The attacking wall surged closer. And beyond the massed ranks, Garroway saw a larger shadow, a hulking, humanoid form rising above the smaller Ahannu like a giant, with massive forearms, stooped shoulders, and gold eyes tiny compared to the broad swath of face, almost hidden deep within bony sockets. It carried a long and clumsy-looking weapon, another gauss gun of some kind, but so long that no smaller Ahannu could have wielded it.
“My God!” Garvey screamed. “What the hell is that?”
“Just kill it!” Foster barked. “Pour it on!”
Laser fire snapped and flashed across the monster’s heavily armored form, eliciting a scream like doomsday. It raised its weapon; Garroway felt the high-velocity round shriek low overhead, felt the concussion behind him.
“Second Squad!” Honey Deere yelled. “Hit the deck!”
Garroway threw himself forward, landing facedown on the rock floor. An instant later lightning snapped and glared overhead with a stuttering burst of thunder. Outside, he’d not noticed the squad’s plasma gun in action in all the swirling noise and confusion. Inside this enclosed chamber, however, the rapid-fire bolts of charged plasma banished darkness in a dazzling explosion of light and sound.
Garroway felt the noise fade out as his helmet compensated, and his visual feed darkened as the input filters snapped in. Deere’s plasma gun loosed bolts in such rapid succession that the effect was of a single flickering bolt of lightning.
And whatever that lightning touched vanished, exploding in clouds of vapor and sprays of blood and charred tissue. The giant Ahannu collapsed in a heap; smaller Ahannu were scrambling back, falling over one another in their rush to escape.
Someone cut loose with a wild rebel yell. And then the Marines were alone once more in the chamber, surrounded as before by piles of burned, torn, and flame-mutilated bodies.
Other Marines rushed up then, pushing past 2nd Squad. First Platoon was coming through the tunnel now, surrounding the battered remnants of Third Platoon.
Two more casualties. That single round from the giant’s gauss gun had smashed through Chuck Cawley’s helmet, obliterating his head, before hitting Cheryl Foster in the torso and tearing her apart. With only seven Marines left out of the original twelve, 2nd Squad was seriously under strength.
“Stand down, Third Platoon,” Lieutenant Kerns ordered. “We’re pulling back to the entrance.”
Odd. Garroway felt a strange combination of relief and disappointment. He was happy to be pulled out of the battle line, yeah…but he also wanted to see this thing through.
Mostly, though, he was just too damned tired to even think. He trudged back to the entrance with the others, emerging in what looked like bright daylight until his visual filters accommodated. The cavern battle must have taken place in almost total blackness, and he hadn’t even realized it.
Outside, the overcast was beginning to break up, with patches of dark green sky showing through black and deep maroon-lit clouds. His helmet AI informed him that it was dawn at the LZ and would remain so for the next several hours. Ishtar’s lazy rotation made for long, long periods of night and day, with a lingering, drawn-out transition between the two.
The rest of the ARLT was completing the job of securing the LZ, setting up a perimeter against possible attacks from off the mountain and laying out guide strips for incoming robot supply landers. A supply dump had already been set up on the north side of the ledge; someone had raised a UFR flag on a makeshift staff there, the red, white, and blue cracking hard in the wind.
“Pick up fresh grenade mags and power packs,” Valdez ordered. “And check your battle armor for breaches, feed failures, and power drain.”
As they replenished their ammo stores, a squad hustled past in single file, vanishing through the yawning gateway into the mountain.
“What’s going on?” Kat Vinita asked.
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Womicki replied. “Nobody’ll tell us nothin’ anyway.”
“I just had word come down from the captain,” Valdez announced to the squad. “Twenty minutes rest. Then it’s back to work!”
“Semper fi, man,” Dunne said, laughing. “The Corps is always looking after us.”
With a groan, Garroway slumped to the ground and was almost instantly asleep.
Chamber of Warrior Preparation
Deeps of An-Kur
Third Period of Dawn
“Our forces retreat,” Tu-Kur-La said. He felt a crushing disappointment, mingled with fear. The scenes they were watching, of a fierce battle within the flame-lit passages of An-Kur itself, were coming from the mind of a Commander-of-Sixties actually participating in the battle. Much of that commander’s emotion was transmitted through the organic connection that linked them.