“We need to make a run for the transports,” I said. “When I give you the signal, fire everything you have at the Mogats in front of your building; then when I clear you, run out the back door and keep running. Do you read me, Marines?”
“What about the ones in the back?” Evans asked.
“I’ve got them,” I said. “You just start shooting when you get my signal.”
“Where are you?” Greer asked.
“I’m two blocks out the ass of your building. You hit them from your side, and I’ll hit them from back here.”
“There are too many,” Greer said.
“We don’t need to kill them, they’re already blind,” I said. “Just run on my command and keep running until you are topside and harnessed into your transport. You got that, speck-sucker? That is an order.”
It was in their programming. These boys could not disobey a direct order.
Peering out from behind a wall, I saw that the street was filled with enemy soldiers and tanks. Most of the tanks had searchlights. The trucks had headlights, and the soldiers held flashlights. Soldiers sat on the turrets of the Rumsfelds shining spotlights down into the street. Foot soldiers milled around the beams of the lights, talking and drinking. They looked confused, not blind. These men could not have realized the extent of what had happened to their world. They had the enemy trapped, but no one had given them their next orders. Without their power grid, they could not communicate with their commanders.
Philips and I crouched behind a wall and watched the Mogats for a moment. “Hold this,” I whispered, handing the case with the gas cartridges to Philips. I was wearing my helmet. I could have screamed the words at the top of my lungs and the Mogats would not have heard me, but I whispered. It was a natural reflex. There might have been ten thousand Mogats around us.
Philips took the case without saying a word. He was not afraid, but the smart-ass style had run out of him. He was serious now. He wanted to walk away from this battle with his skin intact, and he wanted to make sure the other members of the platoon went with him.
I leaned my M27 against the wall, then pulled the canister shooter off my shoulder. I broke it open at the hinge and loaded a canister of noxium gas in its chamber.
Once I fired the shooter, it would take three minutes for the gas to dissipate. I aimed the shooter so that it would spit the canister deep into the Mogats’ ranks and fired. The muzzle of the shooter did not flash like a gun, it simply emitted a quiet belch. The darkness remained total as the canister spiraled through the air and struck a tank no more than twenty feet from the back door of the building.
There was a crash and a moment of silence, followed by screaming and yelling. They wanted to run, but they could not. Panic and death came too quickly.
I had my second cartridge loaded before the first even hit the ground. This time I aimed at the Mogats in the rear, the ones closest to Philips and me. I fired again.
The Mogats had already begun to panic when the second canister dropped. By now they were screaming in pain as well as panic. The men near spotlights might have seen the gas seeping in around them, but most only heard the shouting caused by an undefined death. I fired the third canister right in the middle of the crowd. Each canister unleashed enough gas to cover hundreds of square feet.
Someone else might have described the scene as pandemonium, but to me it spoke of entropy. The Mogat troops fell into disarray from which they would never again organize. They ran, they panicked, they dissolved into the street.
On the other side of the building, the other Mogats must have heard the noise. They must have wondered what had happened. I waited a few more moments before radioing up to Evans. I wanted to make sure the noxium gas evaporated before he came running out.
“Light ’em up!” I shouted at Evans over the interLink.
In the street before us, all was still and quiet now. Any Mogat who was going to escape had escaped. The rest had died. I could see the bodies by using my night-for-day vision. The dead men still looked human, more or less. The bodies, strewn along the ground like toys thrown in a pile, had limbs and hair. Their faces had no more distinct features than a giant blister; and they would squash like overripe melons if you stepped on them. Given another hour, the bodies would burst under their own weight.
Quick flashes of light that reminded me of sheet lightning broke and faded on the other side of the building. Evans and his squad had begun firing their rockets at the tanks. The flashes followed each other quickly, with less than a second’s separation. The audio equipment in my helmet picked up the explosions and played them as ambient noise.
The rockets made a sizzling sound when they launched. Their explosions reverberated and echoed through the dark city. I imagined millions of civilians around me, scared, huddled like mice in their apartments, hearing the explosions and praying to whatever god the Mogats believed in for the battle to end. I thought about those three boys who had tried to stand up to my platoon with a knife. I spared them. Big specking deal. I’d bought them a few more hours and a more painful way to die.
For the Mogats, the universe was ending. They would all die. I could not save them if I wanted to. I might not be able to save any of my men. I might not be able to save my own sorry carcass, not that it deserved to be saved. Friend, foe, soldier, civilian…if we did not escape this very moment, we would all die as one. The men, women, and children would certainly die. They were innocents, but they could not be saved.
Exploding rockets and firing cannons make different sounds. To the untrained ear, it all sounds like a big bang. Once you’ve been in combat, you learn to listen for pitch, intensity, duration, and volume. I heard the sound of the tanks returning fire.
“Evacuate the building. Now!” I yelled. “Now! Now! Now!” Without shields, those shells would tear right through the building. In another minute, the entire building would come down.
“They got Evans,” Thomer called back.
“Out of there!” I screamed. The planet was dissolving, the building was crumbling, and Thomer was taking roll. “Move it!”
“Are there Mogats out the back?” Thomer shouted. I could tell he was running. He sounded winded.
“The street is clear!” I yelled.
I’d started to say something else, when the colonel’s voice sounded over the interLink. He shouted, “Everyone, fall back to the transports. Anyone who does not make it back to the transports in fifteen minutes will be left behind.”
Had he somehow reached Washington or just gotten the lowdown from an officer in the Confederate Arms Fleet? Somehow, he now knew the truth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Marines understand exactly what it means when they receive the order to fall back. It means that your invasion has gone to shit. Fall back means that you cannot hold your position, and the situation has become critical. It means that the enemy is on your heels. It means stragglers will be captured or killed. Marines are trained to lead the way into battle. They don’t much care for the order to fall back.
Of all the Marines that landed on the Mogat planet, only my platoon had begun its retreat when the colonel gave the order to fall back. The rockets my guys fired from the building crippled a lot of Mogat hardware, and my gas had opened a route for them to escape.
The back door of the apartment building flew open, and out ran my platoon, or what remained of it. A twenty-man stampede. They ran straight ahead, straight into the clutter of bodies that filled the street. By this time the noxium had largely accomplished its purpose. Without so much as a glance at the ground, Sergeant Greer stepped into a corpse. He should have tripped over that dead soldier. Instead, he kicked through him.