* * *
Cruz was, per doctrine, the first man out. He stood at the edge of the rear door cursing and hustling his men off the helicopter, directing their leaders where he wanted them placed. A piper automatically took a position by the centurion's side and began playing the First Tercio's own theme, Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera.
"Sergeant Avila," Cruz shouted over the helicopters and the pipes, pointing, "I want your squad there, from ten o'clock to two o'clock." Then he turned his attention back towards the inside of the just-lifting helicopter and saw the left-side wall began to disintegrate in his field of view. The crew chief, still gamely firing his machine gun, was hit by something that exploded, tearing his upper torso from his lower body at the waist and flinging the chief's remains to the right side of the compartment. Cruz had the briefest glimpse of one of the pilots being thrown across the cockpit onto the other.
Smelling aviation fuel and seeing sparks and smoke, Cruz turned to throw himself away from the bird. From behind came a loud whoosh as the fuel caught fire, exploded, and knocked Cruz and the piper, faces first, to the dirt.
* * *
Seeing that someone was at least trying to do something, more men, not all of them Noorzad's, rushed to reinforce the gun position. The column of smoke served as their orientation mark.
Noorzad and his men cheered when the helicopter began first to smoke and then to burst into flame. They saw what Cruz could not. One of the two pilots, trapped by flame behind him, tried to force his way through the strong plexiglas of the windscreen as fire rose all around.
Noorzad would cherish the open-mouthed agony writ on that pilot's face for the rest of his life.
* * *
Cruz and his men were shocked, yes, by the destruction of the helicopter and crew that had bravely brought them in. More than shocked though, they were deeply angered. A red mist descended across the centurion's vision.
"Fix bayonets, you bastards," Cruz called out, as he affixed his own. "Play you son of a bitch," he cursed at the shocked piper.
"Fix bayonets" usually meant a wild screaming charge with blood in your eye. It was not precisely a favored tactic in the Legion but this was a special case, a situation where time was more valuable than lives because it meant lives. The men of the platoon knew that. Even so they looked at their young centurion as if he were insane.
"Fix BAYONETS!" Cruz repeated, as loudly as possible. This time the men knew he was serious. They reached to their belts and, still prone on the ground, pulled out the shiny blades (for the Legion knew that a bayonet was a weapon of terror and that, thus, shinier was better) and attached them to the muzzles of their rifles, jiggling the bayonets to make sure of a secure fix.
"Now . . . you sonsabitches . . . FOLLOW MEEE . . . "
* * *
Looking out the right side window of his Cricket, Carrera saw one of his valuable IM-71s suddenly caught by heavy fire as it tried to lift off after landing its troops. He cursed as the chopper abruptly settled back to earth and began to pour out first smoke, then fire.
His first instinct, born of hate and rage, was to bring a cohort's worth of artillery down on the gun which had just slaughtered his men. He was just starting to pick up a microphone to do that when he saw a rare thing, a remarkable thing. What looked like about fifty men were streaming towards the enemy air defense gun in a single mad rush. Sunlight glinting upward told that those men had their bayonets fixed.
* * *
Racing forward in the lead, Cruz saw the enemy heavy gun fire a brief burst. The passage of the shells created a palpable shock wave around him. No matter, possessed by battle madness he continued his charge, screaming like a demon and firing from the hip.
Nearby, charging forward with fangs bared, the platoon's attached scout dog began to howclass="underline" ahwoooo. My pack is the greatest.
A bullet struck one of the glassy metal chest plates of Cruz's lorica and bounced off, singing. With the angle of the strike and of his body, it shocked and slowed him but it didn't stop him.
Wild-eyed Salafis arose from the ground. Some were cut down by the legionaries' fire but others closed. Cruz put two three-round bursts of 6.5mm into the body of one, half emulsifying his target's innards. Wheeling to face another, this one thrusting forward a fixed bayonet, Cruz tapped the enemy rifle aside and lunged to plunge his own bayonet into the enemy's throat. Dropping his rifle to clutch at his wound, eyes rolling up in his head as blood rushed out to spatter on the ground, this Salafi sank to his knees.
Cruz put one booted foot on the Salafi's head and pushed him off of his now red-running bayonet. Again he whirled to face two more charging maniacs. He swung his butt at one and missed, but then stepped forward and reversed the motion to slam the butt into the Salafi's unarmored kidney. That one went down puking with pain. The next one up Cruz shot before spinning to plunge the bayonet into the back of his previous opponent.
"Die, motherfucker," he snarled as the Salafi screamed in agony.
By this time Cruz's men had reached him and joined the fray. The entire hilltop became a mass of lunging, shooting, screaming and dying men. The dog ripped out a Salafi throat, howled again, and bounded off in search of another. Ahwooo; my pack is the greatest. Not far behind the piper's playing added to the furious din.
Here the legionaries' superior training and armor—to say nothing of the pooch's –came to the fore. Even at close range, the Salafis couldn't usually get a bullet to penetrate directly from in front, though a number of the Balboans went down with wounds to face, head, limbs and torso sides. Within a few moments, all the Salafis were down and Cruz's men were finishing off the wounded with butt stroke, burst and bloodied bayonet.
There was no time, in a close fight, for the niceties. And men who had failed to surrender by the time the Legion closed to three hundred meters had forfeited their right to do so.
Breathing deeply, anger still raging within him, the centurion walked deliberately to where a crusty-looking, one-eyed Salafi struggled to load the light cannon that had smashed and burned the helicopter. Seeing the look in Cruz's eye the Cyclops stopped his efforts and began to raise his hands.
"Fuck you, asshole," Cruz said, as he took aim and triggered a burst into the Noorzad's head.
Interlude
4 July, 2206, Cygnus House, Chelsea, London, European Governing Region, Earth
"The Marquis is dead; long live the Marchioness," Lucretia whispered to herself as the last of the lower class investigating officers departed the mansion. The sun was down and an ambulance had long since carted off her late father's cooling corpse.
As she closed the door behind the police, Class Fours and thus very deferential to the new Marchioness, Lucretia sighed, "Oh, Daddy, and you were such a good lay, too." She sighed, and then burst out laughing, dancing on light feet across the black and white tiled floor of the vestibule.
The police had carted off the bulk of the domestic kitchen staff, of course. They would be incarcerated in Amnesty's own dungeons and rigorously questioned by its own interrogators. But . . . who cares? Lowers can be bought for a song. Which is a damned good thing because now, with daddy out of the way, I intend to go through a lot of them.