At least that might be some small consolation for Gallo.
“Desoto,” Bairamov said, “form up on me when we pass. McCoy, you’d better do something about that damn bomb, and do it fast. The truck isn’t stopping.”
What the hell was he supposed to do? He ducked behind the building and glanced toward the bridge. He had less than a minute before the truck reached it. Rifle rounds cracked around him, throwing dirt clouds into the air as they hit the wall of the house. And he had to do it under fire, too.
He jumped back into the stream, and waded through it to the bridge. The bomb was held onto the logs by ropes wrapped around it in four places. Dark and weathered, they looked little different to the ropes holding the rest of the logs together.
He could hear the tracks of the truck approaching now. Desoto jogged in front of it, and fired his rifle madly between the buildings. Not much chance of him hitting anything, but it should keep the insurgents’ heads down. The truck would be on the bridge in a few seconds.
Logan stared at the bomb. And the ropes. And the wires.
But he didn’t need to defuse it, did he? He just needed to get it far enough away that the bridge wouldn’t be damaged if it did go off.
And there was only one way to do that.
He slashed through the ropes with the blades on his suit’s hand. The IED tilted as the ropes gave way, but didn’t fall free.
The truck was only metres away. He jumped over the bridge, and slashed through the ropes on that side.
The boxes splashed down into the water.
He backed away, then jumped out of the river as the flow of the stream heading for the waterfall caught the boxes, and they began to slide downstream. The wires between the boxes and the bridge unwound and stretched.
The wires going to whatever was supposed to set it off.
Then the ground shook as the IED exploded, throwing a towering column of foamy water into the air.
Logan’s foot slipped on the muddy banks of the stream as the blast hit his suit. He slid backwards as his feet tried to grip. He bent his knees and tried to crouch as the suit overbalanced and toppled, but only found empty air beneath him.
The suit tumbled as it fell backwards, over the edge of the cliff. His rifle flew from his hands as he reached out, trying to grab anything that might support him.
But his hands only found more empty air.
His arms and legs thudded against the rocks as he fell over the cliff, and red lights glowed on his HUD, warning him of damage to the suit. He turned his head, trying to see anything he could grab onto, but could only see the dark rocks and bright sky above him.
The suit twisted around as it fell, until he was facing to the side, along the valley.
The metal feet of the suit slammed against the rock of the cliff, and it turned further, until he was looking straight down. A thick rock outcropping protruded from the cliff below him, and he tried to grab it. His hand clamped down on the end of the outcropping, but the rock cracked as it took some of the suit’s weight. It broke apart with a loud snap, and the suit fell past, barely slowed.
Logan grunted as the back of the suit hit the cliff again, and the suit frame smacked against his own back. More red lights glowed on the HUD, and the suit flew away from the cliff, now barely ten metres above the river, and tumbling toward it.
CHAPTER 21
“Bairamov? Desoto? Anyone hear me?” Logan said. But no-one answered. Nor was there any indication of their status on his HUD. His suit’s reactor was still running, but the suit status display was little more than a sea of red, indicating all the failing or failed systems after the fall. His suit was going to need a lot more than just a service after this.
He hung in the straps that held him to the suit frame. They strained against his shoulders, hips and groin as they supported his weight with the suit lying face-down in the water.
The arms of the suit were bent beneath his chest, trapped between the front of the suit and the bottom of the river. He pushed with his hands, trying to lift the suit from the riverbed.
The motors whirred faintly, but the arms wouldn’t move, no matter how hard he pushed on the hand grips in the suit. He tried to bend his knees, but the legs only twisted slightly, then came to a stop with the ozone smell of arcing, and the acrid stench of burning wiring.
His suit wasn’t going anywhere any time soon under its own power. That was for sure.
The visor was still intact, despite some scratches and chips on the surface, and the suit could keep him alive under water for an hour or more with no external air. But he couldn’t just stay there and wait.
For a start, no-one but Bairamov and Desoto had any idea where he was, or was likely to come looking for him.
He’d have to find his own way out.
And then explain to Volkov how he’d lost his suit, his weapons, and the rest of his team.
Which wasn’t going to go down well.
He grabbed the pistol from the survival kit, and holstered it. Then the goggles. He was lucky he’d managed to scrounge a new pair to replace the ones he broke in the battle, while those were being repaired.
The food and water from the kit went into the pouches on his body armour, and there wasn’t very much of it. To get back to the Legion, he had at least eighty kilometres to cover to town, and he’d have to travel by night, then find somewhere safe from radiation to sit out the day. As fit as life in the Legion had made him, it would still be a long trip. At least three days in this thin air. Maybe four.
For now, he should be safe enough following the bottom of the valley, as the sun was in the west, and would be behind the cliff for a few hours. Maybe he’d have cover for the whole time until it set.
But once he passed out of the shadow, he’d no longer have millions of tons of rock to protect him from anything the star could put out.
And he still had to get out of the river, first.
He sucked in a dozen quick, deep breaths, filling his lungs and blood with as much oxygen as they could hold. He might need it before he reached the shore.
“Alice, open up.”
“I am underwater. Opening the suit would be hazardous. Please confirm order.”
Certainly hazardous to him, if he couldn’t get out, and drowned as the water poured in. But the suit frame didn’t seem badly damaged. Maybe hazardous to the AI, too.
Hopefully she’d still be intact by the time they recovered her. If not… he’d made a backup before they left.
“Sorry, Alice. Confirm. Open the suit.”
He took another deep breath as motors whined and the back of the suit began to open, then his own back turned to ice as river water poured in. He resisted the urge to gasp as his body shook and shivered at the sudden temperature change as the water ran over it.
Instead, he held the last breath he took, and tried to ignore the cold as water filled the front of the suit. Then the back of the suit opened completely, and the last of the air inside it burst past him in a trail of bubbles. He slammed his hand onto the clip in the centre of his chest that held the straps together, and pulled on them until they came free. Then twisted out of the suit’s exoskeleton frame.
His arms pulled him up and legs kicked as he swam toward the surface, and his face broke free of the water in the shadows of the cliff. He glanced back, looking for a landmark to help him find the suit when they returned to recover it.
But the water splashed around him as the river carried him away, twisting and turning, between rocks protruding from the surface. He paddled with his hands and twisted around, to look downstream. White foam sprayed into the air as the river tumbled through rock-strewn rapids just ahead.
He kicked and paddled through the water, toward the rocks near the shore. He needed every ounce of the oxygen he had sucked in before he left the suit, and pushed all the energy he could find into his limbs as they struggled to haul him away from the rapids.