KEL-MORIAN INTERNMENT CAMP-36, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II

Having captured the factory, the next challenge was to assemble a convoy and load it. Once Zander completed a quick inventory of what was available, Tychus learned that he had six trucks, two buses, two tracked, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and a saber command car at his disposal. So he put the saber at the head of the column, followed by an APC, the trucks, the buses, and the second armored personnel carrier.

Three members of the STM platoon had been killed in crash landings, and two had been taken out subsequent to touchdown. That left Tychus with thirty-one of his own people, plus a dozen rangers who had been lucky enough to survive a dropship crash. That gave him a force of forty-three soldiers to protect some three hundred POWs, roughly ten percent of whom might be healthy enough to fight, and were busy arming themselves just in case.

Could the convoy break through into the zone? He hoped so. The only alternative was to stay at KIC-36 and wait to see who would arrive first. A contingent of Kel-Morian troops? Or some Confederate dropships? Given the fact that they were well inside Kel-Morian-held territory, it would have been silly to put his money on the dropships.

There was a sudden roar as gravel flew in every direction and a dusty vulture hover-cycle came to a stop. Not only was Jim Raynor at the controls, he was wearing goggles he’d acquired with the vehicle, a collection of garments scrounged from the factory’s locker room, and a pistol he had taken off a dead pit boss. There was a big grin on his face as he revved the engines. “Look what I found!”

Kydd had been forced to jettison his armor and initiate its self-destruct device when its control system crashed. He looked small standing next to Tychus. “Don’t let him do it, Sarge… . The last time he drove one of those things we wound up in jail.”

But it was too late as an overmedicated Jim Raynor waved and took off down the road. His voice could be heard over the comm in the saber. “I’ll scout ahead,” Raynor said, “and let you know what to look out for.”

Tychus swore as he saw an Avenger chasing a Hellhound across the valley, gave orders for everyone except Ward to shuck their armor, and did so himself. It was too bad, since the hardskins would have given his people an edge in a head-on fight, but they were too large for the already crowded vehicles and wouldn’t be able to keep up no matter how fast they walked or jogged. But there’s an exception to every rule, and since Ward had the capacity to launch eight independently targeted rockets, he was ordered to ride in truck one.

Having freed himself from his suit, Tychus entered the saber, snatched a mic off its clip, and gave the necessary orders. “Keep the vehicle ahead of you in sight, but stay three truck lengths back, and kill your headlights. The comms can be monitored by the enemy… . So don’t use them except in an emergency. Over.”

Zander gunned the engine and put the saber in motion. They had a long way to go, and the clock was ticking.

THE DISPUTED ZONE, ON THE PLANET TURAXIS II

As part of Overseer Brucker’s regiment, it was the Kel-Morian Snakehead Komando’s mission to keep a close eye on the northern sector of the zone, send in regular intelligence reports, and interdict any Confederate patrols that happened along.

The unit was camped in and around a scattering of house-sized rocks, with a clear free-fire zone all around, and good visibility for the sentries perched atop of the biggest boulders. So Foreman Kar Ottmar felt reasonably secure inside his boxy command vehicle as he typed another letter into his hand comp. He couldn’t send it of course, not until the Komando returned to base, but doing so every night was part of a long, frequently interrupted conversation with his wife, Hana.

He could imagine her getting the electronic letters ten or fifteen at a time, and the flicker of firelight on her pretty face as she read them aloud to the children. He never spoke of the fighting in hopes that his family would never face the horrors of war. So he was telling them a story about the dusty brown lizard that had taken up residence in one of his hats, and what the reptile liked to eat, when a comm technician rapped on the half-open door. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but Assistant Overseer Danick is on the horn. He sounds pretty upset. It seems the Confeds attacked KIC-36 and laid waste to it.”

Ottmar swore silently as he hit “save” and left the lizard story half-told. The comsat truck was parked about fifty feet away and protected by light-dispersing camouflage netting. A minute later he was inside the vehicle and sitting on a fold-down seat. A bare-breasted pinup named Viki smiled down on him from her spot just above the comsat terminal as he pulled a headset down over his head and adjusted the lip mic. “This is Snake-Six. Over.”

“The bastards dropped out of the sky!” Danick proclaimed, as if such a thing wasn’t fair. “They weren’t wearing parachutes, they were using some kind of flying armor, which enabled them to land with pinpoint accuracy. We’re still in the process of sorting everything out, but it’s clear that Overseer Brucker and about forty of his guards are dead, with ten WIAs, and major damage to the base.

“That’s not the worst of it, though,” Danick continued hotly. “The Confeds freed the POWs and they’re headed your way! I want you to stop them, Kar… . More than that, I want you to kill every one of the bastards and leave their worthless carcasses to rot in the sun! Do I make myself clear? Over.”

Ottmar could visualize the lick of hair that would be hanging down across the other man’s forehead, the bulging intensity of his eyes, and his slightly purplish lips. “Yes, sir. Very clear. Over.”

“Put your comm tech back on the line,” the assistant overseer instructed. “We’ll feed you everything we have on the column’s position and direction of travel.”

“Yes, sir,” Ottmar replied, and surrendered the headset to the comm tech.

As the officer stepped down from the truck, he wasn’t surprised to find Taskmaster Kurst waiting for him. Somehow Kurst always knew when something was about to happen. He was a big man with a walrus-style mustache and a lantern jaw. “Sir?”

“The enemy laid waste to KIC-36—and killed fifty of our men. Rather than give aid to the wounded, the bastards shot them. We’re going to hunt the slimeballs down! I want the Komando combat-ready thirty minutes from now.”

The exaggerations were intended to motivate the troops, and judging from the anger in Kurst’s eyes, the strategy was working. “Yes, sir!”

Ottmar smiled grimly as the taskmaster departed. The Confeds might have some fancy armor, but they were burdened with hundreds of POWs, and a long way from Confederate lines. He and his Snakeheads were going to find the degenerates and make them sorry they’d ever been born.

The drugs were beginning to wear off, and Raynor was exhausted as the sun rose in the east and he guided the vulture out of a canyon and onto a flat plain. He’d been riding the hover-cycle for hours by then and felt like an old hand as he cut power and let the machine coast to a gentle stop. What had been a single road now split into three well-defined tracks.