Free No Other Gods by John Koetsier

reds. This was the last tactic: each was about 30 degrees out from their respective sides of the canyon opening. It gave them great enfilading fire on the reds, but more importantly, it gave any lingering, thinking, cautious reds a very good reason to get over the lip, down the short slope, and into the main canyon. Which they very gratifyingly did promptly.
                  As the last ones trickled in (I could just make out Rast among them, the fearless leader bringing up the rear) we engaged the last stage of the plan.
                  The two blues on the canyon rim closest to the mouth triggered the deadfalls on each side of the canyon mouth, and all the logs and boulders we had been able to rig in the previous day’s feverish work rumbled down into the opening, sealing the trap.
                  Immediately we opened fire on the massed men below: seven soldiers with automatic weapons firing at can’t-miss range into an unbelievably dense target-rich environment. We kept pouring metal into red, switching mags as fast as possible. They ran farther down the canyon, seeking the illusory safety of the left hook, dying as they moved, and ran smack into the sheer walls at its end. They looked for cover at the slight overhang where we had prepared a meal and slept, and were picked off from the opposing rim. They put their backs to the occasional boulder on the grassy floor, and ate steel from the two outside blues, who now moved up to and took positions on the jagged new canyon wall created by our mini landslide. A few stood and raised their weapons, aiming fire blindly around the canyon rim, but we were dug into too well to be thrown off by a little covering fire.
                  It could not go on, and it did not. Reds began throwing away their weapons and raising their arms. Perhaps a hundred and twenty remained. Our fire slackened, then stuttered to a halt. Silence louder than the cascade of noise filled the hillside.
                  “Everyone in the center,” I shouted. “Weapons on the ground, all of them. Rifles, knives, whatever you’ve got. Butts on the dirt.”
                  All our blues around the canyon rim called off a report from their position. Each could see best into the canyon floor opposite their position, and I wanted to make sure we cleared the entire area. If we didn’t, they could still overwhelm us just with the force of numbers. Most critical were our two outside soldiers, who I now called inside the jagged wall. If there were reds remaining in any numbers outside, they could be a problem for my tiny force. We held positions for long minutes.
                  It seemed that we had gotten them all. But before breaking positions, I sent a few scouts around to ensure we had. Once we jumped down in the canyon with the red prisoners, we would be picked off just as easily as they had been. No reds were in sight, and a rough count of the bodies plus the living told me that if any were still on the loose, they were very, very few indeed. Finally, we dropped down from the rim. I left two lookouts above, with orders to shoot on any suspicion of red malfeasance.
                  I walked toward the reds, avoiding twisted corpses with faces in the dirt, and others with no recognizable faces at all, covering our prisoners with the gun on full auto, fresh magazine in place, spare mags at the ready. Old-fashioned metal slugs tear a big hole, and no-one wanted a piece of that. A couple of my men policed up the dropped weapons, dumping them in a big pile.
                  The reds started muttering as we closed in, seeing how few we were. Angry at us for tricking them, and more angry at themselves for being tricked, and for surrendering when they might have had a chance to storm the barrier and escape, or turn along the canyon rim and roll us up one by one. One was angrier than the