There was a scarlet streak from the horizon like a vector marker in the dark bowl of the sky. A titanic crash turned the sky orange and knocked Des Grieux down. Sandy red dust sucked up and rolled over, forming a doughnut that expanded across the barren hilltop.
Des Grieux got to his feet and resumed walking. The bastards couldn't make him run, and they couldn't make him bend over against the sleet of shell fragments which would rip him anyway—running or walking, cowering or standing upright like a man.
The Republicans fired a dozen ordinary rounds. Tank tribarrels splashed each of the shells a fraction of a second after they arched into view. The powerguns' snarling dazzle linked the Federal base for an instant to orange fireballs which faded into rags of smoke. There were no more ground-huggers.
An ordinary shell was no more complex than a hand grenade. Ground-hugging missiles required sophisticated electronics and a fairly complex propulsion system. There weren't many of them in the Rep stockpiles.
Ground-huggers would be as useless as ballistic projectiles
The top of Hill 541 North was a barren moonscape. The bunkers were improvised by the troops themselves with shovels and sandbags. A month ago, the position had been merely the supply point for a string of Federal outposts. No one expected a siege.
But when the Republicans swept down in force, the outposts scrambled into their common center, 541N. Troops dug furiously as soon as they realized that there was no further retreat until Route 7 to the south was cleared from the outside.
Every day for the past two weeks.
A sniper on Hill 661, twelve kilometers away, fired his powergun. The bolt snapped fifty meters from Des Grieux, fusing the sandy soil into a disk of glass which shattered instantly as it cooled.
Kuykendall,
