“Fire in the hole!” and went facedown, as twin explosions strobed the night. The blast decimated the bugs fi?ghting their way up through the narrow passageway as Watkins began to fi?re his newly reloaded shotgun at the invaders still on the surface.
Snyder had been detached to assist them by that time and Santana was quick to call upon the cyborg’s enormous strength. “Grab some rocks!” the offi?cer ordered. “And toss them in the hole!” The rocks that Santana referred to had once been part of the structure itself, but the combined forces of heat and cold had loosened them over time, and caused one of the internal wing-walls to fail. So as the bio bods began to fi?re into the blood-splattered stairwell, Snyder threw blocks of stone into the opening, thereby crushing some of the nymphs and blocking others. It took more than fi?ve minutes of hard work, but once the exit was sealed, Santana felt satisfi?ed that the bugs wouldn’t be able to break through. But just to make sure, the platoon leader ordered Watkins to guard the exit before heading for the wall and the battle beyond.
A hellish sight greeted his eyes as Santana stepped up onto an ammo container and looked out onto the south side of the body-strewn clearing. As one fl?are burned out, and thereby allowed darkness to claim the outermost reaches of the killing fi?eld, another was launched. There was a soft pop as it went off and threw a garish glow over the scene below. The battle lamps added their own cold white glare to the nightmarish scene as still another wave of alien fl?esh swept in toward the walled compound. It wasn’t so easy to advance now that the Ramanthians had to climb up and over piles of their dead and wounded comrades. But each succeeding wave went a little farther—
until they began to break only yards from the walls. And as Santana added his fi?re to all the rest, the offi?cer wondered what drove the nymphs. Was it hunger? Yes, that much seemed clear, based on the evidence observed earlier. But the mindless, suicidal rush, seemed indicative of something else as well. It was as if the tricentennial bodies had grown faster than the minds they housed and were under the infl?uence of some very primitive instincts. A wilding intended to sweep everything that could compete with them away—thereby creating conditions in which the survivors could fl?ourish. It was a violent process that had no doubt devastated Hive during past birthings and clearly accounted for the Ramanthian desire to acquire more real estate. Later, within a month or two, Santana suspected that the locustlike behavior would end, thereby giving the adult bugs an opportunity to round up their feral progeny and install them in crèche-style facilities where they could be raised.
But all such considerations were driven out of Santana’s mind as Corporal Diachi Sato screamed, and a nymph tore his throat out. “It came from above!” DeCosta shouted into his mike. “First platoon, maintain fi?re. . . . Second platoon, switch to air defense. . . . Execute!”
Because the platoons had been integrated, the order made sense, as roughly half of Team Zebra’s considerable fire-power was directed upwards. And none too soon. Because as Santana released an empty clip and seated another one in the CA-10, at least a hundred tricentennials dropped onto the legionnaires from above! All Ramanthians had wings, the offi?cer knew that, but rarely fl?ew. Of course that applied to adults, and judging from the ominous whir, the nymphs were under no such constraints.
Why the nymphs had waited to take to the air was a mystery, but one that the legionnaire had no time to contemplate as he shot an incoming bug and turned just in time to pull another off Darby’s back. The nymph struggled in an attempt to free itself, and snapped at Santana’s face, as the soldier threw the juvenile down. There was a horrible cracking sound, followed by a squeal of pain as the offi?cer stomped the Ramanthian.
“Well done,” DeCosta said matter-of-factly as he strolled past, pistol in hand. “Smite them down, for you are the hammer of God!”
The senior offi?cer paused at that point, raised his pistol, and shot the nymph that was trying to fi?nd a way into Nacky’s armored head.
But Santana was back in the battle by that time and felt a wave of heat wash across the left side of his face as a T-2
named Prill fi?red the fl?amethrower that that been installed in place of his energy cannon. The weapon sent a fl?are of light across the compound, and the tongue of fi?re caught two bugs in midair. They screeched piteously as their wings caught fi?re but were soon put out of their misery by wellaimed bursts of fi?re from Farnsworth’s SMG. All of the T-2s were out of machine-gun ammo by that time. As were the RAVs, because even though more ammo was available, the bio bods didn’t have time to load it.
That meant the cyborgs had to rely on their energy cannons and in some cases fl?amethrowers to defend the compound. But the jets of liquid fi?re, combined with accurate shooting on the part of the bio bods, proved to be an effective combination. So effective, that after twenty minutes of sustained fi?ghting, the nymphs’ assault began to falter. Sensing victory, DeCosta was quick to follow up. “Send the Godless heathens to hell!” he shouted hoarsely. “Loose the Lord’s fury upon them! For thou art the angels of heaven sent to cleanse this polluted planet!”
Though surprised to hear that they had been elevated to the status of angels, the criminals under DeCosta’s command understood what the offi?cer wanted, and increased their rate of fi?re. Muzzle fl?ashes stabbed the darkness, grenades sent gouts of jungle loam and body parts high into the air, and there was an occasional whir of wings as Santana patrolled the perimeter. The air was thick with the stench of nitrocellulose, ozone, and burned fl?esh. The combined odor caught in the back of the offi?cer’s throat and caused him to gag as he paused to deal with a wounded nymph. The nameless tricentennial was pinned under the legionnaire’s helmet light, desperately trying to drag itself forward, when Santana pointed the CA-10 at the creature’s head. And it was then, in the fraction of a second between the order he sent to his index fi?nger, and the recoil of the weapon, that something jumped the gap between them.
Because while the hatchling wasn’t truly sentient yet, the potential was there, and in that brief moment prior to the nymph’s death Santana thought he had a glimpse into the Ramanthian’s soul. A place so unfathomable that the human knew he would never understand it. But then the nymph was dead, the moment was over, and what had been a hellish symphony of chittering bugs, madly whirring wings, and rattling machine guns began to die down until there was little more than an occasional rifl?e shot to punctuate the end of the bloody confl?ict. “They’re leaving,” one of the T-2s said out loud, as her sensors started to clear.
“Thank God for that,” DeCosta put in gratefully. And no one chose to contradict him.
Hot metal pinged, a breeze ruffl?ed the jungle foliage, and it began to rain. The battle was over. Raindrops drummed against his alloy casing, and his juryrigged propulsion system had a tendency to cut out every once in a while, but Oliver Batkin was happy for the fi?rst time in months. Partly due to his recent escape from Camp Enterprise, but mostly because his reports had been received, and a rescue party was on the ground!
The good news had arrived a few days earlier when the same freighter that dropped Team Zebra into the atmosphere sent out a millisecond-long blip of code. It hit Batkin like a bolt out of the blue and elicited a whoop of joy so loud that it scared a fl?ock of blue fl?its out of an adjacent tree.
Now, having traveled day and night ever since, the cyborg had entered the area where the rescue party should be. An exciting prospect, but a dangerous one, given the fact that the legionnaires would be understandably paranoid and therefore likely to shoot anything that moved, including spherical cyborgs should one appear without warning.
So Batkin ran a full-spectrum sweep as he weaved his way through the treetops and was eventually rewarded by a burst of scrambled conversation on a frequency often used by the Legion for short-range communications. That was suffi?cient to bring the spy ball to a temporary halt while he sought to make contact. “Jericho One to Team Zebra. Do you read me? Over.”