The number two man on the right-hand LAV was behind the controls by then as Ottmar twisted his throttle and sent his attack vehicle surging forward. The key was to get in under the beast, kill any guards who might be waiting there, and fight their way upward. A simple matter, really—and one he would take pleasure in.

Ward could see the oncoming LAVs and knew what they hoped to accomplish, as he left the shadows and lumbered out to stand at the very center of the huge opening. Quad rocket launchers sat atop Ward’s squared-off shoulders, and a Kel-Morian gauss cannon was cradled in his arms. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, and there was a smile on his lips as targeting data scrolled across his HUD.

“Ward!” Tychus yelled over the comm. “Get your dumb ass back over here! That’s an order!”

But Ward couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of his wife calling their children in to dinner, and the music of their laughter, followed by a series of explosions as the Hellhounds bombed his village. He staggered as incoming fire sparkled against his armor, but was only marginally aware of the danger as he chose each target with care. Once the process was complete, Ward was careful to brace himself against what he knew was going to be a massive recoil. There was a satisfying whoosh as all eight of the rockets left their launchers at once, locked onto the heat generated by the targets they had been assigned to, and corkscrewed across the sky. The gauss cannon was up and firing by that time, an LAV exploded, and Ward gave thanks. He was a happy man.

Ottmar figured the man who stood legs apart at the very center of the opening was either very brave or very foolish—not that it made much difference, because in a moment he was going to be very dead!

Then he saw the flash of rockets being fired, the vapor trails they made, and knew what would happen next. There was little more than a couple of seconds in which to think about Hana, the children, and the brown lizard before a rocket blew Foreman Kar Ottmar and the man seated behind him to bloody bits.

Not all of the eight rockets found their targets, but five of them did, and that was sufficient not only to blunt the Snakehead attack, but to leave the survivors without sufficient transportation.

Ryk Kydd, who was up on the processor’s stern observation deck, could see the stranded KMs and the burning vehicles. He was very unforgiving. Three shots rang out—and three Kel-Morians fell.

But the sloths were still in commission, as were three LAVs, and they were damned hard to hit as the four-wheelers wove in and out.

Ward was shooting at the sloths with the gauss cannon, but he was out of rockets, and it was a waste of time. But he stood there blasting away until Tychus dashed out into the opening and tackled him. Nobody other than Tychus would have been strong enough to snatch an armored man off his feet and push him to safety, even as the beneficiary of his kindness threatened to kill him.

Then the enemy was inside the tunnel as two four-wheelers entered, firing as they came. Two rangers threw up their hands and went down as a hail of spikes punched holes through their body armor.

But their short-lived success was over as Raynor pulled out from behind a parked truck and followed the LAVs toward the other end of the tunnel and the daylight beyond. The vulture’s grenade launcher made a steady chugging sound as it lobbed grenades straight ahead.

Raynor wasn’t very skilled with the weapon since he’d never had an opportunity to fire one before, but it turned out that he didn’t have to be, as one of the four-wheelers took a direct hit, and the second ran into a pair of explosions that sent it skidding out of control. Black smoke whipped past as the vulture carried him around the wreckage and out into the open area beyond.

Meanwhile, as the first sloth came to a halt beneath the stripper’s massive bulk, Harnack was there to greet it. He was wearing goggles, and carrying a captured shotgun as he dropped onto the vehicle’s rear deck from a catwalk above.

There was a loud clang as the top hatch opened and fell against steel. That was the moment when the Kel-Morian saw Harnack’s face grinning down at him. Harnack’s grenade fell inside, rattled as it fell into the compartment below, and wound up just a foot away from the reserve ammo locker.

Harnack jumped off and was fifty feet away by the time the ammo blew. The explosion also damaged the second sloth, which continued to shake convulsively as rounds cooked off inside the wreckage.

Only two of the LAVs were still operational at that point, and both of them made a run for it, as half a dozen Avengers arrived on the scene and attacked them from the air. Both vehicles were destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly all sorts of orders were coming in as ten dropships appeared and began to land one after another. The first dropship to touch down disgorged eight armored soldiers, who immediately went to work rounding up the POWs.

Meanwhile, Tychus, Raynor, and Harnack began to make their way out from under the gigantic crawler. Moments later Kydd, Zander, Ward, and Doc fell in behind them. Together they walked out of the tunnel and into the sunlight beyond. The job was almost finished—but there was one more thing to do. Find the rest of the Kel-Morian attack group and kill them.

Thanks to the tracks the sloths and the LAVs had left behind, it wasn’t all that difficult to find the rest of Foreman Ottmar’s Komandos. The unit’s support vehicles plus two LAVs had taken shelter under a protruding rock shelf where they would be in the shade and invisible from above.

It was a pretty good hiding place, all things considered, but not good enough to protect the KM soldiers from the heat-seeking missiles fired by a pair of Avengers, or the troops that landed shortly thereafter. The fueler was on fire, the comm-truck was badly damaged, and bodies lay scattered all about. “Check the bodies to make sure they’re really dead,” Tychus ordered. “And we are taking prisoners, so mind your manners.”

Raynor could have remained on the dropship, but couldn’t stand to sit there while the rest of the team hit the dirt. So he followed them into the shadow cast by the outcropping of rock, saw the undamaged command vehicle sitting off to one side, and drew his pistol.

The door was partially open, but he was careful to approach at an angle, so he could see inside. “Hello? Anybody there? If so, put your weapons down and come out with your hands on top of your head.”

There was no response. So Raynor made use of the pistol barrel to push the door open, and took a moment to peer into the relative darkness, before climbing a set of fold-down stairs. It was hot inside the truck, very hot, and once Raynor was sure that the vehicle was empty of people, he wanted to bail out. But first there were some files to go through. The intel people would want to look at any reports, maps, or other official documents that were accessible.

Raynor had just opened a camo-covered briefcase, and was shoving files inside, when he came across a hand comp. A single touch was enough to turn the device on. The document that blossomed on the screen was a letter from one of the KMs to a woman named Hana. His wife? Yes, he thought so. But rather than the sort of letter that one might expect a soldier to write, Raynor found himself reading a story about a lizard. A tale clearly intended for the author’s children.

Raynor scrolled to the bottom of the document, saw that the story was unfinished, and shook his head sadly. It was hard to believe that the man who had written the letter was all that different from the people Raynor served with every day. That wasn’t what the government claimed, though. According to the Confederacy, all of the KMs were monsters. Brucker was—no doubt about that. But this guy? Raynor wasn’t so sure.