The wounded, Mildred included, cried out in pain. Wincing, she looked at the plastisteel missile embedded in her forearm. It had a fringe of black synthetic feather to make it spin as it fell. The long, thin point was stuck in her flesh only half an inch. She pulled it out and threw it away.
The other slaves who could, did likewise, either yanking the flechettes out themselves, or if they had been hit in an awkward spot, allowing someone else to remove them. Those already grievously wounded or comatose or dead just lay there like human pincushions.
As the rear wags continued to pound Jak and Dean’s position, a loudhailer from one of the lead wags bellowed at them, “Surrender now, throw out your weapons, or you’ll get another dose of darts. And they’ll be full power next time.”
Mildred shouted back a twentieth-century profanity.
She wasn’t sure they’d understand it because she didn’t know if they had mothers, but they had to have gotten the gist because almost at once another of the slow-flying warheads came arcing their way.
Doc used his pulse rifle to pick it off like a clay pigeon. As it crossed the path of the emerald-green beam, the warhead exploded, sending its deadly flechettes spraying in all directions but theirs.
When the assault wag tried the same trick again a third time, the warhead had seven green beams to contend with. It blew up at the top of its arc.
“Look!” Doc said. “The wags in back!”
Troopers in black were piling out of the rear doors of both of the wags, clearly heading around the upper end of the crevasse to intercept Jak and Dean and the others.
“Shoot them!” Mildred cried as she sighted down on the running men.
The concentrated fire of seven laser rifles did no good. Their initial shots veered off the EM shields of their targets’ battlesuits. The troopers were moving too fast to aim for their feet.
Then the forward wags fired their cannons again.
At the energy flare, the ore wag lurched backward violently, throwing Mildred and Doc onto their butts onto the heap of glass blocks. The wag continued to slide this time, and as it did it twisted sickeningly, turning the unprotected side of the cargo box toward the pair of cannons.
CANNON FIRE FROM the other side of the chasm drove Jak and Dean from the ridge top. Joining up with the four surviving slaves on the back side, the mutie albino said, “Another hundred yards, then we cut away the road.”
With Jak in the lead, they ran along the side of the slope, harassing fire from the cannons sending chunks of the ridge avalanching around them. The distance as the buzzard flew was closer to sixty yards, but the ridge line didn’t run straight. It wound back and forth in a serpentine of glassy talus, gaping splits and sheer drop-offs.
Because of the twists and turns, because they were out of sight of the road, they didn’t see the troopers coming at them until it was too late.
Jak reacted to a glimpse of black moving among the green-gray blocks of glass on the slope ahead. He jumped aside, taking Dean with him. A flurry of laser beams sliced through the space where the two had just been. They sliced through the man following behind. He toppled, suddenly in five large pieces, arms, legs, head bouncing in different trajectories down the side of the ridge.
The slaves in back of the dead guy dived away and were missed by the through and throughs.
“Aim for ridge above them,” Jak shouted to the others. “Drive them back.”
It was a stalling action, at best.
They sent energy pulses hammering into the ridge, which melted the glass, and sent it rushing downhill in a torrent. The troopers were unable to fire back because they were too busy retreating from the glass flow. They moved up the side of the slope, trying to get as high as possible to keep the same thing from happening again. They scurried up until their backs were against the brittle fin of eroded glass.
The increased altitude exposed the troopers to the slaves’ fire, but they were relying on their battlesuits’ EM shields to protect them. The higher elevation gave them much better positions to shoot from. And they put them to use immediately.