CHAPTER NINE:
‘The Hitchhikers’
‘I never got a chance to ask, ma’am, with all the walking and hiding, where exactly did you come from?’
Renn stared blankly at the truck wall, not yet willing to answer the soldier’s innocent yet personal question.
Realizing it was best not to push, he turned to the man sitting beside him.
‘It was a stroke of luck, getting picked up like that… In such a nice and sizeable vehicle, too’
The man ignored him, but Renn pricked her ears up; the man was voicing her own silent fears.
‘Folks, we’re experiencing some technical difficulties right now, I’m going to stop the truck and have a look in the engine’ The driver called back to them as the vehicle slowly ground to a halt, each of it’s dual air pads slowly turning off.
There was a thud as a door slammed.
The door on the driver’s side?
Renn snapped back into attention. She had not felt the truck move when the door had shut, or, for that matter, when it had opened.
Conspicuously, she leaned forwards to see through the small window that let the driver see into the back of the truck, and vice versa;
She could still see the back of his head.
Who had slammed the door?
As she thought this, the 12 tired, battle scarred and half-asleep company was rushed by a squad of highly trained, alert, and bloodthirsty Sypharium troops.
The resistance, or what could have been counted as resistance, was quickly silenced by one of the more trigger-happy Sypharium Troops, with the loosening of one of his bullets. 12 became 11. and the rest of the Alliance Marines quickly quietened down.
From outside on the gravel came the sound of hasty negotiating from the Sypharium squad leader and the truck driver.
‘I have a family to feed. That many spies in our territory? ‘Should be worth at least Fifty.’
‘I could simply kill you here and keep the money and the spies’
The reply was blunt and emotionless.
Renn did not hear the driver’s response, but she heard the gunshot, the crack as the lead hit bone, and the thud as the body, now emotionless too, hit the ground.
There was the sound of weapons being cocked. It sounded like the Marines intended to kill them then and there, without any interrogation.
Choosing to act fast, Renn kicked her way through into the front of the vehicle, the cynical part of her brain pointing out that this was the second time that day that she’d gone through a window.
Quickly, she turned the key in the ignition, pleased to hear the smooth response of the air pads.
Wrenching the clutch into full throttle, she drove straight at the Sypharium Squad leader, killing him on impact.
Her men, now far more alert, had reloaded their own weapons and had began to pick off the remaining Sypharium Troops from the back, using the tarpaulin as a sort of loose cover.
Deciding not to wait for enemy reinforcements, Renn hurled the truck down the road, towards Emit Time.