Read Online No Other Gods by John Koetsier - Free Book Online Page A

space in front of us and around us. Moving at high speed. Impacting with the body of the red force. Impacting with the bodies of the red soldiers.
                  They were torn to pieces. In the first few seconds, half went down, their chests ripped apart, femurs smashed, faces torn. A giant scythe cut some virtually in two, their twisted torsos shattering to the ground bearing only a vague relationship with their former limbs. The rest of the detachment were cut down within fifteen seconds, and the avalanche stuttered to a stop.
                  War is hell, I suppose. A hell of a lot of fun, too, when you’re winning, and when you think death is just a temporary inconvenience.
                  I turned my eyes up to the main force of the reds. Now was a critical time for my plan. Would they turn and run? Hunker down? Both were equally fatal for my plan. They’d been thinking about us for days ... and nights. They’d been blooded by us previously, and marching to meet us all day. And now they’d just watched forty of their number get cut down. Would they attack?
                  I didn’t want to leave it to chance. We opened fire at long range, a hundred meters or so. They were in the open and exposed, and if they wanted to run, they’d bleed. Maybe not shatter, but definitely bleed. I was counting on Rast to think. He knew he had at least some kind of numbers advantage. He knew he had no good cover in the flat. He knew that the trees would give him cover, if he could just get there. And he knew where we were. It was too good to pass up, and the reds formed up for an assault.
                  “Get ready!” I shouted, and any blues with me who were in trees dropped down. We emptied the magazines in our spare guns toward the reds, then dropped them and ran. Or, most of us ran. I had a little errand to take care of first. Thirty seconds later I joined the others.
     
    The next half hour was thirty long minutes of sweat and terror. We were forced to pause and pour fire behind us every couple of minutes, then turn and run. Maintaining the illusion that we were a small, defeated, retreating force on the run was paramount. And at least two of those descriptions were accurate.
                  We whipped up the slope, coming up the short rise just before the box canyon at a dead run. I saw that the opening was now wider — the brush had been cleared away — and ordered everyone to their positions. Two sprinted to the far end. Two melted into the undergrowth just outside the canyon. The rest scrambled up the canyon wall. Everyone would find fresh ammo pre-positioned at their designated spots. Except me, of course.
                  Every stage in this battle had been critical — when the enemy can more afford to lose fifty than you one, there’s not a lot of margin for error. But the coming decision was the most critical. It would determine whether we would win now, or die slowly over the next days and weeks. Again, timing was paramount. The first reds into the canyon had to see our group disappearing at the far end. Had to. They needed to know that the chase was almost over. Then the rest of the reds needed to follow them in. I had a plan for that.
                  The hill rising from the valley floor now far beneath us sloped up steeply. Before the canyon it peaked and then descended gently down, while the walls of the canyon, first gently and then swiftly rose higher into the mountain above. The sloping hill and the ground around the canyon lip was treed, but not thickly. The canyon itself was bare of trees – a grassy plain almost mirroring in miniature the valley floor far below, with only a few boulders breaking the skin of the mountain, poking up through the grass.
                  What we had discovered on our second visit to this canyon is that the east end had a left hook. A deadly left hook. The trail seemed