Crawling, she slithered to the roof of the driver's cab and swung down, feet reaching for the running board and left hand for the mirror brace to hold her on the lurching, swaying lip of slick metal.
That seemed to clear her head a little. Enough to see the driver's head turning at last from his fixed concentration on the road and escape; to see the knowledge of death in his widening eyes as she raised the assault rifle one-handed and fired a burst through the door of the cab. His lips shaped a single word:
"nein."
The recoil hammered her back, bending her body into an arch and nearly tearing loose the left-hand grip. Then she tossed the weapon through the window and tore the door open, reaching in and heaving the dying German out; pulling herself into the cab with the same motion, hands clamping on the wheel. She took a shaky breath, wrenched it around to avoid a wreck in her path.
"Freya, what's that stink?" the Draka soldier muttered, even as she fumbled with the unfamiliar controls. It was still so hard to think; out to the road, then shoot out the wheels. Grenade down the fuel pipe. Block the road, back to the woods, where was the throttle… Not totally unfamiliar; after all, the autosteamer had been
invented
in the Domination, the design must be derived… there!
Shit
, she thought, slewing the truck across the narrow road.
There was a steep dropoff on the other side, this should slow them a little once she popped a charge to make the hulk immovable.
Literally. I'm sitting in what the Fritz let out. White
Christ have mercy, I'll never live it down
!
At that moment, the SS trooper fired his Kar-98 through the back of the cab. It was not aimed; there was no window, and it was the German's last action before blood loss slumped him back onto the bullet-chewed floorboards. Chance directed it better than any skill; the heavy bullet slapped the Draka between the shoulder blades; she pitched forward against the wheel, bounced back against the back rest, then forward again.
But I won
, was her last astonished thought. I can't die, I
won
.
Eric felt the German's impact like a flash of white fire across his lower back and pelvis. Then there
was
white fire, dazzling even though his head was turned away: explosion. Eric's bruised face was driven deeper into the rocky earth; his tongue tasted earth and the tenderness of grass. Fists pounded him, heavy knobby fists with thick shoulders behind them, driven without science but with huge strength into back and shoulders, ringing his head like a clapper inside the metal bell of helmet that protected neck and skull. His conscious mind was a white haze, disconnected sense-impressions flooding in: the breathy grunts of the man on his back as each blow slammed down; the bellows action of his own ribs, flexing and springing back between knuckles and ground; shouts and shots and some other, metallic noise.
Training made him turn. That was a mistake; there was no strength in his arms; the movements that should have speared bladed fingertips into the other's throat and rammed knuckles under his short ribs turned into feeble pawings that merely slowed and tangled the German's roundhouse swings.
Bad luck
, he thought, rolling his head to take the impact on his skull rather than the more vulnerable face; he could hear knuckles pop as they broke. Fists landed on his jaw and cheek, jarring the white lights back before his eyes; he could feel the skin split over one cheekbone, but there was no more pain, only a cold prickling over his whole skin, as if he were trying to slough it as a snake does. One hand still fumbled at the SS officer's waist; it fell on the butt of a pistol; he made a supreme effort of concentration, drew it, pressed it to the other's tunic and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. Safety on, or perhaps his hand was just too weak. He could see the Fritz's face in the ruddy glow of burning petrol and lubricants and rubber: black smudged, bestial, wet running down the chin. The great peasant hands clamped on his throat.
The light began to fade.
Felix Hoth was kneeling in the mud behind his radio truck, and yet was not. In his mind the SS man was back in a cellar beneath the Lubyanka, strangling a NKVD holdout he had stalked through the labyrinth and found in a hidden room with a half-eaten German corpse. He did not even turn the first time Sofie rang the steel folding butt of her machine pistol off the back of his head; she could not fire, you do not aim an automatic weapon in the direction of someone you want to live.
Hoth
did
start to move when she kicked him up between the legs where he straddled the Centurion's body, very hard. That was too late; she planted herself and hacked downward with both hands on the weapon's forestock, as if she were pounding grain with a mortar and pestle. There was a hollow
thock
sound, and a shock that jarred her sturdy body right down to the bones in her lower back; the strip steel of the submachine gun's stock deformed slightly under the impact. If the butt had not had a rubber pad, the German's brains would have spattered; as it was, he slumped boneless across the Draka's body. With cold economy she booted the body off her commander's and raised her weapon to fire.
It was empty, the bolt back and the chamber gaping. Not worth the time to reload. The comtech kneeled by Eric's side, her hands moving across his body in an examination quick, expert, fearful. Blood, bruises, no open wounds, no obvious fractures poking bone-splinters through flesh… So hard to tell in the difficult light, no
time
… She reached forward to push back an eyelid and check for concussion. Eric's hand came up and caught her wrist, and the grey eyes opened, red and visibly bloodshot even in the uncertain, flickering light. The sound of firing was dying down.
"Stim," he said hoarsely.
"Sir—Eric—" she began.
"
Stim
, that's an
order
." His head fell back, and he muttered incoherently.
She hesitated, her hands snapping open the case at her belt and taking out the disposable hypodermic. It was filled with a compound of benzedrine and amphetamines, the last reserve against extremity even for a fit man in good condition; for use when a last half hour of energy could mean the difference. Eric was enormously fit, but
not
in good condition, not after that battering; there might be concussion, internal hemorrhage,
anything
.
The sound echoed around the bend of the road below: steel-squeal on metal and rock, treads. Armored vehicles, many of them; she would have heard them before but for the racket of combat and the muffling rain. Their headlights were already touching the tops of the trees below. She looked down. Eric was lying still, only the quick, labored pumping of his chest marking life; his eyes blinked into the rain that dimpled the mud around him and washed the blood in thin runnels from his nose and mouth.
"Oh
shit!"
Sofie blurted, and leaned forward to inject the drug into his neck. There, half dosage,
Wotan pop her
eyes
if she'd give him any more.
* * *
The effect of the drug was almost instantaneous. The mists at the corners of his eyes receded, and he
hurt
. That was why pain-overload could send you into unconsciousness, the messages got redundant… He hurt a
lot
. Then the pain receded; it was still there, but somehow did not matter very much. Now he felt good, very good in fact; full of energy, as if he could bounce to his feet and sweep Sofie up in his arms and run all the way back to the village.
He fought down the euphoria and contented himself with coming to his feet, slowly, leaning an arm across Sofie's shoulders. The world swayed about him, then cleared to preternatural clarity. The dying flames of the burning trucks were living sculptures of orange and yellow, dancing fire maidens with black soot-hair and the hissing voices of rain on hot metal.
The trees about him were a sea that rippled and shimmered, green-orange; the roasting-pork smell of burning bodies clawed at his empty stomach. Eric swallowed bile and blinked, absently thrusting the German pistol in his hand through a loop in the webbing.
"Back—" he began hoarsely, hawked, spat out phlegm mixed with blood. "Back to the woods,
now
."
McWhirter stepped up, and two of the satchelmen. The Senior Decurion was wiping the blade of his Jamieson on one thigh as he dropped an ear into the bag strapped to his leg. The lunatic clarity of the drug showed Eric a face younger than he recalled, smoother, without the knots of tension that the older man's face usually wore. McWhirter's expression was much like the relaxed, contented look that comes just after orgasm, and his mouth was wet with something that shone black in the firelight.
The Centurion dismissed the brief crawling of skin between his shoulder blades as they turned and ran for the woods. It was much easier than the trip out, there was plenty of light now; enough to pinpoint them easily for a single burst of automatic fire. The feeling of lightness did not last much beyond the first strides. After that each bootfall drove a spike of pain up the line of his spine and into his skull, like a dull brass knife ramming into his head over the left eye; breathing pushed his bruised ribs into efforts that made the darkness swim before his eyes. There was gunfire from ahead and upslope, muffled through the trees, and
there
a flare popping above the leaf canopy. He concentrated on blocking off the pain, forcing it into the sides of his mind.
Relax
the muscles… pain did not make you weak, it was just the body's way of forcing you to slow down and recover. Training could suppress it, make the organism function at potential…
If
this is wanting to be alive, I'm not so sure I want to want
it
, he thought.
Haven't been this afraid in years
. They crashed through the screen of undergrowth and threw themselves down.
The others were joining him, the survivors; more than half. The shock of falling brought another white explosion behind his eyes.
Ignore it, reach for the handset. Sofie thrust it into his palm, and he was suddenly conscious of the wetness again, the rain falling in a silvery dazzle through the air lit by the burning Fritz vehicles. Beyond the clearing, beyond the ruined buildings by the road, the SS armor rumbled and clanked, metal sounding under the diesel growl, so different from the smooth silence of steam.
He clicked the handset. The first tank waddled around the buildings, accelerating as it came into the light. Then it braked, as the infantry riding on it leaped down to deploy; the hatches were open, and Eric could see the black silhouette of the commander as he stood in the turret, staring about in disbelief at the clearing. Wrecked trucks littered it, burning or abandoned; one was driving slowly in a circle with the driver's arm swaying limply out the window.
Bodies were scattered about—dozens of them: piles of two or three, there a huddle around a wrecked machine gun, there a squad caught by a burst as they ran through darkness to a meeting with death. Wounded lay moaning, or staggered clutching at their hurts; somewhere a man's voice was screaming in pulsing bursts as long as breaths. Thirty, fifty at least, Eric estimated as he spoke.
"Palm One to Fist, do y'read."
"Acknowledged, Palm One." The calm tones of the battery-commander were a shocking contrast to Eric's hoarseness. "Hope yo've got a target worth gettin' up this early for."
"
Firefall!"
Eric's voice sounded thin and reedy to his own ears.
"Fire mission Tloshohene,
firefall
, do it
now
."
He lowered the handset, barked: "Neal!" to the troopers who had remained with the guide in the scrub at the edge of the woods.
The rocket gunner and her loader had been waiting with hunter's patience in a thicket near the trail, belly-down in the sodden leaf mold, with only their eyes showing between helmets and face paint. With smooth economy the dark-haired woman brought the projector up over the rock sill in front of her, resting the forward monopod on the stone. She fired; the backblast stripped wet leaves from the pistachio bushes and scattered them over her comrades. The vomiting-cat scream of the sustainer rocket drew a pencil of fire back to their position, and then the shell struck, high on the turret, just as it began to swing the long 88mm gun toward the woods. The bright flash left a light spot on Eric's retina, lingering as he turned away; the tank did not explode, but it froze in place. Almost at once bullets began hammering the wet earth below them,
smack
into mud, crack-whinning off stone. The rocket gun gave its deep
whap
once more, and there was a sound overhead.
The Draka soldiers flinched. The Circassian guide glanced aside at them, then up at the deep whining rumble overhead, a note that lowered in pitch as it sank toward them. Then he bolted forward in terror as the first shellburst came, seeming to be almost on their heels. Eric hunched his head lower beneath the weight of the steel helmet; no real use in that, but it was psychological necessity. The Draka guns up the valley were firing over their heads at the Fritz: firing blind on the map coordinates he had supplied, at extreme range, using captured guns and ammunition of questionable standard. Only too possible that they would undershoot. Airburst in the branches overhead, shrapnel and wood fragments whirring through the night like circular saws…
The first shells burst out of sight, farther down the road and past the ruined buidlings, visible only as a
wink-wink-wink-wink
of light, before the noise and overpressure slapped at their faces. The last two of the six landed in the clearing, bright flashes and inverted fans of water and mud and rock, bodies and pieces of wrecked truck. He rose, controlling the dizziness.
"On target, on target,
fire for effect
," he shouted, and tossed the handset back to Sofie. "Burn boot, up the trail,
move
."
It was growing darker as they ran from the clearing, away from the steady metronomic
whamwham-wham
of shells falling among the Fritz column, as the fires burnt out and distance cut them off. A branch slapped him in the face; there was a prickling numbness on his skin that seemed to muffle it. The firefights up ahead were building; no fear of the SS shooting blind into the dark, with their comrades engaged up there. Although they might pursue on foot… no, probably not. Not at once, not with that slaughterhouse confusion back by the road, and shells pounding into it. Best leave them a calling card, for later.