The Apocalypse Troll

Their initial shock faded as they recognized how substantially they outnumbered their enemies. And then, on the heels of that realization, came a second: they must escape, and their vehicles were under the guns of Ludmilla's hastily assembling perimeter.

They came from everywhere, recruited because they'd required little shaping. The Troll had touched them less deeply, bent them less terribly, than he'd been forced to do with those less inclined to violence. All he'd done was program them with fanatical loyalty to their leaders and their "cause," and his death had not impinged directly upon them. They honestly believed they were fighting for themselves, and Taggart's third in command was still alive. He was a hard, hating man, and he knew his enemies were hurt and bleeding.

Even if he hadn't needed the vehicles, he still would have attacked.

Ludmilla looked up as the first recoilless and mortar rounds came in. She'd hoped the enemy would break with the Troll's death, but she hadn't reckoned with the sort of men Taggart had recruited, and she ducked lower in her weapon-pit command post as mortars, machine guns, and covering Dragons from Second Platoon hammered back at their attackers. The unwounded survivors of the three oversized platoons which had come down the mountain would scarcely have made a single normal one, but they couldn't withdraw: there were too many wounded for the fit to carry.

"Slugger, Sneak Play!" She shouted into her mike, her voice fighting the crash of battle. "What's your situation?"

"Sneak Play, Slugger is stuck." If Grant was surprised to hear her instead of Abernathy or Aston, his voice gave no sign of it. "We're down to one LAV. Estimate sixty percent perso

"Slugger, can you take your wounded with you?"

"Affirmative, Sneak Play."

"Pull out, Slugger. Get clear as soon as possible. Inform me when you reach-" she crouched over her map card "-Victor-Four. Confirm copy."

"Sneak Play, Slugger confirms. Pull back to Victor-Four and advise."

"Luck, Slugger." She switched cha

"Sneak Play, Romeo One. Glad to hear your voice. What can we do?"

"Stand by, Romeo One. We'll have targets for you-" She broke off as Staff Sergeant Ernest Caldwell tumbled into the pit with her. The other two survivors of his forward air control team were with him. "Romeo One, our FAC just turned up. I'm handing off to him." The rattle of incoming small arms roared higher. "I'm going to be busy." She turned to Caldwell as she reached for her blaster once more. "When Slugger gets clear, I want those woods hit with everything they've got, Sergeant. Burn them out."

"Yes, Ma'am."

She rose higher in the pit, listening to the cacophony of her men's weapons, her suit sensors and the Troll's dying glare showing her the enemy. She braced her firing hand on the lip of the pit, and her radio was back on Company T's tactical net.

"Here they come, boys," she said calmly. "We've got to hold them till Slugger gets clear-then the airedales can have them."

There was no more time for talk. The Apocalypse Brigade swept towards the Marines, muzzle flashes and the back-flash of recoiless rifles and rocket launchers lighting their positions like summer lightning.

Company T's survivors poured back an avalanche of answering fire, but the attack rolled in. Ludmilla picked a clump of enemies clustered around an M60 machine-gun team and squeezed the trigger.

Ed Staunton watched the bright, blue-white bursts explode below him and wondered what the hell made them.

Her blaster might have broken the attack, but the Apocalypse Brigade had once had energy weapons of their own and they knew its weakness, knew its targeting systems would lock on the first solid object in its line of fire-including trees and underbrush. They recoiled, but they quickly realized there was only one of it and began to work around her flanks.

"Skipper!" It was Jaskowicz, shouting into her ear as she sought fresh targets through the smoke. Flame roared everywhere she had used her blaster, but at least the wind was away from them. "Right flank's going, Skipper!" the sergeant shouted. "Not go

"Move the reserve squad in!"

"Already done it, Skip!"

"Damn!" She keyed her radio. "Slugger, Sneak Play. State position!"

"Sneak Play, Slugger is at Victor-Five," the reply came back instantly, and Ludmilla nodded. It would have to do.

"Get your heads down, Slugger," she told Grant, then turned to Caldwell. "Set?" He nodded.

"Do it," she said.

The world exploded.

The Hornets shrieked down like invisible demons, a long, endless line of them spilling napalm and cluster bombs, and the Apocalypse Brigade died. Perhaps as many as fifty escaped the attack and the forest fires and managed to sneak past what was left of Slugger Force as the Ospreys swept down into the vicious thermals of the fire-torn night to take Company T's survivors out of Hell.

genesis n., pl. -ses. The coming into being of anything; origin; begi

-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged Dictionary of Standard English Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

2465, Terran Standard Reckoning

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Richard Aston woke from dreams of agony to an unfamiliar ceiling. He'd never seen that particular swatch of acoustic tiles before, but he'd put in too much recovery time not to recognize a hospital ceiling when he saw it.

He tried to remember how he'd gotten here, but it was a blank. He turned his head and saw the IV plugged into his left arm, then carefully wiggled each finger and toe in turn. It was a ritual testing, first devised thirty years before, and he breathed a sigh of relief as each joint bent obediently, confirming its continued presence.

In fact, he couldn't find a single thing wrong with himself, except for a ravenous appetite. Which was strange. Why was he-?

His thoughts broke off as the door opened quietly. He turned his head and smiled as Ludmilla entered-then frowned as she froze just inside the door. She stared at him, her eyes huge, and he held out his right hand.

"Milla?"

Her name broke the spell, and she hurled herself forward, her arms opening wide, and the strangest thing of all was the tears spilling down her face as she laughed and murmured his name over and over between kisses.

It took fifteen minutes for her to calm, and her tearful, wildly emotional state was a shock. It was so unlike her ... and so filled with love he almost came unglued himself. But the pressure of her feelings slowly ebbed, and she slipped into the chair beside his bed, holding his hand in both of hers as she recounted all that had happened.

"I'd seen neuron whips before, Dick," she said finally, shivering. "I knew you were dying." Her hands tightened on his. "So ... I took a chance. I made the corpsman inject you with about twenty cee-cees of blood-from me."

She paused, her eyes locked with his.

"But-" He broke off, his own eyes widening in shocked speculation.

"That's right," she said. "It could have killed you-should have killed you, really-but you were already dying anyway. So I did it, and ..." She paused again, drawing a deep breath. "It worked."

"It worked?" he echoed blankly. "You mean it-? I-?"

"Yes," she said simply, smiling tremulously. "I know I didn't have any right to do it, but-"

"I'm a ... a Thuselah?" he demanded, unable to grasp it.