Roswell Fanatics

Max hunkered down behind the rocks in the area of the bank undercut by the creek bed, taking what shelter was available as the last of the beehive rounds exploded in air...raining their flechettes onto the battlefield. Although several flechettes pinged off the rocks sheltering him, he wasn't hit by them, even though he was too exhausted to shield.

Max moved quickly to the edge of the dry creek bed and scaled the small cliff to the top of the little ravine. The beehive rounds had killed scores more Skins, and several humvees and large trucks seemed to be idling haphazardly through the area, their drivers dead or disabled. But the artillery battery was now down to rounds of high explosive warheads...rounds that would be devastating where they hit...but with the Skins troops so widely dispersed, the HE would be far less effective than the beehive rounds. What was worse, the armored units....the IFVs that now constituted the bulk of the Skins firepower after the destruction of their two tanks, had barely been affected. Less than a half dozen had succumbed to the shelling, and there were dozens more.

Max ran back to the Skins IFV that had been taken out by the artillery fire in the creekbed, hoping to be able to salvage some weapons from it, but it was burning fiercely...like the remains of his own FAV. He was down to his M-16 rifle and the radio... still surrounded by thousands of Skins.

'Well babe,' he thought, visualizing her eyes the way they had looked out at him from the picture, '..it shouldn't be long now.' He looked out and saw the IFV with the antennas...the command IFV, no doubt...almost a mile away and continuing to go west. It was a long shot, and of course it would do no damage to the vehicle at all, but he squeezed the trigger and sent a three round burst of fire at the vehicle. The bullets would ping harmessly off the rear of the vehicle, but in the din of combat he wouldn't even hear it.


It had been almost six years since Skins ....substituted for senior Air Force military officials.... had ordered the removal of the few remaining Minuteman II missiles in the area..., securing the weapons they most feared in preparation for the war to come. But the Skins were actually latecomers to demilitarizing missile silos. The silos themselves...and most of the war materiel that still existed in the United States of America, was actually the residue of one of the strangest wars in human history...the Cold War.

The world's two superpowers, the USA and the USSR had in fact been preparing for World War III almost as soon as World War II was completed. In the end it was an uneven contest for many reasons, but certainly for economic ones. The US at times put as much as 7% of its gross domestic product into its military budget, the USSR as much as 30% of its much smaller gross domestic product. In the end, the US could sustain their burden and the USSR simply could not. By the 1970s the USSR was trying desperately to slow down an arms race that was destined ultimately to cause the failure of the weaker superpower. Part of this effort was a series of two Strategic Arms Limitation Talks....talks that led to capping the total number...and some reductions..in the number of missiles each superpower kept in readiness targeted at the other nation.

As a result of SALT-II, Minuteman II site E-11 was one of many that had to be destroyed. Not mothballed...not pickled...but destroyed. That wasn't that easy, since like all missile silos it had been designed to withstand a near-miss with a nuclear weapon. The heavy reinforced concrete doors covering the silo proper were the hardest to deal with...practically, they couldn't be destroyed. So huge bulldozers dug a pit in the Missouri soil and buried the massive door in the pit. The silo walls were destroyed with explosive...partially caving in the silo, and the support buildings were bulldozed to rubble and the rubble pushed into the open silo. The dirt from the hole excavated for the doors was then pushed into the silo.....all steps observed by spy satellites from both countries. In the end, a picture was taken by the local newspaper, and an editorial column written expressing hope that this was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The whole mess was ultimately covered with six inches of reinforced concrete to seal the silo ...in the words of the editorial columnist...'for all eternity.'

But an eternity is a damn long time, and in the thirty-plus years that had passed since the decommissioning of the silo the debris had slowly compressed under its own weight, and as the good Missouri soil had dried out, it had sifted into voids remaining in the debris below and the once level fill had descended almost 6 meters below the level of the reinforced concrete above. Reinforced concrete is fairly strong, but six inches of it covering an eight meter wide hole with nothing under it for the first six meters, it would turn out, was not capable of supporting an Infantry Fighting Vehicle weighing 20 metric tons.

Koja had the infrared target of the phosphorus fire clearly in his sights but as he started to press the firing stud the IFV pitched forward and down as the front of it tore through the concrete cap on the old silo. As the vehicle continued forward the concrete cap gave way altogether...the IFV first ramming into the west side of the old silo and then plunging downward six meters to the debris below. But the debris was no more capable of holding the IFV than the thin concrete cap and it continued its nose first plunge downward. Perhaps the debris would have gotten to a point where it was compressed enough to stop the headlong plunge...perhaps not...but as the double TOW launcher scraped along the wall of the silo it was being compressed by both the weight and the forward momentum of the IFV.

The rocket that propels a TOW warhead is not particularly sensitive to shock, as rockets go, but then it's designers had really never expected it to serve as a bumper between a 20 metric ton vehicle travelling at 30 kilometers an hour and an immovable object either.

Koja screamed over his radio for help as the IFV toppled into the silo...but there really wasn't time to hear an answer. Compressed against the wall, the number Two TOW missile ignited and struggled to leave the launching tube. After the designed one second delay it armed itself, the proximity fuse looking for a large chunk of metal to fire its warhead at. Proximity fuses are designed to withstand the severe forces of launch and that naturally involves compromises. They aren't very bright. The small electronic device was practically overjoyed to discover it was actually in contact with just such a target.

As the warhead fired, two explosively formed projectiles were created....the first to destroy the reactive armor covering a tank, the second to actually penetrate the target armored vehicle. At this close a range, both went punching through the roof of the turret and the interior of the IFV quickly resembled a blast furnace. The explosion of the 25mm ammunition from the chaingun and the puncturing of the IFV fuel tank completed the start of the carnage. In the closed area of the old silo the heat would ultimately set fire to the aluminum armor of the IFV itself and the fire would smolder for almost a week. That wouldn't make any difference to either Koja or his driver though. Both had died in the first three seconds.

The M2A3 IFV that served as a command vehicle for Zata was nominally capable of holding eight people, but the additional radio gear and planning maps had cut down the interior space somewhat. It normally had a crew of four, the gunner, the driver, the electronic technician, and Zata himself. It had never been a roomy vehicle, and if you had any tendency to claustrophobia, it could be quite uncomfortable…although certainly not as uncomfortable as being outside in a rain of flechettes.

A battlefield is a terrifying place, even for those fully trained to be there….and the higher the casualty rate the more stressful it was. Casualties for the Skins were now approaching 40%...and most of those casualties were fatalities as shrapnel from the Claymores and flechettes from the beehive rounds had combined with the rare hit by high explosive rounds to devastate the Skins forces, especially those who were unarmored.

It had happened in every serious conflict, but by the first war of the human industrial era, WWI, the level of unrelenting violence of modern warfare made it exceedingly common. ‘It,’ of course, went by many names. acute stress disorder, shellshock, combat stress disorder, battle fatigue…. It was a common occurrence any time you had beings trapped in a situation of violence and threat of death. It helped, however, if you had the appropriate training, faith in your unit leadership. And some degree of bonding to the others in the unit. In the three thousand survivors of what only a few hours ago had been five thousand Skins troops there were a fair number of combat stress victims…people whose terror had rendered them ineffective…too panicky to really contribute to the mission. But even among these people…most hung in there, frightened but still bonded to their unit and their fellows in it…people who had suffered the same losses…taken the same risks…people who they identified with who had fought in the same mud and risked the same fate. Even in their trerror they supported their fellows and drew dupport from them in return. So it should probably have come as no surprise that the individual most susceptible to combat stress disorder among the survivors was one who had no training at all to be there, and had always had contempt for the job the military did and those individuals in it.

The terror had been growing in Tafor for hours. He was a Skin…it wasn’t a rush of adrenalin…the body chemistry under that husk was different. But in its own way…it was very much the same as in a human. The ‘fight or flight’ part of his autonomic nervous system was activated at a higher level than it had ever been activated in his long life. It was flogging his brain…telling it he must get away from this deadly situation.

It was happening to the other four occupants of the command IFV as well, but they had their duties, they had each other, they had a mechanism to fight with…even if it wasn’t as immediate as their own autonomic nervous systems would have preferred. As the IFV rolled westward they knew that now was a time to endure…a time to hang in there and wait for the right moment to fight. It wasn’t easy, but with training and experience, it could be done.

“Sir,” said the communications technician to Zata, “…we just lost another scout vehicle 14. He was preparing to engage with his chaingun and just abruptly went off the air. The other two scouts can’t see him for the smoke, but he gave a scream and abruptly went off the air..”

Zata nodded. It couldn’t be helped. Scout units on the point were always the most vulnerable. That too was part of their job….to trigger the traps before the main body of troops were sent into the area.

“Did the other scouts see what engaged him?”

“Apparently not sir. The human artillery he was trying to attack have not yet opened fire…”

Tafor’s eyes went wide with alarm. ‘This was insanity….they were moving in to a trap….and yet Zata kept up this lunacy of marching into the barrel of the cannon…when they had Zan within their grasp.’

“But if we had Zan as a hostage….”

“That wasn’t Zan,” snarled Zata, “and even if it was…it would make no difference to these humans…”

Tafor held on as the IFV pitched forward as it ran through the still-smioking crater left by one of the 105mm HE rounds, and as he did so his head was near the turret as the three rounds of M-16 fire pinged off the outside.

“What was THAT?” he screamed, barely containing his terror.

The gunner seemed unconcerned, “Just some small arms round pinging off our turret, your Excellency. It will do us no harm…”

Tafor sat back in the seat….terrified. His ‘fight or flight’ system was activated fully now but his mind was telling him it was death to leave the vehicle. As the anxiety attack started…his eyes fell at last on the four automatic rifles secured in the rack before him.

The doctrine of the US military toward small arms had evolved over the centuries. As late as the early 1980s, they had issued fully automatic M-16s to all their soldiers. But the fact of the matter was that for most purposes, fully automatic fire was inferior to aimed fire, and the practice had largely ended. On full auto, the M-16 tended to climb in anybody’s hands, with all but the first few bullets going high of the target as the recoil forced the barrel to rise. Now, most of the M-16s issued had a selector that allowed the weapon to be in ‘safe’, ‘semi’, or three round fire, just like the weapon that Max was carrying. You saved a LOT of ammunition that way and a footsoldier could only carry so much weight of ammo, with little reduction in actual effectiveness.

But the weapons in the rack weren’t like that. They were M4A1 variants of the ancient M-16…..the short stocked..short barreled weapon favored by tank and IFV crews. They were less cumbersome to get through the hatches than the longer infantry weapons on those occasions that the crew needed to dismount…perhaps to cover a crewmate as he fixed a broken tread…and they were also capable of fully automatic fire, since under those circumstances their real purpose was to simply suppress attackers until the repairs could be made and everyone get back inside where the greater weapons of the vehicle itself would perform the offensive functions.

But the M4A1 was NOT an indoor toy….bullets will bounce off the interior of an armored vehicle as easily as they do the exterior…and bounce again…and again…and again…until they finally find something soft enough to stop them. So armored vehicle operators are pretty careful with their M4A1s, not wanting to be trapped in a small room of metal with bullets ricocheting madly off the walls like some insanely deadly game of billiards.

An infantryman moving through the field will generally do so with his M-16 on safe, but the weapon is cocked with a round in its chamber, having only to push the safety lever forward to arm the trigger. An infantyman riding in a vehicle might well have the M-16 on safe, the bolt drawn back ready to strip a round into the chamber with the press of the release stud, but no round actually chambered. It was a little bit safer that way.

But armored vehicle operators REALLY wanted to be safe. The weapons themselves were on safe, and the bolts were forward ..... sealing the chamber. To make them function it was necessary to pull back on the handle and release it, stripping a round from the thirty-round magazine into the chamber and then take the weapon off safety. It was more cumbersome, but again, the M4A1 is not an indoor sort of toy. At least that’s what it USUALLY took to ready the weapon.

But although Zint was the god of war in the Skins pantheon just as Mars had been for the humans, any soldier could have told you that the real master of the battlefield was usually a guy called Murphy.


Tafor was terrified but not yet altogether irrational. Zata was strong-willed…and increasingly contemptuous of governors like himself…appointed by his distant cousin the Dictator from amongst the lesser Skin royalty. But the man was well enough liked by his troops, and Tafor was trapped here in this horrid vehicle which he did not know how to drive…did not know how to work its weapons…and in truth, didn’t even really know which way was the way they’d come. As much as he hated Zata, the man’s troops would not let him get away with killing the popular Overseer. The only hope was to disable the Overseer, and then hold him hostage to his troops following his orders. Secure in that thought Tafor grabbed the first weapon in the rack and turned quickly.

Zata was looking down at the map when he heard the sudden movement behind him. Almost seventy years of experience as a soldier warned him and he tried to turn…but suddenly the blackness took him.

As Tafor smashed the butt of the rifle into the back of Zata’s head, he was already turning the weapon on the three crewmembers. Tafor in truth didn’t know much about firearms…and certainly not slugthrowers like these human weapons. But he had taken lessons once in the use of a similar weapon on his home world…it was still considered fashionable to hunt birds in the company of other Royalty, although the elegant shotgun he’d used on that occasion bore little resemblance to the utilitarian M4A1. But it had a safety and a trigger, just like the small shotgun, and he clicked the safety forward and put his finger on the trigger as he yelled at the crewmembers.

“I am in charge now. Instruct all the other troops to go to the creekbed and capture Zan…capture him alive, whatever the cost.. Do it now, or your lives are forfeit as well as that of your commander.”

The communications technician had turned his head to talk to the Overseer just in time to see Tafor ram the stock of the gun into the back of Zata’s helmet. It was a tanker’s helmet, meant as much to soften the blows from the inevitable bumps with the roof as the IFV ran over the broken terrain as it was for any actual ballistic protection. But it wasn’t designed to take a deliberate blow to the back of the head with the buttstock of a carbine. The technician instinctively tried to lurch to his feet to protect his commander, but found himself caught short by the seat belt. Before he could do anything else, Tafor made his threat.

“I am in charge now. Instruct all the other troops to go to the creekbed and capture Zan…capture him alive, whatever the cost.. Do it now, or your lives are forfeit.”

The gunner and the driver looked at the communications technicians. They were not only strapped in, but draped across the controls of their positions. There eyes told him what he already knew, that he was the one best able to handle the threat from Tafor.

Tafor…the technician decided, was a madman at least three times over. Once to assault the commander …. The likelihood of him doing that and surviving surrounded by thousands of troops was slim indeed, once to order the troops to concentrate while still within range of the human artillery tubes to the north, and once to even consider the use of an automatic weapon in the close confines of the IFV. And as he looked…he saw a fourth reason Tafor was a madman…or at least a fool. The rifle he held was the one assigned to him.

All crewmembers were supposed to leave their weapons in the rack without a shell in the chamber…and the odds were good that any weapon chosen would not have a chambered round. But in the case of his very own weapon, he’d cleaned it only yesterday… and added tracer cartridges to every third round….only then putting the magazine in the weapon. The technician was absolutely certain the weapon had no round chambered.

The technician had a handgun, but was reluctant to even use that in the close confines of the Bradley. But he also had a knife on his webgear…and the knife, he knew, would make short work of the Governor. But still…all Tafor needed to do was to quickly pull back on the cocking handle…and then he would have a loaded weapon. He decided it would be better to play along with Tafor….to give the order he had commanded. Once he had taken care of Tafor, the order could be quickly reversed.

“All units…this is command…return to the dry creek bed we just past,” said the communications technician, pushing the button for the microphone with his right hand while quietly unbuckling his seatbelt with the left. “The enemy there is Zan…a member of Antar Royalty. He must be taken alive….at all costs.”

As Tafor relaxed the communications technician spun in the chair and pulled a fighting knife from the left suspender of his webgear. The man, Tafor was certain, was bluffing. No one would be crazy enough to come at a man with a loaded gun. He had no compunction about killing the man if he had to…but he needed at least some of the crew. He could scarcely operate the big armored vehicle himself. As the man came toward him he decided to fire just one round in front of his feet…to convince the technician and the others he meant business.

As the technician made his move he started to smile. All he had ever feared was that the man would somehow realize his error…that he would remember to pull back the charging handle and chamber a round, but he hadn’t done that..and that meant the governor was as good as dead.

There are always unknowns in combat…they are unavoidable…but the greatest danger is when you are sure of something that is in fact untrue.

As the trigger was pulled the sear released the hammer. The spring drove it forward to the back of the firing pin which was sent forward into the primer of the shell that had been chambered by the force of the gun striking Zata’s helmet. The primer sent a detonation through the cartridge instantly igniting the powder. As the force of the exploding powder pushed the first round down the barrel a small part of the explosive gas was vented to the top of the weapon where it pushed back on a rod that unlocked the bolt and forced it backwards, ejecting the spent shell. The bolt springs pushed it forward again…chambering another round….and as the rotary bolt locked the sear…with the trigger still depressed fired again…..

Tafor was holding the M4A1 mainly by the pistol grip as he fired what he thought would be one warning shot. But it’s almost impossible to fire just one round when you have the weapon in full automatic fire…even a shooter familiar with such weapons will have a hard time getting his finger of the trigger before three rounds are fired. But Tafor wasn’t familiar…and in the enclosed IFV with the noise of the weapon and the flash of the muzzle his finger froze briefly with the trigger depressed. In all, eight rounds were fired.

The first round passed between the feet of the technician ricocheting off the floor, then the ceiling, and burying itself safely in the communications radio in a sudden flash of sparks. But the pistol grip was below the axis of recoil, which forced the barrel higher with each successive shot. The second passed…barely…below the technicians genitals…again lodging in the communications equipment after one bounce. The third round caught the technician in the chest…the wound would have been lethal even had it not let the toxic oxygen in to his tissue. The fourth round caught the technician in the forehead…although he was already dying.

But it was the other four rounds that ricocheted madly off the ceiling of the IFV with nothing soft to absorb them…at least not until they hit the driver and the gunner.

When the M4A1 finally stopped firing Tafor dropped it in horror, his ears ringing and his eyes burning from firing the weapon in the close confines of the armored vehicle. He backed into the corner screaming in terror as the vehicle came slowly to a stop. But there was no one to hear his screams. Except for the unconscious Overseer and Tafor himself, there was no one alive in the vehicle.

Colonel Taylor stood beside Major Young, watching the IFVs to the north and south of them. For whatever reason the one directly east had stopped moving....but they were certain it was still out there, hidden in the acrid smoke, perhaps even now targeting them through it with it's imaging infrared sights. But even if it had thrown a track or otherwise been temporarily disabled it would make little difference. As they continued west, both of the other IFVs would soon be within engagement range with their TOW missile systems. They debated firing the two artillery pieces they had been able to ready even knowing the projectiles would range east....too far downwind in the brisk wind now blowing...to affect any but a few of the oncoming troops...assuming, that was, that the stuff would affect them at all.

Colonel Taylor looked at the two projectiles sitting there, EB-P scribbled on them with a laboratory china marker in a familiar scrawl. Those two projectiles and the two already loaded in the artillery were all they had and if he wasted them his people likely had no chance at all.

Still, as the IFVs came ever nearer, the chances were they'd waste all four. He had no confidence that he would actually be able to get the first two projectiles fired...the TOWs would come in with supersonic speed from only two miles away....

'Better to give the order now,' he thought, turning toward the men behind the large cannon, 'then to die with the damn things unfired.'

But as he was about to give the order Major Young's voice broke through his thoughts..."Sir.....sir... I think they are turning back.."

Colonel Taylor looked first to the south and then to north, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's.....odd," he said. Both men quickly turned to the east toward the smoke plume from the burning white phosphorus.

"Could it be the nearest one has us targetted and the other two don't feel they need to fire?" he asked.

"Perhaps," replied Major Young, "...but I still don't know why they'd go back east. I'm afraid I have no idea what they are doing sir."

Max was attempting to call in artillery against the westernmost edge of the Skins troops, but the lead elements .... probably the scouts....were already out of range if the 105mm to the north, and most likely already inside the minimum range of the 155mms as well. He was losing, Max knew. The odds, he knew, had always been against his success....to actually save those two hundred or so people back at the silos, but considering everything...considering he'd already lost everything he cared for most...considering he didn't care really if he lived or died...., it would have only seemed fair for God to grant him this little victory...if indeed there was a God. After all, he thought bitterly, he'd already given up not just the fourteen years of happiness that he might have had....but by his future self intervening, he'd cost Liz those years of life that she might have had as well.

But life wasn't fair, war wasn't fair, and as he saw the two humvees coming toward him fron the east, his rage overwhelmed him. He put aside thoughts of what might have been. These were the creatures that had killed Liz, and he at least now had a target for his bitterness.


As the word came on the radio the three men in each of the two humvees smiled.

“All units…this is command…return to the dry creek bed we just passed. The enemy there is Zan…a member of Antar Royalty. He must be taken alive….at all costs.”

Although they wore battle dress uniforms, the men were not really part of the Skins military. They were the Regional Governor's Guard, a paramilitary organization that worked for Tafor. In fact, they specialized in capturing people alive...sometimes simply for their husks, sometimes to mindrape for information..sometimes to rape in other ways....since the Dictator had not seen fit to provide enough Skins females on Earth for the governor...and his Guard.

They had kept to the back as the troops advanced...letting the frontrunners hit the Claymore mines and the artillery rounds as the humans had tried to keep them from advancing..and by sheer luck found themselves the nearest units to the creekbed when the word was sent out.

And they, more than any of the other vehicles, had an array of nonlethal weapons to assist in the capture....TASERs...Tear Gas....flash-bang grenades. They had also heard Tafor talk repeatedly of capturing the hybrid...and the rewards he would give to anyone who did.

They braked the vehicles to a stop 150 meters east of the the drycreek bed and made their plans.

"Circle around him and get upwind," the leader told three of the men. "Then lob tear gas grenades and flash-bangs and when he flushes this way, we will take him out with our TASERs, is that understood?"

The men nodded and all turned to face the west. The leader heard the tinkle of breaking ceramic and looked curiously at his chest...seeing the 5.56mm hole that had appeared in his Kevlar vest directly over the ceramic breastplate. The vest that had easily stopped a .38 pistol round at short range apparently was not adequate for an assault rifle at 100 meters. He died not really understanding what had happened.

The second Guardsman died of a head shot before the other four even knew they were under attack...and then they broke quickly back toward the safety of their vehicles. None of them, however, could outrun the 940 meter per second 56 grain bullets and the back of their Kevlar vests proved even less able to stop the boat tailed full metal jacket rounds than had the front.

The dust of their bodies blew away in the wind of the passing gust front.

Standing by the two 155mm tubes that they had ready, both Colonel Taylor and Major Young watched in amazement as the billowing clouds of white phosphorus smoke thinned to reveal the ancient silo site a little over a mile away....with the aft end of a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle sticking up....burning furiously and clearly no threat to anyone anymore. It would take a few minutes before their relief was crowded out by the realization that the reason they could see the silo to the east was that the smoke was now rising nearly vertically in the light winds. The gust front had passed.

Max turned away as the last of the six men pitched forward on the ground and turned to dust...only then looking up....realizing that all of the Skins vehicles were now coming at him...the ones out front having reversed their course away from the silos.

'Maybe there is a God after all,' he thought, '...or at least Fate's got a real sense of humor....'

He ran forward quickly...back to his radio.

"Liberty 1-7, Liberty Actual. I have multiple fire missions for you. Load high explosive."

"Liberty 1-7 copies, loading Hotel Echo at this time..."


He awoke to a throbbing headache...a view of the floor of the command IFV, and the whimpers of a terrified Sector Governor behind him. It had already been a bad day. As he pushed himself off the floor and saw the carnage in the IFV, Zata knew it had just gotten much worse.

As the first two IFVs reached the crest of the hill overlooking the creekbed they stopped, and it made no sense to Max. Either of them could bring it's primary weapons to bear against him. Eaxh had a thirty-caliber and fifty caliber machine gun, in addition to the awesome power of the 25mm chaingun...but the weapons weren't even being brought to bear on his position. As the third IFV joined them...forming the start of a barrier behind which their humvees and trucks were disgorging unmounted troops, Max finally understood. They were trying to take him alive.

Early in the war he'd sworn that would never happen...he'd never let it happen. He'd known too much too let them capture him...mindrape him...use that information against his side. In fact, he'd always carried one fragmentation grenade on his webgear...just to assure that wouldn't happen. But they were down to their last half dozen rounds of HE 105mm, and out of beehive rounds altogether. Every moment he could hold out....every second he could delay to let the Skins vehicles and troops gather above his location....that would be that many more that would be withing range of the projectiles when they came.

He had two full magazines in his ammo pouch and probably ten rounds in the magazine he had in the rifle. That was seventy rounds...maybe a few more. As the first group of Skins rushed him from behind the IFVs his rifle fired in short bursts.

Max intended to make them pay...just as long as he could.

The remains of the driver, gunner, and communications specialist told most of the story...the rest he quickly shook out of Tafor.

"The man was assaulting me...trying to kill me with that blade. I fired in self-defense."

"He was assaulting you AFTER you had assaulted his commander."

"All I wanted was for you to pick up Zan. That's how we captured Antar...by getting the Royals."

"This isn't Antar you fool," shouted Zata.

"You can not talk to me like that. I am not only the Regional Governor, but a Baron as well....second cousin to Kivar himself."

Zata fought back the urge to immediately kill the arrogant bastard as he pulled himself to the communication console. Better to avenge the dead after the living were cared for. His men were all hurrying in to danger, following the orders of this idiot. But the radio was dead...smoke still wafting from the bullet riddled case.

Zata looked quickly out the viewing ports...watching the last of the vehicles go by them heading eastward toward the creekbed and the Antar-human hybrid. A moving IFV was noisy...he wasn't going to get them to reverse their course by shouting at them. With a glare of hatred at the Governor, Zata crawled into the driver's seat. Within minutes it was heading eastward in pursuit of a vehicle with a working radio.

"You will see," said Tafor. "Once we capture him...all of this will be over."

'Once my men are out of danger,' thought Zata in reply, '...I will kill this idiot with my own hands...even if it is the last thing I do...'


Sergeant Major Grayson was riding in the lead humvee with Bryan, not even paying attention to the route the driver was taking....too busy pouring over the map.

"These last six rounds have all been danger close, sir, and Colonel Evans keeps marching them in closer. Even if he has pretty good cover, he must be taking a beating."

"Corporal...how much longer?" asked Bryan, looking up at the young man driving.

"Probably fifteen minutes until we'll be within TOW range, sir. Maybe a few less if we really push it."

Bryan looked back at the convoy behind him....eighteen hummers, six with TOW missiles, twelve with turrets with machine guns, mostly 30 caliber but a couple fifty. It was a small enough force that it might not do much more than annoy the remaining Skins forces and it certainly wouldn't get there in time to save Max. But it MIGHT be able to support Colonel Taylor's people...and moving to interdict them was probably the smart thing to do. As much as Max was his friend....it WAS going to be too late. He hesitated for a moment....and that was enough.

"Corporal, you get this buggy to that creekbed just as damn quick as you possibly can, you got that son?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major."

Grayson looked into Bryan's face and smiled. "Hell, sir,...I always said that the noncoms run the Army. I didn't want you to let your personal feelings get in the way of doing the right thing. The colonel's done a hell of a job sir....Time for us to do ours."

Bryan shook his head slightly and smiled. Then he got on the radio.

"Justice 1-1, Liberty 1-1, ...Justice Actual. We are moving to engage the Skins. Get another convoy together as quickly as possible and try to get them to the silos to engage those enemy who make it through our attack. We'll soften them up as much as we can for you...."