"That way," pointed Valerian, heading off down a side corridor, running bent over to keep out of the smoke. His eyes still stung from the fumes and his mouth tasted of tar, but he couldn't deny the exhilaration he felt going into battle alongside his father.
Valerian negotiated them through the network of tunnels until they arrived at the blast door that led out onto the platform. The neosteel door had been torn from its mounting by the enormous impact of the gun cutter's fall and lay buckled on the concrete floor.
They clambered over the shattered door and entered the cavern of the landing platform. The gun cutter lay canted at an angle, its fuselage torn open where it had been peeled back by the rock walls of the shaft. Smoke billowed upward from its remaining engine toward the bright oblong of daylight, and burning pools of fuel collected beneath the wrecked craft.
"We're going to have to be quick," said Arcturus.
"Damn right," agreed Valerian. "I don't want to get blown to bits by an exploding gun cutter, thank you very much."
"Yes, it wouldn't be a very epic way to meet your end, would it?" said his father. "Let's make sure we don't then, eh?"
With that, his father began clambering up the slope of twisted metal and debris toward the tear in the fuselage. As he reached the gaping wound in the side of the culler, he turned and called down to Valerian.
"Keep watch above us and back along the corridor. If our enemies pick up the signal from the cutter you can be sure we're going to have company..."
CHAPTER 19
VALERIAN FOUND COVER BEHIND A TWISTED SHEET of the gun cutter's fuselage, training his rifle down the length of the passageway they had come from. Master Miyamoto took up position across from Valerian, and his father's three marines found cover that would allow them to enfilade the enemy.
Eventually their attackers would realize that their target was not in the house. Once the enemy marines figured out where their quarry had gone and what they were doing, they'd throw everything they had at them.
Valerian and his soldiers had dragged piles of debris back toward the cutter to form rudimentary barricades and shared out what ammunition they had for the gauss rifles. The clock was ticking, but for what it was worth, they were ready.
Or at least as ready as five men could be to hold off thirty trained soldiers.
The heat in the cavern was stifling and sweat ran down Valerian's face inside his facemask. His breathing sounded incredibly loud and his peripheral vision was practically nonexistent. In frustration, he tore the mask off and dropped it next to him.
The air was tight and oxygen-depleted, but much of the smoke from the wrecked cutter was being vented up through the wide landing shaft. Not the best conditions in which to fight a battle, but who ever got to fight a battle in ideal conditions?
And Valerian was willing to risk some respiratory difficulty to actually see the men he was going to have to kill.
He wiped a hand over his face, trying to keep his breaths shallow, and blinked regularly to keep his eyes moist. He could just about make out the echoing sound of gunshots and wandered where they were coming from. Had his grandfather and Charles managed to get his mother to safety while his father's marines fought back? Or was he hearing echoes of shots being fired execution style, like those that had ended the life of his father's parents and sister?
The thought that his mother was in real danger almost sent him running back along the corridor, but he forced himself to remain where he was. Allowing emotion to rule his actions would only get him killed and that would do no one any good, least of all himself.
He glanced up toward the cutter. What was taking so long?
Was the comm unit broken? Was his father even now trying to repair it?
How long had passed anyway?
Valerian found he couldn't even begin to guess how long it had been since the attack began. It felt as though several hours had elapsed, but he suspected that it was one at best. The elasticity of time in a combat situation was something he'd read about, but had never expected to experience firsthand.
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and looked over to where Master Miyamoto crouched. His farmer tutor was staring at him, jabbing a finger down the corridor, and Valerian fell his mouth go dry as he heard the clatter of boots and the bark of shouted orders.
This was it. The enemy he'd run from all his life was finally here. But this time Valerian Mengsk wasn't running. This time he was fighting.
He shouldered his gauss rifle and licked his lips as he saw shadows moving through the ruptured aperture of the blast door. Risking a quick glance back at the cutter, he silently willed his father to get a damn move on.
A pair of Confederate marines ducked around the edge of the torn doorway. Master Miyamoto rose from cover and opened fire, a meter-long tongue of fire blasting from the muzzle of his weapon. The first marine dropped, Master Miyamoto's expertly aimed fire punching unerringly through his visor and filling the inside of his helmet with iron spikes.
Valerian pulled the trigger, working his fire over the second marine. The recoil of the gauss rifle was fearsome, designed to be absorbed by a powered combat suit, which Valerian conspicuously wasn't wearing. The roar of the weapon was deafening, but Valerian kept the rifle on target, knowing that his target's armor would defeat all but the most concentrated clusters of impacts.
The man fell as the three soldiers opened up as well, the additional weight of their firepower tearing through the marine's armor and spraying the wall behind him with blood. Valerian ducked back into cover as return fire sawed through the doorway. Impaler shots rattled from the metal around him and he flinched as a ricochet sliced across his arm.
He heard shouts and rose once more, sending a blast of fire toward the doorway.
Shots filled the air, smacking from the debris and rock walls as the enemy marines laid down a curtain of suppressive tire. Valerian heard something skitter across the ground and his heart leapt into his mouth as he saw a gently wobbling oval disc come to rest no more than a few feet from him.
Without thinking, he dropped to one knee and scooped up the grenade, lobbing it back the way it had come. It exploded an instant later, the noise agonizingly loud and the wave of overpressure swatting him onto his back. He scrambled to his knees, coughing and trying to force the air to return to his lungs.
Valerian heard screams and cries for medics, sounding tinny and impossibly distant. He felt warm wetness in his ears and reached up, his fingers coming away bloody. A greasy fog bank of acrid smoke swirled upward from the grenade's detonation. Valerian felt around for his rifle, only now realizing it had been snatched from his grip by the blast.
More blasts of gunfire sounded, but he couldn't tell who was shooting.
He found his rifle and swept it up. The top portion of the barricade he'd been sheltering behind had been torn away by the explosive force of the detonation. Valerian realized if he'd stood to throw the grenade back, his upper body would have been vaporized.
Perhaps seven marines were lying screaming on the ground, ripped open and their guts spilled out over the floor. Fragments of armor and ruptured body parts littered the ground, but it was impossible to tell exactly how many men had died. Shouting marines tried to drag their wounded comrades to safety, but Valerian and Miyamoto gave them no respite, cutting them down in a deadly crossfire.
Valerian experienced a surge of exhilaration and fell the urge to laugh well up within him with almost uncontrollable force. Amid all this killing and death, the sensation was ludicrous, and he suddenly realized how ridiculous this notion of battle was. Men who had never met were trying to kill one another.
Valerian knew why he was fighting: to protect his loved ones and save his own life.