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The T-680's sensors picked up a strong energy reading from the cave mouth. "Hose the cave!" I yelled. "Now!"
The anti-perso
Something big and airborne shot out of the cave mouth. It screamed low over the T-680.
KRAAAAANG! The T-680 was blown over on its back. I tumbled down into the turret behind Schmidt, banging my head thrillingly. Fire and smoke filled the interior. Finding my helmet, I put it on, then helped Schmidt find his. The tank's electrical system shorted out spectacularly. In the darkness and sudden silence I fumbled for the hatch's manual release. "Are you ambulatory, grunt?" I growled.
"Ja. Barely."
"Follow me." I felt wonderful, but my body wasn't obeying orders the way it used to. I had to get tough with it. Grudgingly my hands worked the crank. The hatch opened partway, revealing red-lit snow. I squeezed through, with Schmidt tight behind.
We scrambled to get clear. The screaming overhead got louder. Looking back, I spotted a stubby fighter-a Yak VTOL-coming around for another pass. Flying and fighting in a blizzard wasn't easy, but the hijacker pilot had had quite a bit of experience. The fighter was one of those which had been raiding the shimmerstone camps. It had used up its load of eggs on the T-680. Now it was chewing up tundra with its wing-mounted aerial ca
One other thing I noticed: it was trailing dark smoke. Schmidt hadn't missed completely.
"The cave!" I yelled. We staggered, zigzagging, toward the dark opening. Schmidt looked as blissed-out and played-out as I felt. But we still had a job to do. We kept going.
The strafing line missed us by a meter or two, pelting us with snow and frozen dirt but nothing worse. The Yak banked right to avoid the hill and swing around for another pass.
Tried to, rather. The dark smoke thickened, and the Yak plowed straight into an upper slope. The orange fireball briefly outshone the nearby lava flows.
We reached the cave mouth and kept going.
The glossy black shaft was as smoothly bored as my Kalashnikov, probably a gas vent. The floor had been paved, painted and lit like an airport runway. It plunged several hundred meters into the hill at a thirty-degree angle. We did too, as fast as we could.
Near the bottom, three hijacker riflemen appeared, heading our way. We all spotted each other at the same time, and opened fire. Our shots echoed hollowly in the blizzardless silence.
I emptied my clip into the lead hijacker, blowing his left leg off at the hip. He dropped. Schmidt nailed his hijacker too.
But the third one kneeled, aimed, and fired a short burst. Schmidt was knocked backwards. Blood gushed from his chest, subsided, then stopped.
Ejecting and slamming in a new clip, I fitted the last hijacker with a new eye between the other two. He slumped as I ran by him.
I stumbled to a stop at the bottom of the shaft. My legs were just about all out. Hugging the stone wall, I edged around into the cavern beyond.
The "hill" must have been formed by a giant volcanic gas bubble. The gas had vented, leaving a cavern about two hundred meters across. The hijackers had simply moved in and set up shop. Floodlights in the bowl ceding lit a circle of tarmac. Prefab buildings, fuel tanks and equipment ringed the perimeter. In the middle three more Yak VTOLs were being prepped by ground crews, to deal with the attack. They didn't seem to know that I was it.
Slugs chipped the rock wall over my head. Two hijackers in ground crew outfits were ru
I dove, rolled, and scuttled under a truck. More slugs chopped up the tarmac in front of me. I cut loose with my Kalashnikov, driving the two hijackers to cover behind a pile of crates. More armed hijackers were converging on us from the buildings.
I looked around for the ammo dump, but it wasn't wearing a sign. The golden haze was now almost blinding. I felt so good that I just wanted to lie here enjoying it. But I still had a job to do.
Only one option left. I headed for the nearest Yak.
I zigzagged across the open tarmac, firing wildly, hoping to interfere with the hijackers' aim. The closer pair stayed behind their pile of crates, but the charging group sent bursts of slugs my way. A ricochet off my back knocked me down. I managed to get up and keep going.
Thirty meters to the Yak. My last clip scattered the crew prepping it. I dropped the dead weight of the Kalashnikov, and kept going.
Twenty meters. A slug punched through my right shoulder, shattering the joint. It was the best thrill yet. I found myself rolling on the tarmac, moaning ecstatically. I lurched back to my feet, and kept going.
Ten meters. I heard yelling behind me, getting louder. Something exploded to my left, probably a grenade. I staggered, but kept going.
I hit hard, curved duralloy. The Yak. The shooting stopped. Afraid of damaging their expensive fighter. I slid along the fuselage to the hatch. Opened it with my good hand. Jumped halfway inside.
Somebody grabbed my leg. It wasn't working very well, but well enough to lack free. I squirmed the rest of the way in. Wrestled other hands to get the hatch sealed. Fists banged. Voices yelled.
I crawled forward to the cockpit. Into the pilot's seat.
The hijackers had surrounded the Yak. Skoda fire hammered the fuselage, spiderwebbing the windshield glassite. My good hand fumbled with the controls. I had never flown a fighter, a few hours of sim-training had been considered adequate to cover such a low-probability scenario.
That was okay. I wouldn't be going very far.
Skipping the checklist, I swung the wing and tail jets into VTOL mode and fired them up. Thrust pushed the hijackers back. The Yak rose a couple of meters and hovered sloppily.
The hijackers were ru
The flow of blood from my shattered shoulder was filling the inside of my suit. I could hardly move, but I managed to bring the Yak's nose around.
I felt better than I had ever felt before. Better than I had thought I could feel. And the best was yet to come. The golden haze was darkening. I could barely make out the cluster of towering aviation fuel tanks.
Somebody finally figured it out. An explosion rocked the Yak. Red displays flashed. Smoke filled the cockpit.
What had it been like for you, grunts? Fire and ice merged. The ultimate orgasm, resisted yet lusted for. Just like I lusted for it.
I shoved the throttles in all the way. The jets swung to flight mode. Screaming, the Yak leaped forward.
The dim tank-shapes grew. Filled the windshield.
Flam/shock/crush/blind/tear/burn/flay-
YEEESSSSS!!
Somewhere in Haven's equatorial region there was a well-hidden facility which didn't officially exist. Certainly the CoDominium didn't know it existed, or else the sky would have filled with warships paying an unsocial call. For it was a military research center sponsored by the government of Sauron. To circumvent the CoDominium's strict technology restrictions without giving away its ambitions prematurely, Sauron established such facilities in out-of-the-way sites. Haven was about as out-of-the-way as you could get.
In a well-equipped but otherwise spartan private office, a man known to most of the staff only as the General sat behind his big desk. Switching off his computer terminal, he leaned back to consider the report he had just read.
The goal of Project Fury was to augment the performance of a soldier by surgically reversing his pain and pleasure centers and suppressing his shock reactions, on the theory that if he enjoyed rather than feared suffering he would be more aggressive. From a strategic point of view the field test's telemetry and follow-up data seemed to validate the theory. A lightly armed commando squad had defeated an overwhelmingly superior force and destroyed its base of operations.