minutes ago, running as fast as he could over the uneven ground and high grass. As he ran, he took off his helmet and his dissipation vest and threw them away. This helped to increase his speed. He drew his hand laser just before reaching the tree line. There was considerable smoke obscuring the area, but Cobb plunged in at full gallop. It took a couple seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkened conditions, and he slowed down as he stumbled a couple times on tree roots. He couldn't see more than about three meters ahead because of the smoke, and as a result he was upon a Kirrian soldier before either one realized it. The soldier started to bring his laser rifle up to fire from the hip, but Cobb had already fired a burst at him. The blast hit him square in the chest, and Cobb was past him before he hit the ground. The stand of trees was only about one hundred meters wide at this point, and as he passed into the open, Cobb increased his speed again. The ground was now farmland that must have been lying fallow. Cobb made good time over it. It was now about forty seconds since he had started running. He figured he had about a minute and twenty seconds left before it hit.
As he reached the far edge of the field, he entered a small hamlet. The A-framed houses were made of a dark wood and were poorly constructed, obviously inhabited by subsistence farmers. He could see civilians at the windows pointing at him and yelling as he ran by them. He would have laughed at their expressions except he needed all his wind for running. He had to assume that there were soldiers after him and that he could be hit in the back by a laser burst any second. He hoped that his headlong flight would make him a hard target to hit. Blood started leaking out of his nose from the strain, and he tried to breathe in through his mouth and out through his nose to keep from choking on it. He heard the excited yapping of Kirrian haltars, fox-like animals that passed for dogs on this world. There were probably a few of them after him as well.
The hamlet consisted of only about twenty houses, so Cobb was out of town almost as soon as he entered it. He saw a ditch off to his right about thirty meters away and veered toward it. It was just what he had been hoping for, a place to take cover. He dived into the two-meters deep ditch and could tell from the smell that it was the village garbage dump. Cobb didn't care; all he wanted to do was to get as deep into the hole as he could. He shoved his head into the garbage and covered it with his arms. He pulled his knees to his chest to form a tight ball. If he had looked up just then, he would have seen a panting Kirrian soldier stop at the lip of the ditch above him and level a laser rifle at his backside. Cobb had estimated that it would take two minutes for the Alliance to hit the landing site with the missile. He was ten seconds short. There was a bright flash as the heat wave from the blast hit the Kirrian soldier; his whole body seemed to burst into flames. The man tried to scream but nothing came out of his melting mouth. Cobb could feel the heat and could see the bright light even through closed eyelids and a protective layer of garbage. When the blast wave hit the still standing, charred remains of the Kirrian soldier a few seconds later, the body disappeared instantly, as if transported. This was immediately followed by all manner of debris, burning pieces of houses, animals, trees, and people that flew past or into the ditch and onto Cobb.
He kept his head down until he felt sure the explosions were over. When he finally raised his head, he saw that he’d been buried in smoldering debris. He had to force his way through the pile and back into the open air. This proved to be relatively easy, especially for a man flush with adrenaline. The majority of material that had landed on him turned out to be wood from houses and branches from trees, but he did see a few blackened arms and legs, probably belonging to the civilians who had lived in the hamlet. It didn't bother him much. He had seen worse; besides, these were just pieces of Kirrians.
Suddenly he felt a burning in his rear end. Glancing back, he realized he was on fire. He dropped to the ground and dragged his backside through the dirt and garbage until the live embers were out, cursing profusely as he did so. Cobb thought that in another time and place it would have been comical, but he didn't feel like laughing. He sat down on the edge of the ditch and tried to regain his composure. A plethora of smells assaulted his nose: garbage, burning wood and grass, seared flesh. He was oblivious to it all. In a daze, he stared out across a nightmarish landscape. Back the way he had come, there was not a single standing tree within sight, only burning stumps. There were grass fires in almost every direction. Most of the houses in the village were leveled, and those left standing were badly damaged and in danger of collapse. He could tell from the way the debris was distributed that the blast center was either on or near his company's landing site. All this registered at a barely conscious level as Cobb's senses slowly returned to him.
It took about ten minutes before he was calm enough to take stock of his condition. He realized that there was blood running into this left eye from a small cut above his eyebrow and small trickles were also coming from his nose and ears. The burn on his backside was minor, and he had several small lacerations and bruises where he had been hit by flying debris. Overall, Cobb thought he had been very, very lucky. If he'd been caught out in the open or closer to the blast center, he would be dead right now.
He now could now turn his attention to what had just happened. He knew that the Alliance was deathly afraid of its advanced technology falling into the hands of the Kirrians and would be willing to take extreme measures to ensure that it didn't. He’d heard rumors that the Alliance had dropped small nukes on units that were in danger of being overrun to make sure all the weapons were destroyed. Alliance command could then report that the units were destroyed by the Kirrians in regular combat. If the Kirrians said otherwise, the Alliance could chalk it up to Kirrian propaganda. Considering the tight press control within the Alliance, there would be very little chance of the truth getting out anyway. But things like that are hard to keep from the soldiers. He had run into an old friend from his training days that told him a story about a vet that claimed his unit had been wipeout by their own command because they were being overrun. Cobb was skeptical of this multi-hand knowledge, but he also knew enough about the Alliance that it had a ring of truth to it. Cobb was now a living witness to the fact that the rumors were true. The Alliance would not be too happy to see him come back.
At this last thought, Cobb laughed out loud and said, "Here I am, at least 200 kilometers from the nearest friendly lines in a hostile country populated by a species who would love to kill an Alliance soldier, especially one that just helped obliterated a civilian village. I can't pass myself off as one of them because I can't speak their language, and I don't look anything like a Kirrian. I don't have any communications equipment, and I sure as hell don't see any. I don't think the Alliance has to worry about me showing up on their doorstep and spilling the beans.”
He decided that surrendering was not a good idea; he didn't think the Kirrians would be any happier about his surviving this than the Alliance. He figured that his only chance lay with evasion, even if the odds of his surviving for long were very close to zero. He needed a better plan. He checked to see what he still had on his person and came up with the hand laser, a knife, a med kit, some Alliance money, and extra laser rifle cartridges. He figured that the last two would be useless since he was deep in Kirrian territory and didn't have an Alliance laser rifle. The cut above his eyebrow was a bother, so he opened up the med kit and took out an antiseptic wipe and a stitch. He managed to clean the area of most of the dirt and garbage and applied the stitch to stem the flow of blood. Then he took out a bandage and wrapped it once around his head. As he did this, he suddenly came up with an idea. It was an idea that might just save his life or at least postpone its termination.
He grabbed his things and headed for the village. He managed to find one house that was mostly intact, though the roof was gone and one outside wall had collapsed. The walls of the house were made of sun-baked brick, which explained why it was still partially standing. As he ste
pped through the wood-framed doorway, Cobb was nauseated by the smell of burnt flesh that permeated the house. He could see through the smoke that it was a single-roomed house. Four Kirrian civilians were in the room, all of them dead. An elderly male was in a heap against the wall opposite the doorway. His head and upper torso had been burned to total blackness. Cobb thought he must have been standing in front of the window when the heat and radiation wave hit. The bloody leg and arm of a small child stuck out from under the rubble where the wall had collapsed. Cobb couldn't tell if the child had been a boy or a girl; then again he wasn't really interested. An adult male lay close to the child with a large piece of brick imbedded in his face. The fourth individual was a smoldering, charred mess halfway out the rear door. Cobb figured it was the female of the family; her clothes most likely had caught on fire and burned her to death. He searched around the house trying to find some extra clothes, but there were none. They must have been too poor to have a second set. Cobb had thought