Until Sienkiewicz’s second plasma bolt turned it into a fluorescent bubble collapsing in on itself.
One of the weasels was still alive. Maybe it’d been in the cab and shielded when the bolt struck the back of the van. Whatever the cause, the weasel was still able to charge toward Security Headquarters, firing wild bursts from its machine pistol.
You expected the little bastards to be tough, but this one was something special. Kowacs himself put four rounds into the Khalian’s chest, but it had to be shot to doll rags by the concentrated fire of a dozen rifles before what was left finally collapsed.
Kowacs rolled to his feet. His whole left side was bruised, but he couldn’t remember how that had happened. He flipped up his face shield and called, “Cease fire!” on the command frequency.
Sienkiewicz’s second target was still burning. Fuel, plastics, and weasel flesh fed the orange flames. There was only a crater where the first van had blown up, but burning fragments of it seemed to have started their own little fires at a dozen places around the parade square.
Kowacs switched to the general Base Forberry push and crashed across the chatter with a Priority One designator. “All Fleet personnel. The Headhunters are in control of the vicinity of the Mil Gov complex. Don’t fire. Keep your heads down until we’ve secured the area.”
Kowacs turned around.
“Bastards got in through the aqueduct,” Bradley snarled beside him. “Sure as shit.”
Light from the open door to Security Headquarters blinded Kowacs.
“Kowacs!” shouted Commander Sitterson, a shadow behind his handheld floodlamp with the dimmer shadow of Colonel Hesik behind him. “What are you doing? And where are the—”
Andy stuck his burned face from the back of the truck beside Kowacs.
“You traitor!” Sitterson screamed at the marine captain. “I’ll have you shot for this if it’s the last thing I—” and his voice choked off when he saw that Kowacs had lifted his rifle to his shoulder because that was what you were trained to do, never hip-shoot even though the target’s scarcely a barrel’s length away.
And Kowacs couldn’t pull the trigger.
Not to save his ass. Not in cold blood.
Not even Sitterson.
When Kowacs heard the first shot, he thought one of his men had done what he couldn’t. As Sitterson staggered forward, dropping his light, Colonel Hesik fired his pistol twice more into the commander’s back and shouted, “I’m on your side! Don’t hurt me! I won’t—”
The muzzle blast of Bradley’s shotgun cut off Hesik’s words as completely as the airfoil charge shredded the Bethesdan’s chest.
“I was wrong about how the weasels got in,” Bradley said in the echoing silence. “Hesik was a traitor who led ’em here before he greased his boss.”
Liesl, CO of the Third Platoon, had gotten sorted out from his men and was standing beside Kowacs. “Gamma Six,” Kowacs said, nodding as he slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle, “get aboard and get this truck over to the dock for washing, just like we planned.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Liesl said. Bickleman was driving again. He boosted engine thrust as soon as he heard the order. The vehicle and its cargo began to move with marines still lifting themselves in over the tailgate.
“Alpha Six,” Kowacs said on his command frequency, “secure the boulevard to the south. Maybe there’s not another load of bandits, but I don’t like surprises. Beta Six, spread your men out and search the trucks we nailed. And watch it.”
There was a long burst of automatic fire, but it came from a barracks and wasn’t aimed anywhere in particular. Somebody whose room had taken a Khalian rocket had survived to add to other people’s confusion.
“Headhunter Command to all Fleet personnel!” Kowacs said. “Stop that wild shooting or we’ll stop it for you.”
All the real problems were over for now. Kowacs didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell the true story. Maybe to Toby English over a beer.
That didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that he didn’t have to admit, even to himself in the gray hours just before dawn, that he’d murdered thirteen civilians to cover an administrative error.