She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her with his back to her. “Yes,” she said. “Homemade rockets. Primitive stuff.”
“It’s still deadly enough,” he replied. “Especially if you’re not wearing armor. C’mon. Down this way.”
He led her sharply right, into the mouth of a narrow alley between a storehouse and Building 4, the Mission Recreational Center. He was moving at a jog that ate up the ground, and she found herself having to run all out to keep up with him. Damn, I’m not used to this, she thought. Too much sitting around in the office trading gossip and eating native sholats. She was sweating heavily in the humid heat, and her jumpsuit was rapidly soaking through.
They emerged on Alexander Boulevard, at the edge of the native compound, and turned southeast, toward the Pyramid of the Eye.
Traditional Ahannu architecture ran heavily toward step pyramids and conical, two-and three-story huts. Some xenoarcheologists thought the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia had been inspired by the buildings of the An colony destroyed there in about 8000 B.C., though there was ample evidence that the Builders had used the same design much earlier, on Mars and elsewhere.
In fact, the structure dubbed the Pyramid of the Eye was almost certainly not Ahannu but something much older, erected in the Ishtaran jungle by the Builders as much as half a million years ago.
Perhaps the ancient An had gotten the idea of the step pyramid from the Builders.
Or perhaps it was simply a very common, very sturdy and easily raised architectural style, common to hundreds of civilizations across the galaxy. Nonetheless, the stark power of the ancient ziggurat contrasted sharply with the low, dome structures of mud and brick clustered around its base.
She was reminded again of something she’d seen on Earth—the ruins of ancient Egyptian temples, palaces, and workers’ huts clustered about the bases of the three much older, enigmatic pyramids on the Giza Plateau on Earth.
Aiken abruptly stopped, spinning to his left. Nichole saw nothing but shadows beneath an awning extended from the side of a native shop, but the Marine triggered his laser, firing from the hip. The heavy weapon gave a low-throated hum, deep and loud enough to make her teeth ache, and the beam, made visible by dust particles and ionizing air, sparkled in yellow-white brilliance for nearly a full second.
Rock exploded from the face of the storefront. By the brief glare of incandescence, Nichole saw a shape—a human shape—stumbling from the scattered shadows.
It was a man, a Sag-ura, naked and shaven-headed. Judging by the fine network of tattooed scales all over his body, the colorful face markings, and the keen-edged chakhul in his hands, he was one of the Sag-ura slave warriors of the God’s Hand. Aiken’s shot had sliced at an angle down across his torso, nearly severing his head and left arm from his chest in an explosion of blood and charred flesh.
Nichole didn’t scream, not quite, but she let out a yelp. “What have you done?”
“Getting you the hell out of here. Come on!”
“You killed him!” But then she realized how stupid that protest sounded. The slave soldier had certainly been trying to kill them, and if his spear was useless against a Marine’s battle armor, he wouldn’t have had much trouble with the light plasweave fabric of her mission jumpsuit. According to some of the stories collected by the Sag-ura Cultural Studies Group, the Sakura-sag were not known for taking prisoners.
The Pyramid of the Eye loomed ahead now, its truncated peak bathed in harsh, white light. A pair of Wasps orbited the structure, protecting a larger, more massive flier resting on the uppermost platform. She could see people up there, tiny black stick figures moving against the lights.
There was a flash and a loud bang, and Aiken stumbled. Nichole could hardly see what happened next, so quickly did it unfold, but she had the blurred impression of more humanoid figures emerging from shadows between several of the buildings along the north side of the boulevard.
Aiken dropped to one knee, recovering, pivoting with his cumbersome laser. The weapon hummed again, and by its flash she saw the attackers, a handful of Sag-ura led by a full-caste Ahannu warrior.
It was a big one, taller than a man, and more massive. The folks back home called them reptiles, though they were more properly classified as parareptilians. The scales, the slit pupils, the cranial crest, the fighting claws, all contributed to the lizard-like feel of the thing. Literally designed for fighting, it didn’t have the intelligence of Ahannu god-warriors, but it was quick and it was cunning. The god-weapon clutched in its six-fingered hands didn’t help either.
It fired a second time, and something exploded against Aiken’s armor. It staggered him, but he brought the laser to bear, firing into the Ahannu’s chest. It was wearing a quilted cloth uniform or armor of some kind, but that provided scant protection from the Marine’s return fire. It keened, a shrill, baying wail, then dropped to the pavement, heavily muscled legs kicking and twitching.