The men in the terminal building screamed and pulled their triggers until their fingers bled. Thousands of explosive rounds and lancing laser pulses ripped the air and the aliens. The fantastic bodies of the aliens flew apart. Some of them, blown nearly to fragments, continued to crawl, hop or creep forward, ignoring their missing body parts.
The flocks of flying things arrived first, immediately dropping shrades into the ranks of militiamen. Even less disciplined than the rank and file militia thugs that guarded the streets and gave out traffic tickets, the reservists were quick to rout. Ragged holes were torn in the line even before the headless killing machines with their deadly bladed feet could arrive.
“Sir, they’re hitting us from the rear!”
“What’s that?” shouted Droad motioning forward 1st tactical squad, which they had held in reserve to keep the line. The terrific din of battle inside the large echoing terminal building made it almost impossible to hear.
“The giant ones, they’re tearing their way into the jetways and the coming down the ramps from the gate areas!” roared Jarmo, his deep voice cutting through the clamor. “We should send half 1st tactical squad to deal with them!”
Droad nodded. “Take some of your men and join them,” he said. He gave Jarmo a look, which the other immediately interpreted. Neither of them wanted Steinbach’s men behind them and on their own.
“Good thinking, sir,” said Jarmo, trotting off with his plasma cannon unslung.
The fighting went hard in the main terminal. Droad observed that his men had the numbers and the firepower, but they lacked the ferocity and discipline of the aliens, who were clearly oblivious to death and pain. When perhaps a third of the men were down, they fell back in disorder, taking more casualties as they broke ranks. The aliens, however, fought on without change although more than half of them had been destroyed.
Soon, every one of their snipers on the roof had been killed. The battle raged on, pushing the men back. At the second barricade in front of the doors of the security center and still holding the tops of the escalators, they held them. Using his sidearm to good advantage, Droad personally shot two of the hideous slug-like things that the flying horrors had vomited in the midst of his men.
A firm hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him around. He lifted his laser pistol reflexively, but it was only Sergeant Manstein.
“Things are going badly in the rear,” Manstein shouted. “They can’t stop those things at the gates. They’ll be in here soon!”
Droad nodded. For a moment he stood panting, his face drawn and white with the stress of days of siege and battle. Then he ran to Steinbach, who was standing with Major Lee in the middle of a knot of men in body-shell. He relayed what Manstein had told him. Although Steinbach was reluctant, they were soon all heading for the gate area at a dead run.
Things were indeed going badly, thought Droad. Jun was killed, gored and trampled until his corpse was almost unrecognizable. Many men in black body-shell lay strewn about the scene. A dozen of the giant monsters were down, some of them only wounded. Trapped up on a catwalk in a construction area, Jarmo and the last of the men in body-shell were cornered and being stalked by the monstrous killers.
“Use concentrated fire to bring one of them down,” said Droad opening up on the leading monster. Surprised by this new attack, the rest pulled back into one of the gate areas, out of view.
Jarmo and his surviving men joined the others. Crouching behind a row of seats in the non-narcotic waiting area, a tense discussion began.
“Let’s pull back. These things can’t get us in the corridors,” suggested Major Lee.
“We can’t just let a pack of ten ton monsters roam around at our rear,” returned Droad in exasperation.
“What did you do to my tactical squad?” Steinbach demanded of Jarmo, livid fury on his face. “This must be the most frustrating day of my life.”
“We both took each other by surprise. I think they meant to sneak up on us while the other beasts hit us from the front, but that failed. Unfortunately, they did manage to ambush us.”
“Ambush you? Ambush you? How can a pack of dinosaurs ambush anyone?” asked Steinbach, beating one gloved fist into another.
“It was a tactical error,” admitted a Captain of the tactical squad, speaking up for the first time. “It was my error, not Jarmo’s. From the description, we were expecting a herd of elephants, something like that, but these things are intelligent. They stayed back in the dark and then rushed us from either side. At first our body-shells saved us, but then they simply knocked us down, planted one of their huge feet on our guns and gored us.”
Jarmo nodded in agreement. “They are faster than they look when charging.”
Steinbach made a rude sound of disgust. He walked away from the circle of men. “I’m surrounded by incompetence,” he muttered.
“What are they up to now?” asked Droad.
“They’re holding back, waiting for reinforcements, perhaps, or new orders by radio,” said Jarmo. Before he could say more, the sky outside brightened with an orange glare and the earth shook beneath their feet.
Droad looked at Jarmo and smiled. “The mechs.”
As Droad expected, the battle for Grunstein International had been going well for the humans up until that point, but the arrival of the mechs decided it. They came out of their jump-webbing at a dead run, weapons blazing. Two flitters came down in front of the terminal, hitting the aliens there from the rear, while two more landed in the blastpans and a terrific struggle began with the monsters among the gates.
Cagey and wary, the juggers knew they were out-matched by the combined forces of the humans, but they didn’t immediately attack in the berserk frenzy so common to the other types. These larger ones behaved more like hunters, more like men. They worked to sell their lives as dearly as possible. When it was all over, three of the mechs had been rendered inoperative.
Walking back to the security center through the smoking ruins of the terminal building, Droad noticed Jarmo, who came up and fell into step beside him.
“This is the time for caution, sir,” said Jarmo in a hushed voice. His ever-vigilant eyes flicked over every moving thing around them.
Droad nodded vaguely, almost too tired to care if the militiamen assassinated him.
They made it all the way back to the center before Sergeant Manstein asked: “Hey, where did Steinbach go?”
Droad looked around, surprised. He had just been there a moment before, hadn’t he? The last he could recall seeing him was sometime before the counterattack by the mechs. After that he had simply vanished.
“He couldn’t have run out on us, where is there to go?” remarked Sergeant Manstein.
“Go find him, Jarmo,” said Droad. “I don’t trust the good General. From now on, it is your personal responsibility to keep an eye on him.”
Jarmo walked away, smiling.
Eighteen
“Come on, you bastard! Come on,” Ari hissed. He twisted the handle again, but the door wouldn’t open. With an inarticulate sound of frustration he reinserted his identification card. He held his hands out before him, balled into fists, and pleaded with the locker door. “Don’t be broken, oh please.”
During the battles over the terminal building, the lockers had fared rather well, but they hadn’t escaped damage completely. Several bullet-gouges and black laser-scorings marked the casement. The stainless steel finish of Ari’s locker, in particular, was anything but stainless. A dark blotch of black and brown with a center of warped metal marked the heat of a deflected laser blast. The card-slot rejected his card again, spitting it out with a tiny electric whine.
“No, no, NO!” Ari howled. He pounded the locker around the hinges and the latch mechanism. Finally, something gave and the locker yawned open with dramatic slowness. His hand darted inside and drew out the satchel.