“Where are the rest of your men?” I asked. When I left Terraneau, Mars had one thousand engineers in his corps.
“In there, waiting for us.” Mars pointed down the tunnel as he spoke.
“Do you have men guarding both tunnels?” I asked.
Mars shook his head. “We flooded the southbound tube.”
I nodded, and said, “You better tuck your men in; the fighting is about to begin.”
“What about the aliens?” he asked.
“One battle at a time,” I said. “Freeman and I will slow the militia while you and your men dig in. After that, we’ll work on the blast doors.”
“Hear that, guys. It’s time,” Mars said. He sounded so damn cheerful that I thought he must have misunderstood me. His engineers scattered. Two of them climbed into a freight truck that was parked along one wall of the tunnel. As they started up the engine, Mars and a few of his engineers hopped into a Jackal.
The big truck headed out the tunnel, then cut a wide U-turn and squealed to a stop. It was so large it blocked out most of the sunlight. It also completely clogged two of the three lanes leading in from the city.
The engineers hopped out of the truck unscathed.
Moments later, huge metal doors pivoted out from the shadows along the walls and shut out the rest of the sunlight. The doors were perfectly fitted for the entrance. They were tall and thick, and they slid along rails, making no more noise than a bicycle riding on a flat paved road until they connected together with an earsplitting clang.
With the doors shut, the tunnel went as dark a closet. Just a narrow seam of daylight shone in around the edges of the doors. I turned and looked into the darkness. Far away, a Jackal moved slowly through the darkness, its racks of lights casting a blinding glare. And then the tunnel lights came on, shining down on the spider’s web of scaffolding that ran along the walls.
When I did not see him immediately, I worried that we might have sealed Freeman outside the tunnel, but my worries proved unfounded. I spotted him working under the scaffolding, probably setting charges or some other defense.
One of the Jackals rolled up beside me, and Nobles hopped out. I said to him, “That flimsy door isn’t going to keep anyone out,” though I thought it might protect us from the pressure shift of a falling atmosphere.
“It’s just supposed to slow them down,” Mars said.
I kept my eyes on Freeman, watching him walk around the piping. He moved slowly, deliberately. I could not tell what he was doing.
How ironic, I thought. Ray Freeman, out to save the universe.
The first grenade exploded. The force of the explosion did not destroy the iron door, but the sound of the blast echoed inside the tunnel.
One of the engineers came to me, and shouted, “Your armor is in the back of the Jackal.”
“No shit,” I said. They’d brought me armor, I was touched.
A rocket struck the door, nearly blasting it off its rails. The deafening sound was followed by the sharp tak tak of bullets striking unyielding metal.
“It’s in the turret,” the man said.
I nodded and jogged to the back of the Jackal. The militia would break through in another moment. I needed armor and firepower. When I opened the door of the turret, I saw that Mars had used the space to stow a lot more than a set of armor and a handful of weapons. Two figures lay huddled on the floor, tied up and gagged.
I stared in at Ava, and she stared back at me. Her hands were bound behind her back, and someone had taped her mouth. Seeing me, she struggled and shifted her weight, mumbling incoherently all the while.
“Ava,” I said. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
She mumbled something, twisting and turning and struggling to get free. I might have untied her, but I did not have time. The next rocket knocked one of the huge metal doors out of its tracks. With a deafening yawn, it fell, kicking up a blast of air that smelled of dust, oil, sulfur, and iron.
The man lying beside Ava screamed and struggled. There was no mistaking the look of terror in his eyes. In Ava’s green eyes, I saw nothing but fury. As I grabbed my rucksack, Ava began babbling all the louder. She thrashed to get my attention as I removed the various sections of my armor from the bag. After laying out the armor, I gazed at the assortment of weapons Mars had brought me.
I leaned in, and said, “Well, Ava, nice seeing you again.”
She brought up a foot and tried to stomp it on my face; but she was slow, and she telegraphed the kick. I dodged her foot, and said, “That wasn’t very polite.” As I closed the door to the turret, I could hear her kicking and shouting.
Freeman must have captured them, Ava and her new lover. Maybe it was Mars. I did not have time to think about it; but if I survived Terraneau, I would have a debt to repay.
It took me under a minute to strip out of my service uniform and step into my bodysuit. In another thirty seconds, my armor was in place.
“Mars, are you on?” I asked over the interLink.
“Sounds like it’s getting hot out there,” he said. That was an understatement. By that time, the other half of the door had caved in. A fusillade of militia bullets struck the jackknifed truck and dug into the walls and ceiling. Sunlight and bullets and the sound of explosions poured in through the tunnel entrance.
Retreating deep into the tunnel and hiding behind whatever protection the engineers had installed would be easy, the trick would be stalling the militia so that they did not have time to kick in the doors. We would not fight them, per se, so much as slow them down; but even that had to be timed just right. If we stalled too long, we might get ourselves cooked in the bargain.
“Get your men in deep,” I told Mars. “Get settled in and get the doors ready.”
Someone fired a grenade into the scaffolding where I had last seen Freeman. The grenade burst, sending smoke and flames and twisted pipes in every direction. My helmet deadened the sound, and my armor absorbed the percussion, giving the explosion a dreamlike feeling, and I felt no fear and realized that my combat reflex had already begun.
The militia fired automatic weapons along the walls, their bullets kicking up sparks as they struck steel pipes. “Freeman, where are you?” I asked over the interLink. As I checked for Freeman, I saw Lieutenant Nobles climb behind the wheel of the Jackal that carried Ava and her lover. He drove away.
Freeman answered my query with action instead of words. Three men tried to sprint from the entrance of the tunnel. Using his sniper rifle, Freeman picked them off.
I spotted him by following the angle of his rifle fire. He had taken cover behind a crane. “The engineers built a steel barrier a quarter mile in,” he said in his low, ineffable voice. “We need to get back there.”
A few of Mars’s men tried to come back and help us; but they were engineers, not combat Marines. They crawled along the walls and froze when the gunfire erupted, and I told them to get back into the tunnel and guard the door. “Fall back,” I shouted over the interLink on a frequency that every man could hear. They did not need to be told a second time.
Several guns opened fire. Shooting blindly into the tunnel, the militia leaders hoped to keep us pinned while some of their men tried to flank us. They made a mistake. They overestimated our numbers. They must have thought there were dozens of us instead of two men hiding in the shadows along the wall. They fired toward the center of the tunnel, then they sent out six men who ducked low and sprinted for cover. Freeman picked them off, starting with the man in the rear and working his way forward. He hit them so quickly that the first four went down before last ones noticed.
A grenadier spotted Freeman. As he stepped out to fire an RPG, I picked him off with my M27.
“Where are you?” I asked Mars over a frequency that only he and Freeman would hear.
“We’re dug in behind the next blast wall, about a quarter mile in,” he said.