by Leo Champion
Mullins lunged for him, bringing his rifle around, knowing it would be too slow and he was going to die—
Boom-boom-boom came heavily from Mondragon, gunshots that weren’t the M-25’s crack, but the man with the revolver staggered backwards.
Mondragon had let his rifle drop to its sling from his shoulders, was holding a big, long-barrelled revolver instead. His holdout gun. Probably best for close quarters.
Fire slashed at them as they jumped over the man’s body. The ambushers were working their way through Diamond North, coming up on him and Mondragon from all sides.
Sooner or later they’d be overwhelmed, unless they could make it to the blockhouse. And that was only a dubious safety.
Hill, Janja, Mandvi, Mullins thought. Don’t just sit there in shock – do something!
* * *
“They’ve gotten us pinned,” Janja breathed to Mandvi, Senechal – who now uneasily carried Reuter’s rifle – and a couple of the Black Gangers who’d gathered in the lee of Janja’s rock.
Almost to prove his point, another bullet ricocheted off a nearby rock. The bastards definitely had his range, but there seemed to be only a couple of them there. The rest of the hostiles had fled from the ambush positions into the waystation, going after whatever friends in there had foiled the ambush.
These two were keeping Janja down while the rest of them tried to kill Janja’s friends, and if there was one thing that was not okay in the eyes of Lance-Corporal, formerly in Rajputana First Lieutenant, Sujit Janja? It was trying to kill his friends.
“They want us pinned.” He raised his voice so it would carry beyond the cluster of men with him as he continued.
Drawing breath. He envisaged where he thought that bastard was, mentally preparing himself. His rifle was ready and his body tensed,
“You do not,” he snarled as he got to his feet, rifle up, and began to dash forwards, “give the enemy what he wants!”
Mandvi’s shots whipped past him as Janja ran, going for a flattish rock, incoming fire kicking a spray of sand up just to his left. He fired back as he went down, at a man in a definite foxhole not far away, and the man disappeared – might or might not have gotten him.
Shooting. Mandvi joined him a moment later behind the low flat rock. The helicopter pilot and one of the Black Gangers – Leon Smith, with a sharpened spade clutched in front him like the weapon it had become – joined him a moment later.
“Safety catch,” Mandvi murmured to the pilot.
“Huh?”
A lone round whipped over them, evidence that the dug-in guys hadn’t been completely neutralized.
“Your rifle. Safety catch. It’s on.”
“Oh,” the pilot said sheepishly, adjusting it to semi-auto.
More shots came, and Janja heard M-25s firing back. Hill shouted something, and there came the boom boom of Dashratha’s shotgun. On the other side of the path, others were running forwards.
Mandvi carefully raised himself above the level of the cover, scanning. Squeezed off a round at a flicker of movement.
Janja steadied himself for another push.
“Cover us, Hill!” he shouted.
“Go!” came Hill’s voice, and the guys on the north side of the path began to fire.
Janja fixed the bayonet to his rifle and readied himself.
“You guys,” he called to his group as he got to his feet and began to move forwards, “follow me!”
* * *
A burst of fire narrowly missed Mullins as he stopped at the edge of an alley between buildings, about eight feet across.
More fire sparked off the concrete of the alley.
“Got that way covered, I think,” Mondragon breathed.
Mullins could hear them all around, shouting to each other. At some point they’d surround the two or simply chase them into gunsights, and Paul Mullins and Diego Mondragon would be dead.
It was simple as that. Fire from the blockhouse could slow the process a little but not stop it. And then it would be the turn of Lennon and the Black Ganger in the blockhouse…
* * *
“Follow me!” Janja shouted as he bolted upwards and forwards, at the trench where the last man had been. Fire from Hill and Jorgensen, a shotgun blast from Dashratha, laced the top of the foxhole – and then, with Mandvi at his back, the pilot and the two Black Gangers on their heels – they reached it.
There was a man at the bottom, one arm limp while he desperately attempted to one-handedly reload the M-25 held under his arm.
He brought the gun up anyway as he saw Janja, but the lance-corporal’s gun was already aimed down and he drilled the enemy with a neat three-round burst through the head.
Objective achieved, threat neutralized, next objective.
Come to their aid of their rescuers who from the shooting and shouting, sounded like they might be having a bad time amidst the buildings of the waystation.
“Follow me and get ‘em!” Janja shouted, raising his rifle and, bayonet ready, ran for the buildings.
* * *
Mullins nodded at Mondragon, who held a fragmentation grenade. They had to run one way or the other, buy a little more time.
They were running out of space, getting toward the far side of Diamond North. There were only so many buildings for them to retreat past, and then there’d be rocky ground without cover to speak of.
Then they’d be caught-up with and shot to bits.
But for now they were going in the direction of the guys who’d just cut them off.
“Cook it?” Mondragon suggested.
Mullins hated that concept; it was how Smith had almost gotten himself and a bunch of other guys killed on Chauncy, and he’d never forgotten the scare.
He shook his head. “Just aim it at the center where they can’t reach.”
Fire whipped past them from a guy peering out behind another building. Mullins fired a couple of shots back, enough to keep the incoming fire random and ineffective. Enough to discourage anyone from peering out to actually aim.
Mondragon reached around the corner and hurled the grenade.
Boom.
“Go!” Mullins shouted. Fire lashed at the two men as they bolted down the alley, over a pair of eviscerated corpses, and safe for another couple of moments.
Not long, as furious shouts and angry snarls came. They’d killed two more of the scumbags, but the rest were still very much closing in.
And Mullins and Mondragon were about to run out of cover they could retreat through.
* * *
The firing from the ambush location had tapered off, and Kaggs realized that that could not be a good sign – it meant Willie and the other man covering the east, had been killed; there’d still be suppressive fire from coming from that direction if they were alive.
Someone there had been stupider or maybe just better-disciplined than he’d expected. But they wouldn’t have stayed pinned forever anyway.
“Shenko,” Kaggs snarled to the deputy shot-coller next to him, “take a few men and finish those two off. We’ll deal with the others.”
Kaggs looked around at his crew. Too many of the ones with guns were dead, and not every man with him had picked up a discarded one. More had Qing nomad swords or sharpened spades, one man a bayonet fixed to a probably-empty jezzail.
Yeah, more suited to hand-to-hand than a shooting fight. In the close confines of the waystation, it would probably have ended up that anyway.
“Come with me,” said Kaggs with a gesture, and headed to deal with the new threat.
* * *
Janja ran down a narrow, three-foot-wide, gap between large off-white prefabricated buildings, Mandvi close behind him with the pilot and the two Black Gangers. There was shouting up ahead, as he came into a wider space—
And a shot slammed into his kevlar-vested chest, hard enough to hurt, as figures who’d been lying in wait jumped them—
Shots went off and bayonets flashed as they responded. Janja ran one bearded man th
rough the chest, just a few inches deep then twist as you pull back to keep it from getting hurt, saw others running at the others.
“Janja, down!” came a scream, and he reacted, dropping to a crouch as though a sniper had gotten him in his sights. A blade whipped over where the Indian’s head had been, from behind.
The man who’d warned him, the Ganger named Leon Smith, was turning. He caught the Ganger in the man’s offswing with his shovel, bringing it across the renegade convict’s face.
It had been sharpened to a razor’s edge and it sliced his head open from temple to jaw, blood flowing. Screaming, the man struck by Smith fell.
Senechal was being mobbed by two of them and was about to die. Janja turned, speared the first of the pilot’s two through the side of his chest. Mandvi shot the other one down with his rifle—
And then it was quiet except for the screams of wounded men, and a few cries of surrender.
Chapter Twenty
With Alvarez keeping an eye on the three wounded renegades who’d surrendered, Janja clapped Mullins on the shoulder.
“It was you guys,” he said. “Thanks for saving our asses.”
Mullins shook his head, exhausted and shaking a bit from the fight.
“No problem,” he said. “They get any of you?”
“Nobody too fucked up,” Janja said. “That hand-to-hand at the end was messy.”
After that, it had simply been a matter of securing the area, searching outwards for hiding holdouts – there’d been two, both of whom had come out shooting and died – and counting the dead.
“What do we do with that one?” Senechal asked with a glance toward Dmitri Bogdanov, in his battered Ganger’s trousers and reflective vest. He was no longer armed.
“He escaped these ones; he wanted nothing to do with them. Then he saved our asses by warning us. They’d have killed everyone,” Mullins said. “Then he helped us. He’s good.”
“He’s a convicted Black Ganger,” Janja objected. “You’re not proposing we arm him outside of an emergency basis?”
“This situation is an emergency basis,” Mullins pointed out. “We need another armed man. This one has proven himself.”
“He’s still forbidden from being armed until his sentence is up,” said Janja. “For a reason.”
“We need armed men and this one’s proven himself, Janja,” said Lennon. “I’ll have him by my back. But he also gets a blue shirt from one of these guys here. For the kevlar if nothing else.”
Other men were showing up; Lennon, Smith who now held a bloody spade in front of him, a couple of other Black Gangers with the party. The doctor.
“He warned you guys in time to save us,” said Hill. He looked at Bogdanov.
“Sorry, Janja,” the squad leader said. “Lennon, he can have a gun.”
Janja looked as though he were going to say more, but Mullins shook his head. Sorry, he could see the reservations about arming Black Gangers – but Bogdanov was OK and could be trusted for now. He’d saved everyone.
“We need as many armed effectives as we can trust,” Mullins said.
“Fine,” snapped Janja. “Those two fought well with us, too. Smith saved my life when they jumped us.”
The man with Leon Smith was a heavyset, dark-skinned man with a crew cut.
“That one gave a good account of himself, too,” Janja pointed. “What’s your name?”
“Kwan, sir. Former Lance-Corporal Dao Kwan.”
“What’d you do?”
Kwan looked down.
“Prohibited substances, sir.”
“Distribution, or just use?” Janja asked.
“Just pissed hot, sir. A few times.”
A junkie, thought Janja. Even Legion discipline couldn’t cure all vices. But what was there in this wasteland for him to snort or inject?
“And you, Smith?”
“Attempted desertion,” said Alvarez from where he stood with a tablet open. “But they’re Black Gangers. The first one may have redeemed himself for now – I’ll sign a reduction-of-sentence recommendation for him if we ever make it – but the other two no.”
* * *
I wouldn’t want to arm at my back, Mullins thought, anyone I’d been randomly whipping until a few days ago, myself either. It was hard to blame the MP for his objections.
Mullins objected for a different reason: he didn’t know Kwan, but Smith had proven himself dangerous to be around.
“No,” he stepped in and said. “Not Smith. He’s why I don’t like grenades, for fuck’s sake.”
“Men learn from their mistakes,” said Janja. “I was there myself.”
“Boss,” said Dashratha, who had also been in the pit when Smith’s playing with a live grenade had nearly killed five men on Chauncy, “I was there as well, and I respectfully disagree. That one’s a dangerous idiot.”
“I promise you can trust me,” said Smith.
“You can’t arm either,” Alvarez insisted. “Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer, sir!” he said to that man as he came sauntering up. Newbauer held the M-10 he’d taken from Sergeant Greene, the whip he’d taken from the same man in his belt.
And where the hell were you during the fight? Mullins wondered. He noticed with a part of his mind that Bogdanov had discreetly slipped away.
“Corporal Alvarez,” Newbauer turned to him.
“Sir, do you recommend we arm these two Black Gangers, despite regulations saying otherwise?”
We are desperate men in the field, thought Mullins, exasperated. How the hell could you care about regulations at a time like now?
Newbauer stomped a boot.
“Absolutely not! There are convicts and then there is convict trash!” he growled. “They can barely be trusted with tools, let alone weapons!”
“Very well,” said Lennon smoothly. “We do have a surplus of weapons and ammunition, though. I trust these two can be trusted to at least carry ammunition. So that we will have it.”
“Ammunition is acceptable,” Newbauer decided. “No firearms.”
Bogdanov slipped back, wearing a bloody and torn blue shirt in place of his reflective one. His trousers were still sandblasted Black Ganger black, but sandblasted and bleached hard so that they were sandy-pale.
“This one saved our asses, sir,” Alvarez pointed at Bogdanov.
Newbauer turned and inspected the man.
“Haven’t seen you before. You Legion?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Lennon says you warned him of the ambush. That true?”
“Sir, yes sir it is true sir.” Bogdanov was doing his best to behave like a recruit on Chauncy with his yessirring, Mullins noticed. Given his own read on Newbauer, that was probably a good approach: be totally subservient while volunteering nothing.
If anyone around was going to warn the colonel that Bogdanov had started the day in an orange reflective vest and not his current blue kevlar-woven shirt, now would have been the time for them to. Mullins looked at Janja, hoping the man wouldn’t speak up. The Indian glowered but said nothing.
“Good. You can have a gun. Of course he can have his gun, Alvarez. Just not those two.”
* * *
Most of the nomad band’s captured zaks had been killed in the fight, or had been run off by the noise of it. There were a few left, as men searched through the corpses, the packs and the saddlebags.
Cramer had stabilized the injuries of the three wounded prisoners, who were being held in a small shed, having been thoroughly searched. A man – right now it was Mondragon – stood with a rifle in the shed door, watching them.
“They jumped Ciampa,” Hill had snarled on learning the story. “They’re the last survivors of the scum who killed Ciampa, Walsh, Kittery and Ndosi.”
The rest of First Squad. Hill, Lennon and the men here had known Ciampa and his team well. As had Mullins, being in the same platoon. None of the four had been Nine-Ninety-Sixth, but you didn’t have to have gone through Chauncy with them to have served with them. Trai
ning, brutally consuming at the time, was receding into memory.
“We’ll figure what to do with them later,” Mullins had said. For now they had more important priorities: securing Diamond North and taking stock of what remained in the place. Between the nomads and the renegades, a lot of the supplies had been trashed.
“Another saddlebag,” said Mandvi to Mullins now. “This one came off a saddle with a bit more bling on it than the others. Might have been the chief’s? But there’s some stuff inside you might want to look at.”
Mullins took it, opened it up.
Inside was a map cylinder.
Booby traps occurred to him – there were a few nasty things you could do with a map cylinder you expected an enemy to open – but there was no reason to think the nomads had expected to be jumped like they apparently had been.
Still, he pointed the cylinder in a safe direction and kept his hands away from the front of it as he unscrewed the cap, shaking the contents down onto the ground.
The contents were a pair of maps, protected unnecessarily by the cylinder because they’d been printed on tough, thin opaque plastic instead of paper. On them were contours, terrain features – and colored shapes in places. Blue triangles of varying size, black squares of varying size that seemed to correspond to the path of the wells the Project had blasted in. There were a few green dots and some biggish areas shaded in orange or pale green.
Lots of writing in a language Mullins recognized as Eurolang but didn’t know a word of. He spoke German, but Eurolang was different and didn’t seem to share any of the words here.
“First maps we’ve captured,” Mullins remarked to Mandvi and Jorgenson. Inspecting the one in his hand.
Yes, Diamond North was clearly marked, and he recognized… did the other one have…
“Shit,” he breathed, realizing. “This is the nomad perspective of everything between here and Hubris.”
“Including their own wells?” Mandvi asked.