Jock were swinging their cycles in a dust-flinging braking arc that brought them to an abrupt halt at the back wall of the control center. Crossman and Trang threw themselves belly-first to the ground, covering Vinnie and Jock as the two Sergeants laid the dirt bikes on the ground and freed the canvas rucksacks which had been strapped to the machines.
“Go!” Vinnie barked, unslinging his borrowed Marine assault rifle.
Mahoney led them away from the bikes and Trang brought up the rear as they edged around the fusion- formed block building—ignoring the rear entrances that early reconnaissance had told them were barricaded—and jogged briskly around to the east side to the juncture of the side and front walls. Vinnie craned his neck around the corner, motioning to the others to halt while he checked out the front of the building. The weapons’ emplacements were deserted as the fight had been carried to the Marines over at the launch pad, but there were still a pair of Invader troopers keeping a guard at the front door, their rifles held at high port.
Vinnie leaned back around and, shifting his rifle to his right arm, flashed the others a signal with two fingers, then pointed at Jock and jerked a thumb at the corner. Trang and Crossman took up cover positions while their comrades moved into place at the corner, readying their weapons.
“One,” Vinnie hissed in a barely-audible mutter as Jock huddled against his left shoulder. “Two… three!”
Jock threw himself out around the corner and into a prone position as Vinnie leaned around the corner and brought up his rifle left-handed, and the two men opened fire simultaneously. The two Marine carbines chattered in unison, each sending a three-round burst into the heads of the armored Invaders. Before the troopers hit the ground, all four of the penetration-team members were around the corner and rushing for the front entrance, this time with Trang and Tom Crossman in the lead, hands filled with grenades.
Vinnie and Jock moved to take up positions on either side of the blown-out doorway as Tom and Shao deactivated the grenade’s safeties and prepared to chuck them through the entrance. Feeling something under his boot, Mahoney glanced down and saw that he was standing on the partially-skeletal, rotting hand of one of the human corpses the Invaders had left behind. Its empty eye sockets stared back at him, its face frozen in the rictus of a smile.
Vinnie forced his gaze away from the loathsome spectacle, biting his lip to keep the bile back in his throat and quickly moving his boot off of the bare-white finger bones. He turned his attention back to Tom and Trang, watching them underhand the grenades into the blown-out doorway, ducking reflexively and covering his ears just before the detonation. The ground shook beneath him and he could feel the concussion in his sinuses and diaphragm as dust shook off the walls and fire and smoke shot out through the doorway.
Mahoney and Gregory darted inside before the smoke had fully cleared, and found themselves in a control room now wrecked twice over, the equipment that had survived the surgical attack of the Invaders now wrecked completely. Blood coated the walls from the handful of Invader corpses lying in pieces on the floor; but several of the aliens still clung horribly to life. A blue-skinned Invader, his torso severed at the waist, was dragging himself toward them by his shredded hands, his eyes just as shark-dead as they had been, his face eerily expressionless. Another lay with his entrails hanging from a gaping wound that exposed most of his chest and belly, but seemed to be trying to get to his feet.
The hellish sight filled them with revulsion, but Jock and Vinnie didn’t waste any time ogling the creatures— they sprayed the survivors with carbine-fire, obliterating their oddly swollen heads with 6mm slugs. The two ex- Marines reloaded their rifles from magazine pouches in their tactical vests as Trang and Crossman dashed in behind them to cover. Crossman took up a position behind a control panel to keep their avenue of retreat open, while the others headed through the main control room, through a connecting corridor to a narrow, grey door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”
With Trang staying in the hallway to stand guard, Jock yanked the door open and he and Vinnie ducked through it into the cramped passage within. Chemical ghostlights cast a network of shadows through the open metal gridwork that lined the passageway onto the bare sandstone behind it; but the far end was lost in darkness, which did nothing to assuage the fears of the Intelligence teammembers. Their boots clanged off the gridwork as they jogged quickly down a long set of stairs that finally levelled out onto a narrow walkway. Keeping the muzzle of his weapon pointed at the dark end of the corridor, Mahoney cursed himself for not thinking to bring a flashlight: if there was anything down there, they were well and truly screwed.
But the end of the tunnel proved to hold nothing more threatening than a stout, metal hatchway, sealed with a locking wheel. Jock slung his carbine across his chest and Vinnie moved aside to let the bigger man have a go at the door. Gregory wiped sweat off his forehead, then dried his hands on his utility fatigue pants before grasping the wheel and throwing his weight against it. There was a low squeak, barely audible above his own labored grunts, and then the wheel was turning. Vinnie flattened himself against the opposite wall, his carbine held across his chest, as Jock slowly pulled the thick hatch open.
There was a pneumatic hiss as air from the tunnel rushed into the hatchway, and an automatic light flickered on within. Vinnie angled through the portal and into a large, cavernous chamber, walled on three sides with air- sealed plastalloy. The fourth side was composed of the guts of the laser focussing system: a complex network of encased lenses and cooling valves as intricate as a spider’s web, and nearly as delicate.
Vinnie set his carbine on a work bench and shrugged off his backpack.
“Well, buddy,” he said, grinning at Jock, “looks like we got some blowing up to do.”
“What the fuck is keeping those guys?” Lambert muttered through clenched teeth, taking aim at one of the advancing Invaders and walking a burst from high on its chest to blow out its faceplate.
Invader corpses littered the ground between the control center and the landing pad, at least twenty of them down from the withering fire from the dismounted Marines and the APC’s chain gun. Bobby had kept the vehicle moving to try to avoid catching a missile from the Invader ground troops, and had been successful so far—as a matter of fact, none of the Marines had suffered so much as a graze as yet. But that, Lambert knew, was not going to last. They’d used up the shoulder-fired missiles disposing of the Invaders’ heavy-weapons teams, but there seemed to be no end to the supply of troops to attack their position. What worried the Gunny most was the thought that these guys had to have some kind of aerospace support, and it was only a matter of time till it arrived.
Lambert twisted around in his prone position just inside the low blast wall of the landing pad, panning past the other Marines arrayed in a semicircle around him to check the position of his vehicles. The scout car was nearly out of sight, even with the magnification of his helmet optics, leading the enemy Hoppers on a merry chase across the plateau, but the APC was less than half a klick away, chasing down a squad-sized element that had attempted to flank them.
The carrier’s chain gun spurted a short burst, and half the Invader squad went down, their armor flayed open by tungsten-core slugs. But Gunny Lambert could see one of the creatures bringing a plastic tube up to its shoulder.
“Bobby!” Lambert barked into his helmet pickup. “Missile on your six!”
The APC skidded into a fishtail just as a flare of propellant shot from the tail of the launch tube, and the smoke trail of the projectile angled wide of the carrier’s rear. The Invader trooper tried to bring his aim around and shepherd the wire-guided weapon back to the vehicle, but the carrier’s bubble turret barked sharply, spitting out a two-round burst of 25mm caseless that trashed the launch tube and its holder, sending the missile plowing harmlessly into the ground.
“That,” Bobby Comstock transmitted, “was too damned close.” He twisted around in his harness to fix a glare at Peplowski, his gunner. “Peppy, you better keep your eyes open or we’ll be wearing this tin can for a coffin!”
“I’m doing what I can, you redneck hick,” she grumbled. “Just concentrate on driving!”
“Shut up, you two!” Lambert snapped into their headphones, struggling to hear himself think above their cross-chatter on his comlink and the hammering of the autoguns around him. “Jimmy!” he transmitted to the scout car driver. “Gimme’ a situation report.”
“Running low on ammo, Sarge,” Jimenez told him. “We need to cut this short.”
“Jimmy!” Camellia Tinker, Jimenez’s gunner snapped. “Look at the launch pad.”
Jimenez shifted the Heads-Up-Display’s view from the Hopper he was chasing down to the far-off pad, where the Invader launch vehicle rested on its multiple thrust nozzles—which were slowly becoming enshrouded with a white mist that Jimenez recognized all too well.
“Sarge!” Jimmy transmitted, trying to keep one eye on the Hopper while the other watched the rocket. “That shuttle—it’s venting coolant! It’s getting ready to launch! You guys better get out of there!”
