“Even without the fleet here to send us supplies?”
“The fleet might sneak a supply ship through, sooner or later. That’s what the Skorpis must be thinking right now. They’ll be back to finish the job.”
Frede scowled at me. “So instead of waiting for them to attack us here you want to take all of us halfway across the planet and attack them in their stronghold?”
“If we wait for them here we’ll be sitting ducks. I’d much prefer that they didn’t know where we are.”
Quint shook his head. “What difference does it make? We’re dead anyway.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said disgustedly.
The sudden whining hum of the antimissile lasers made all four of us look up. The lasers were powering up, swiveling, pointing skyward.
“Something’s coming in,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
The lasers fired, the crack of their capacitor banks sharp enough to hurt my ears. Seconds later we heard the dull rumble of an explosion, like thunder rolling in the distance. Another crack from the lasers, and then another clap of thunder, closer.
“This base is nothing more than a target now,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
None of them argued.
Battered, patched and bandaged, we gathered ourselves and what was left of our supplies and started the long trek through an unknown country toward the stronghold of our enemy. I led our vanguard, twelve of our least-wounded troopers. The twenty other relatively healthy men and women formed a guard around the flanks and rear of our wounded. All of us glided a meter or so above the ground on our flight packs. What was left of our supplies we carried along on the flight packs of our dead comrades.
We left their bodies at the base. It was a hard decision. Normally a troop cares for the bodies of its slain soldiers as well as possible, freezing them in cryo units when they can, in the hope that they can be repaired and eventually revived. Even if not, the bodies are treated with respect and eventually cremated with honors.
We could not bring the bodies of our forty-six dead with us; we simply did not have the strength for it. And besides, I figured that they would soon be cremated in a nuclear fireball. The Skorpis had tried to seize our base with their warriors and failed. Now they were determined to obliterate the base without risking further casualties.
Even as we moved the troop out into the dark, shadowy forest, the antimissile lasers fired again. And again. I wondered if the enemy was throwing that many nuclear missiles at our base, or if they were clever enough to send in dummy missiles, cheap unarmed rockets that gave our sensors the same signature as a nuclear-tipped rocket. Sooner or later our lasers would drain their power packs to exhaustion. Then a nuclear missile could be fired at us with impunity.
We started off near noon, local time, although the trees’ high canopy hid the sun from us. It filtered down in mottled patches of brightness, breaking the cool shadows of the forest as we wended through the massive tree boles, a caravan of battered, grimy soldiers in green armor floating across the ground as silently as wraiths.
Dwindling in the distance we heard the insistent crack! crack! of the lasers, firing at incoming missiles. It seemed to me that the firing grew more desperate as the hours passed. The enemy couldn’t be using up all that many nuclear warheads, I told myself. Most of those missiles must be decoys, dummies, meant to exhaust the system.
At last we drew too far away to hear the lasers. Either that, or their power packs had gone dry. If we had been there, and if we had fresh supplies coming in, we could replace the power packs and keep the base defended. But such was not the case.
It was nearly nightfall when we heard the vicious clap of thunder, sharp as a blow to the face. The shock wave of a nuclear explosion, palpable even at this distance. The sky behind us lit up and a low, grumbling, growling roar shook the air.