Operation Sierra-75

by Thomas S. Gressman

  The alien swung the long weapon at her head. Frost leapt backwards, careless of landing safely, seeking only to put space between herself and that monstrous weapon. More quickly than Frost would have believed possible, the Masher came on. Handling the weapon as easily as the Marine sergeant would have wielded a pugil stick, the alien thrust the wickedly screeching saw blade at her midsection. Frost twisted aside, getting her Jackal in front of her.

  A jerk on the trigger, and the big shotgun roared and jumped in her hands. The buckshot sang off the Masher’s breastplate, knocking him back a half-step. The thing let out a bellow of shock and pain. It rushed forward, swinging the two-handed Thumper. Frost pumped the Jackal’s slide, feeding a fresh round into its chamber. She ducked below a stroke that would have ripped her head from her shoulders, rammed the shotgun into the alien’s groin, and jerked the trigger.

  The blast lifted the alien off its feet, dropping it into an untidy tangle of arms, legs, and weapon. The Masher’s corpse twitched once and lay still. The whining chain-saw blade stopped. In some corner of her mind, Frost realized that the Mashers’ weapons must be either powered by or controlled by the creatures’ nervous systems. The anomaly of the idea that a race so primitive in appearance and culture should be able to perform such cybernetic implants was not lost on her.

  Another of the hunched aliens lumbered toward her. She brought up the shotgun, pointing its stubby barrel at the center of the creature’s body. The Masher let out a yelp, and, flailing its arms, came to a stumbling halt. For a split second, Masher and Marine eyed each other; then the alien screeched again and darted away into a hut. Only after the thing had retreated did Frost realize that it was the pregnant female.

  “Lion Three, this is Six,” Taggart’s voice erupted from her headset. “We’ve got trouble here. The aliens have gotten organized and they are pressing us hard. Push your squad south as fast as you can.”

  “Roger, Six,” Frost acknowledged. “First Squad, form up on me. The boss is in trouble and we’re gonna go bail him out.”

  Private Cho Lim took one step before a Masher leaned around the corner of the same hut the pregnant female had taken refuge in. The alien’s spike gun barked. Lim pitched over onto his back, his hands clutching his face. Corporal Henry tried to go to his aid, but was attacked by two more Mashers, one of which was armed with a stolen Pitbull rifle. The tall noncom was struck by two assault-rifle rounds before he could take cover.

  “Henry, report!” Frost bellowed.

  “I’m okay, Gunny,” he answered breathlessly. “Damn, that hurts. They hit me center mass, but the armor stopped the slugs.”

  “Gunny, Lim’s dying out there,” Harris yelled, following up his angry shout with a long thundering burst from his Rottweiler. Splinters flew from the hut’s wooden walls. Frost would have bet that nothing could survive the withering blast of gunfire. She was proven wrong, as a bleeding Masher leaned around the doorframe, taking a wild potshot at the machine gunner.

  Harris was right. Lim was not dead. He was writhing on the ground, his hands pressed over his face. The wounded man’s back arched violently. He kicked his feet.

  “Koll, put a grenade in there.”

  “On the way, Sarge.”

  Koll’s Bulldog thumped. Frost saw the shack’s wooden wall splinter where the twenty-millimeter projectile struck and penetrated. Less than a second later, the package of steel and explosives detonated with a sharp bang. Koll had set his grenade for delayed point detonation, allowing it to pass through the hut’s flimsy wall before bursting. Nothing inside the shack could have survived that deadly shower of high-velocity fragments.

  “Mossier, deSilva, check on Lim.” Without waiting for a reply, Frost darted toward the hut’s open, smoke-shrouded doorway. Nothing moved inside. The Bulldog’s grenade had done its work. There were five dead Mashers, including the pregnant female. For a moment Frost was sickened by the sight of the dead alien, her body torn by the deadly steel shards. But the veteran noncom quickly steeled herself and turned her back on the charnel house.

  “Gunny, Lim’s dead,” Mossier called. “His faceplate was torn away by that spike, and he suffocated before we could get to him.”

  * * *

  Captain Max Taggart flinched as a steel spike buried itself in the trunk of the diseased tree behind which he had been sheltering. He rolled right, came to his knees, and loosed a three-round burst of automatic rifle fire. A few dozen meters away, a Masher, scrawny by comparison to its fellows, clutched its left thigh and collapsed into a heap.

  Off to his left, Taggart heard the loud, flat crack of a bursting twenty-millimeter grenade. Two more of the squat little monsters fell to the dusty soil, their bodies torn by shrapnel.

  “Captain, they’re coming in close!”

  Taggart wasn’t sure who raised the panic-tinged shout. A Masher, bounding through the dying trees swinging a Thumper, gave him no time to inquire. The creature was on him before Taggart could bring his Pitbull to bear.

  The Masher let out a howl of rage and battle lust, and brought the metal-shafted club down in a vicious overhand arc, intended to smash the Marine officer’s helmet and head alike. Taggart was able to save himself only by flinging himself recklessly to one side. At the same time, he brought his rifle up in a slashing counter-clockwise circle, hoping to deflect the Masher’s primitive, but still deadly weapon.

  Neither the blow nor the desperate parry connected. The Masher, impelled by the force of his missed stroke, lurched forward. Taggart stumbled, trying to get his feet back under him after his wild dodge. Both antagonists fell to the ground.

  Taggart rolled away from the Masher. He felt his environment suit snag on some bit of debris and then pull free. He mouthed a silent prayer that his suit was not torn and surged to his feet. The Masher was gathering itself for another charge. The captain gave the creature no time to set itself. With all his strength, Taggart swung the butt of his Pitbull at the creature’s head. The monster let out a snuffling yelp of shock and pain as the rifle’s collapsible stock slashed into its jaw. A muted, wet snap reached Taggart’s ears. The creature dropped twitching into the dusty soil. The Marine officer reversed his weapon and finished the creature off with a burst of gunfire.

  Almost immediately, two more Mashers sprang up to take the first one’s place. Taggart shot the one nearest him. As he was swinging the M-18’s muzzle to engage the second, the Masher struck the weapon from his grasp with a fire ax, which had probably been looted from Cabot’s damage-control stores.

  Taggart heard the weapon clatter across the ground as he fought to keep his balance. The force of the blow had twisted him half-around, leaving the Masher behind him and a bit to his left. Taggart took advantage of the writhing lunge he had to make to stay on his feet, and, continuing the turn, lashed out with the sole of his right foot.

  The shooting back kick caught the Masher in the belly. Taggart heard the whoop as the breath rushed out of the creature’s lungs. Completing the turn, he grabbed for the big Ka-Bar combat knife hanging upside down from the left suspender of his combat harness. At close quarters, the knife would serve him better than the heavy M-43 Pug autopistol holstered on his hip.

  As Taggart yanked the heavy bowie-bladed knife from its kydex sheath, the Masher, still struggling to breathe after the devastating blow to its abdomen, lurched forward, its Thumper club lying forgotten in the dirt. One flailing hand snagged Taggart’s harness while the other clipped the side of the Marine’s head.

  A star-shot red haze drifted across Taggart’s vision.

  God, this little bastard is strong.

  Blindly, he lashed out with the Ka-Bar, feeling the weapon’s blade strike flesh. For a split second, the blade hung up in the dense muscle sheathing the Masher’s upper arm. Then the force of the slash dragged the weapon free. The Masher howled in pain, but never let go of Taggart’s harness.

  Summoning all his strength, which had been increased by rage and fear, Taggart thrust the combat knife into the Ma
sher’s body. Twisting the weapon’s handle, he jerked it free and thrust again. He felt the viselike grip on his harness slacken, then release, as he rammed the Ka-Bar into the Masher’s torso a third time.

  A deep gurgle escaped the ugly alien’s throat. It sagged backwards. The Ka-Bar embedded in the Masher’s body was jerked from Taggart’s hand by the fall. He thought that he had probably jammed the thick, broad blade against one of the creature’s ribs. It would take more time and effort to free the weapon than Taggart had at the moment.

  Taggart looked around for his Pitbull. He spotted the weapon lying against the base of a sickly, blighted tree. The M-18’s barrel had been bent by the Masher’s ax. A bright line gouged in the metal showed how close Taggart had come to losing his fingers to the alien’s melee weapon.

  Yanking his Pug from its flapped green nylon holster, the captain turned to survey the battlefield. The Mashers had pulled back. A few of his Marines were pursuing them. Dr. Fritz Mayer knelt over a camouflage-clad form, holding a pressure dressing in place with one hand while struggling to free a second bandage from its sterile package with the other.

  Taggart dropped down beside the medic. He placed his hands over the thick bandage pressed against the wounded Marine’s shoulder. Even through the dressing, Taggart felt the broken ends of Private First Class Lisa Parks’s collarbone grate together. Mercifully, she was unconscious.

  “It’s through-and-through,” Mayer said.

  The captain half rolled the injured Marine toward him, allowing Mayer to apply the second bandage against the ragged exit wound in Parks’s upper back. In a few moments, the medic had the dressings taped firmly in place.

  “Is she gonna make it, Doc?”

  “I think so, Captain,” Mayer sighed, sitting back on his heels. “She’s lost a lot of blood, and her suit was compromised. I think we got to her in time, though.”

  The medic sighed again and jerked his head toward the Masher’s encampment. “You go ahead, I’ll look after her.”

  Taggart patted Mayer on the shoulder and got to his feet. A few meters away, Parks’s Bulldog support rifle lay undamaged on the ground. The captain recovered the weapon in order to replace his destroyed Pitbull and headed through the grove of dying trees toward the rapidly fading sounds of battle.

  * * *

  “Madre de Dios,” Private Jorge deSilva breathed.

  Gunny Frost looked up at her trooper’s awe-filled exclamation. There, striding between the huts, bearing down on her depleted squad, was the largest Masher they had seen yet. The creature would have been well over six feet tall, if it had been standing on the ground. As it was, the top of the alien’s head towered almost three meters in the air. Grafted into the alien’s waist were five articulated limbs, each ending in a sharp steel point. The Masher’s own legs dangled limply a meter above the earth. Whereas most of its “normal” fellows had small bits of metal implanted in their bodies, this monstrous specimen was almost completely encased in steel plates. Clutched in its hands was an elegant riflelike weapon, the likes of which Gunny Frost had never seen.

  DeSilva recovered his composure and sent a three-round burst into the alien’s chest. The alien replied by leveling the metallic green rifle at its assailant. A loud sizzling hum blanketed the sounds of gunfire, and deSilva dropped to the earth, screaming. His right leg had been severed at the knee, the stump cauterized by the eldritch energies projected by the huge alien’s weapon.

  His squadmates scattered, sheltering behind whatever cover they could find, but not before the Masher cut down another Marine.

  Gunny Frost dashed out of cover to grab deSilva by the back of his combat harness. A hissing burst of invisible energy scorched the earth only a meter away. She felt an indescribable wave of heat pass over her, causing her breath to catch in her lungs. She hefted the now-unconscious Marine across her shoulders and launched into a shambling run, barely reaching the cover of a rock outcropping before another blast of invisible heat energy tore through the air. The stone shattered beneath the energy weapon’s beam, showering Frost and deSilva with shards of white shrapnel. A few rock splinters penetrated Frost’s environment suit, stinging her legs and side like a swarm of enraged hornets.

  Fighting panic, she took a deep breath of rubber-tasting, filtered air and held it. Digging in a pouch, she extracted a patch kit. Another blast of energy blew more stone to rubble, but Frost could hear the rapid, angry rattle of Pitbull and Rottweiler fire replying to the Masher’s assault.

  Working as quickly as she could, Frost slapped sealant patches over the gashes in her suit, hoping they would hold as well as the suit’s designers claimed they would. When the last rent was sealed, Frost snatched up her Jackal and peeked cautiously around the base of the outcropping.

  The big, enhanced Masher was still on its mechanical feet, though it was bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  Tracer fire lanced in from behind the creature to spark off its mechanical legs. Through the smoke of battle, Frost could see a Marine lying prone in the shadow of a ruined hut, blazing away with a machine gun. Taking advantage of the distraction provided by that hail of fire, Gunny Frost yanked a hand grenade from its pouch on the side of a magazine carrier. She armed the fist-sized explosive package and lobbed it underhand beneath the big alien’s dangling humanoid feet.

  A roar of animal pain accompanied the bursting grenade. When she looked again, the Masher was down. Three of its five mechanical legs were twisted, splayed outward by the blast. The two intact limbs were twitching spastically. The creature’s lower body had been shredded by the steel fragments, and yet it struggled to lift its arcane weapon. Gunny Frost lifted her shotgun, intending to put the creature out of its misery, when the Masher lifted its bloodied head, fixing her with small, beady eyes. A spasm of pain passed over the alien’s apelike features. It let out a small mewling sigh and lowered its head as though it were settling in for a nap. The mechanical legs gave one final jerk and were still.

  Almost immediately, the volume of fire echoing through the Masher camp slackened. It was as though the biomechanical monster’s death had been a signal to the surviving aliens, for those able to do so took to their heels, dragging with them those of their dead and wounded comrades they were able to reach. As suddenly as it had begun, the battle was over.

  31

  * * *

  O nawa Frost stood staring down at the dead body of the spider-legged Masher.

  It must have been their chief, she thought. When it was killed, the rest of the little bastards broke and ran.

  “Corporal Henry,” she called aloud.

  “Right here, Gunny.” Though the 5.56 millimeter slugs from the stolen Pitbull did not penetrate the thick kevlon of his combat environment suit, the impacts had cracked two of the gray-haired noncom’s ribs. His voice came out as a sharp-edged rasp.

  “You okay, Tim?”

  “Sure, Gunny. Nothing a little Earthside R & R wouldn’t fix.”

  “Well, you ain’t gonna get it until we get off this damn dustball,” Frost snarled with the mock severity common to sergeants of every stripe and nation. “Get what’s left of your squad organized. Check the dead Mashers and make sure they’re really dead. And we still have hostages to find.”

  “Right away, Gunny,” Henry replied.

  As Henry turned to carry out Frost’s orders, the Mohawk gunnery sergeant saw Captain Taggart approaching. The front of his environment suit was slick with dark Masher blood. A Bulldog support rifle rested in the crook of his left arm.

  “Looks like you had a time of it too, sir,” Frost said.

  “We did, Gunny. They came in close, and it ended up hand-to-hand.” Taggart looked and sounded like he was exhausted. “I called Cortez and her people in as soon as the fighting stopped. They’re taking care of our wounded. God, what a mess.”

  “Yessir,” Frost said. “I’ve got Corporal Henry and what’s left of First Squad looking for the hostages, but I doubt we’ll find any, not alive at any rate.”

>   “Yeah,” Taggart sighed. “Then all this will have been for nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Frost agreed. Out of the twenty Marines who had left the landing zone, eight were dead. Four more were wounded. The inverted wounded-to-killed ratio was hardly surprising. If a man’s suit was breached, and he wasn’t able to patch it, he’d suffocate in the poisonous atmosphere in short order, just as Cho Lim had.

  “Take a look at this big bugger,” she said shifting to a less painful subject. Frost nudged the dead Masher with her toe. “You think he was their chief, or boss, or whatever?”

  “I can only guess, Gunny. Maybe he was the biggest. He had the best weapon. He even has the most metal grafted into his bod . . . Well, I’ll be. Look here, Gunny.”

  Taggart knelt beside the dead bio-mechanical alien. He moved its left arm aside revealing a rectangular box of orange anodized steel. Black lettering on its surface proclaimed the device to be Cabot’s missing flight data recorder. He grasped the unit by an exposed mounting bracket and pulled. The device remained stubbornly in place.

  Frost gently pushed her captain aside and, dropping to her knees, drew her big Ka-Bar combat knife. The eighteen-centimeter blade was razor-sharp. Even so, it took considerable care and a fair amount of straight-out hacking at the creature’s rapidly stiffening muscles to free the recorder. When at last the device came free, the thin silvery threads that Frost thought of as nerve fibers clung to the unit’s input-output terminals like a clump of fine gray-black roots.

  “You don’t think these creatures had access to the data stored in this thing, do you?” Taggart said, taking the bulky device in his hands.

  “I dunno, sir. Why?”

  Corporal Henry, looking thoroughly dejected, approached. Taggart held up one hand to forestall any more questions or speculations from his gunnery sergeant.

  “I’m sorry, boss,” Henry said with a sad shake of his head. “There ain’t no signs of any hostages, just lots of dead monsters and a couple big piles of junk. We didn’t see any signs of Neo-Soviet involvement, either.”