“Nice shot, Kydd,” Tychus said over the squad freq. “Okay, what are you jerk weeds waiting for? Let’s jump that gap!”
Kydd broke cover and made his way forward. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he was grateful that no one could see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“They took the Kel-Morians by surprise and freed hundreds of Confederate POWs, and now the brave soldiers known as the Heaven’s Devils have been sent to a new location. Security regulations prevent me from saying where they are, but you can be sure of one thing: the enemy will be sorry!”
THE CITY OF POLK’S PRIDE, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II
As Tychus led the Heaven’s Devils onto the roof of the building beyond, and the rest of the company followed, Doc knelt next to Raynor. The bullet had cut a deep groove into the side of his helmet and a trickle of blood was leaking out of it. Cassidy thought Raynor was dead at first.
A servo whirred as Doc thumbed the external visor release button. It slid out of the way to reveal Raynor’s pale face. It appeared as though Raynor had turned his head, or moved just as the sniper fired, causing the round to bounce off the curvature of his helmet without penetrating it. Cassidy triggered the release on her right gauntlet so she could reach inside her patient’s helmet—and pressed a finger against a point located just below his right earlobe and at the back of his jaw.
Raynor felt a sudden stab of pain and opened his eyes to find Doc peering down at him. “Damn,” he said. “I’m alive.”
“’Fraid so,” Cassidy agreed.
“How bad is it?”
“I suspect you’ve got a scalp laceration,” Doc replied clinically, as she stood. “But your blood pressure is normal, so it can wait. What the hell were you thinking anyway?”
Raynor reached up to take her hand. “I was thinking how lucky I was that the sniper wasn’t going to shoot me,” he said ruefully. “Damn, that hurts.”
“You want some pain juice?”
“Hell no … the last time you did that I felt too happy. Let’s go.”
Having made the jump to the roof beyond, the Devils returned to street level behind the sloths. They were firing south at the resocialized marines and newly arrived rangers. All of whom were struggling to move up the street toward the hill and the repository deep inside of it. “Ward!” Tychus said, “take those bastards out.”
Ward braced himself, took careful aim, and fired a rocket. It hit the right-hand sloth low, in between its tracks. The resulting explosions lifted the machine a couple of inches up into the air, blew a hole in its vulnerable belly, and triggered a powerful secondary explosion. That blew the turret off and sent a gout of flames shooting straight upward.
The second sloth’s turret was coming around by then, trying to find the new threat and kill it, but that opened it up to a ground attack by the resocialized marines. They swarmed through the barricade farther down the street and came forward firing handheld rocket launchers of their own. The sloth shook as it took a couple of hits, shuddered convulsively, and blew as one of the resocs threw a D-6 charge in under its belly. The resoc died in the resulting explosion, but that made no difference to his comrades, who charged forward and quickly caught up with the Devils.
Now the combined force was at the bottom of the hill and approaching the fortification’s heavily defended main gate. It had taken a direct hit from a siege tank and consisted of little more than a crater surrounded by a collar of debris. A bloodied leg could be seen protruding from the dirt.
But that didn’t mean the Kel-Morians were going to let the invaders enter the repository unopposed. As the Devils and a force of resocs pushed up the slope and surged around both sides of the crater, a squad of Guild Guards was there to receive them. Suddenly, what had been an arm’s-length conflict became extremely personal as the groups overran each other.
“To me!” Tychus shouted over the comm, as he fired his gauss rifle at point-blank range. It was important to form a phalanx that could produce massed fire and hold the real estate they’d been able to take.
The Devils were the first to respond as Ward, Zander, and Harnack came together to form a solid front. The rangers and marines hurried to realign themselves as Ward loosed his remaining missiles. The closely spaced explosions left ragged gaps in the enemy’s ranks, but the battle was far from one-sided, as one of the guards fired his flamethrower and a ranger was engulfed in a fiery conflagration.
Retribution came swiftly. Because rather than charge the enemy with the others, Kydd had orders to hang back and choose his targets with care. So the man with the flamethrower blew up as a slug found a fuel tank and Harnack triggered his own weapon. “You bastards want to play?” he demanded angrily, as a gout of flame played across the guards in the Kel-Morian front line. “Well, let’s fire it up!”
Tychus, meanwhile, had met his match. The KM taskmaster was as tall as he was, but not as broad in the chest, and armor clashed as they collided. They were so close together that neither man could use his rifle for anything other than a club, so both took swings at each other. As each man blocked the other’s blows, they were forced to release their weapons and fight hand to hand.
It was a situation that favored the Kel-Morian, because the Guild Guards prided themselves on close-quarters combat while Confederate military forces spent precious little time on such training. So Tychus found himself being subjected to a well-executed leg-wheel hip-throw and a follow-up blow that dented his helmet. Sweet mother of mercy, Tychus thought to himself, this bastard needs to die.
But killing the other man wasn’t going to be easy as Tychus attempted to roll away. The suit’s backpack made that difficult as the Kel-Morian methodically kicked him in the side.
As Tychus came to rest on his back, and the exhaust from his backpack splashed the ground, he caught one of the huge boots and gave it a powerful twist to the right. That brought his opponent crashing down. Tychus was quick to follow up by rolling on top of the taskmaster and sitting astride the other man’s chest.
Tychus felt for a grenade with one hand, found it, and thumbed the Kel-Morian’s visor release with the other. It opened to reveal an unshaven face that was contorted into a fearsome grimace as the Kel-Morian struggled to buck his opponent off. “Sweet dreams, asshole,” Tychus said as he armed the grenade, dropped it into the other man’s helmet, and immediately rolled away.
Maybe, had there been a little more time and had the Kel-Morian been able to pull his gauntlets off quickly enough, he might have been able to reach down into the cavity next to his chin and remove the bomb before it went off. But such was not the case. There was a flash of light and a loud bang as the taskmaster’s helmet exploded.
“Quit laying down on the job,” Raynor said as he arrived on the scene and reached down to give his friend a hand.
“I thought you were dead,” Tychus said as he came to his feet and bent to retrieve his rifle. “We were going to have a big party and everything.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Raynor replied dryly, as a marine lieutenant led a platoon of resocs across the body-strewn expanse of concrete toward the ramp beyond. “Maybe next time.”
“Come on!” Ward shouted. “Today is the day! I can feel it!”
“The crazy sonofabitch is going to try and get himself killed!” Raynor exclaimed. “Come on!”