we had to throw just about every piece of ordnance in the armory at it, and the thing made it to within a hundred yards of our rooftop position.
Next to me, Halley squints down at the creature, and gives me another weary look.
“That was too damn close,” she says, echoing my thoughts.
Underneath our feet, the roof of the terraforming station vibrates faintly, and there’s a familiar rumbling in the air that’s making my stomach clench once again. I look up, and by the expression on Halley’s face, I can tell that she felt it as well. All around us, the laughter and cheering ebbs as the Marines notice the new tremors as well. This time, the vibrations are strangely dissonant and out of phase, not steady and rhythmic like before.
“Oh, shit,” Halley says.
“Reload those weapons,” Sergeant Becker shouts from his position fifty yards to our right. “Get those launchers back up, right the hell now.”
There are small ammunition stashes at each fighting position. I open a box of rifle magazines, and find it half empty, twenty out of forty magazines already used up. I take out a magazine, slap it into my rifle, and stuff two more into the pouches on my harness. One of the Marines puts down a MARS launcher next to me, and grabs a rocket cartridge from a very small stack of them.
“That’s all we have left?” I ask.
“We had three per launcher,” he says. “I used up two just now, and the rest ain’t even armor-piercing.”
I hear shouts of alarm, and turn around to see not one, but four more of the huge alien creatures ambling out of the fog a few hundred yards away.
“Oh, shit,” Halley says again.
Chapter 23
The newcomers don’t simply follow the path of the previous visitor. Instead, they pause at the very edge of the mist line, and then fan out in a widely spaced line abreast, as if they are aware of the fate of their fellow traveler and the limitations of our hand-held weapons. When they finally start to cross the rocky terrain toward the station, they fan out even more, until there are several hundred yards between each of the approaching creatures. Their battle line now takes up half a mile, and they advance in a more urgent stride than the one that came before them. With only fourteen troops split up into three teams, and three quarters of our ammunition already expended, I know at once that we don’t have a chance of stopping this new assault.
On the right side of the roof, the autocannon crew opens fire again. The big ammunition canister attached to the gun is made of see-through polymer, and even from a hundred yards away, I can see that the level of remaining shells is very low.
“Left flank!” Corporal Harrison shouts. “Shoot the one all the way to the left. Fire at will!”
With the newcomers spread out, our teams are forced to split up their fire. Our fireteam around Corporal Harrison starts pouring rounds into the creature on the left flank of the approaching line. Like before, I switch my rifle to fully automatic mode, and start dumping my magazines into the advancing alien.
“Don’t you fucking miss with that rocket,” Corporal Harrison tells his MARS gunner. “Wait until he gets closer. Cohen, grab that last rocket and reload for him as soon as that tube’s empty. Make ‘em count.”
To our right, a cheer rises from the location of the autocannon team. We look over to the right flank and see that the cannon crew is aiming at the legs and feet of their target, instead of trying to score a hit on the torso like before. Their effort seems to be working. The creature’s sure and steady gait falters as the tracer rounds start slamming into its lower extremities. Some of the tracers deflect off its hide and careen into the darkness like embers in a breeze, but some clearly punch through. The creature lets out an awful, eardrum-shattering wail, and stumbles. Then it crashes to the ground with all the grace of a collapsing building.
“Shoot the legs,” the call goes out over the common channel. “Aim low and shoot the legs!”
We shift our fire and aim at the legs of the alien that’s striding across the plateau toward our corner of the building. Through my optical sight, I can see our flechettes and grenades churning up the dirt in front of the creature’s huge, three-toed feet. What worked with the high-velocity cannon