rounds doesn’t seem to work with our pitiful arsenal of small-bore weapons, however. I know that most of my bursts are finding their target, but the alien strides on, undeterred. Then our MARS gunner launches one of his two remaining rockets. I hear the familiar popping of the launcher tube’s caps, and raise my head over the sights of my rifle to observe the flight path of the rocket. It strikes a glancing blow to the outside of the creature’s upper leg, and then bounces off to explode in the mud behind the alien.
“Fuck!” the gunner exclaims. Another Marine lifts up the last rocket cartridge, and shoves it into the back of the launcher, performing the fastest MARS reload I’ve ever seen. He pops the locking latches shut, and pats the gunner’s shoulder.
“Up!”
The gunner takes aim once more. By this time, the creature is so close that I could hit it with a well-thrown rock. The launcher booms again, and the rocket leaps out of the tube. A fraction of a second later, the explosive warhead strikes the left upper leg of the alien dead center between what looks like knee joint and hip. At this range, the pressure from the blast is enough to make me stumble back a step or two. The alien falters, and goes down on its injured leg with a shriek. It hits the corner of the building with its shoulder as it falls, and I get knocked off my feet. The surface of the roof is lined with mercifully soft rubber, but my head still hits it hard enough to make me see stars. When I regain my senses a moment later, my rifle is gone from my hands.
“Get the fuck back,” one of the Marines shouts. “It’s getting back up.”
The Marines cramble back from the edge of the roof. A pair of hands grabs the collar of my borrowed Marine fatigues, and I turn my head to see Halley crouching over me.
“Let’s go, Mister,” she shouts.
To our right, the two other fireteams failed to duplicate even our modest and temporary little victory. The two creatures that made up the center of the alien line have reached the building. The shield-like tops of their heads just barely clear the edge of the roof, but their long forelimbs can reach way beyond it. I see a three-fingered hand coming over the rooftop ledge and clawing into the rubber coating of the roof, the structure underneath yielding to the grasp of the enormous hand like the metal foil cover on a meal tray. The other creature doesn’t even bother with such a probing approach. It merely brings down a huge arm on top of the roof, where it lands with a bang that sounds like an exploding artillery shell. This time, everyone left standing on the roof is knocked to the ground. Over to our right, there’s suddenly a trench in the roof between us and the spot where Commander Campbell and Sergeant Becker’s fireteam took up position.
I scramble to my feet and pull Halley along with me. The surface of the roof is now slanted toward the spot where the alien creature tore a gash into the rooftop. My rifle lies on the ground a few yards away, but when I start toward it, the creature we downed just a few moments ago reaches over the edge of the roof and buries its three fingers in the rubber of the rooftop in front of me, clawing for a hold.
“Screw the gun,” Halley shouts, and pulls me away. “We need to leave, right now.”
I can’t see if the Commander and Sergeant Becker are still alive, but I don’t want to wait around for instructions while the alien behemoths are taking apart the building under our feet.
The run back to the access door seems to take a lot longer than the dash out when we arrived up here, even though it feels like I’m running about twice as fast. Behind us, it sounds like someone is dropping frigates onto the hard ground from high orbit.
When we get to the door, there’s a momentary traffic jam as ten of us are trying to squeeze through the hatch at the same time.
“Where’s the damn shelter?” Halley yells through the din.
“Down the stairs, basement level,” one of the Marines shouts back as we duck through the door and run down the first flight of stairs. “Bottom of the stairs, take a right.”