To The Stars

“This is a big place,” he said, looking up at the service towers, gantries and warehouses that stretched into the distance behind the wire fence. “We can maybe take it — but we can’t hold it.”

“You were at the last briefing. We’re getting reinforcements to consolidate.”

“You never said where they were coming from.”

“Of course not. So if you’re captured you won’t be able to talk.”

The big man smiled coldly and patted the bandolier of grenades hung about his neck. “The only way they’ll capture me is dead. So tell.”

Dvora smiled and pointed skyward. “Help will come from there.” Vasil grunted and turned away.

“Now you sound like a rabbi,” he said, just as her radio sounded a rapid series of high-pitched bleeps.

“Go!” Dvora said, but he already had his foot down on the accelerator. “Gunners ready?” she said into her radio.

“In position,” the voice said inside her head. She tightened her chin strap to keep the bone conduction headphone secured in place.

The big truck rolled around the corner of the warehouse and stopped by the military police box there. The gate that blocked the entrance remained shut. The MP leaned out and scowled.

“You’re going on report, buddy, because you are stupid, and you are lost. That thing isn’t cleared to come in here…”

The time for harmless drug injections had passed. Through a slit cut in the canvas cover of the truck the muzzle of a machine gun emerged, firing, sweeping back and forth. Because of the long silencer on the end of the barrel it only made a muffled coughing sound; the crash of broken glass and punctured metal was much louder. A second gun on the other side killed the MP there.

“Ram it,” Dvora said.

The heavy truck lurched forward, crashing into the gate, pulling it down with a shriek of torn metal, drove over it. An alarm bell began sounding somewhere in the distance; there was the muffled sound of explosions.

Dvora had memorized their route, but she did not believe in taking chances so had the map unfolded on her lap. “Left at the next corner,” she said, her finger on the track marked out in red. “If we don’t meet any resistance on the way this should take us directly to our target.

The service road they were on cut through an area of office blocks and warehouses. There was no other traffic. Vasil put his foot to the floor and the heavy truck picked up speed. The gearbox screamed as it shifted into top gear, the soldiers in back grabbing for support as they jarred through a pothole.

“That’s the building we want, the big one…

Her words ended in a gasp as the road surface ahead stirred and cracked, crumbled, then split from curb to £urb. Vasil was standing on the brakes, the wheels locked, the tires screaming as they skidded, scarcely slowing, burning rubber. They looked on, horrified, braced themselves, unable to do anything else as they saw the concrete fall away in chunks and slabs as a meter-high steel plate levered up to block the road. The slide ended in a metallic crash as the truck drove headlong into the rust-splotched barrier.

Dvora plunged forward, her helmet cracking hard against the metal dash. Va sil clutched her by the shoulders and pulled her erect.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, dazed by the impact. “This barrier… wasn’t mentioned in the briefing.”

A hail of bullets tore through the metal of the truck, crashed through the windows.

“Bail out!” Dvora shouted into her microphone, raismg her gun at the same time and putting a long burst into the doorway of a nearby building where she thought she had seen someone move. Vasil was already in the street and she dived after him. Her squad were dropping down and seeking cover, returning the fire.

“Cease firing until you see a target,” she ordered. “Anyone hurt?”

There were cuts and bruises, no more. They had survived their first combat encounter and had all found cover, either under the truck or against the building wall.

The firing started again and slugs screamed off the road, sending up spurts of dust and fragments from the sidewalk. At the same time there was the bark of a single shot from under the truck and the firing stopped. A metallic clatter sounded, loud in the silence after the firing, as a gun fell from a window across the main road; a man’s motionless arm hung down across the frame.

“There was only the one,” Grigor said, snapping the safety back on his rifle.

“We’ll advance on foot,” Dvora said, looking at the map. “But away from this main road now that the alarm is out. The alleyway across the road. Scouts out, proceed as skirmishers. Go!”

The two scouts, one after another, rushed across the empty road and into the security of the alley mouth. The rest of the squad followed. They double-timed now, aware of the quick passage of the minutes, Vasil grunting to keep up, running heavily under the thirty kilos weight of the big recoilless 50 calibre machine gun, his two ammunition carriers at his heels.