Aston moved through the fire-sick night in a familiar half-crouch. His assault rifle stuttered viciously, and two men went down. Ludmilla was behind him, her fire seeking out her own targets, and all about them, First Platoon was on the move, swarming over fallen false-treetop camouflage to hit a cluster of weapon pits behind the crash of grenades. The barracks they'd chosen as Ludmilla's fire position loomed ahead, and he saw two Marines charge the wall. They rolled up against it, arms moving almost in unison, and hand grenades smashed through the windows.
Glass and debris blew outward, and a SAW gunner kicked in the door, hip-held automatic weapon hosing the interior on sustained fire.
They were moving, he thought hopefully, and so far their casualties weren't too bad. Maybe ...
Blake Taggart crouched in the darkness, trying to picture what was happening. He'd never seen a fire-fight before, much less a night assault, and nothing less could have prepared him for the reality. It was all movement, muzzle flashes, and savagery, with no pattern he could grasp, but deep inside he knew the enemy was imposing his pattern on the chaos, and a sense of doom touched him.
No! He shook doubt aside. He'd been promised power! He was the anointed viceroy of the world! No one would take that from him. No one!
He darted a frantic look over his shoulder. There! The fire was heaviest on the left end of the line.
He punched a frozen gunner savagely to get his attention. The man jerked and saw his commander's pointing finger, then swiveled his otherworldly weapon and squeezed the trigger.
The night exploded. Half of Fourth Platoon vanished in a lick of blue-white fury, incinerated by the "light" power gun the Troll had given his men. Abernathy rolled away from the glaring scar in the mountainside, beating out the flames on his camo jacket as he tried desperately to spot the source of the fire. But like Ludmilla's blaster, there was no muzzle flash, no discharge to betray its location.
Ludmilla staggered. Her flight suit sensies were cranked up to full gain, trying to spot any communication between the Troll and its combat mechs, and the sudden energy surge was agonizing. She went to her knees, groaning, cursing herself for not considering the possibility even as she turned down their sensitivity. But at least she knew where the thing was.
Corporal Bowen went down beside her, a .50 caliber slug through his chest, and she snatched the laser target designator from his back, blessing the endless hours spent learning to use Company T's equipment. She laid the sight on the power gun's pit even as its gunner fired again. The energy bolt exploded against the mountain, killing more of her friends, and she keyed her radio.
"Romeo One, this is Sneak Play," she said clearly over the net. "I've got a target for you."
Ed Staunton stiffened in his cockpit. A woman? That was a woman's voice! What the hell was she-?
Then the call sign registered. Of every human soul in that inferno, "Sneak Play" had absolute priority.
"Sneak Play, Romeo One," he snapped. "Where?"
"Romeo, Sneak Play is prepared to laser paint. Target is a pit with heavy weapons."
"Roger, Sneak Play. Romeo One copies." He thought furiously for a second. All right.
"Romeo Four, Romeo One. Line 'em up, Freddy. Sneak Play's gonna light up a target for you. One round only. Confirm copy."
"Romeo One, Romeo Four copies one Maverick on the illumination."
"Sneak Play, Romeo One. Light up."
"Roger, Romeo One. Illuminating now."
A Hornet sliced down out of the heavens as a thin, coded laser beam flashed invisibly through the dark. It touched the housing of the power gun as it ripped off a third blast, killing twenty more Marines, and high above, a single AGM-65E air-to-surface missile separated from Romeo Four and dove for the beckoning laser.
Nine seconds later, Blake Taggart, Viceroy of Earth, was blown to bloody fragments by a two hundred fifty-pound blast-frag warhead.
The explosion trembled through the earth to the Troll, and he felt Taggart's mind die. It was only a human, but they had been deeply linked for many months, and the sudden loss was agony. Hurt roared through his brain as his first combat mech slid from the access tunnel on anti-gravs, distracting him from the quick three hundred sixty-degree scan he'd planned upon. Instead, he sent the mech raging towards the spot where Taggart had died.
The hostile fire ringing Slugger Force faltered as Marines slid through smoke and flame like vengeful devils. The men of the Apocalypse Brigade died or fled, and what was left of the decoy attack shook itself out into some sort of order and probed cautiously after them.
"Target left!" somebody shouted, and Major Dan Abernathy watched the Dragon team slew their launcher around. He rolled up on an elbow, conscious of the waiting pain as one of his men worked on his shattered left leg. Funny. He didn't remember being hit.
The Dragon belched sudden flame, roaring away through the dark, and his eyes flashed ahead to its target. There! So that was what a "combat mech" looked like.
He barely had time to register the weird curves of its form before the Dragon crashed home and a ten-pound shaped charge slammed the alien war machine to the ground.
So they could be killed. The thought came in a queer little voice deep within him, and on its heels came the pain.
The Troll roared with mental fury as his mech went dead. Those hairy primitives were destroying his irreplaceable equipment!
Yet even through his fury, he began to feel a tinge of doubt. The invaders were dying, but they were hurting him. Hurting him badly. What else could they do to him? For the first time he began to regret the delay in completing his bomb.
Staff Sergeant Leroy Sanderson saw the explosion of the combat mech from his perch high above, but one of his teammates was already punching his shoulder. Another machine floated before them, rising silently, glinting blood and gold with reflected fire, and he laid his sights with care.
There! The Troll "looked" up from his second combat mech. Aircraft! There were aircraft above him! A cold stab of fear touched him at last, but he refused to panic. Instead, the mech tracked the nearest warplane, locked its sights, and fired.
"Jesus!"
Commander Staunton never found out who shouted the single blasphemy as Romeo Twelve vanished in a terrific ball of blue fire that came right out of nowhere. It could have been him. He'd never seen anything like that-never even imagined its like! Whatever the hell it had been sprayed the hapless Hornet over the heavens in molten droplets, and there was no chance at all of a chute.
Another explosion winked far below him, almost in the same instant. He barely noticed it, and he never knew it marked the death of the machine which had killed his pilot.
The Troll noted the death of his second combat mech, but he was almost calm now. He'd determined that the aircraft were easy targets and also that his light armor could be killed. Very well. He had three light mechs left, but he would not waste them.
He made rapid calculations from the data his mech had garnered before it died. There was a way. He could blast every one of those aircraft from the heavens in a single paired salvo if he did it properly, and the ridiculous chemical explosives which had killed his light armor would be powerless to stop him.
He sent commands to his fighter, and a panel opened. His organic component disconnected quickly from the flight controls, and the smoothly efficient machinery transferred it to the waiting combat chassis parked beside the medium combat mech in his forward hold.