Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [59]
Father Pieter could not answer. A sickness akin to nothing he had ever felt before was crushing him.
The headhunter was working at the hole in Tomas’s head with his stone axe, drawing out the contents. He proffered them for the missionary, clumped on the axe head.
‘Eat the flesh, drink the blood. Isn’t that what you taught us, Father?’
He grabbed the back of Pieter’s head and forced his mouth towards the grey matter.
‘Swallow, or I will slit open your guts and make you eat those also.’ He continued to force-feed his sobbing captive, and the jungle was wild in his heart, in his blood.
‘Where’s your God now, missionary?’
Where’s your God now?
Curfew in Wameen, and the market place was deserted as the dented cruiser dropped gently down in the parking bay next to the barracks.
There was no point coming out quietly. The rebels poured out of the port even before it had completely opened, and headed for the half-open barracks gateway at a mad run.
The guards had watched the cruiser with the Indoni markings descend, and despite being a little curious over the dents and green stains streaking the fuselage, hadn’t been overly interested. Now they jolted to shocked attention as the warriors streamed towards them, half-naked; bullet belts criss-crossing their chests; rifles, bows and arrows.
And a white man in a skirt.
They struggled to bring their Power Rifles to bear and managed to blast a couple of guerrillas into the dirt before they were overwhelmed, and the barracks breached.
The guerrillas were in.
It had to be a trap. There were so few soldiers in evidence.
Those that were proved not much of a threat. Jamie rushed around a lot in the dark courtyard screaming dramatically, but not actually doing anything. Soldiers were firing from a few glass-less windows, but there didn’t seem to be many of them.
The rebels swarmed up the spiral stairways, and soon most of the snipers were silenced.
Pulse fire from an archway across the courtyard. It kicked a cauterised hole through a guerrilla to Jamie’s right. He flinched as the body flumped steaming into the dirt at his feet, and then he was charging erratically towards the archway, emitting a hoarse war holler as he went, not sure what he was going to do, just trying to make it look and sound good. Three guerrillas followed him, rifles booming. The soldier jerked in the entranceway and fell inwards.
Another guerrilla whirled around in a mad dance, his head ablaze as a surviving sniper targeted him from one of the high windows. Jamie continued heading for the archway, carried along with the mad flow of battle, and actually realising it might be better not to skit around in the middle of the courtyard when snipers were about, even if it was dark.
It’s a trap. It’s a trap! It’s a –
He was repeating the words in his head now as he charged.
Why was it proving so easy otherwise? There had to be a large battalion waiting for them inside this archway, lurking in the darkness, and then they would all be for it.
Through the archway, into that darkness, his breath rasping in his excitement, highland blood pumping deliciously, and Jamie was almost beginning to enjoy this. It had been so long since he’d gone into battle.
The corridor was deserted. A single bulb set high on a wall at the end, and it showed them nothing but cells, and those empty. Around the corner at the end, Jamie clutching his machete and expecting his head to explode with blaster fire any moment.
More cells, the dim light from the bulb barely illuminating them. Some of them contained Papul men, in various stages of dying. The guerrillas took out the locks with the blaster from the dead guard, but there was little they could do for the wrecks of humanity inside. They could hear sporadic rifle and pulse fire from outside, but it seemed to be petering off. The cell at the end of the corridor contained just one man, hanging from the wall, his eyes gouged out. The Indoni hadn’t even bothered