James Axler – Gaia’s Demise

Sprinting forward, the men raced around the LAV. In the open doorway, Mildred and Doc waited with weapons poised and stepped out of the way as the two men scrambled inside just as they all heard the soft noise of a gasoline engine from the trees.

“There were voices on the radio,” Krysty announced from the driver’s seat as Ryan closed the aft doors and J.B. slammed home the locking bolt. “Somebody must have heard the land mine go off and sent out sec men on a recce.”

“Kill the engines and play dead,” Ryan directed, sliding the barrel of his Steyr out a blaster port. “Let’s see who it is before we do anything. Jak, man the cannon. Dean, the chain gun.”

Everybody moved quickly, and the rumblings of the diesel engines died away just as a Hummer packed with armed men rolled into view through the bushes. All of them were wearing blue shirts and carrying AK-47 assault rifles. At the sight of the APC sitting in the field, the driver slammed on the brakes, nearly losing several of the sec men.

“Hey, Sarge, is that one of our wags?” a blue shirt asked, puzzled.

“Shit, no! It’s a bunch of ours put back together!” answered the driver in horror.

“Ryan,” a burly sec man cursed. Ammo belts for a machine gun were draped across his chest like bandoliers, and he was cradling a massive M-60 machine rifle. “It must be that bastard Ryan.”

“Cawdor? Black dust, let’s get the fuck out of here before he returns!”

“Yeah, sure,” the driver said, lifting a rocket launcher into view from the empty front seat. “Let’s blow it to hell first.”

As the sec man leveled the rocket launcher, a sharp crack came from the APC and he toppled over with most of his head gone, blood everywhere. The LAW hit the dirt and rolled away into the weeds.

The big sergeant pushed the dead man from the Hummer and, loudly grinding gears, he slammed the Hummer into reverse. The blue shirts behind him wildly fired their assault rifles, the 7.62 mm rounds ricocheting harmlessly off the hull of the APC.

“Alive?” Jak asked, jerking back the arming bolt on the belt-fed cannon.

“Fuck them,” Ryan snarled, firing his longblaster out the aft blaster port again.

Jak ripped loose with a string of shells just as the Hummer charged backward out of the clearing, the barrage of rounds tearing apart the spot where it had just been.

“Can’t let them get away!” J.B. growled, burping the Uzi. “We could have an army after us next time!”

“Hold on!” Krysty cried, and the LAV rolled after the fleeing Hummer in full reverse.

Once past the bushes, the woman jammed on the brakes and jerked the steering levers hard. The heavy APC wheeled around in a sharp turn and paused. There was some dust hanging in the air from the passage of the Hummer, but no sign of the vehicle itself.

“Where are they?” Krysty asked, squinting through the tiny ob port in the armored hull. The overgrown roadway stretched to the south and north, directly ahead of the copse of trees.

Ryan and the others pressed their faces to the ob ports and blaster ports. The billowing dust obscured the fields and trees in every direction.

“Three o’clock!” Mildred shouted. “They just went around that bend in the road.”

Krysty pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The big Detroit engines purred for a moment, building power, then awoke with a roar. Their eight wheels spun crazily in the loose dirt, then the five-ton wag leaped after the enemy. Grabbing stanchions, Ryan climbed forward to a position near Krysty. He braced one hand against the low ceiling, while the other gripped the back of her chair for support. He swayed with every bounce, but remained standing. Ryan watched the speedometer steadily climb to fifty-five, then inch toward sixty mph, nearly the top speed for the predark wag. He also saw the fuel gauge drop just as fast. They were burning fuel at an unprecedented rate. There had been no chance to fill the tanks before the chase, and soon the LAV would run out of juice, becoming a perfect target for the rockets of the blue shirts.