“Routed them where?” one Marine asked.
“They won the battle,” I said.
Silence.
“The Space Angels, the aliens, the speckers we watched head into town …they’re dead. I just got a report from Base Command—the Army annihilated them.”
The silence lasted another moment, then I heard excited chatter, which instantly silenced when Sergeant Philips asked me, “Are you saying that the war’s over?”
I had to think about this for a second. That was what they were celebrating in town. I knew it could not be over. No one would send a mere fifty thousand troops to capture a planet. You couldn’t even hold a city with fifty thousand troops. Their ion curtain still had us in its sleeve. There simply had to be more aliens on the way. I did not want to say that, however. I did not want to crush the morale. “No, it’s not over,” I said. “But the first round went better than we could have hoped for.”
The shouts, the cheers, and the rapturous cursings restarted spontaneously, but Philips did not join in. “If it’s not all over, sir, can we get back to capturing this alien?” he asked. When everyone else was serious, Philips bucked discipline and flaunted authority. Now that everyone else celebrated, Sergeant Mark Philips was all business.
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Philips’s beacon led through well-trafficked territory where snow, ferns, and small trees had been tromped into the mud. Soon, though, the beacon took me into a less-traveled glen. Virgin snow with a few footprint trails gleamed in the bright light. The aliens followed a natural pathway that led through thin growth while Philips and his men had stuck to the trees. I recognized their boot prints.
The aliens’ feet left rectangular prints in the shallow snow. When they reached drifts, the bastards sloshed through without lifting their feet out of the snow. Instead of leaving a line of individual prints, they dragged their feet and left ruts in their wake.
I spotted Huish before I saw the others. He was kneeling in a small gully, his gun trained on the enemy and his finger on the trigger waiting for the order to shoot. I identified him by the virtual dog tag over his helmet.
“What is the situation?” I asked Huish over a direct link.
“They’re just over that rise, about thirty yards out. Philips and Herrington are moving in for a better angle,” he said, pointing with his rifle.
I hid behind a tree and surveyed the scene. Looking along the edge of the gully, I spotted White and Boll. Philips and Herrington lay flat on the ground in a patch of ferns. I don’t know how well concealed they were from the aliens, but it took me a few moments to spot them.
“Do you have a good line on them?” I asked Philips on a direct channel.
“All three of ’em,” Philips said. “Can we get this show under way, sir …now that you’re here to help?”
I stole up the rise, cutting through the ferns at a crouch and making as little noise as possible. Below us, the ground seemed to form a bowl, offering the aliens no protection. One of the aliens knelt and played with some sort of scientific instrument while two others stood guard. The one with the instrument was poking a four-inch needle into the ground.
“Maybe they’re a science team,” I said.
“Bet you’re right. Can we cap ’em now?” Philips asked, not bothering to hide his annoyance.
“I want to take the one checking the soil home with us …alive,” I said.
“Got it,” Philips purred. He signaled Huish and Herrington to flank the aliens from behind. I sighted in on one of the guards as Philips assigned targets to his men. The creature’s eyes were the same color as the rest of his face. They looked no more lifelike than the eyes on a marble statue. The face had a more or less human-looking mouth and nose.
There was that one brief moment of anticipation as every man took his place and homed in on his target. A breeze whistled through the trees, shaking branches just hard enough to dislodge the snow from some distant tree. I saw a blue-and-red bird hopping on a limb a few feet above one of the aliens.
On my visor, the names Tom, Dick, and Hairy appeared above the three aliens. Tom and Dick were the guards; Hairy was the scientist. Philips had placed these designations so that we all knew what we were doing. “Lieutenant Harris wants us to take Hairy home with him,” Philips said.
“Boll, Herrington, you guys smack Tom. Take him out fast,” Philips whispered. He sounded completely calm. “Huish, you and I get Dick.”
Boll and Herrington laughed. I got the feeling Huish would take grief about getting “Dick” for some time to come.
“What about me?” White asked.
“Make sure Hairy doesn’t get away. Lieutenant Harris has a thing for him.”
Now everyone was laughing. If this did not go well, Philips and I would have a conversation when we got back to base.
“Take ’em out!” Philips yelled.
I fired a three-shot burst. The bullets struck Dick on the side of his head, just above the tiny nubs that looked like ears. Sparks flashed where the first bullet struck, as if it had glanced off a rock. The second and third chipped at the head, producing a shallow gash.
Dick spun to face me. Its face was impassive. Its eyes seemed as fixed as flint stones. It must have been searching for me, but I could not tell by looking at those eyes. I aimed at its forehead and fired off three more shots, making the alien stumble backward. I wasn’t the only one shooting the bastard. More chips spattered off its back and shoulders.
“What do I have to do to kill this specker?” one of the men yelled.
I aimed at one of its eyes and fired again. The eye chipped, but it was the same color under the surface, and nothing leaked from the hole, as if the alien had been carved out of stone.
“Speck!” Philips yelled, sounding nearly out of control. “I hit that bastard in the nuts. Go down, asshole! Your Nuts are busted!”
Hairy, the scientist alien, stopped taking readings and ran to join the guards. Dick’s rifle fired, making a cooing noise as a yard-long bolt of white light flared from its muzzle. The bolt traveled through the air at the absolute speed limit of what a man can track with his eyes. I perceived that bolt as much as saw it, watching where it started and where it struck while my mind filled in the holes. The light bolt struck a thick mound of dirt to my right, cut through the mound, and continued through the air. A plume of smoke rose from the hole it left in the ground behind it.
“Fall back,” Philips told his men.
I agreed with that order, but I did not follow. Aiming my M27 at Dick’s right shoulder, I held the trigger down. I must have fired twenty rounds within a two-inch spread before the alien stumbled backward. I continued shooting as the shoulder dented, fractured, then splintered. Dick’s right arm fell to the ground, and his rifle fell with it.
Boll, a grenadier, popped out from a ditch and fired a rocket that hit the ground somewhere between Tom and Hairy. The ground shook on impact. Mud and bits of rock sprayed through the air. The heat from the explosion filled the air with steam that evaporated as quickly as it appeared. The report of the explosion echoed off distant trees.
The explosion sent the aliens flying in opposite directions. One crashed into a tree, spun part way around its trunk, then landed twenty feet farther on. Had it been human, it would have been torn in half against that trunk. Even in combat armor, a man would have been ripped in half. I did not see where the other alien landed. By this time, capturing prisoners was the last thing on my mind. All I cared about was getting my men out of this skirmish alive.
When Dick rose to his feet and picked up the rifle with his remaining arm, Boll fired a rocket at the bastard. That rocket could have blown an entire platoon into an unrecognizable pile of limbs and parts. It might have knocked a tank on its side or caved in a small building. In this case it simply split Dick in half. His body broke. Boll fired another rocket, striking Hairy in the chest and blowing him apart while Philips and Herrington continued firing at him.