Drifter's War (15 page)

The long mournful wail of a death trumpet floated across the top of the hill. They couldn't see it from the inside of the cave but a funeral was in progress. The nineteenth funeral that morning. Twenty-seven villagers had died during the Il Ronnian bombing attack. The aerospace fighters had attacked the village. Some of the survivors were hidden in the rubble. The rest were burying their dead.

Lando shrugged. The motion caused some dirt to dribble down his neck. Della had designed the ambush herself so he didn't take her comments all that seriously. "Well, Cy
is
cooking up some explosives. Or he's trying to, anyway."

The smuggler looked at his wrist term. "And according to Dru-2l, the Il Ronnians will arrive any moment now."

Della made a face. "Get real. How would he know that? These people have no command and control, no training cadre, no troops, no weapons, and no intelligence apparatus. So how could they have access to information like that?"

"Listen," Lando replied calmly, "isn't that the sound of an engine?"

The death trumpet stopped in mid-note and Della cocked her head. Sure enough, there was the sound of an engine, and the distinctive
whop, whop, whop
of helicopter blades. The Il Ronnians were right on time.

She smiled. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you?"

He grinned. "Dru-21 and Wexel-15 have a little something up their sleeves, that's all. Remember the computer they call 'God'? Well, it told them. Sol only knows how it found out. Give me a kiss."

She did and then both of them turned their attention to the world outside.

Their view was somewhat restricted. All they could see were piles of rubble, what had been the town square, and the fields beyond.

The square was large enough to accommodate a helicopter or air car. And due to the fact that the area was relatively clear of debris, it made a tempting LZ. A combat-experienced pilot would avoid it like the plague.

But Della hoped the Il Ronnian pilot would be either a novice, or a more experienced sort, who would see what she wanted him to see: a demoralized group of villagers burying their dead. They'd soon know if she was right.

The chopper had come in low, and skimmed just above the crops, so Lando got his first glimpse of the aircraft as it came up over the top of the hill.

The Il Ronnian aircraft had a large boxy fuselage that bristled with rockets, auto cannon, and energy weapons. It hovered for a moment as the pilot scanned the hilltop for a place to land.

Lando was forced to look down as the helicopter's enormous rotors drove waves of grit across the square. Suddenly he felt an emptiness where the bottom of his stomach should be. It was a stupid idea. There was no way that a couple of humans and some inexperienced heavies could take on the Sand Sept troopers and win. Especially when armed with little more than some rocks and a single handgun.

That's the way Lando felt. His brain said something entirely different. It pointed out that if they wanted weapons, then the best place to get them was from the Il Ronnians themselves. A time honored technique used by insurgents everywhere. The only problem was that it was damned hard to do. Lando wished that he'd never agreed to the ambush.

Reeg sat between the pilot and the co-pilot. He looked out through scratched plastic. The aerospace fighters had reduced the village to little more than rubble. He couldn't see a single wall that stood more than head high. This sort of wholesale destruction would have to end if they wanted to find the computer intact. He made a note to mention it to Teex.

A group of villagers watched from lower down the hillside. He saw a motorized cart loaded with bundles. Bundles about the size and shape of bodies. A funeral then, or the geek equivalent. Something about the scene, about the way that the geeks watched them, bothered Reeg, but he couldn't put a name on it. The pilot interrupted his thoughts.

"How about the open space? It is either that or the flatlands down below."

Reeg was pulled in two directions. The town square looked too good, too obvious, the sort of place that screamed "ambush."

But the flatlands were unappealing as well. The lower part of the hillsides, the part where the crops ended, were almost entirely bare.

What if they got halfway up the hill and ran into an ambush? The insertion team would be easy meat from up above. But that was stupid. The geeks didn't have weapons or the knowledge to use them if they did. Still, there was the incident in the temple to consider, and only a fool makes the same mistake twice. Reeg turned to the pilot.

"We will land in the open space. But strafe it first. That should spring the trap if there is one."

The pilot nodded, unlocked his auto cannons, and squeezed the trigger mounted on his stick.

There was a roar of sound and as the helicopter shook, twin streams of tracer hit the rubble and threw up fountains of dirt and dust.

The pilot was good. He walked the cannon fire all over the hilltop by nosing up and down while simultaneously rotating the chopper on its axis. The fire stopped as suddenly as it began.

The cannon fire produced a huge cloud of dust. It drifted toward the west. Reeg watched carefully but saw no signs of movement or return fire. The ruins were what they appeared to be. Ruins and nothing more. The pilot looked his way and the file leader nodded.

The ship moved forward, flared slightly, and landed with a noticeable thump. The side doors were open and the first members of the insertion team had already spilled out when it came to him.

The villagers should have run, should have hid, should have done anything but stand there. Unless they'd been told to stand there for a reason! Unless the villagers were bait!

Reeg opened his mouth to say something, realized that it was too late, and hit the harness release instead. He spoke to the pilot via the team freq on his way toward the rear of the aircraft.

"Keep your eyes open and be ready to lift. I have a bad feeling about this one."

The pilot gave a short jerky nod, used his tail to flip a switch, and scanned the LZ. Ground pounders. They were all alike. Worried about nothing. The geeks wouldn't stand a chance against his guns.

Lando could hear his pulse pound in his ears as the Il Ronnians jumped out of the helicopter. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Wait a minute, here came one more, an officer or a noncom from the look of him. That made sixteen altogether. All heavily armed. They were huge, foreboding, and their tails made them look like the devils of human mythology, only worse.

Lando licked dry lips. There might as well have been a hundred Il Ronnians for all the chance they had of taking them. There were twenty-four heavies hidden in and around the rubble, or had been prior to the cannon fire, and they didn't stand a chance. Had there been some way to cancel the ambush he would have done so. But there wasn't so he couldn't.

Besides, Della had overall command, and wasn't so easily discouraged. She looked at Lando, nodded, and put the toy whistle to her lips. The noise was loud and shrill. A lot of things happened all at once.

Heavies erupted out of holes dug in the square. Some were within inches of Il Ronnian troopers. They grabbed ankles and pulled the soldiers down.

Others had hidden in caves or holes in the rubble. Some were dead, victims of the ground fire, but most were still alive. They came forward like zombies, coated with a layer of white dust, hands reaching for Il Ronnian throats.

Those troopers not already engaged in hand-to-hand combat fired their automatic weapons. The heavies charged anyway. Some staggered and fell but the rest kept on coming, and some of them made it. Work-hardened hands closed around Il Ronnian throats and held on even in death.

Della stood in a marksman's stance, feet spread wide apart, weapon held in both hands. She was terribly exposed but felt that she couldn't take cover unless the heavies could do likewise.

Della selected a soldier at random. The Sand Sept troopers wore armor but their visors were relatively weak. She did it the way the marine combat instructors had trained her to do it. One shot to break the visor and one to kill. One-two, one-two, one-two.

The helicopter pilot activated his weapons systems but found that he couldn't fire. Not with his own troops in the way.

Reeg's blood ran ice-cold. His worst fears had been realized. There was no question as to the proper course of action. Save as many of the team as he could, get the hell out of there, and return in force. The geeks would be punished, oh, how they would be punished, but that was then. This was now.

"Break contact! Break contact! Form on me!"

The Sand Sept troopers were well disciplined and did their best to obey. A handful, five or six, backed toward the chopper firing from the hip.

One of them staggered when a bullet went through his face shield, then staggered again as a second shot passed through his skull.

"A projectile weapon! Where the hell did the indigs get projectile weapons?"

Then Reeg saw her, a human female, aiming a handgun his way. He'd heard that human females could fight but had never seen one before. He turned in her direction but a retreating trooper blocked his lane of fire. There were two shots. The trooper staggered and fell, blood gushing from the hole where his face had been. Reeg looked for a shot but the human had changed position. Damn! Damn! Damn!

"Get on the chopper, and get on now!"

A couple of troopers made it and Reeg hurried to follow their example. That's when he saw a human male roll under the helicopter. He had some sort of cable. The geeks purpose was clear enough: to connect the cable to the aircraft's undercarriage and prevent it from taking off! By the holy fluid itself they had nerve!

Reeg directed a hail of slugs in the human's direction and saw him roll away.

Reeg ground his teeth in frustration as he climbed aboard the ship and made his way toward the front. Thirteen troopers! The geeks had scrubbed thirteen of his best troopers and done it with little more than their bare hands! Teex would be furious, but worse than that, disappointed.

Reeg felt a terrible shame come over him. It started somewhere deep in his solar plexus and radiated out through his entire body.

The helicopter rocked from side to side as it left the ground. Reeg fell against the edge of the hatch, recovered, and leaned toward the pilot. His voice was a growl.

"Kill them! Kill everything that moves!"

The pilot paused, knowing there could be Il Ronnian wounded out there, but decided the file leader was correct. He signaled assent with his tail and squeezed the trigger.

Fountains of rubble and dust shot upward as heavy-caliber slugs churned their way through the ruins.

That accomplished, he switched to rockets. The pilot fired them in pairs, marching them across the hilltop, turning the entire area into a hell of flying rock and metal.

Lando dived into a shallow depression and did his best to dig down toward the center of the planet. Cannon fire rippled across in front of him and angled away. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the cannon fire was over.

Lando was already pushing himself up and away from the ground when the first pair of rockets hit. The sound was deafening. The smuggler dropped back into the hole and covered his ears. Tiny bits of red-hot rock and metal rained down across his neck and back. He was glad that Melissa, Cap, and Cy were safe, and was worried about Della.

Then, when it seemed as if the strafing would never end, it suddenly did. The helicopter lifted, slid down across the hillside, and roared toward home.

The survivors were almost entirely silent as they emerged from hiding.

Lando stood and looked around for Della.

Della braced herself and pushed. The Sand Sept trooper's armor made a scraping noise as he rolled onto the pavement. He had grabbed her at the exact moment when her pistol had clicked empty. They had fallen to the ground with him on top. And then, before the Il Ronnian could follow up, the helicopter pilot had unknowingly shot him in the back. Not once but numerous times. And at least one of the heavy-caliber slugs had penetrated the trooper's armor.

Lando helped the bounty hunter to her feet.

The heavies appeared one at a time crawling out of caves and rising from piles of rubble. Some were bleeding, some supported each other, and all were dazed.

A light, the same female they had met earlier, appeared and moved among the wounded. A remote part of Lando's mind took note of the sophisticated medical instruments that she used. The village doctor perhaps? Something to look into later. Any sort of protracted war requires lots of medical personnel. Speaking of which, how many lives had been lost already?

Lando counted heads. There were damned few. Six, seven, eight. Eight out of twenty-four. A third of the heavies were dead.

It was bad, but not all that bad when you considered that only three of the sixteen Il Ronnian Sand Sept troopers had escaped. Or so it seemed to Lando.

But what did the heavies think? Outside of Wexel-15, and a few other veterans of the temple massacre, the constructs had never fought before, never taken casualties, and never seen the horror of war.

Now they had and there was the very real possibility that they would change their minds, give up the fight, and capitulate. Or so it seemed until Wexel-15 lurched into view. The heavy had numerous cuts, a coating of dust, and a huge grin. Lando staggered under the weight of a friendly pat.

"Greetings, friend! It was a victory, was it not? We have weapons now and the Il Ronnians will die in large numbers."

Lando looked at Della. Both of them smiled. "Spoken like a true general, Wexel-15. Spoken like a true general."

12

Quarter Sand Sept Commander Teex checked to make sure that all the fasteners on his class-one uniform were closed and that his cape hung straight. Then it was time to assume his best "I'm in command" facial expression and move his tail into the attentive-subordinate position.

Aggressive but obedient. Those were the traits of the ideal officer. A rather contradictory mix of qualities it seemed to him.