Jim closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think. “They’ll massacre you, Diego. All of you.”
“I asked you why they’d do that, Jim?” asked the same worried voice.
“You got something good and positive here. Kind of project that the planet needs to replenish itself and offer the hope of a greening again. Hunters of the Sun don’t want that. Not unless they control it.”
“Help us,” Diego blurted out as he reached for Jim, fingers brushing his jacket. “You’ve got some good guns and you can use them. Save us, Jim.”
“Can’t.”
The stillness outside was shattered by the noise of breaking glass and the dull crump of implode grenades. Flashes of golden fire burst in a dazzling display through the dusty windows, illuminating the shocked faces of the group.
Jim spun on his heel and ran to the door. He opened it a crack and peered out. There was a rumbling noise coming up the main track toward him, and be glimpsed a half-track personnel carrier. Some of the hydroponic greenhouses were already well ablaze, giving enough light for him to make out the arrow-and-sun insignia painted neatly on the front of the oncoming vehicle.
He eased the door a little wider, heard a yell, and then a chunk of wood splintered away a couple of feet above his head. The crack of the combat rifle followed closely behind the impact of the high-velocity bullet.
“Don’t go….” Diego’s voice, ragged with fear, came from behind him. “Jim?”
He didn’t waste time on any more talk. He slid through the partly open door like a gray rat up a drainpipe and ducked away to his left, running in a crouch. Bullets tore great furrows in the sand around his feet as he scampered toward the waiting vehicles, praying under his breath that the attackers wouldn’t be aware of the back-trail.
The personnel carrier had an LMG on its turret, and it opened up. A burst of lead ripped past his head, close enough for him to feel the exploding heat as the bullets sliced through the darkness. Behind him there was screaming and the noise of breaking glass. Someone to Jim’s right was shouting out orders at the top of his voice.
A spotlight bloomed from the blackness, questing backward and forward like a hunting dog, trying to pick out the dodging man. A gun cracked once from ahead of Jim Hilton, and the light went out in a tinkle of glass.
He recognized Kyle Lynch’s Mannlicher Model V rifle, one of the .357 rounds finding its target.
“Keep me covered, I’m coming in!” Desperately he plowed on, stumbling and falling, catching his knee an agonizing crack on a jagged rock half-hidden in the dirt.
Jim glanced once behind him, seeing that several of the hydroponic units were already being burned or smashed or both. The light of the fires showed a number of armed men darting from building to building, smoky blue flames blossoming where they stopped.
There was the constant crackle of small arms, larded with the occasional deeper, heavier explosions of grenades or incoming mortar shells.
Carrie appeared out of the blackness, holding her little .22. She grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him roughly to his feet.
“You hit?”
“No. Banged my knee. The others?”
“By the trucks. Come on, Captain. Time to haul ass out of here.”
It was the best advice he’d heard in a while.
Even if they’d rallied around Diego and the others, their own weapons were totally outclassed by the overwhelming firepower of the Hunters of the Sun.
It would have simply been a maimed and futile sacrifice on their part.
“The big hut’s blazing!” Kyle was standing by the two trucks, the hunting rifle carried at the high port. His eyes were white in the darkness, and he was panting as though he’d completed the Boston Marathon.
Jim looked back once more.
The dormitory building was well on fire. As he watched, the door was kicked open and a slender figure appeared. At that distance it wasn’t possible to be sure, but it seemed as if it was holding a scattergun. Before the man, who might have been Diego Chimayo, could shoot, he was hit by a burst of automatic fire that almost ripped him in half and sent him tottering down the steps, the gun falling from the bloodied, limp fingers.