“Look at this,” Garroway said. “Is that blood? Brains?”
“No,” Hanson said, immediately interested. She knelt beside the body, looking closely. “Their blood is yellow-orange. See that yellow liquid? I don’t know what that is.” She pulled a vial from a jumpsuit pocket and began collecting some of the purple jelly.
“Careful, ma’am,” Dunne said. “We don’t know about their chemistry yet, and you don’t have gloves.”
“Ahannu body chemistry is pretty much compatible with ours, Marine,” she said. “If this stuff didn’t poison him, then it shouldn’t poison me.”
“You can’t be sure of that, ma’am,” Womicki pointed out. “Some toxins will poison one species and not another. These creatures aren’t even mammals.”
“I think it’s safe enough,” Hanson said. Still, she used care in securing the sample, wiping the vial carefully on a rag when Dunne offered one to her. “This stuff is organic, but it’s not part of normal Ahannu biochemistry, as far as we know. Damn, I wish I had access to the net! This is important! I think—”
A sharp crack sounded across the courtyard and something struck the front of Building 10 across the street, striking sparks bright against the shadows.
Garroway lunged forward, knocking Hanson off her knees and flat on the pavement, covering her with his armored body. Another crack sounded, closer this time.
“The east pyramid!” Womicki yelled, raising his laser rifle to his shoulder. “It’s coming from the top of the pyramid!”
The other Marines brought their weapons to bear, triggering a barrage at the presumed sniper’s nest. The white-stone pyramid—Garroway remembered it was called the Pyramid of the Eye—glowered down into the Legation compound from the eastern edge of the city, offering a magnificent view of the goings-on within.
“Now hear this, now hear this!” came over Garroway’s armor radio receiver. “Battle stations, battle stations! We are under attack!”
And then the first crude rockets began arrowing into the compound.
22
26 JUNE 2148
Marine Bivouac
Legation Compound
New Sumer, Ishtar
1642 hours ALT
Garroway rolled off Hanson, snatching up his rifle and taking aim at the pyramid to the east. Linking his helmet display to the LR-2120’s optics and damping the input down to infrared, he could see movement in the small peaked hut high atop the building’s truncated tip. He magnified the image and caught a glimpse of a face, a human face, strangely painted in the yellows and greens of the heat-sensitive sight, leaning into a bulky gauss rifle as the sniper took careful aim. It looked like he was drawing a bead directly on Garroway’s faceplate.
But Garroway was faster by a fraction of a second, his thought-click triggering the laser and loosing a five-megajoule pulse. The enemy soldier’s head exploded in a burst of brilliant yellow and green, and the figure toppled backward into the purple and blue shadows of the building.
Something hissed into the courtyard, trailing a streamer of white smoke, struck the side of a building, and exploded with a sharp bang. Bits of metal pinged off Garroway’s armor. “This way, lady!” he yelled, grabbing Hanson’s arm above her elbow and bodily dragging her across the pavement.
“Let go! Let go!” she yelled. “I can move by myself!”
Pivoting, he propelled her forward, sending her flying into the open doorway of Building 10. Another rocket exploded behind him, picking him up and catapulting him sideways into the street.
His armor absorbed the punishment and he lurched to his feet, laser at the ready. Where the hell was that fire coming from?
Over the wall. Rocket contrails were arching high above the northern wall as projectiles came raining down on the Legation compound. He jumped into the open doorway himself as part of the roof crumbled in a savage blast, showering onto the street in an avalanche of debris, water, and smoke.
“Are you all right?” he asked. The woman nodded. Her eyes were wide and there was a bloody scratch on her cheek, but she appeared unhurt. “Good. Stay here, stay down!”
He ran into the street again, where other Marines were gathering, moving in a running surge of armored shapes toward the northern wall.
At first he thought they were going to go out through the high, arched gate on that side and find the rocket launchers, but a Marine with a massive handgun waved them toward a flight of stone steps leading up the inside of the wall. “To the parapets!” he yelled, using his suit speakers to boom the command out across the courtyard. “Repel the assault!”
Garroway pounded up the steps and took his place alongside a half dozen other Marines already there. The Legation compound wall was broad and heavy, four meters tall, five meters wide at the base, and nearly four wide at the top, the faces slightly concave to render them quakeproof, with a meter-high crenellated parapet along both the inner and the outer sides. Crouching behind the low outer barricade, he peered down into the northern quarter of the city.