He got the other foot under him. He could barely stand. He saw Patu. She was slumped in her chair, head to the side. He knew at once that she was dead. There was blood and injuries. Her face was lifeless. He staggered to her, wincing, gritting his teeth, putting one foot in front of the other. The flames were growing. The heat was intense. Mazer ignored them. He grabbed the med kit from under Patu’s seat and tossed it out. Then he reached up and unfastened the latch on Patu’s harness. She fell forward into him. He wasn’t ready for it, didn’t have the strength for it. They both fell to the ground.
Mazer came to. He had blacked out again, only for an instant, but he had no time to spare and willed himself to wake. It was the pain. It teetered on the point where it was so unbearable that the body shuts down, like a switch has been flipped. Mazer pushed himself up into a sitting position. He grabbed the fabric of Patu’s shirt and dragged her toward him, scooting backward on his buttocks, pulling her away from the flames. She was dead weight, her limbs limp, her head lolled to the side, a trail of blood behind her.
The earth exploded to Mazer’s right.
A shower of dirt and rocks and heat rained down on him.
Mazer looked up. A skimmer flew by overhead, having just missed him with a burst of its laser fire. The skimmer flew on for a hundred meters then abruptly turned back, changing its course with unnatural speed. It opened up its gun at a distance, unleashing a barrage of laser fire that tore into the downed HERC and slung shrapnel and burning wreckage in every direction. Hard, hot projectiles struck Mazer in the arm, the shoulder; a heavy, burning piece of metal fell across his leg. He cried out. The pain was immediate and unbearable, the heat intense. Panicked, Mazer pulled at his leg, desperate to free himself. But the fabric of his pant leg was snagged on the metal and held him fast. Screaming, burning, his body coursing with pain and adrenaline, he found the strength to sit up, push the metal off him, and pull his leg free.
The skimmer flew by overhead again, but Mazer didn’t track it with his eyes this time. He knew it would be coming back. Patu’s assault rifle still hung from her shoulder. He had dragged it out here with her. He crawled to it, pulling himself forward in the dirt. A part of him wanted to lie still and let the inevitable happen, to get it over quickly. Better to die in an instant than to suffer a long lingering death from a gut wound out here in the open. He knew help wasn’t coming. He knew he wouldn’t survive. His wounds were too serious. He was losing too much blood.
But there was the other part of him as well. The soldier. The warrior. The part that had been shaped by drills and exercises and mottos and principles. The bigger part of him, the stubborn, angry, Maori part of him.
He reached the rifle and pulled it free. It was hot to the touch, scorched in places. The screen said it still held three hundred rounds.
Mazer turned over onto his back. Sure enough the skimmer was coming for a third pass. The earth to his left exploded. Rock, dirt, heat. Mazer ignored it. The ground in front of him exploded, partially blocking his view. He waited a millisecond for the debris cloud to disperse, then he pulled the trigger. The gun screamed, shaking in his hands. He didn’t have the strength to hold it. He held it anyway. The vibrations felt as if they were ripping him in half inside, which they probably were. He fired anyway. A continuous burst of armor-piercing slugs.
The skimmers weren’t as durable as the troop carriers. The bullets ripped through the hull and pinged around inside in a violent ricochet. The rifle clicked empty. The skimmer flew by. Mazer turned his head to watch it pass. It descended rapidly, crashed, rolled, and took out a half-dozen trees before finally coming to rest in the dirt. Mazer watched it a moment. The wreckage smoked and hissed but didn’t move and nothing emerged from inside.
Mazer dropped the rifle. He could feel himself going into shock and losing consciousness again. He blinked his eyes, trying to stay awake, to focus, to use what time he could. He turned his head, searching for the med kit. It was there to his right. He reached for it. It was just beyond his fingertips. He didn’t have the strength to move any closer to it.
He reached again, straining.
His fingers brushed the handle. He reached again and this time the tips of his fingers curled around the handle and brought it close. It seemed to require an enormous effort. His eyes were heavy. He could feel his strength draining from him like a dying battery. He was going to bleed out. If he didn’t stanch the bleeding immediately he was going to bleed out.
His mind went to Kim. She would know exactly what to do here. She would know how to handle this. She would get into that medic mode, that laser-focused place her mind went to whenever there was serious trauma that needed fast, mistake-free action. He had seen her do it several times and marveled at how she could turn off the world that way and move like a preprogrammed machine. No doubting, no indecision, just go go go. Syringe, meds, pressure, equipment. Boom boom boom. Like a soldier. She had saved countless lives that way.