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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 56: Beam 144
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 74
Standing back from the tower’s open windows, Beam scanned the field ahead. He was guessing that there were perhaps thirty to fifty armed soldiers out there, and while they looked like most of them were wearing the more limited armor, the sheer number of rifles was daunting. Taking out that many at range would be a challenge, particularly since it would not take them long to figure out where he was attacking from.
Wait, though. A troop like this--someone would be in charge, giving the orders. Could he figure that out? Could Bob figure it out? Bob could hear all those thoughts over there; he could certainly hear the thoughts of the man in charge. But did that tell him where the man in charge was? It seemed likely--back on the space prison, Bob could tell where people were based on hearing their thoughts. If he pointed in the right direction, they could target that key person.
And Bob already knew what he was thinking.
“Dawn,” he said without turning, “Bob is pointing at the place where their leader is positioned. Let’s put something big there, see if we can take him out and break up their command structure.”
A moment later a rocket flew out the window and into the woods fairly near the middle of the line. Its explosion brought down a couple trees, but there were screams, soldiers Beam took as collateral, caught in the blast. That was a benefit. He thought it unlikely that the second in command, if there was such a person, was somewhere other than next to the commander, so this should create if not chaos something like it.
Anyway, that was step one. The question was what to do next. The trees weren’t thick here--they were on the outskirts of the city--but they were adequate to provide concealment, and as long as the enemy did not break cover it would be difficult to target them. They only had a few rockets, and he did not want to waste them.
“Grenades,” he said. They had a couple crates of assorted grenades, and a few well-placed frags would do significant damage. Dawn had that grenade launcher on her rifle, and rarely used it. “Dawn, let’s put a spread of maybe four or five along their line, see if that does the job.”
The diminutive killing machine promptly placed a series of grenades in an even spacing, skipping the center. A few soldiers came running forward, and Beam and Bron dutifully shot them with the rifles they had recently acquired. The white-haired man figured that at least some had been killed or maimed, and others had fled to the rear. The enemy was in complete disarray.
It was time to leave.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #470: Verser Turnings. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
