Two women—neither of them young, though one was twenty years younger than Kowacs thought at first glance—were scraping coarse roots on a table in the center of the straggle of huts. Beside them on a straw pallet lay a figure who might have been of either sex; might have been a bundle of rags, save for the flicker of lids across the glittering eyes, the only motion visible as the line of rifles approached.
“Don’t move, dammit!” Kowacs bawled as a man directly across from him ducked into the hut.
There was a pop and a minute arc of smoke from Bradley’s left hand—the hand that didn’t hold the leveled shotgun. The smoke trail whickered through the doorway as suddenly as the civilian had—then burst in white radiance, a flare and not a grenade as Kowacs had half-expected.
Bawling in terror, the man flung himself back outside and danced madly as he stripped away the flaming rags of his clothing while the hut burned behind him. A marine knocked him down with his rifle butt, then kicked dirt over the man’s blazing hair.
Both platoons were among the huts in seconds. “Empty!” a voice called, and, “Empty!”, then, “Out! Out! Out!”
Three of them tried to get out the back way as somebody was bound to do. That was fine, always let ’em think they had a way to run. The dazzling whipcrack of a plasma bolt streaking skyward, all the way to the orbit of the nearer moon, caught the trio in plain sight.
They didn’t flatten on the ground or raise their hands, just froze in place and awaited the cross fire which would vaporize them if it came. Marines from Second Platoon threw them down and trussed them scornfully.
“He can’t move, he’s wounded!” a woman was screaming desperately from the hut beside Kowacs. That didn’t sound like an immediate problem, so he glanced around for an eyeball assessment of the situation.
Everything had gone perfectly. The one hut was afire. Several Marines held an extra weapon while their buddies grasped the civilian who’d been carrying it. The woman didn’t have to tell anybody that the fellow two of his men were dragging was wounded. Kowacs could smell the gangrene devouring the prisoner’s leg.
The only shot fired was the warning round from the plasma weapons placed in ambush. Very slick. So slick that it probably looked easy to Sitterson and Hesik, pounding up from the treeline where they’d been left flat-footed by the Marines’ advance.
The elder of the women who’d been preparing food cried shrilly at Kowacs, “Why are you here with guns? We need help, not—”
Then she saw Hesik. Kowacs caught her by one arm and Sienkiewicz grabbed the other when they saw what was about to happen, but it didn’t keep the old woman from spitting in Hesik’s face.
The Bethesdan colonel slapped her across the forehead with the barrel of his pistol.
The younger of the pair of women broke away from a marine who was more interested in the drama than in the prisoner he was holding. She jumped into the dark entrance of a hut. The three marines nearest lighted the opening with the muzzle flashes of their automatic rifles.
The prisoner flopped down with only her torso inside the hut. Her legs thrashed while one of the Marines, more nervous or less experienced than the others, wasted the rest of his magazine by hosing down her death throes.
The air stank with the oiliness of propellant residues. Hesik looked dazed. He was making dabbing motions with his right hand, apparently trying to put his weapon back in its holster. He wasn’t even close.
“Right,” said Kowacs, angry that his ears rang and that a screwup had marred a textbook operation. “Get the trucks up here and load the prisoners on while we search—”
“Not yet,” ordered Sitterson. Everybody paused.
“Hold him,” Sitterson added to the marine gripping the man—boy, he was about seventeen—with his hair singed off. “You too—” pointing at Sienkiewicz. “Make sure he doesn’t get loose.”
The big corporal obeyed with an expression as flat as those of Kowacs and Bradley while they watched the proceedings. She gripped the boy’s left elbow with her own left hand and angled her rifle across her chest. Its muzzle was socketed in the prisoner’s ear.