Mildred snugged the tribarrel’s butt against her shoulder and pinned the trigger. There was no recoil to the weapon. The rifle hummed softly against her cheek, fingers and arm. She painted a line of green light that sparked and smoked across the legs of the water tower. Across and through, missing the trooper stationed there by a good three feet. The tower groaned as it began to tip forward, then it came crashing down on the astonished man.
The battlesuit did him no good. Like the cave ceiling at Moonboy ville, the tank was too heavy for the EM shield to deflect. It flattened both the trooper and his armor. Water sloshed out through the tank’s ruptured seams, pouring in a wild torrent over the glass.
“Look out!” Jak said, grabbing Mildred by the shoulder and giving her a hard shove. Laser beams from around the compound pinpointed their position. If he hadn’t pushed her, they would have trisected her head.
“Run!” he told her.
Mildred darted from the mine entrance, angling for the closest solid cover. She ducked behind the line of loaded sledges, where other slaves kept low and out of the line of fire. As Jak joined her, energy pulses from four or five weapons skimmed the tops of the carts, passing within a few inches of them.
The companions didn’t even get the chance to suck in a full breath before a beam slashed at them from the opposite, completely exposed direction, from over near the propane burners. Jak spun toward the source and touched off another pulse from a half crouch.
With a resounding wham, the propane tanks exploded, sending a ball of orange-and-yellow flame billowing into the air. The explosion lifted the shooter off his feet. He flew, arms spread wide, a black silhouette landing in a crumpled heap thirty feet from the cooking area.
Despite the impact, the trooper remained conscious. He knew he was in an exposed position. He tried to get up at once, pushing with his hands, raising his chest off the glass. Led by Doc and Dean, the slaves hiding behind the sledges, in the dimples and at the mine entrances mustered their courage and lobbed chunks of glass on him. Fist-sized hunks and bigger hammered his helmet and shoulders, driving him back to the ground.
Laser beams shrieked across compound, and the stoning ceased.
A group of guards firing from one of the mine entrances had Jak and Mildred’s position zeroed in. The concentrated energy of their weapons turned the sledge the companions were hiding behind into a glowing coal on skids. Unable to stand the raging heat, Mildred and Jak advanced to the next sledge in line.
Green beams clipped the front of the cart’s skis, sending showers of fat sparks skittering over the glass.
“We’re pinned down,” Mildred said. “It’s coming from one of the dimples. Next to the klieg light.”
Jak poked his head up and immediately jerked it back down. “Two,” he said, “shooting over lip of hole.”
The air was torn by quavering squeals. The guards at the mine entrance had shifted their aim to the side of the new cart. After a few seconds, it, too, began to glow like an ember.
“We can’t move any farther,” Mildred said, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “We’ve got to shut those guys down. Jesus, the ore in the cart is starting to melt!”
“Keep others busy,” Jak said. “I’ll take mine.”
Mildred poked her weapon’s muzzle around the front of the cart and sent beams into the centers of the helmets of the shooters hiding in the dimple. Her laser pulses struck the EM shields a foot or so in front of the guards’ eyes and veered off to the right, cutting shallow trenches in the glass. Because of the intense energy flare caused by the deflection, the troopers couldn’t acquire fresh targets.
Jak meanwhile had scooted between the pair of sledges. The heat waves coming off the carts made the mine entrance shimmer and dance in his tribarrel’s open sights. He didn’t aim for the four troopers crouched just inside the entrance’s overhang. Instead, he aimed at the overhang itself. Aimed and fired, flattening the trigger. Jak swept the front edge of the tunnel roof with laser light. Like dirty green candle wax, the glass turned to liquid and poured down on the troopers.