The slaughter in those close quarters was indescribable, a bloody, searing, nightmare of darkness and burned flesh; of hideous shrieks; of bodies piled four deep on the cavern floor, gruesomely burned, blast-torn, and mutilated.
And then the Ahannu forces dissolved away, fleeing as the Marines advanced. The tunnel opened into a broader chamber, and now the Marines came under fire as Ahannu god-warriors carrying a variety of clumsy-looking gauss-fired weapons opened up from perches on the cavern walls and from the cover of a spill of boulders ahead. Sergeant DaSilva staggered, then collapsed, a neat, round hole punched through her helmet faceplate. Staff Sergeant Stryker screamed as his left arm was torn away by a massive round ripping through his shoulder. And there were more of those damned giant Ahannu up there at the end of the tunnel, firing their bigger-than-life gauss guns.
For the next ten seconds—an eternity in a close and desperate firefight like this one—lasers and plasma bolts snapped and crackled across the cavern. A barrage of grenades crashed among the boulders at the far end of the room.
Valdez feared that the detonations were about to bring the walls of the cave down on top of them all. “Hold the grenade fire!” she called out. “We’ll cause a cave-in!”
“I doubt it, Gunny,” Staff Sergeant Ostergaard replied, shouting to be heard above the racket. “After a few thousand years of major seismic quakes and the shock of that BFG going off, I doubt there’s anything we can do worse!”
Valdez digested this, then nodded in her helmet. “Right, Marines! Hit ’em with everything you got!”
Again the Ahannu defenders began to melt away, scurrying off into side tunnels or vanishing up the curve of the main passageway ahead. The Marines advanced, all save Stryker, who was rapidly fading into shock. Sergeant Knowles looked up at Kerns and shook her head. “His suit medic is fried, Lieutenant. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Valdez said.
“And we can’t spare the assets to send him back,” Kerns decided. “Bring him along.”
Valdez noticed an amber light blinking weakly on her helmet display. With the net down, they were relying solely on radio communications now. The amber light indicated that they were picking up the signal from the backpack nuke in the control center, somewhere up ahead.
“Hey, Lieutenant—”
“I see it, Valdez.”
“Yeah. This is the cavern where we left the relay. The warhead ought to be another two hundred meters up that way.”
“We got company, gang,” Gunnery Sergeant Horst warned. “Ahead and behind!”
Ahannu god-warriors were spilling back into the cavern. The Marines had advanced far enough that that they were in danger of being surrounded, as enemy fighters emerged from tunnel mouths and cave passageways…including the opening of the narrow tunnel from which they’d just emerged.
“Perimeter defense!” Kerns ordered. “Fire at will!”
“Bad guys at three o’clock!”
“Pour it on ’em!”
“Task Force Kerns, Task Force Kerns, do you copy? Over…”
“Hold it, people!” Valdez yelled. “Quiet! Radio call comin’ through!”
“Task Force Kerns, this is Dragon One. Do you copy?” The words were badly distorted, blurred by static.
“We hear you, Dragon One!” Kerns shouted. “You’re weak! Repeat, transmission weak!”
“Report—…pon magnetic…building…hurry—” The static built to a shrill squeal.
“Say again, Dragon One!” Kerns shouted. “Repeat and boost your gain! Your message breaking up!”
“I say again…mountain…mag…field building up. We think…Derna…”
“Shit,” Ostergaard said. “The Frogs are getting ready to fire their BFG again.”
The Ahannu rushed the circle of Marines. For several seconds nothing could be heard above the crack and snap of lasers, the shrieks of horribly burned and wounded attackers, the battle yells of the beleaguered Marines.
Valdez’s helmet indicators were showing it now, the steady, throbbing pulse of Objective Krakatoa’s magnetic field, building steadily toward a deadly climax. She couldn’t hear the radio call from Dragon One any longer.
“Lieutenant?” she called. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it through to the nuke in time!”
“I know,” Kerns replied, snapping off a trio of laser pulses as the Ahannu horde surged forward. “Any suggestions?”
Valdez concentrated for a moment on her own fire, coolly taking down one of the giant Ahannu just before it fired its gauss gun. The idea behind Task Force Kerns had originally been to reprogram the nuke with a time delay, enough to let them get out of the mountain before the thing blew. She had to admit to herself that it had never looked like a real good possibility since any attack by the enemy would have thrown a major wrench into the works.