Kane looked at the scarlet streaming from between the leg pieces of Grant’s armor, like a bubbling spring of blood. The blood wasn’t a bright arterial red, but the Roamer land mine had still inflicted serious lacerations, even through the polycarbonate shin guard and Kevlar undersheathing.
Kane reached out to examine the wound, but Grant slapped his hand aside angrily. “Don’t waste time on me.”
Kane hesitated. He was twenty years old and on his second dark-territory probe. He didn’t know Grant very well, and as his squad leader he wasn’t supposed to. All he was expected to do was obey the man’s orders.
Through helmet comm-links, they heard the shouts and curses of the other four members of the squad pinned down in the gully an eighth of a mile away. The sporadic pop-popping of muzzle loaders interwove with the deeper, steadier stutter of Sin Eaters and Copperheads on full auto.
Grant and Kane had walked point, and Kane sensed impending danger with every step that took them farther away from the gully. Though intimidated by Grant’s grim manner and seniority, he informed him of his suspicions.
Grant ignored him, told him to shut up and march. So when armed Roamers began rising from pits they’d dug in the desert floor, tossing aside sand-covered tarps, it was almost a relief.
The two Mags had heeled around, saw they couldn’t backtrack and headed for the boulder. Grant was in the lead. When the black-powder mine detonated under the pressure of his right foot, it ruptured the surrounding earth in a gout of smoke, dirt and flame. The cracking shock wave knocked Kane down, but picked up Grant and cartwheeled him to within a few feet of the boulder.
The primitive mine’s low explosive power contained more sound and fury than death. It also provided a pall of smoke and dust, allowing Grant to crawl behind the rock. Kane held his ground, firing his Copperhead in long, left-to-right bursts, then bounded across the smoldering crater and joined Grant behind the boulder. A storm of bullets struck it, chipping off shards and bouncing away.
Grant palmed grit from his helmet’s visor and checked the Sin Eater’s action. He had lost his Copperhead in the detonation. “How many do you figure?”
“Too many,” Kane replied, ducking his head as another rifle ball dug a gouge in the rock. “We’re about as outnumbered as we can be.”
Grunting and wincing, Grant shifted his leg. More blood flowed out from beneath the polycarbonate shielding. Kane reached for it again.
“Lay off,” Grant snapped. “We’ve got no time for first aid.”
“And I’ve got no time to deal with a stubborn bastard who passes out from loss of blood and expects me to drag his ass back to the Sandcat.” Kane’s reply was as sharp as Grant’s command. “I’m going to take a look at it, try to stop the bleeding. It’s that simple. Sir.”
Tersely Grant said, “Be quick about it.”
Kane loosened the seal and lifted the shin guard away. Crimson spilled over his black-gloved fingers. Pushing aside the torn edges of the Kevlar, he examined the ragged, blood-pulsing gash at the base of the knee.
“Bad?” Grant asked.
“Not really. But not good, either. Bet it hurts like hell.”
“You’ve got a gift for stating the obvious,” said Grant between clenched teeth.
Kane opened up pouches on his web belt, removing field dressings and a pressure bandage.
“I should’ve listened to you,” Grant said. “How’d you know?”
“Instinct. Ninety-nine percent of the time I’m wrong, but that one percent makes up for all the time I waste on paranoia.”
Grant chuckled, then bit off a groan as Kane began treating his leg.
There was a tap on his shoulder, and Kane felt thrown out of sync with the dream reality. “I’m not really interested in this, you know,” Sindri said. “I had already deduced that you and Mr. Grant were Magistrates.”
“Fuck off,” Kane snapped, unscrewing a vial of sulfa and blood coagulant. “You wanted me to remember, so I’m remembering.”
Sindri clucked disapprovingly. “You’ve gone too far back. This is what, a dozen years ago?”
Kane nodded, frowning, his thoughts leaping ahead. The Roamers had made a concerted rush to overwhelm their position, hurling their mines as grenades. One had detonated nearly at Kane’s feet, deafening him, chunks of the hardened clay case battering him and cracking a couple of ribs. If not for his helmet’s visor, he would have been blinded.
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