Inside the landspeeder the explosions were muffled. The dust ahead was still rising when Fitz and his soldiers got there. Dust was going up, and bits of the luxury apartments were still coming down. They were out of their vehicles and running in, firing small-arms for some form of cover.
The second Korozhet craft was still moving. As they got to the deck, it lurched. One of the privates was cutting the two children loose, as Fitz took down his first Korozhet at close quarters.
Then his muscles spasmed terribly and he felt himself helplessly arc over backwards into the rubble.
He was conscious, able to hear and see, still breathing. And paralyzed. Fitz could see a orange-spined prickle-ball with what was unmistakably a hand-weapon.
It said something.
Ariel was standing on his chest. She started forward. Just a pace.
Then she bared her teeth.
"NO!" she hissed between those teeth. "Mine. Mine."
So the Korozhet shot her. A brief dart of red light.
Fitz, unable to move, felt her fall. And felt her lifeblood stream onto his chest. The little pawhands clung convulsively onto his shirt-pocket. And then released.
The Korozhet spined down, with one of its horned alien henchmen. The Korozhet spine-suckers plucked up Ariel. The horned alien began to lift Fitz in its clumsy forepaws. Suddenly the creature jerked, and dropped him face down on the rubble.
Fitz couldn't move. Face down, he couldn't even see. He could hear the shooting, though. It sounded like an entire barrage. He lay there, grieving. He had three last Cointreau-centered liqueur chocolates in that top pocket, that he'd been saving for Ariel.
He was not too sure how much later someone turned him over. He was not sure he cared. Not even when he realized that it was Van Klomp's big ugly face looking down on him.
It was almost two hours later that Fitz began to recover some movement. After that he had a couple of wild, almost epileptic muscle spasms, and found that he could at least begin to sit up. He was weak, and wretched.
Van Klomp came into the aid station.
"Boeta, I thought you were dead. I should have known it was too good to be true."
"Ariel's dead, Bobby. She tried to protect me. Stood over my body. And the bastards killed her. I even couldn't move to help her." Fitz knew there was heartbreak in his voice. But Bobby Van Klomp was more than a friend. He was more of a father than his own father had ever been.
"Oh, hell's teeth. I'm sorry, Fitzy. She loved you, that mad rat of yours."
"She loved me enough to stand and defend me, when her soft-cyber was programmed to make her obey the Korozhet. I think that's why they shot her. But I wish they'd at least left me her body."
"Fitzy… I don't know what to say, boykie. All I can say is your lot did a hell of a lot better ambush than we had prepared on the other side of the canal. You made them pay a very high price for her. You got two kids free. One's got a concussion and the other a broken leg, but they're alive and free. You killed twenty-seven and destroyed one of their hovercraft-and you only lost three of yours."
"Only thanks to your lot getting there. I wish I'd known where the hell you were."
"I moved my boys into the assault course grounds, except for the ones in that first chopper those bastards shot down. They're dug in there. Then we set up a sort of 'combined arms' group-the new recruits without slowshields and with as much firepower as we could manage to scavenge, the vets with bangsticks and explosives-and went and scouted Webb Fields. We dropped a few smoke-rounds on the crowd, in order to chase them out of that trap. But then we got our mortars taken out, and we've been scouting for an opportunity since."
Fitz's stood up. "Be ready for lots of opportunity. I plan to kill every single stinking Pricklepuss on this planet before I'm done. I'll give Ariel a funeral pyre worthy of a goddess."
Van Klomp smiled crookedly. "I don't think the rats have 'goddesses,' Fitzy."
"They do now."
Eric Flint
The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly