moss suggested that he hadn't been.

His armor's exoskeleton took the shock as the sergeant grounded and checked his display. It looked good—like a textbook drop. The squad's beacons glowed in precise alignment, encircling the skimmer, and he brought his own pulse rifle into ready position.

"Sharon, you're on perimeter security. I'll take Bill's people to check the skimmer."

"Aye, Sarge," Corporal Sharon Hillyard's voice said in his earphone. Hillyard was tough as nails, young but with seven years' service already behind her, yet he heard her relief. "Stimson, Hadley," she called her section's two plasma gunners, "take that ridge to the north and set up to cover us. Ellen, I want you and—"

O'Brian tuned her out and waved to his other corporal, and the five members of the squad's second section fell in on his flanks as he advanced on the wreck.

It was bad. In fact, it was even worse than O'Brian had feared. The skimmer's gunner had been dragged out of her smashed turret, and it was hard to tell that shattered, flayed body had been a woman's. Hell, it was hard to tell she'd even been human, and he swallowed his gorge as he made his way across the blood-soaked ground. It was going to take the forensic people to identify the bodies, he thought. After they gathered up all the pieces.

He made his way to a gaping hole in the skimmer's side, his armor's audio sensors picking up the sputter and pop of arcing circuits but not a single sound of life from the interior, and drew a deep breath. Then he thrust his armored torso through and looked upon obscenity.

He jerked back and swallowed hard, and his white face was suddenly streaked with sweat. Nothing this side of Hell itself should look like that, a small voice said through the horror in his mind. He closed his eyes, then made himself look again, trying to pretend it was a scene from HD, not reality.

It didn't help. The skimmer's interior was splashed and daubed with crimson, as if lunatics with buckets of blood had run amok within it. Consoles were shattered and smashed, and everywhere he looked were bits and pieces of people. The hacked, mutilated jumble of limbs and torsos and eyeless, severed heads filled him with something worse than horror, but he made himself step fully through the hole. He ground his emotions down, refusing to think, relying on instinct and training, as he walked through the entire skimmer.

There were no survivors, and as he fought to keep the hideous nightmare about him from registering, he was glad. Glad that no one had lived through the Stilties' butchery. He completed his iron-faced sweep and turned to make his way stiffly from the wreck, and a single, horrified thought quivered though his frozen mind. Dear God. Dear God in Heaven, what could make anyone do what had been done to these people?

He paused outside the broken hull and locked his armor. He leaned back limply against its supporting strength and closed his eyes while he fought back tears. He sucked in deep breaths, grateful for the sealed environment that isolated him from the stench of blood and death he knew surrounded him, until he could open his eyes again at last. Then he cleared his throat.

"No survivors," he told his squad. Even to himself his voice sounded rusty and old, and he was grateful no one asked any questions. He switched to the command channel

"Falcon-Five, Falcon-Three-Three," he said, and waited.

"Falcon-Three-Three, Falcon-Five," Sergeant Major Jenkins replied. "Go."

"Falcon-Five, there are no survivors. Repeat, no survivors."

"Falcon-Five copies, Falcon-Three-Three. Wait one."

O'Brian stood with his back resolutely to the skimmer, eyes focused on nothing, while Jenkins conferred with Captain Papadapolous. Then the captain himself came on the line.

"Falcon-Three-Three, Falcon Leader. Understand no survivors. Are there any signs of hostile natives still in your area?"

"Negative, Falcon Leader. We've got several hundred dead, but no sign of live hostiles." He started to say something else, then paused as Hillyard's beacon flashed an attention pattern on his display. "Wait one, Falcon Leader." He changed channels again. "Yes, Sharon?"

"I've been listening in, Sarge. You might want to tell the skipper I don't see any rifles lying around out here. Looks like they stripped their own dead before they moved on."

"Copy, Sharon." He punched back into the company command net. "Falcon Leader, Falcon-Three-Three. Be advised we see no Stilty rifles on site. It appears they stripped their dead before leaving."

"Understand no rifles on site, Falcon-Three-Three. Maybe they've got more bodies than guns. Any sign they took the NPA's weapons, as well?"

"Negative, Falcon Leader. They . . . spent enough time here to do it, but I've seen several pulse rifles and sidearms. Looks like they might not have understood how to use them."

"We can hope, Falcon-Three-Three. All right. I've got a new mission for you."

The first flight of NPA skimmers swept overhead, curving back into the south to move their troops in behind the wave of Medusans flowing towards the Three Forks River and the enclaves. O'Brian watched them, noting the way they banked sharply to eyeball the ground as they crossed Sierra-One-One's desecrated wreckage, while he listened to Papadapolous's voice.

"The Navy tells me there's another energy source five-point-three klicks from you at zero-three-niner true. That may be what sucked the NPA in close enough to get hit, so investigating it could be just as important as stopping the Stilties. Ensign Tremaine has a pinnace parked on top of it, but you're the closest ground troops. The Navy is on channel four, call sign Hawk-Three, standing by for ground support if you need it. Check it out and report back. Anybody you find there, we want them. Copy?"

"Aye, aye, Falcon Leader. Falcon-Three-Three copies. Check out the power source at zero-three-niner, secure the site, and report back. Navy call sign Hawk-Three. We're on it, Sir."

"Good, Three-Three. Keep me informed. Falcon Leader clear."

"Falcon-Three-Three clear."

O'Brian switched back to the squad net while he brought up his map. If there was a power source up there, it had to be underground, but he and his people had the sensors to find it.

"Sharon, Bill. You copied that?"

"Aye, Sarge," Hillyard responded, and Corporal Levine seconded her.

"Okay. Bill, I want your section on point. Stay sharp and watch yourself. If we've got off-worlders in this, we may be looking at off-world weapons, as well, so remember what happened when the NPA hit that lab."

"You got that right, Sarge."

"Sharon, put Stimson and Hadley on the flanks to cover Bill, but I want the rest of your section watching our six. Got that?"

"Check, Sarge," Hillyard replied, then paused a moment. "Sarge, did the skipper say he wanted those people alive?"

"He didn't say, and I didn't ask," O'Brian said flatly. The silence which answered him was eloquent. "All right, people, let's move our asses."

The squad of armored Marines turned their backs on that place of horror and headed east.

"Falcon Leader, Falcon-Three. Falcon-Three-Two reports movement coming at him from zero-three-seven."

Lieutenant Kilgore's voice was low, as if pitched to avoid the Medusans' ears. Papadapolous glanced at his display in his hastily selected command post and nodded to himself. It seemed Major Isvarian had been right about the effect mekoha had on the Stilties. The bastards were making a beeline straight toward the enclaves from the site of the ambush, and that didn't seem to indicate very much in the way of caution or forethought. Which was just fine with Captain Nikos Papadapolous.

"Falcon Leader copies, Falcon-Three. Keep your people falling back and stay clear of our fire lanes."

"Aye, Falcon Leader."

"Falcon Leader to all Falcons. Hostiles approaching from zero-three-seven. Prepare to engage on my command."

He looked up as metal and plastic clicked behind him. A half-dozen of Isvarian's NPA medics labored furiously, setting up an emergency aid station, and Papadapolous frowned. He gestured to the Fourth Platoon's platoon sergeant, standing beside him.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Where's Dr. Suchon, Regiano?"

Sergeant Regiano glanced away for a moment, then met her commander's eyes levelly.

"She's back where the shuttle dropped us, Sir." Papadapolous's head tilted dangerously, and the sergeant answered his silent question. "She refuses to move any closer to the front, Skipper."

"I see." Papadapolous drew a deep breath, and his eyes were hard. "Sergeant Regiano, you will return to the LZ. You will inform Commander Suchon, with my compliments, that her presence is required here. Should she refuse to accompany you back to the aid station, you will use whatever means are required—up to and including the threat and application of force—to bring her. Is that understood, Sergeant?"

"Aye, aye, Sir!" There was undisguised satisfaction in Regiano's eyes as she saluted sharply and marched off to the rear. Papadapolous swallowed a venomous curse, then shook himself and forced his mind away from its fury at Suchon and back to the task at hand.

He turned to the visual display at Sergeant Major Jenkins's right knee. It showed a birds-eye view of the valley, relayed from one of the two pinnaces invisible on station high above him, and his skin crawled as the ground itself seemed to flow towards his positions. The Stilties were coming at him in a mob more than two kilometers wide and three deep, flowing through the moss like a vast, ragged tide. There must be at least ten thousand of them out there, and that was far more than he'd allowed even his worst-case estimates to assume. Even with the NPA reinforcements, his people were outnumbered thirty or forty to one, and thank God they'd caught them in the open instead of in among the enclaves!

He'd chosen his kill zone because the valley was the broadest opening through a tortuous east-west ridge line, the most logical avenue for the natives' advance southward, and the wave of Medusans flowed towards it, exactly as he'd hoped. They began to funnel together as they entered its northern end, and he checked his deployments one last time.

An awful lot of his plan was built around Third Platoon's battle armor, and he wished he'd been able to bring O'Brian's squad back to thicken his lines. But he couldn't. He needed that power source checked before anyone there could bug out. That was all there was to it, yet it left Kilgore's platoon spread mighty thin. His squad of heavy armor formed the stopper at the southern end of the valley, as well as Papadapolous's heaviest single fire unit. They should be well able to take care of themselves, particularly with the support of Sergeant Howell's heavy weapons section and the turret mounts of Isvarian's grounded skimmers, but that left Kilgore only one squad of scouts to watch over the Stilties' advance and cover both flanks, and that was nowhere near enough for the captain's peace of mind.

He heard angry voices behind him, one of them the shrill whine of Fearless's senior physician, and then what might have been the sound of a blow, but he tuned them out to concentrate on more important things. The scouts were withdrawing up the sides of the valley now, bouncing from cover to cover in their jump gear, and he gnawed his lower lip as he watched them.

He wasn't worried about his battle-armored people, but the rest of his troops were in standard body armor, and the NPA company Major Isvarian had brought in to flesh out his people were even more lightly protected. He had no doubt his weapons could turn that valley into a slaughterhouse, yet even with air support that many enemies might manage to break at least some of their number out of the zone. It seemed preposterous in the face of modern weaponry. Every manual he'd ever read, every lecture he'd ever heard, said ill-armed aborigines could never break through that much state-of-the-art firepower. But the manuals and lectures had never contemplated facing a horde like this precisely because modern killing power made such a concentrated body of troops suicidal. That meant he didn't have any real way to estimate how much fire the Medusans—especially if they were all on mekoha—could absorb without breaking, and he'd have only a single section of armored scouts on each flank to intercept them. If they were hopped up enough to keep coming, if they got in among his lightly armored people in any numbers . . .

"Keep a close eye on the flanks, Gunny," he told Jenkins softly, and turned to his Navy channel. "Hawk-One, Falcon Leader. Watch the slopes. If we get a breakout, I want you on it in a hurry."

"Hawk-One copies, Falcon Leader," Ensign Tremaine replied. "We'll watch your flanks."

"Thanks, Hawk-One." He returned his attention to his map display as the light codes of hostiles began to flow into the valley. Another fifteen minutes, he thought.

Lieutenant Liam Kilgore watched his armor display with one eye while he checked his pulse rifle with the other. His scouts had done their first job by spotting the Stilties, then fallen back before them without being spotted in return. Now it was time for them to get the hell out of the way and get ready to kick some ass, and he grunted approval as they filtered neatly back into the positions he'd selected in such haste. His armored people were supposed to intercept any Stilty breakouts and stop them short of the less well-protected types behind them, but there were an awful lot of hostiles out there. He wished O'Brian's squad was with him to help thicken the flanks, but even if O'Brian had been there, it wouldn't have thickened them enough. Still, if there were a lot of Stilties, there was also a lot of firepower on the ridges above his people. Maybe even enough.

Jesus, there were a lot of the bastards! More and more of them flowed forward, and he no longer needed his armor sensors to see them. The mark-one eyeball worked just fine, for the nomads weren't even trying to hide. Their vaunted skill in concealed movement seemed to have deserted them, and his audio sensors picked up the high, shrill sounds of some barbaric chant as they forged ahead with their weird, swinging gait. Perhaps half of them were cavalry, mounted on jehrns, the odd, upright riding beasts of the northern hemisphere nomads; the rest were on foot, and all of them advanced waving rifles, swords, and spears—even clubs—and screaming encouragement to one another. There were actually bayonets on most of those rifles, and there was something peculiarly bloodcurdling about the Medusans' frenzied sounds and obvious unconcern for anything they might run into. Kilgore almost imagined he could smell the acrid stench of mekoha wafting from them, and the thought of fighting someone who couldn't even feel pain, much less fear, wasn't one Marines were accustomed to.

On the other hand, he told himself grimly, the Stilties weren't accustomed to facing modern firepower, either. They were in for a shock, and—

"Falcon Leader to all Falcons. Engage!" a voice snapped, and Kilgore's pulse rifle swung up into position without conscious thought. His thumb snapped the selector to full-auto, not the normal semi-automatic, and his little finger pressed the stud that selected the explosive magazine. He paused for one bare heartbeat, seeing the mob of Medusans through cold, suddenly distant eyes, and then he squeezed the trigger.

It wasn't a slaughter. It was worse than that. The Medusans had never heard of dispersion; they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, crowded into a single, huge target. Anything that missed one of them was bound to hit another.

Kilgore's pulse rifle surged back, its recoil almost imperceptible through his armor as its small, powerful grav coil spat a stream of four-millimeter darts down-range. The explosions of the darts weren't the clean, white flashes of practice on the range; they were red and steaming as Medusan bodies blew apart in geysers of blood. He swept his fire across the shrieking natives, emptying a full hundred-round extended magazine into them in less than twenty seconds, and his was only one of almost three hundred modern rifles flaying that screaming thong.

Darts screamed down over his head from the crest of the valley's sides, and the shattering thunder of his third squad's heavy, multi-barreled pulsers ripped into the Medusans from the south. Searing flares of plasma incinerated Stilties by the score as the heavy weapons section opened up, and some of Isvarian's NPA troopers were armed with rocket and grenade launchers that blasted severed limbs and gobs of Medusan flesh across moss and boulders. The rocky valley was a pocket of Hell, and not even mekoha could fully barricade the natives against the horror. They howled in shock and agony, writhing like ants in a flame, yet even as they screamed and died, others lunged outward, running up the slopes with the impossible agility of their three-legged gait, charging straight into the fire tearing them apart.

It was incredible. Kilgore slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle and emptied it. Slammed in a third and opened up again, ears cringing from the savage discord of shrieks and explosions bellowing over his audio pickups, and he couldn't believe it. The Stilties were charging so fast, their mob formation so thick, that he couldn't kill them fast enough to stop them! Any sane opponent would have broken and run from that murderous fire; the Stilties didn't. They were a living wave, willing to take any losses to reach their foes. They surged over their own dead and dying, frothing ever higher up the sides of the valley, and his scouts were spread far too thin to contain them.

"Falcon-Three, Falcon Leader! Get back, Falcon-Three! Clear the slopes for the Navy!"

"Aye, Falcon Leader." Kilgore's voice sounded strange in his own ears through the thunder and slaughter. It was flat and level, leached of all expression by the horror before his eyes, and he heard it passing orders to his scouts. He abandoned his cover, feeling crude bullets skip and whine off his armor like hail as the Medusans saw him at last, and his people hit their jump gear, vaulting higher up the steep slopes. Marines and NPA troopers above them checked their fire as the armored scouts suddenly went bobbing and weaving through their fire lanes, and the Stilties screamed in triumph as the avalanche of death slackened. They charged after their fleeing enemies even while those on the valley floor continued to wither and die in the hurricane of destruction sweeping up from its southern end, and Kilgore's ears rang as a rifle bullet spanged off his armorplast helmet in a smear of lead.

But then the scouts were clear, and the pinnaces screamed down, lasers and autopulsers raving. They swept along the sides of the valley, cluster bombs and napalm erupting beneath them, lasers and guns plowing a ten-meter wide swath of absolute destruction through the howling Medusans, and then they swept back to do it all over again. And again.

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 shoot—they're gonna want evidence—but 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 intended—a centimeter below Colonel Bryan Westerfeldt's navel.

The sergeant stood fully upright, listening to the clatter of weapons on stone. He started down into the cave, and the cold, bitter hate at the core of him hoped the ghosts of the NPA's slaughtered patrol could hear the high, tearing screams of the gutshot bastard dying on the floor before him.

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Framed