The running raiders started to shout as they exited the mine. The stupid bastards thought they’d gotten away. As the mutants poured out into the sunlight, they spread out and turned back to face the entrance of the mine, their guns aimed and ready to retaliate against their pursuers. They just had to wait for the rest of their buddies to get out of the way.
As soon as the last one was out of the mine, Murdok sent a message to Aeron.
“That’s all of ’em, boss.”
“Got it.”
From his position inside the mine, Murdok could not seethe Talionis. He couldn’t hear the ship’s engines either, since they were virtually silent. What he could hear, however, was the collective scream of terror as the raiders realized how badly they had fucked up.
While Murdok and Zeth were chasing the mutants from Sector Bravo, Aeron had broughtthe Talionisdown from high altitude. Now the ship was hovering a short distance away from the western entrance of the mine. A perfect position to finish off the mutant gang.
The ship opened fire.
From his vantage safe within the mine, Murdok watched as the landscape outside erupted in geysers of dirt and pulverized stone raised by the barrage of ammunition from the ship’s underwing guns. The raiders exploded as the fat-caliber rounds tore through meat and bone. It was a massacre. A complete and utter massacre.
Murdok grinned. He lived for this shit. The roar of gunfire, the smell of freshly spilled blood. Violence on a grand scale. There was only one thing he enjoyed more, and right now she was sitting in the cockpit with Aeron, watching it all go down.
Murdok moved forward to get a better view of the action. He sensed Zeth right behind him, equally enthralled.
Then he noticed something.
About a hundred yards out past the mine entrance, a stray mutant was hoisting something onto his shoulder. It wasn’t an ordinary old rifle. It was a big tube-shaped weapon with a muzzle so big Murdok could have fit his whole fist inside it.
An anti-aircraft rocket.
“Boss, check your two o’clock. There’s a tango with a double alpha.”
“I see him,” Aeron answered calmly.
Outside, the spumes of dirt cut a trail across the ground as Aeron swung the ship around to face the raider in question. Bullets ripped the mutant to pieces, but as he died, he managed to pull the trigger on his weapon. The rocket-propelled grenade whooshed out of the muzzle.
Only it wasn’t aimed atthe Talionisanymore.
It was headed straight for the entrance of the mine.
“Shit!” Murdok shouted. “Look out!”
He turned and started to run. Zeth was already doing the same. They managed to sprint about ten paces back into the mine before the grenade exploded behind them. The wave of overpressure sent them sprawling. Then came the whoosh of super-heated air.
And after that, a deep tectonic rumbling that made Murdok’s blood go cold.
The tunnel was collapsing.
Before Murdok could push himself to his feet again, the section of tunnel came down around him, burying him and Zeth beneath darkness and stone.
CHAPTER 28
“No!” Rona shouted.
Aeron didn’t shout, but he shared her pain. Those weren’t just his friends down there. They were his comrades, his brothers-in-arms, and right now they were in trouble, buried under a pile of rocks.
“Murdok,” he said. “Zeth. Do you copy?”
No answer.
Damn.
He needed to get down there to check on them, but there were still a few dozen enemies to take care of first. He jerked the controls, causing the ship to bank to the right, then he opened fire again, strafing the remaining raiders with the underwing guns. The mutants burst apart in explosions of gore. In a matter of seconds, they were all dead. The only movement down below was the drifting dust left over from where the bullets had impacted the ground.
