Confidence Under Fire

"CHEESE IT YOU FOOLS! Run For Your Lives!!!" Doc shouts into the megaphone.

The Time Operatives run. The crowd runs with them.

Gunfire claps and reverberates off the buildings around them and echoes down the halls of this hollow asteroid. Explosions from the APC's mortars deafen everyone. Windows break. People scream. Blood curdles

Everyone runs. The APCs follow.

Doc flashes back briefly to his time in the middle east. Fragments of an exploded mortar zing past his ear into the skull of a young man in front of him. His camo is a Hawaiian shirt.

The few members of the crowd with stolen guns do a rather excellent job of hitting their targets. Their targets, however, are thickly armored and bullets bounce madly off their hulls, pwinging and zinging everywhere.

There are a few lucky shots, however. A bullet or two find their way down the mortar muzzle on one of the tanks just as it is being armed. The mortar detonates within the turret, blowing a gaping hole in the top of the APC. The resulting fire sets off the remaining munitions, blasting the tank into shreds and taking out all the soldiers within it.

The crowd cheers. The other tank takes the opportunity to blow away almost a dozen people with one shot of it's mortar. The crowd continues to run.

All the crowd's gunfire is concentrated on the other tank. It holds up remarkably well. It continues to rip two or three people in half at a time with it's .50 calibur machine guns and turning half a dozen at a time into gibblets with it's mortar.

It takes only a bit more than a minute to run the two blocks, but it seems like a lifetime to everyone involved. The FastTrack station is inside a building forged from the iron of the asteroid they are within. The glass doors of the building open into a turnstyle-gated hallway which gives a merciful sanctuary for the people running from the tank. It can't fire much past the door, but it doesn't mean it won't try anyway.

They're only about a hundred feet away. Doc is feeling out of shape as he pushes it this last stretch with the last of his strength. Steve begins to breath too hard and slows down to catch his breath. The rest of the crowd pours into the station under heavy fire. Steve is caught out in it.

The machine gun still fires and the mortars still fly.

"Come on, Steve!" Doc yells.

"I--can't--run--any--more," he pants, completely out of breath and looking like he's on the verge of a heart attack. The rest of the crowd passes him up, at least those who are not cut down by gunfire.

As the crowd disappears beyond the shattered glass door of the FastTrack building and around the wall into the terminal, the APC stops its approach. The rear hatch flies open and a crew of six pirate soldiers hops out, weapons ready, under the cover of the continuing machine gun fire from their APC's turret.