Just in time: an emerging figure ducked back, firing two wild rounds.
Wild rounds, yes—but they weren’t blind, this time: they could see him just as well as he could see them, now that the smoke had been sucked out. Time to go.
Dragging the rescue ball so that it was behind his body, Trevor let the MP-5 fall loose on its lanyard and pulled the safety sleeve off the pinch contacts. He pressed them together.
The blast was not loud in the thin Martian atmosphere, but it tumbled him off the side of the rescue ball. Catching up the MP-5 in his right hand, and the ball in his left, he toggled his helmet’s commo bar with his jaw. “Crossbow, I am removing the package.”
“Quarrel, I see your new doorway. We are locked and off-safety.”
At the jagged hole that he had blasted in the side of the dome, Trevor had to pause to maneuver the rescue ball through without slicing it open on the torn edges of the prefab, all the time keeping his body angled so he could keep an eye on the passageway. Good thing: two spacesuited figures came around that corner, one high, one low—the high one firing with his own MP-5.
Trevor crouched, aimed, dumped the entire magazine: the standing shooter went down, the other one put a crease in the left arm of Trevor’s suit before ducking back behind the doorjamb.
Trevor rolled the rescue ball through the gap—feeling the contents thump awkwardly around as he did so—and popped out into the tan-pink dust swirls of a fifty-kph Martian breeze. “I am out—and it is a hot exfil, Crossbow. Repeat, hot exfil.”
“You call it, Quarrel. I have you only five meters from the target zone, and I see thermal blooms in the building behind you.”
“Do you have smoke?”
“Negative: live warheads only.”
“Give me my range.”
“You are at twelve meters from target. Do you see the gully—at your two o’clock?”
“Roger. Good eyes.”
“You are still danger-close.”
“Just fire on my mark.”
Trevor swerved in the direction of the gully, felt something clip him in the rear of his right thigh as he pushed the rescue ball over its edge. As he dove into the natural trench himself, he yelled, “Mark!”
There was a half second of silence, and then, even through the thin Martian atmosphere, there was a momentary, soaring roar—like an up-dopplering freight train driven by jets—which passed almost directly overhead. It was cut short by a tremendous blast behind him, which sent fragments of stone and metal spattering into and over the trench, and which painted the surrounding rocks with a flickering glaze of orange and red light. Then the light was gone, and, a moment later, the concluding rumble of the detonation had faded as well.
Trevor stood up as the last pieces of debris came down. The entire northeast corner of the dome was gone, some of the edges pounded inward, others torn outwards. Thermal imaging showed the heat of some quickly smothering fires—and one or two prone, rapidly cooling biomasses. Any others were either cowering further inside—or had been reduced to protoplasm.
“Quarrel, we show all clear. Confirm.”
“Crossbow, the LZ is clear.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen seconds. Quarrel, your biomonitors are showing us three suit breaches, two wounds. One of those breaches hasn’t been fully autosealed. Recommend you use suit patches all speed.”
“Already on it, Crossbow.”
Ten seconds later, the transatmospheric assault VTOL—a cubist wasp with ordnance bristling under its wings and belly—swerved into sight, sucking up coils and curlicues of the tan-pink dust as it banked, straightened, and hovered, just a foot off the ground. Trevor picked up the rescue ball, discovered that his left leg was wobbly, got a hand from a tan-and-gray spacesuited figure who hopped down from the payload bay. Together, they hoisted the ball inside the VTOL with one heave.
“Thanks, Carlos.”
“N’sweat, sir. Up you go.”
Leg shaking, Trevor rolled into the VTOL, heard the warning klaxon and saw the orange lights: imminent high-speed closure of the bay’s pressure door. Which it did with a bump and a metallic slap. Trevor lay still for a second, feeling the noradrenal rush begin to fade, prepared to suppress the post-op shakes his body—and mind—always wanted to have, but which he never permitted. Then he propped himself up on his elbows—
And saw a woman emerge from the rescue ball like Venus on the half-shell, her figure still discernible through the heavy clothes and tattered duct-tape remains. She must have seen him looking at her: raven-black hair fanned out as she quickly turned her head toward him. Her startling green eyes smiled when they met his—and tears started to run down her cheeks.