Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“Fire at will!” the Sergeant shouts, and the space in front of the administration building turns into the Seventh Circle of Hell as a dozen Marines start firing their weapons at the same time.

To our right, the autocannon opens up again. All along the edge of the roof, flechette rifles start chattering their hoarse reports. I aim at the downed creature, and start firing grenades. Next to me, Halley follows suit. Our little reinforced squad is firing every weapon on the roof at the downed alien, and the noise is deafening. I go through the few grenades in my harness one by one, firing them as fast as I can stuff them into the breech of the launcher, and then adding the contents of my rifle magazine when I’m out of grenades. At this range, the huge form is impossible to miss. I fire one magazine after another, two hundred and fifty rounds at a time in three-second bursts, pumping out needle-tipped tungsten darts as fast as the technology will let me.

Then there’s no movement from the figure below, and all we’re doing is shooting at dead matter. Still, I keep my finger on the trigger and my aiming reticule on the target until the bolt of my rifle locks back on an empty magazine.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” someone calls over the common channel, and the gunfire gradually ebbs. For a few moments, there are no sounds other than the rain falling on the rooftop all around us. Down below, the alien creature lies motionless, sprawled out in the mud just a few dozen yards in front of the admin building. I eject the magazine from my rifle and search for a new one in the pouches on my harness, only to find that I’ve burned through my entire supply of rifle ammunition and grenades.

A whooping cheer rises from the ranks of the Marine squad.

“ Nailed the motherfucker,” Corporal Harrison shouts, and I hear similar exclamations from all sides. Halley merely exchanges a wary glance with me as the Marines celebrate our victory by slapping each other on the armor and pumping their fists into the air. I look down at the alien creature, lying still in the dirt. Its skin is still smoking in a few spots where the grenades and cannon shells have spent their explosive payloads against the alien’s incredibly tough hide. We brought it down, but we had to throw just about every piece of ordnance in the armory at it, and the thing made it to within a hundred yards of our rooftop position.

Next to me, Halley squints down at the creature, and gives me another weary look.

“That was too damn close,” she says, echoing my thoughts.

Underneath our feet, the roof of the terraforming station vibrates faintly, and there’s a familiar rumbling in the air that’s making my stomach clench once again. I look up, and by the expression on Halley’s face, I can tell that she felt it as well. All around us, the laughter and cheering ebbs as the Marines notice the new tremors as well. This time, the vibrations are strangely dissonant and out of phase, not steady and rhythmic like before.

“Oh, shit,” Halley says.

“Reload those weapons,” Sergeant Becker shouts from his position fifty yards to our right. “Get those launchers back up, right the hell now.”

There are small ammunition stashes at each fighting position. I open a box of rifle magazines, and find it half empty, twenty out of forty magazines already used up. I take out a magazine, slap it into my rifle, and stuff two more into the pouches on my harness. One of the Marines puts down a MARS launcher next to me, and grabs a rocket cartridge from a very small stack of them.

“That’s all we have left?” I ask.

“We had three per launcher,” he says. “I used up two just now, and the rest ain’t even armor-piercing.”

I hear shouts of alarm, and turn around to see not one, but four more of the huge alien creatures ambling out of the fog a few hundred yards away.

“Oh, shit,” Halley says again.

The newcomers don’t simply follow the path of the previous visitor. Instead, they pause at the very edge of the mist line, and then fan out in a widely spaced line abreast, as if they are aware of the fate of their fellow traveler and the limitations of our hand-held weapons. When they finally start to cross the rocky terrain toward the station, they fan out even more, until there are several hundred yards between each of the approaching creatures. Their battle line now takes up half a mile, and they advance in a more urgent stride than the one that came before them. With only fourteen troops split up into three teams, and three quarters of our ammunition already expended, I know at once that we don’t have a chance of stopping this new assault.

On the right side of the roof, the autocannon crew opens fire again. The big ammunition canister attached to the gun is made of see-through polymer, and even from a hundred yards away, I can see that the level of remaining shells is very low.

“Left flank!” Corporal Harrison shouts. “Shoot the one all the way to the left. Fire at will!”

With the newcomers spread out, our teams are forced to split up their fire. Our fireteam around Corporal Harrison starts pouring rounds into the creature on the left flank of the approaching line. Like before, I switch my rifle to fully automatic mode, and start dumping my magazines into the advancing alien.

“Don’t you fucking miss with that rocket,” Corporal Harrison tells his MARS gunner. “Wait until he gets closer. Cohen, grab that last rocket and reload for him as soon as that tube’s empty. Make ‘em count.”

To our right, a cheer rises from the location of the autocannon team. We look over to the right flank and see that the cannon crew is aiming at the legs and feet of their target, instead of trying to score a hit on the torso like before. Their effort seems to be working. The creature’s sure and steady gait falters as the tracer rounds start slamming into its lower extremities. Some of the tracers deflect off its hide and careen into the darkness like embers in a breeze, but some clearly punch through. The creature lets out an awful, eardrum-shattering wail, and stumbles. Then it crashes to the ground with all the grace of a collapsing building.

“Shoot the legs,” the call goes out over the common channel. “Aim low and shoot the legs!”

We shift our fire and aim at the legs of the alien that’s striding across the plateau toward our corner of the building. Through my optical sight, I can see our flechettes and grenades churning up the dirt in front of the creature’s huge, three-toed feet. What worked with the high-velocity cannon rounds doesn’t seem to work with our pitiful arsenal of small-bore weapons, however. I know that most of my bursts are finding their target, but the alien strides on, undeterred. Then our MARS gunner launches one of his two remaining rockets. I hear the familiar popping of the launcher tube’s caps, and raise my head over the sights of my rifle to observe the flight path of the rocket. It strikes a glancing blow to the outside of the creature’s upper leg, and then bounces off to explode in the mud behind the alien.

“Fuck!” the gunner exclaims. Another Marine lifts up the last rocket cartridge, and shoves it into the back of the launcher, performing the fastest MARS reload I’ve ever seen. He pops the locking latches shut, and pats the gunner’s shoulder.

“Up!”

The gunner takes aim once more. By this time, the creature is so close that I could hit it with a well-thrown rock. The launcher booms again, and the rocket leaps out of the tube. A fraction of a second later, the explosive warhead strikes the left upper leg of the alien dead center between what looks like knee joint and hip. At this range, the pressure from the blast is enough to make me stumble back a step or two. The alien falters, and goes down on its injured leg with a shriek. It hits the corner of the building with its shoulder as it falls, and I get knocked off my feet. The surface of the roof is lined with mercifully soft rubber, but my head still hits it hard enough to make me see stars. When I regain my senses a moment later, my rifle is gone from my hands.