I watched Gregor sprinting towards me. I covered him as best I could. He turned and my audio dampeners kicked in as he fired a long burst from the railgun at the charging Berserks. I watched as several of them seemed to explode into liquid mid-stride. Gregor hit the quick-release catch on his gyroscopic harness. The whole rig along with the gun and ammo pack fell into the mud. Gregor was running again, pulling his personal defence weapon from a holster on his thigh, unfolding it as he ran. Leaping over the wall, sliding into the mud nearby before scrambling back to join us and then opening fire.
Like most signal types, Shaz favoured a laser. I could feel the heat from its beams as he fired bursts of bright red light into the remaining Berserks. The Tyler Optics laser carbine was set at a frequency designed to superheat what it hit rather than burn through it. Where he hit the Berserks I saw their solidified liquid flesh turn to a greasy black steam. I could hear him through my access to the command net requesting air and artillery support for an immediate evac. I could hear the hopelessness in Shaz’s voice. We were getting nothing from command. I understood the necessity of sacrifice but there seemed to be no gain in sending us to die like this.
Behind us I could hear Ash’s SAW firing long bursts accompanied by Mudge’s AK-47. The AK-47 was a replica of a pre-FHC weapon chambered for 9-millimetre long that he insisted on using. They were all around us and closing. We kept on taking Them down, thinning their numbers, but They kept on charging at us. The uneasy joke had always been that if They ever learnt tactics humanity was really screwed.
Concentrated shard fire had Shaz. Gregor and myself duck down into the mud as the low wall was chewed away and they were on us. I managed to get off a shot point blank into one of the eight-foot-tall monstrosities before dropping the Benelli and extending my knuckle blades. I rammed the blades up, sliding under chitinous plates like they trained us. augmented muscle and prosthetic driving the plates apart as black liquid poured all over me.
With some effort I heaved the dying alien to one side. The Berserk behind him swung a limb, ending in some kind of spiked weapon, into my rigid breastplate. It hit so hard it cracked the plate, causing the inertial undersuit beneath to harden. I landed on my back in the mud, retracted my knuckle blades, drew my laser pistol and the Mastodon and fired a lot. It seemed to take a while but the advancing Berserk fell back into the mud.
I managed to get to my feet before the next one tackled me and sent me sprawling back down. I dropped the pistols and just stabbed repeatedly into it as its power-assisted claws tried to peel me out of my armour. I was still stabbing a long time after it had stopped moving and had leaked all over me. It smelt like burnt plastic.
Eventually it dissolved over me. Gregor was there to pick me up, as ever. It had gone quiet. I retrieved my weapons, watching as Gregor cleaned black ichor off his sword bayonet. Shaz was doing likewise with his kirpan. Mudge was changing a clip and Ash was just looking out over the low wall.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It seemed very quiet. It was now nearly dark. We were entering the short night of a planet in a binary system.
‘They’re just standing there,’ Ash said shaking her head. Mudge stood up.
‘Get down!’ I hissed, Gregor and Ash doing the same.
‘They’re not doing anything,’ Mudge said. He studied them for a while. I wondered how wasted he was and what it was this time. I crawled over to where Mudge was stood, cradling my automatic shotgun in the crooks of my elbows. I peeked over the low wall. Mudge and Ash were right. The Berserks were standing, swaying as if in some unfelt wind about two hundred metres back. Between them and us were a multitude of black, viscous oily puddles that showed where we’d killed their mates. A feeling was making its way through my fatigue, something not felt for a while – interest.
‘You ever heard of anything like this?’ I asked Mudge. who was intently studying the sky. I’d asked him because Mudge was one of the few of us who took an active interest in the rest of the war. He shook his head.
‘Can’t see it being anything good for us,’ Ash mumbled in her thick Brummie accent.
‘What do you want to do?’ Gregor asked. I had no idea. There were obviously too many of them for us to fight. I shrugged.
‘Get yourselves sorted. Patch yourselves and your armour up as best you can, check your ammo, ready secondary and tertiary weapons. Shaz, I know it’s a waste of time but keep on the command net. Got any time after that, we’ll have a brew.’
‘Then what?’ Ash asked. I could hear Mudge giggling.
‘If they haven’t killed us and they’re still playing silly buggers then we head back to the firebase and see if we’re in time for the last shuttle.’
‘Or we’re sharing the planet with a lot of angry demons,’ Shaz said.
‘Where’s Ash gone?’ I heard Mudge say. Then I saw the look of horror on Gregor’s face and Shaz screamed. I swung round bringing my shotgun up. I found an awestruck Mudge staring at a bit of what I can only describe as dark air.
‘She got sucked in,’ Mudge whispered.
‘Mudge!’ Gregor shouted as he brought his PDW up to cover the dark air. ‘We need you in this world!’ This seemed to bring Mudge out of it. He staggered back bringing his AK-47 up to cover it. A red beam lanced out turning part of the dark air into greasy steam.
‘Cease fire!’ I shouted. ‘Shaz, you watch our backs. I want to know what the rest of them are doing.’ Shaz stood there staring. ‘Shaz!’ He looked up at me, his eyes wide around his lenses, and then he nodded. Through the split screen on my internal visual display I could see through Shaz’s helmet camera.
The Berserks were still holding off in their rough perimeter. The dark air hadn’t move. It still stood where Ash had stood.
‘Mudge, what happened?’ I demanded, cursing, though not blaming, the journalist for choosing to get high now. The war was easier for him as a hallucination. I could see his knuckles whitening on the grip of his assault rifle.
‘Mudge, do you want me to come over there and beat the shit out of you?’ Gregor asked quietly. This seemed to shake him out of it. I guess we all listened to Gregor no matter how wasted.
‘It moved up behind her,’ Mudge whispered, but I was hearing it across the patrol’s tactical net. ‘And just yanked her in.’ On my internal visual display I saw Shaz’s helmet camera turn from the perimeter and back to the dark air.
‘Shaz,’ I said. The signalman turned back to the perimeter. Mudge giggled again. I resisted the urge to shoot him.
‘It was like a spatial anomaly,’ the journalist said, ‘a little spatial anomaly.’ Gregor and I exchanged looks. Ash fell out of the dark air, what was left of her. She was covered in her own blood. Her body looked like one big wound as if she had been pierced in every part of her flesh. We lit the night up with our muzzle flashes.
Back again. There was just one person at the end of the bed this time. Just Morag. She appeared to be checking over an auto pistol. She had her legs crossed on the bed and I could see a holster strapped to her upper thigh.
‘Where’d you get that?’ I tried to say, but it came out a slurred mess. She looked up at me, made the gun safe and holstered it.
‘Balor gave it to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘People tend to give pretty girls things,’ I slurred. I was slowly beginning to sound a bit more like I was speaking English. Whatever I said it was the wrong thing, judging by her expression. I glanced over at the bed next to me. Rannu was gone.
‘Where’s the Thug?’ I asked, sounding petty even to my own ears. Morag looked up. She seemed kind of angry.