Rance had acted immediately. While everyone else was still in the grip of the initial shock and confusion, he had gathered Dry kin, Renchett, Dacker, and Hark around him.
"I don't intend to be left here for the Yal."
The longtimers had been a little surprised that the topman was putting self-preservation over duty. In a situation like this, they would have expected him to be one of the last into the lifeboat, not the first. He must have sensed what they were feeling.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm going to get out as many men as I can, but I'm also getting myself out if I possibly can.
The four longtimers looked at each other. "So where do we figure in all this?" Dyrkin said finally.
"Fin taking you with me."
"I ain't going to argue with that. What do we have to do?"
"Hill 4078 is being set up as an embarkation point."
"Where's that?"
"About two hundred klicks to the north." "What are we supposed to do, walk there?" "We're going to commandeer a gunsaucer." "We're what?" "I'm calling in all my favors." Dyrkin scratched the back of his neck. "Can I ask you a personal question?" "Why am I doing this?" "That's the one."
"Because a lot of good men are going to be left stranded on this forsaken planet, and there's nothing I can do about it. That's it. I'm damned if I'm going to be one of them. Besides, most of the people I feel I owe my loyalty to have been killed."
"It finally got to you."
"It finally got to me."
Renchett had grinned wolfishly. "So let's get ourselves a saucer and get the hell out of here."
Calling down the saucer was a simple matter of putting a request through the command channel. Convincing the pilot, a hard-eyed individual called Maso, had been a little more difficult. It had taken fifteen minutes of hard talking by Rance and a considerable trading of obligations before Maso finally agreed to fly them out.
"Just so long as me and my crew go out on the same e-vac as you," he said.
"What about the saucer?"
"Forget the saucer. There's going to be a hell of a lot of material left behind before this scramble's over."
Beneath them, Hill 4078 came into sight. Its cleared top stuck out of the surrounding fungus jungle like a bald head. On one side, sappers were still burning off the vegetation. Clouds of black smoke rolled into the air and were driven away from the site by a brisk wind. A number of e-vacs were already on the ground.
"I bet the bastard officers are getting away first."
Warning lights started flashing on the saucer's control panel.
"We're running into ground fire!"
Maso glanced swiftly at Rance. "You didn't tell me that we'd hit enemy fire."
Rance's expression was bleak. "What did you expect? The Yal are going to use every last chiba on this rock to slow us up."
Pulses of green energy arced lazily up from the fungus. Crew and passengers were pushed down into their couches as the saucer accelerated and banked steeply.
"I'm turning back."
"Back to what? There's going to be enemy around any place that e-vacs are jumping off." "Dear God!"
The craft rocked and rolled as an energy pulse burst beside them. Maso's fingers danced over the control keys. The saucer lifted vertically.
"I'll try and get above the flak."
There were two more explosions, but neither was as close as the first.
"Body gunners stand by for manual override."
"Check."
"When we're over the hill, I'm going to drop fast. I want blanket fire on the surrounding jungle. Anything to make those Yal gunners keep their heads down."
"Check."
"Comm here, chief. I'm getting a demand for identification from traffic control on the hill."
Rance spoke into his communicator. "Tell them we got an A-thirty priority clearance." "But we don't."
"If it's as much of a mess up down there as we think it is, they ain't going to know. Try and sound like an officer."
"Okay, I hope you're right."
A few seconds later, the comm operator came back on. "They seem to have bought the story. We're cleared to land."
"Dropping on my mark."
The ship fell like a stone, decelerating only at the last, bone-wrenching moment. Halfway down, the guns opened up with a shuddering roar.
"Torquing up here, Chief."
"Don't worry about it, I don't intend to take this thing off again."
The saucer hovered as its landing legs extended, and then it touched down. The passengers and crew unstrapped and stood up. Rance looked all around the cabin.
"If we run into a problem, let me do the talking."
The port opened. The saucer had set down some distance from where an e-vac was running its drive prior to a fast lift. The e-vacs, too, were drawing fire on the way in and out. The squat ugly ship was vibrating hard enough to pop its seams, and the noise was deafening. When it finally rose into the air, it went up screaming like a banshee, cramming on every last measure of speed. The backwash produced an instant dust storm all across the embarkation area. The men leaned into the hot wind as they climbed out of the port. The sound of the climbing ship died away, to be replaced by yelling in their helmets.
"Get down! Incoming! You by the saucer, get under cover."
Rance looked quickly around. There were some half- 1 finished slit trenches on their left. The digging equipment I seemed to have been abandoned by its crew.
"Run!"
They sprinted and dived. Orange fireballs streamed] from the jungle below them in a lazy curve that ended in] a tight group of explosions. A ground transport blew up. | Pieces of metal pattered down around the crouching J men.
"I've had better welcomes." "No shit."
"This is a place to get out of."
The firing ceased. There were three other figures also I sheltering in the trench. The trio were all sappers. They] had to be the digging crew, and they were probably the I ones who had shouted the warning. Rance called out to j them.
"Is that the end of it?"
"Stay down. There's likely to be a second burst. They mostly dust us off after a ship gets away. The bastards usually do us a second time to see if they can catch us I creeping out of our holes."
In absolute confirmation of the sapper's words, a sec- j ond burst of fire hit the area. Again it stopped. The sappers left it a couple more minutes before they raised their j heads.
"Looks like they've given it a rest." "How long have they been out there?" "They started last night." "Have they been hitting the perimeter?" "Not yet. So far they've just set up a couple of firing j positions."
"Who's in command here?"
"There ain't nobody in command. The officers are all 1 too busy getting their ass off planet. The closest thing is j the field police who are going around shooting everyone they don't like the look of."
"So where do I go to hook up with my ship's e-vacs?"
"You could try the traffic control dome. That's the big one over in the center. I doubt you'll get too far, though. We heard that they had just two standards to get everyone off this rock."
"Two standards? Is that all?"