Ryan was dead meat and he knew it.
Then, suddenly, there was a thunderous boom and a powerful shock wave ripped through the hill, jarring Union just as she pulled the trigger.
Her shot went wide in a big way. Ryan, who’d managed to stay on his feet through the blast, charged up the hillside before she could fire again.
He grabbed the H&K by the barrel and tore it away from her, hurling it off into space. But the lack of a weapon didn’t keep Union from fighting back. She lunged at him like a panther, catching him at the knees and sweeping his legs out from under him.
Ryan came down on top of her, and she flung herself backward so he was pinned beneath her weight. He used the position to his advantage, snaking an arm around her neck and clamping it tight.
Teeth clenched, he cinched the choke hold tighter. Union strained to roll to one side to break the pressure, but Ryan used his own weight to hold her in place.
She tried to maneuver a booted foot to kick him in his crotch, but the move was impossible. Union pushed up and slammed herself down on him, trying to hurt something, but then the choke hold finally took effect. The pressure of his arm cut off the blood flow to her brain, and her thrashing struggles diminished.
Union went limp. Ryan waited a moment afterward to make sure she was out before letting go of her and rolling her body aside.
Then he got to his feet and jogged around the hill to see where the artillery had hit this time. It didn’t take long; there was now a smoking crater midway between his hill and Jak’s.
As Ryan took in the damage, he heard a loud whoosh from the opposite side of his hill and scrambled to get there. He arrived just in time to see a small guided missile race from below and soar out over the battlefield, leaving a trail of curdled gray smoke.
In a heartbeat, the missile flashed over the heads of the approaching muties, zooming unerringly toward a single huge target behind enemy lines.
As Ryan watched, the missile hit, and the big blaster exploded. Even before the smoke cleared, he could see that the barrel of the weapon had been destroyed.
As the army of attackers turned to see what had happened to their biggest asset, Ryan ran a little farther and saw the source of the missile. Below, between his hill and the next one over, stood a man with a portable rocket launcher braced on his left shoulder.
Instantly, Ryan recognized him. Dr. Hammersmith was front and center, and he was loaded for bear.
Ryan grinned and shook his head. Thanks to the pot-smoking whitecoat, the biggest threat on the field was out of action. The sniper nests were secure for the moment and still running hot; he could hear the crackle of shots being fired up and down the line by his companions.
Now, if only that mutie army wasn’t quite so big. Whittling it down a few heads at a time with sniper fire wasn’t shrinking it fast enough.
Fortunately, Hammersmith had the right idea. After taking a moment to reload, he fired the rocket launcher directly into the approaching front line. Muties blew apart in the blast, sending body parts churning into the air and leaving a nice gaping hole in the middle of the line.
Keep it up, Doc, Ryan thought. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he chastised himself. That man with the rocket launcher might call himself a doctor, but he would never be Doc.
As bullets from the muties below hissed past him, Hammersmith fired another rocket. This one opened an even bigger hole in the front line, scattering twice as many muties as it blew them to pieces.
Ryan saw fresh confusion in the ranks as the battle’s momentum shifted. Some of the shifters turned and fled, unable to take the heat now that the enemy had a big blaster of their own.
But not all of them retreated. A large contingent moved up to fill the gaps, focusing their fire on the man with the rocket launcher.
To his credit—or the credit of the drugs in his system—Hammersmith stood his ground and calmly reloaded. But he wasn’t bulletproof, and Ryan knew he wouldn’t last long.
Running around and down the hill, Ryan retrieved Union’s H&K from the ground where it had fallen. Charging back up the slope, he found his Scout longblaster and grabbed it, then made his way back around to the hillside above Hammersmith.
Picking a spot with good visibility of the approaching force, Ryan hunkered down with the longblasters and went to work. Cranking off round after round from the H&K’s drum magazine, he knocked down key shooters who were going after Hammersmith. The heads of determined shifters popped like balloons along the new front line; apparently, the H&K’s magazine was currently loaded with explosive rounds.
Meanwhile, Krysty picked up on what he was doing and joined the action from the next hill. Her shooting was almost the equal of his own as she did her part to shield Hammersmith. The snipers gave Hammersmith time to fire another rocket at the crowd, turning a slew of muties into blown-apart fragments and fluids. This time, the slaughter gave more of the shifters pause; again, a group of retaliators moved forward, stomping on their comrades’ remains in their push to the front line, but there were only half as many as there had been last time. And the slow leak of retreating fighters from the rear echelon had become a steady pour.
Ryan kept shooting, but he knew what the end of a battle looked like. The tide had turned, and there would be no further reversals.
All that was left was the cleanup—speeding the enemy soldiers’ retreat until they’d all abandoned the field of battle. Then Ryan could turn to the next problem on his list, the one he’d stepped away from long enough to give Hammersmith the cover fire he needed.
Union.