Maya's mother would have been proud of her. She had taught her squad well. An orderly unit, they flowed across the battlefield, never exposing themselves, never getting in each other's way. "Halt!" she ordered, and they all stopped, and without having to be told, they shrank into the bushes. "Move around this warehouse," she said, "and meet on the other side."
Her squad had the wisdom to choose the southern side, the one shielded from the Mauves.
Far ahead, a swarm of black-haired women, maybe as many as fifty, came charging in from the northwest. Clearly, they weren't Mauves, but they carried machetes and torches, which burned furiously in the screen of Maya's dark-vision goggles, and Maya could have sworn she saw the leader wearing a skull on her head.
"Commander?" she said over her radio, "I see enemies from the north, but they're not Mauves. Who are they?"
The answer was not long in coming. "Sabers. All units, get ready! The Sabertooth clan is here!"
Maya did not have to relay it to her squad. Each of them started looking and immediately honed in on the Sabers. The first few bullets flew, and two Sabers dropped. A few guns poked out of the enemy crowd and fired back, but their shots were disorganized.
More groups of Sabers swarmed across no-man's-land. They came in dozens, silver blades and black metal gun barrels shining against skin and cloth.
Maya's squad fired back, and most of their shots hit, but the Sabertooth crowds didn't get much smaller. Everywhere the Sabers went, they threw crude handmade bombs. Explosions punched out windows in buildings, and grasses caught on fire. Houses sat in veils of flame.
"Get back!" ordered Maya. "We need better cover!"
The squad obeyed her, sprinting back from the Sabertooth stampede. Vaulting over a concrete barrier, Maya settled on the other side. Piles of sandbags and heavy metal crates, which had been brought out only minutes ago, shielded her and her squad. Peeking out, she saw the Mauves join in with the charging Sabers.
"We're going to activate the landmines," said the commander's voice on Maya's radio. "I repeat, we're going to blow the mines! Get off Second Street, now! Everyone off Second Street!"
Maya hunkered down. Beside her, one of her warriors was praying while the other hastily scraped up bullets she had dropped on the ground. A third weighed a grenade in her hand, tilting her head to listen, and another desperately tried to bandage someone's stomach wound.
"Three..." said the commander, "Two... one... now!"
It didn't sound like an explosion. It wasn't even the dull thump Maya had expected. It was a rumble like thunder which made her stomach jump and her brain echo with the noise. When her balance was good enough to move, she looked over her concrete wall and saw a bank of black smoke where the front of the horde had been. But she could still hear their war-screams. Disregarding the scarcity of bullets, Maya aimed into the cloud and fired, prompting a few of her followers to do the same.
The bandits kept coming. Emerging from the smoke, a few front-runners threw pipe bombs, and atlatls flung serrated stakes into the air. Maya ducked, suddenly realizing why Tongana had wanted so badly for the militiawomen to wear helmets. A few seconds later, wood and metal projectiles thunked to the ground, some sticking into dirt but most of them hitting pavement and falling flat. A few bombs punched the air far away, but none reached her and her squad. Thankfully, the Sabers had misaimed.
Once again, Maya stood up, fired, then repeated her order, "Get back!"
The squad gave more ground, and the enemy crowd spread out, but it was still too big to see how many of them were left. The plan, she knew, was to draw in the enemy and encircle them. But will it work with this many of them?
