The booby-trap charge under the seat was a full block of C-4, not just a small antipersonnel to chill the driver. Both Krysty and Orin knew that the five-pound block of high explosive would vaporize anybody inside the APC. Even the APC itself would be permanently damaged from the staggering blast. Apparently, Overton was a believer in destroying what he couldn’t possess, and would rather see the predark war wag reduced to shrapnel than allow the browns to get control of its advanced weapons systems. Smart man.
“Wait,” she said suddenly.
The sergeant looked up from the floor. “Trouble?”
“Open the turrets and back doors, both of them.”
Orin breathed quietly for a few moments, then nodded in understanding. That could spread the force of the detonation outside the vehicle, lessening it tremendously. They would still die in any blast, and the wag would probably never roll again, but the turret blasters might be salvageable.
He got to work quickly. The top hatch the driver used to steer by opened easily. The gunner’s hatch was more stubborn, but finally yielded. However, the commander’s didn’t move an inch no matter how much strength the big man exerted.
Sighing in frustration, Orin went to the rear and swung aside the double doors, using a seat cushion to keep them from swinging closed again. Then he dutifully returned to the woman in the chair.
“Ready?” he asked, taking both her hands.
“Ready,” Krysty replied, heart pounding in her chest.
Without further notice, Wyndham yanked her bodily off the chair and they hit the metal wall together. Both waited a few seconds for fiery annihilation, only slowly allowing themselves to relax with the assurance of continued existence.
“Nuke me, it worked.” The sergeant laughed in relief.
“Let’s go,” Krysty ordered, already moving, her cascade of red hair waving wildly about her shoulders from her tense state of mind.
Exiting the wag, the pair closed the doors and put some distance between them and the LAV.
“Think we can get the chain gun?” Orin asked, studying the turret.
Krysty cracked her knuckles. “Better not chance it. The slightest vibration”
The world went silent as blinding light emanated from every ventilation hole, turret and hatch of the armored transport as it lifted off the ground. Krysty and Orin found themselves flying through the air from the strident concussion, hitting the floor and skidding along the smooth concrete for yards until slamming into the far wall near some motorcycles.
Gamely, the stunned man and woman tried to stand in the ringing silence, blood flowing from their ears. But they were unable to focus enough to regain their balance. Vaguely, they were aware the armored chassis of the vehicle had to have stopped the brunt of the detonation, the open doors channeling the blast safely away from them exactly the same way a barrel on a blaster did the muzzle-flame. The wall behind the wag was cracked and peppered with smoking bits of chairs and internal machinery. The door to the closet was completely gone, and the motorcycles were riddled with shrapnel holes, gas and oil leaking from the big engines. The detonation would have killed at close range, the few yards they retreated out of common sense changing the crushing effect to merely stupefying.
Weakly, Krysty clawed at the reeling Orin as she noticed a yellowish gas streaming from the punctured saddle bags of a motorcycle, the thick cloud quickly expanding across the enclosed garage and coming their way.
SMOKING A CIG, a blue shirt in the doorway of the fortress jerked unexpectedly and died as Ryan and the companions approached with Nathan and a dozen of his loyalist sec men. The group stepped between the ornate columns and looked across the ville.
Bolstering his silenced blaster, Ryan studied the battlefield of the courtyard. Dead blues and browns were strewed about everywhere, along with dozens of villagers. A wag burned near the execution dock, filling the noon air with the faint smell of roasting taters to mingle with the sharp stink of black powder and the reek of the newly deceased. Near the horse stables, a human head was perched on top of a hitching post, the anguished features staring across the decimation.