Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [99]
The jungle around the temple was burning wildly now.
The surviving guerrillas, those who had been lucky enough to escape Pan, Saw and Grave, emerged from the inferno, intent on taking the cruiser, spurred on by Tigus. Twist walked through them, not seeing them, holding his hands before his face, as if he could not understand what they were. A guerrilla took a shot at him, but the bullet missed. He advanced into the smoke, was gone.
Pan had not let them escape. He had merely let them past him so he could emerge and blast them down from behind. He didn’t notice Saw collapse into a bush not ten yards from him, his throat cut with three rapid slices from behind. The guerrilla who had done it didn’t waste time watching him fall, but came on after Pan, tucking the bloody machete back into his belt and picking up Saw’s pulse rifle.
Pretty Boy was on both knees, head hanging forward over his breast. Arrows decorated his body. He was still pressing the button on his empty weapon. Click. Click. Click. Bass was draped over the edge of the dock, head and arms hanging down towards the water.
Pan wasn’t interested. He emptied his power pack and let the jungle burn around him, Victoria still struggling in his right hand. ‘All right,’ he said, tossing the rifle and pulling his Luger, tapping the barrel on her forehead. ‘Let’s go find your friends.
The back of the evil white man’s head was targeted perfectly in the sights of the pulse rifle. Tigus was on one knee, taking his time drawing a bead. His hand didn’t shake. It would be a clean shot.
His men were dead or dying all around him. The rest had fled, giving up on the idea of taking the cruiser – there was no-one who could fly it anyway. That left four men loyal to the cause still guarding the Krallik’s temple – that is, if they had not downed arms and run too.
They had been taken by surprise. That was the only answer to this craziness. Six men – with admittedly superior firearms – had massacred fifteen or so rebels. So much for a crack troop of survivalists highly trained in guerrilla warfare.
The OPG had been made to look like children playing at war.
And this man...
He eased down on the pulse button.
This man was walking casually around like he was on an afternoon stroll.
The woman was struggling gamely with him. Tigus watched the Dog pat her forehead with his Luger warningly, and she relented somewhat. They were turning back this way now, heading for the temple. Smoke tumbled in, obscuring his vision.
A crackle of burning leaves to his left. A thrashing sound.
Something caught in the incendiary. Something big. In a frenzy of burning pain it came at him, driven from its hiding place in a hole beneath the bushes by the heat and the smoke.
Tigus swung the gun.
The massive grey Slinker waddled at him with surprising speed, its flat, blunt head jerking from side to side in distress.
The forearms, thick as Sumo wrestlers, lifted from the ground to embrace the guerrilla, raking cloth and strips of flesh from his back.
The energy weapon discharged, the bolt wild. The Slinker closed its jaws firmly around Tigus’s head, wrenched sideways, snatched the Papul’s head free from the shoulders.
The creature trampled over the decapitated body, on towards the cool lake, crunching on its mouthful.
The inferno hadn’t reached the temple yet. But the guards could see through the window holes there wouldn’t be much time before it did. They also saw their leader devoured by a Hole Slinker, and the evil man who was the worst killer of all coming toward them, dragging his woman.
All that was enough to put them off their guard, and get them quivering with indecision. But they still had two rifles between them, and plenty of arrows. In their confusion they forgot about the hostages.