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She used hand ht flank, then moved up the line to find Lieutenant Givens, her CO She spotted his suit right at the center of the line, standing almost directly under Yojiainst his
“What the fk is going on, El Tee?” she shouted
He gave her an irritated look and yelled, “Your guess is as good as , and visual warnings are being ignored Before the radio cut out, I got authorization to fire if they come within half a klick of our position”
Bobbie had a couple hundred more questions, but the UN troops would cross the five-hundred-meter mark in just a few ht flank with her squad Along the way, she had her suit count the inco forces and ets Less than a third of the UN troops at their outpost
This makes no sense
She had her suit draw a line on the HUD at the five-hundred-meter mark She didn’t tell her boys that was the free-fire zone She didn’t need to They’d open fire when she did without needing to knohy
The UN soldiers had crossed the one-kilo in a scattered fored line and a seventh bringing up the rear about seventy ure on the far left of the ene the one closest to her by default So itched at the back of her brain, and she overrode the suit and selected the target at the rear and told it toreticule She felt a chillthe six UN Marines wasn’t wearing an environ, hue black scales Its head was a e as it should have been and covered in strange protruding growths
But e for its body, and too long for their width, they were a childhood nightmare version of hands The hands of the troll under the bed or the witch sneaking in through theThey flexed and grasped at nothing with a constantThey were retreating
“Shoot the thing chasing them,” Bobbie yelled to no one
Before the UN soldiers could cross the half-kilometer line that would cause the Martians to open fire, the thing caught therabbed one UN Marine in its huge hands and tore him in half like paper Titanium-and-cera broken bits of technology and wet hu five soldiers ran even harder, but thethem barely slowed as it killed
“Shoot it shoot it shoot it,” Bobbie yelled, and opened fire Her training and the technology of her co er on her suit’s gun, a strea rounds streaked out at the creature at more than a thousand meters per second In just under a second she’d fired fifty rounds at it The creature was a relatively slow-ht line Her targeting computer could do ballistic corrections that would let her hit a softball-sized objectat supersonic speeds Every bullet she fired at the h it, probably not slowing appreciably before they exited Each exit wound sprouted a spray of black filaments that fell onto the snow instead of blood It was like shooting water The wounds closed al had even been hit was the trail of black fibers in its wake
And then it caught a second UN Marine Instead of tearing him to pieces like it had the last one, it spun and hurled the fully ar more than five hundred kilos total—toward Bobbie Her HUD tracked the UN soldier on his upward arc and helpfully informed her that the monster had thrown him not toward her but at her In a very flat trajectory Which meant fast
She dove to the side as quickly as her bulky suit would let her The hapless UN Marine swiped Hill next to her, and then both of the down the ice at lethal speeds
By the time she’d turned back to the monster, it had killed two more UN soldiers
The entire Martian line opened fire on it, including Yojied and ran at angles away froive their Martian counterparts an open firing lane The creature was hit hundreds, thousands of ti at a full run, neverwhen one of Yojimbo’s cannon shots detonated nearby
Bobbie, back on her feet, joined in the barrage of fire but it didn’t make any difference The creature sla two marines faster than the eye could follow Yojimbo slid to one side, far ht Sa’ido when he wanted to That didn’tthe mech’s cannon around for a point-blank shot, the creature ran right up its side, gripped the pilot hatch, and tore the door off its hinges Sa’id was snatched froht up
The otheras they went Without radio, there was no way to coordinate the retreat Bobbie found herself running toward the dome with the rest The s knew that the doainst so that could tear an armored man in half or rip a nine-ton nized the futility in atte to override her terror
By the time she found the external door into the dome, there was only one other marine left with her Gourab Up close, she could see his face through the ar at her she couldn’t hear She started to lean forward to touch helmets with hi on the door controls with one ht him and peeled the helmet off his suit with one casual swipe Gourab stood for aand mouth open in a soundless scream; then the creature tore off his head as easily as it had his helmet