Conviction by Tammy Salyer

men from the leftmost and closest ATV and squeezing off a shot. Through the noise of their still-running engines, I can’t hear if my shot hit its target, but the way the man on the right crumples awkwardly against his vehicle tells me my aim was good. The other immediately drops behind the ATV, using its sparse size for cover. The action draws the attention of the rest, but too late for three of them, who are picked off by David from his fortuitous vantage point. He isn’t called Eagle Eye for nothing.
    That leaves six, at least by David’s count. The dust and shadows of the rock make it hard to know for sure. The quad doesn’t move fast enough for anyone with even a moderately decent firing group to miss, but the only cover out here is behind the rock spires, and Soltznin keeps pushing toward them as David and I continue to fire at the parked scavs. They’ve all hit the deck behind their own vehicles. Their vantage reduces their chances of hitting us, but I still feel much, much too exposed.
    Within a minute, Soltznin passes the evac craft and our assailants and pulls the quad up short just before barreling into a bench-sized boulder at the edge of the field of rocks. We both dive for cover among them.
    “David, we have good cover, but it’ll be hard to hit anything from here. What can you see?”
    “Four more of them. Three pinned down behind the two ATVs on the right and one on the ground behind the first one you took out.”
    I turn to look at Soltznin. “What do you think we should do?”
    “I don’t know, but they could have friends on the way, so we better do it now .”
    She’s right. Swallowing against the hard knot in my throat, I decide. “I’m moving closer, see if I can get a better shot.”
    “We got your back,” David responds, and Soltznin gives me a thumbs-up.
    Staying low, I push through the strewn boulders as quickly as I can. The ground slopes up, leaving the angle of sight better for the scavs. Every time I rush from the cover of one sandstone slab to another, a shot follows me, always whining too close off a rock for me to draw a comfortable breath. My lungs feel as if they’re being squeezed by a fist, and sweat begins to slip down my neck into my shirt. I have to force myself to stop and put my back against a boulder for a few seconds to calm everything down, my heartbeat, my breathing, my jittering nerves.
    “Aly, you good?” David asks.
    “Just having a personal moment.”
    Suddenly Soltznin’s voice rings out. “You scavs have one chance to get out of here before we cut you down.”
    Her words, infused with the authority of a seasoned squad leader, batter the rocks with their force, and I take the unexpected moment of distraction to leap forward several meters to the cover of a slab directly behind the evac craft’s port wing foil. The sound of my boots against the gritty rock redraws the scavs’ focus, but not fast enough for them to put a stop to my progress. I drop to the ground and find a funnel of open space between the rocks, just large enough for me to get a good visual on someone’s carelessly exposed foot. His scream when I shoot off everything from the arch to the toes could break glass.
    In typical scav style, they barrage the rock I hide behind with a useless volley, using up too much of their ammo and achieving nothing except to assure the three of us that they have no plans to decamp. Like rabid dogs, their jaws are clamped tightly, tenaciously, and maybe fatally to this quarry.
    David’s spire looms to my left as I face the craft. Looking up, I can just see the barrel of his carbine aimed down at the vultures from the darkness of his rock depression. Now what? Only a minute or so has passed since I started forward, but with the exception of one less foot, our accosters don’t have any more of a disadvantage, and I still don’t have a clear shot. With about ten meters between them and the craft, they can’t move forward and use its frame as cover without