He rolled onto his side and brought his gauss rifle up, glancing across to see Yancy, Chuck, and Toby pulling themselves over the rocks and into cover. Below him, the firebats continued to pour flaming gouts of superheated liquid at their foes. One of them—Arcturus didn't know which—was limping badly, his leg armor mangled by gunfire above the knee and blood sheeting down his thigh.
Several other marines were down, but the mercenaries' attention was fixated on the advancing warriors and they hadn't noticed the other inbound enemies. Arcturus opened a link to Dominion section and said. "Get moving, everyone. Fast and low."
"You got it, LT," said Chuck Horner, leading Yancy and Mercurio off. Arcturus nodded to himself. Horner had real potential, naturally assuming command of his small section, and Arcturus made a mental note to see about developing his skills if they survived this encounter.
"Chun, Dia," he said, "let's go."
Arcturus led them off, scuttling forward, hunched over as much as his armor would allow, and keeping to the cover of the rocks. His heart was hammering in his chest as he ran, fully expecting a burst of Impaler spikes to rake him and his soldiers at any moment. Arcturus could hear a near-continual roar of gunfire, screams, and explosions from the canyon and knew the men he'd sent forward were still fighting.
An angry orange fireball mushroomed from below, signaling the death of one of the firebats, followed moments later by a second explosion. The reek of flamethrower fuel filled the air and Arcturus heard more screams of dying soldiers.
Just ahead, he could see a splash of white and recognized the rocks above where their ambushers were fighting. He grinned with feral anticipation, terrified yet exhilarated at the same time.
Arcturus dropped to one knee and jabbed a fist at the while rocks.
"Take up position either side of me," he said. "We get to those rocks and unleash everything we've got."
De Santo and Leung nodded, and Arcturus could see the same relish on their faces he figured they could see on his.
"Let's do this,"" hissed Chun Leung, palling Mayumi's gleaming barrel.
"You got it, Big Dog," replied de Santo, punching knuckles with Leung.
"Let's go," said Arcturus.
He ran over to the rocks, bracing his foot against a low boulder, and looked down into the canyon as de Santo and Leung took up position. Below them was a scene straight from hell, the valley floor aflame and littered with blackened bodies. A few fallen mercenaries screamed and clutched bloody wounds, but Arcturus didn't care about their pain. These men had tried to kill him and his marines, and that made them less than nothing in his eyes.
As he'd suspected, both firebats were dead, as were about half of Emillian's resoced marines, but they had done their job: keeping the mercenaries' attention firmly fixed on them while Dominion section moved around the flank.
Across the canyon, Arcturus saw Horner, Yancy, and Mercurio rise from the rocks and aim their weapons at the enemy below. A few of the mercenaries looked up as Dominion section appeared above them, and Arcturus relished their look of panic.
"Fire!" shouted Arcturus.
Withering sprays of Impaler spikes ripped through the mercenaries, their lighter body armor no match for close-range gauss fire. Arcturus worked his rifle over the men below him, bloody eruptions fountaining where his spikes blew open skulls or tore limbs from bodies.
Caught in the crossfire, the mercenaries had no chance.
They danced in the vicious bursts of gunfire, trapped in the open and unable to fight back. The echoes of rifles were deafening as they filled the narrow defile in the canyon with screaming hot spikes. A few of the mercenaries managed to bring their weapons to bear, but it was too little too late and they were cut down without mercy.
Realizing that to fight on was hopeless, one man threw down his rifle and held up his hands in surrender.
Arcturus cut him in two with a sustained burst of fire.
It was over in a few seconds, and the canyon was suddenly quiet as the marines of Dominion section ceased firing. Acrid smoke drifted from the heated barrels of their guns as they looked at each other in disbelief—shocked at the carnage they'd caused, but elated to have survived and won their first firefight.
"Good job, everyone," said Arcturus, his heart rate only now beginning to return to normal after the thrill of killing these men. The canyon floor resembled an abattoir, shredded flesh and blood mingling in thick, viscous puddles that were already congealing into sticky pools in the heat.
"Man, we killed those SOBs good!" shouted Yancy, his rifle held triumphantly above his head. Chuck Horner sketched Arcturus a salute and even Toby Mercurio looked pleased for once. Beside him, Dia de Santo and Chun Leung butted helmets and he felt them slap the shoulder guards of his armor in triumph.
"You did it, LT!" cried de Santo. "We killed the whole damn lot of them!"
"That we did," agreed Arcturus, only now beginning to appreciate the slaughter he had orchestrated.
He knew that some men experienced a great and terrible guilt over killing other human beings. But as he looked at the ripped-open sacks of meal and bone that had, only minutes before, been living, breathing human beings, he felt nothing for them.
Nothing at all.
Arcturus looked up at the miners' encampment through the optical viewfinders, seeking any sign of weapons technology like the missile turret that had downed their dropship. Sure enough, another pair of turrets with sweeping dishes, not dissimilar to those they'd left behind at Camp Juno, were placed at the forefront of the encampment.
The mining complex was a well-organized collection of modular constructions built on an artificially created plateau at the mouth of a great scar in the mountainside that resembled the lair of some prehistoric monster. The edge of the plateau had been built up into a defended ridge, with sandbagged foxholes and concrete bunkers.
A pair of goliath combat walkers plodded back and forth behind the barricades on their reverse-jointed legs, the rotary cannons on their weapon arms spooling up and the missile systems above the pilot's canopy trained on the sky. Arcturus wasn't too concerned with the goliaths—they were primarily used to engage airborne targets, though the power of their guns wasn't to be sniffed at if you were a grunt on the ground.
In any case, he had just the thing to fight goliaths.
He smiled as he saw the panicked miners and their mercenaries running back and forth, terrified at the sight that had just come into view on the rutted road that led to the main gate of the mine complex.
The siege tank had finally rumbled into the bloody canyon thirty minutes after the conclusion of the fighting. Since the battle's end, Dominion section had been securing the weapons and ammo of the fallen marines and gathering up the dead.
Of the marines who had charged in the wake of the firebats, only five were left alive, the rest arranged in neat rows alongside the eight wounded and those who had perished in the crash. The bodies of the mercenaries were dragged to the side of the canyon and their weapons taken, but were otherwise ignored.
An evac bird was called in to take Captain Emillian and the wounded back to Camp Juno. Once Arcturus received confirmation that it had been dispatched, he and Dominion section, together with the five resoced marines, rode the tank farther up the valley.
After all, they had a job to finish.
"Oh yeah!" shouted Yancy Gray, standing on the tank's frontal glacis and balancing himself by holding on to its enormous cannon. "Not so cocky now, are ya? Not so tough when you see we got ourselves a tank. Yeah!"
The siege tank had the range to engage the miners' camp from where they sat now, its main gun more than capable of pounding the camp to smoldering ruin without fear of reprisal.
But Arcturus didn't want to destroy the mining facility if he could avoid it, not if there was a chance it could be taken and put to use.