“I’d say it’s time we got the hell out of here, sir,” Ben shouted.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Bowie snapped. “All units, fall back to the mine entrance!”
The CASPers who still had ammo left for their primary weapons laid down cover fire as the two squads fought their way out of the mine and into the bright morning sun. Not all of them made it out, though. The monsters swarmed over two members of Viper squad. It was like watching a school of piranha systematically dismember a couple of wayward deer that had wandered into the river for a drink. Soon, there was little left of those CASPers save for a heap of shredded metal and bloodied remains.
As soon as the surviving CASPers were clear of the mine, Bowie ordered, “Head for The Sanctuary!”
The CASPers ran at their maximum speed away from the mine’s entrance, and Bowie’s aft cameras showed the horde of monsters wasn’t following them. He didn’t understand why, but he didn’t really fragging care; he just wanted to live to fight another day.
They had seriously underestimated what they were up against, gotten cocky because they had armored suits and heavy artillery. Maybe they should have listened to Commander Neill and to Crockett after all. Colonel Travis wouldn’t want to hear that, though. He would want to be briefed immediately on what had happened and would likely rationalize the losses away as he usually did. It was one of the things Bowie liked least about the colonel. As he headed back to The Sanctuary, he ran through the series of events in his mind over and over again, getting his story just right so he could handle the briefing with Colonel Travis.
Bowie couldn’t remember the last time they had been beaten so thoroughly and lost so many so quickly. It put a knot in his stomach, and he wondered, for the first time, if maybe they were in over their heads.
* * *
Upon his return to The Sanctuary, Major Bowie doubled the number of active CASPers guarding the colony’s walls. He still had his doubts about the older Mark VI suits, but his misgivings were colored by the bloodshed he had witnessed inside the mountain. He trusted the colonel on the call to use them for The Sanctuary’s defense, and right now, the more defenses they had, the better. The Mark VI suits were built for defense, and were far heavier than the Mark VIIIs he and the others normally used.
As Bowie stood at attention in front of Colonel Travis’ desk inside the unit’s command center, what had happened in the mines kept replaying itself over and over in his head. He wasn’t used to losing and wasn’t taking it well.
Colonel Travis stared at him with both shock and disbelief in his eyes. He was chewing heavily on the last remaining cigar he refused to light.
“You’re telling me we just lost six of our Mark VIII CASPers?” Travis asked him again, hoping he had misunderstood something.
Bowie gave a sharp nod. “Yes, sir. I take full responsibility for it. I should have anticipated the dangers of engaging the enemy in such close quarters.”
Travis shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Bowie.”
The two of them had known each other for a long, long time, and Travis knew he couldn’t run the Marauders without Bowie. Bowie thought of himself as the muscle and Travis as the brains. The two of them together had built the Marauders from nothing, and had kept the unit turning a profit until recently. They had been through a lot together: war, bloodshed, failed relationships, success, and defeat. They would see this mission to the end as well.
“I’m the one who ordered you and your men into those mines,” Travis sighed. “I’m not going to lie. The loss of those suits hurts us pretty badly. Not just the cost either…”
“Sir…” Bowie started but then paused, considering his words carefully. “I know this job is our last chance to get out of debt, but those monsters…I’ve never seen anything like them. It wasn’t just that they tore our boys apart with their bare hands. There are lots of enemies out there that can do that. It’s the fact that they just kept coming. There seemed to be no end to their numbers. Who knows how many of them live inside that mountain?”
“You think we’re in trouble then?” Travis asked point blank.
“My gut tells me we are, sir,” Bowie admitted. “At least after what I saw in the mines. If I’m even half right about how many of those creatures are alive beneath the surface of this world, well, I’m just not sure that we can fulfill our contract on this rock even with the extra suits you bought.”
“We have no choice but to pull this off, Bowie, and you know it,” Travis said firmly. “If we blow this job, that’s it. The Marauders are over. The pay from this contract is the only way we can keep going. We both knew the risk when we signed on for this. It’s do or die time. The question is not whether we succeed or not. The question is how do we do it?”
Travis picked up a data-pad from his desk. “I’d say another offensive on the creatures isn’t a viable option. We can’t afford to risk losing any more CASPers because we underestimated what we’re up against here.”
“I agree,” Bowie nodded. “Our best option is to make use of the colony’s walls. This place was built to be easily defended, and those old suits you bought are perfect for the job.”
Bowie couldn’t help but wonder if Travis had seen a siege coming from the moment he had taken on the contract. Travis often knew more than he did about a contract and sometimes held back details he felt the men in the unit didn’t need to know. “You saw this coming didn’t you, Travis?” Bowie asked. “That’s why you bought those old suits in the first place.”
“I saw it as a possibility,” Travis shrugged. “You know how I like to be prepared for the worst. We were hired to defend this place, after all, not go out and eradicate all of those creatures on the planet. We needed the proper equipment to do the defending with. It only made sense.”
Bowie could see that Travis was just as concerned about their ability to protect the colony as he was, but he had pressed the man enough already. Any more would just tick him off.
“I want half our CASPers stationed on the walls at all times, and the other half on alert status,” Travis ordered. “Supplement them with our infantry troopers, half on, half off.”
“Yes, sir,” Bowie answered, hoping Travis’ precautions would be enough. “What about Commander Neill and his men? We could really use them.”
“If he and his men stay out of our way, I don’t give a crap what they do,” Travis grunted. “We don’t have time to deal with them. Bigger fish and all that.”
“And if they do get in our way?” Bowie asked.
“Arrest them, shoot them, whatever you feel like, Major,” Travis frowned. “Just see that they don’t.”
* * *
Privates Hayes and Gwin shared their spot on the wall with Lieutenant Brooks. Brooks was suited up in one of the old Mark VI CASPers. Like his other brothers in arms, he looked like a space-age version of one of the Knights of the Round Table. Like those knights of old, their mission was one built on honor and valor. They even had swords, though after hearing about what had happened to Bowie and 3 squads in the mines, even CASPer blades weren’t enough. Cannons were a much better option, although it seemed that they were pitifully ineffective too. It didn’t bode well for the mission.
The three of them made up one of the numerous watch squads posted about The Sanctuary’s walls. All of them had heard the rumors about Bowie getting his butt handed to him in the mines, and the stories weren’t kind. The fact that the watch along the wall had been so heavily reinforced added validity to the rumors. Normally, they all felt a sense of cautious invincibility in their CASPers, but that wasn’t the case today. If the rumors were true, they had lost six men inside that mountain. Such a thing was unheard of for a squad of CASPers. What kind of creatures were these that could eliminate a bunch of highly-trained, heavily-armed veterans in a matter of minutes?
Brooks clutched a massive, belt-fed machine gun in his armored hands. The weapon was some reassurance against the growing unease that was spreading among the mercs, but he would have
felt even better if he’d had more time to get familiar with the CASPer, and the weaponry that went with it, before being ordered to suit up for battle.
Like most of those who had ended up stuck in the Mark VI suits, Brooks wasn’t ordinarily one of the unit’s CASPer pilots. He and the others weren’t completely inexperienced in suit combat, but they weren’t the experts Bowie and the Mark VIII pilots were either. Most of them were learning or re-learning CASPer combat on the fly. Even so, the presence of the heavily-armored CASPer made Hayes feel a bit safer. You could never have too much firepower on your side.
Hayes looked out across the clearing toward the distant alien trees. The colonists, despite being religious weirdos, had at least had the sense to clear out the area around The Sanctuary’s walls on all sides of the colony. Doing so gave whoever was standing watch a large, open field of fire at anything that came out of the tree-line. Pretty basic defense strategy, but Hayes had been surprised over the years at how many folks who had hired the Marauders hadn’t had even that much sense.
“Stop worrying, will you?” Gwin punched him on the shoulder. “From what I hear, the things we’re fighting don’t even have any guns.”
“Man, I saw the one they brought in yesterday,” Hayes said, looking over at Gwin. “That thing looked like something out of a fragging nightmare I had when I was a kid.”
Gwin laughed. “But it was dead, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hayes nodded. “But…”
“Then that means we’re going to be just fine. Right, Lieutenant?” Gwin looked over at Brooks.
“I will be,” Brooks said. “You two grunts…who knows?”
It was clear that Brooks was joking, but Hayes didn’t laugh.
“If Bowie couldn’t handle those things, sir, what makes you think we can?” Hayes kept his gaze fixed on the distant tree-line.
“Bowie is one tough mother, Hayes, but at the end of the day, he’s just a man. He took three squads of CASPers into their home, and they got their collective butts handed to them because they didn’t really know what they were going to be up against. We know exactly what’s going to be coming at us.” Brooks raised the hand of his CASPer to point across the clearing surrounding The Sanctuary. “And that’s one heck of a beautiful kill zone out there.”
“Copy that,” Gwin smiled.
“But they did all that damage without guns,” Hayes reminded them. “They don’t run out of ammo or have equipment malfunctions.”
“No, they don’t,” Brooks agreed with a wry smile, “but they bleed.”
The day had ticked by slowly for all of them, but it was still another hour until the evening shift was slated to show up and relieve them. The sunset that accompanied their final hour on watch was both beautiful and disturbing. It wasn’t totally unlike the sunsets they had back on Earth. In some ways, that lifted their spirits, reminding them that fighting and winning meant a chance to go back home at some point and see their own sunset again. Still, where Brooks and Gwin saw that melting sun as a good thing—one that boosted their morale a little in spite of what lay before them—Hayes only saw the reddish light the sun gave off and couldn’t help thinking how much it looked like blood.
“You’d think that those things would have come after us by now if they were going to,” Gwin commented. “The major attacking them on their own turf had to tick them off. I can’t imagine those things just letting something like that slide.”
“You are assuming they think like we do,” Hayes said. “These are monsters, not grad students working on their Ph.D.”
“Maybe not,” Gwin said, “but they were smart enough to take out some of our best guys. You have to give them credit. We can’t underestimate their intelligence.”
“From what I’ve heard, the creatures are mostly nocturnal,” Brooks said. “Could be they’re just waiting for nightfall to make their move.”
“Great.” Hayes frowned. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s starting to get dark, sir.”
“I didn’t say that they would be coming, private,” Brooks pointed out. “They clearly move about during the day too. They took out a security patrol on the morning of the day we landed. I was just saying the odds were higher for them to make a move after the sun went down…especially if they’re as smart as Gwin seems to think they are.”
Hayes produced a cigarette from the pocket of his jacket. Using one hand to shield its tip from the slight wind that was blowing and the other to work his lighter, he fired it up. The smoke drifted away like the remnants of a burnt offering to some alien god.
“That’ll kill you one day,” Gwin said, looking disgusted as the wind blew Hayes’s second-hand smoke into his face.
“I’d say that’s the least of our worries,” Brooks grumbled. “Look sharp. I’m picking up movement in the trees. Zooming in on it now.”
“Pass me the binoculars.” Gwin held out a hand to Hayes, but Hayes shook his head.
Hayes stuck his cigarette between his lips and raised the binoculars to his eyes, trying to see what Brooks was seeing. The setting sun cast long shadows in the trees, and it was hard to see anything through the foliage. Hayes thought he caught a glimpse of something black, moving fast, darting among the shadows, but he wasn’t sure it if was just his mind playing a trick on him or an actual threat, moving with extreme stealth. He reached up to click the binoculars into another setting that amplified the existing light. As he did so, a cloud passed overhead, blocking out the last rays of sunlight still shining over the horizon. In that moment, he saw them. Thousands of yellow, glowing eyes stared at The Sanctuary from the cover of the trees. Hayes froze and felt the knot in his stomach harden. His worst fear was about to come true. Hayes lowered his binoculars and turned to tell the lieutenant what he saw, but Brooks was already calling it in.
“This is Lieutenant Brooks at Watch Point 13. Looks like we’ve got company, and a hell of a lot of it,” Brooks said over the comm of his CASPer. Hayes and Gwin heard him as well; he hadn’t bothered to shut down his suit’s external speakers from when he had been talking to them.
“Roger that, Brooks,” Major Evans, who was overseeing the day watch, replied. “You’re not the only one, either. I’ve got sightings coming in from all around the perimeter. Just hang tight and don’t engage unless those things make a rush at The Sanctuary.”
“Yes, sir,” Brooks answered before turning to Gwin and Hayes. “You heard the man. No one fires at those things unless I give the word.”
Hayes couldn’t stop staring at the sea of glowing eyes. It made him think of an army of demons getting ready to storm the gates of Heaven, only there were no angels here to stop them. There was only his unit and the civilians they had been hired to protect. Hayes was no stranger to combat. He had seen aliens before and had watched men die all around him, but this…this was something else altogether. A feeling of dread washed over him as he continued to stare at the monsters in the woods.
“What are they waiting for?” he muttered more to himself than Gwin or the lieutenant.
“I got no fragging clue,” Gwin said next to him, raising his rifle to his shoulder and taking aim at the trees.
Hayes checked the readiness of his own rifle and then followed Gwin’s example. He knew when the things out there did finally make their move, it would be the CASPers that opened fire on them first. Several of the CASPers stationed on each side of the city carried shoulder-mounted missile launchers with more than enough range to hit the creatures where they currently stood. Hayes hoped that when the CASPers were given the green light to open up on the monsters, the amount of hell the mobile combat suits rained on them would drive them away without infantry troopers like himself ever needing to fire a shot.
A chorus of shrieks rang out among the distant trees. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. A chill ran along Hayes’ spine at the sound. The cries were utterly inhuman and made him think of the final shrieks of a cat being tortured to death.
“Holy frag…” Gwin gasped ne
xt to him as the monsters came charging from the trees.
If the monster corpse Hayes had seen reminded him of something out of a childhood nightmare, then the living creatures rushing into and across the clearing reminded him of demons. Their bodies were as black as the night and covered with scales that sometimes glinted in the dim light of the stars, now that the cloud cover had broken. They moved with superhuman speed and cat-like grace, though they were clearly reptilian in nature.
Some idiot down the wall from them must have gotten spooked and let loose a volley of missiles from his CASPer before the order to fire was given. The thrusters of the missiles blazed a hot orange as they streaked from the top of The Sanctuary’s wall into the ranks of the approaching monsters. Their detonation sent splashes of gore and severed limbs spinning into the night as dozens of the monsters met their deaths.
Major Evans’s voice rang out in Hayes’s ear through the comm of his combat helmet. “All units, fire at will! I repeat, engage the enemy, and fire at will!”
Hayes and Gwin ducked closer to top of their section of the wall as Brooks’ CASPer let loose at the monsters. Brooks didn’t hold back. He emptied the entire payload of his suit’s missile launcher in a single volley. Hayes gritted his teeth at the pain in his ears from the roar of the missiles.
The western clearing around The Sanctuary’s walls lit up as CASPer missiles hammered into it. Explosions rippled through the ranks of the monsters, blowing gaping holes in them. Even before the explosions had died away, the CASPers opened up with their MACs. The creatures closest to the wall were literally shredded by the barrage of fire that poured into them.
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