Free Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) by Michael R. Hicks Page B

out of the way to get clear of the line of fire.  
    As if in slow motion, fixed in the beams of half a dozen flashlights, the door fell open, banging heavily onto the floor.
    Something leaped out, screeching.  
    Mikhailov and the others opened fire.
    The results were spectacular. Mikhailov and the three soldiers who had been covering the freezer door were armed with shotguns, but the rounds with which they were loaded did not contain slugs or buckshot. Instead, they were loaded with a special military version of zirconium-based shotgun shells often known as Dragon’s Breath. After studying the reports Jack and Naomi had sent him, he thought these might be an excellent weapon to combat any harvesters, which were extremely vulnerable to flame. Like the big Desert Eagle pistol, he had never expected to have to use them. The ordinary Dragon’s Breath shells could not be fired from semi-automatic shotguns such as the KS-K, but Rudenko had managed to have a batch modified so they would. The Dragon’s Breath spewed a torrent of incendiary particles, burning at roughly three thousand degrees Celsius, to a range of fifteen or more meters, and were the next best thing to an old-style flamethrower. They could not take down targets at any significant range, but Mikhailov had never expected them to.
    Three massive gouts of flame erupted from the muzzles of the shotguns as the soldiers fired, engulfing the freezer and the lab area behind it in a blinding pyrotechnic display. The fireworks were punctuated with the bark of assault rifles firing on full automatic.
    The rat that had somehow been trapped inside the freezer, and had dashed out when the door had been opened, was incinerated by the Dragon’s Breath and chopped to pieces by the assault rifles.
    “ Cease fire! ” Mikhailov lowered his weapon, his ears ringing from the shots. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear the blinding after-images left by the Dragon’s Breath shells.  
    Every flashlight and weapon was focused on the smoldering remains of the rat. Stepping forward, Mikhailov prodded it with the end of his weapon. Satisfied that it was nothing other than what it appeared to be, he breathed a sigh of relief, coughing in the swirling smoke of the gunpowder and zirconium that now enveloped the lab.
    He turned as Rudenko burst into the room, half a dozen men behind him, weapons at the ready.
    “ Kapitan? ” The NCO stopped beside his company commander and looked at the rat. He grinned. “A shame that we could not have interrogated it.”
    “It is cooked and ready to eat if you are hungry, my friend.” Mikhailov clapped the older man on the shoulder. He didn’t show it, but his insides were quivering like jelly.
    “You know that I prefer them raw, sir.” He trained his weapon around the lab, taking in the destruction that appeared in the beam of his light. “Aside from this rat, sir, this place is empty. The other side is clear.”
    Mikhailov nodded. “I agree. Let us move on to the greenhouse buildings.” He paused, looking at the rat again. “If anything is in there, it certainly knows now that we are here.”
    * * *
    The connector to the first of the huge greenhouses, like the hallway back in the lab building, was pitch black. None of the lights worked. The power was obviously out, but that was not all: some ceiling fixtures had been smashed, the shattered remains of the long fluorescent tubes crunching under the men’s boots.
    The platoon moved through the connector with half the men hugging the left wall, the other half the right. When the first pair of soldiers reached the double doors leading to the first greenhouse, they stopped and looked back at Mikhailov.
    He signaled for them to proceed. The first two men pulled the doors open, while the rest of the platoon rushed forward into the darkness.
    As he stepped beyond the doorway into the greenhouse, Mikhailov sucked in his breath through his clenched teeth. He had known the buildings were big, but his