I was still waiting for him to activate the screamer, and Swede was lucky his fuck-up hadn’t cost us all our position and our lives. It was Joker’s responsibility to time our screamer battle soundtrack correctly, and waiting so long was putting the rest of the Marines on edge.
When I started to think we’d all have to pack up and return home, Joker finally gestured with two extended fingers and activated the auditory decoy.
I kept my battle rifle propped on the short ledge in front of me, waiting for the party to begin.
A second later, the shrieking started. The bugs froze, their triangular heads and long antennae spinning back and forth, searching for the origin of the sound.
“You still feel confident in your plan, Joker?” I asked as the screamer blared.
Before the mission began, I told the sergeant that his plan had a flaw, and I’d even sent him and his corporals back to the drawing board to think up something else. They returned a few hours later and told me they were confident. We’d soon see whether their confidence deserved any merit.
He didn’t answer right away, so I tore my eyes from the confused bugs to check on him. The sergeant was looking back at me, but I couldn’t see his expression beneath the slate-gray armor concealing his face. The way he glanced at the remote for his screamer lure and back at me suggested he was ready to listen.
“Noise-makers don’t work so well against the bugs when they can’t tell where the sound is coming from,” I explained. “That is, unless you modify the sound enough to let the echoes diminish before the next sound starts.”
I hoped he’d get the clue.
The sergeant turned his helmet toward me. I could almost hear the sound of gears and pulleys as he mulled it over. He handed his rifle off to the private crouched next to him, opened the data panel on his left forearm, and thumbed the controls.
A second later, the audio lure’s horrible cacophony resolved into something resembling the low, pained whisper of a scared man. Nonsense words echoed throughout the cave, but less so than before.
The pair of Xeno turned their heads toward the source of the sound, and the heads of the aliens behind them also shifted to the screamer.
The sound of humans riled their bloodlust, or maybe battle lust. They’d stop at nothing to destroy every human they found, and that’s why they had to be exterminated. It was them or us. With the way they dashed toward the lure and started beating on the rocks above it with their rifles, I knew that today, at least, it would be them.
We’d sent one of the privates out before they arrived to cram the screamer as far into a gap in the rocks as he could manage. They’d find it eventually. But, first, we’d draw every last one of them out of their hidey holes.
Joker looked to me as if I was going to be the one to order the attack. But this was his mission. The bugs were all grouped together and climbed over each other in their frenzied search for the lure. It was the perfect setup, and all Joker needed was the confidence to call it. I waited, and so did he. Then, when I thought we couldn’t wait any longer, he made his move.
The absolute best cure for a tightly packed group of enemy troops was explosives. I was sure that back in the medieval history of mankind, people had employed other, less effective treatments to use against their enemies. But once someone discovered how to blow shit up properly, we’d learned to spread out.
The bugs, it seemed, had not learned that lesson. They looked like hungry ants poring over a sugar cube. A couple of aliens noticed the soft thud of the grenade landing in their midst and jumped free of the explosion. The rest were caught in a fiery shower of white phosphorous.
Not for the first time, I was glad for my battle armor’s self-contained breathing system. The scent of frying bugs was like the smell of burning polymer if the main ingredients were dirty socks and vomit.
Most of the troops rolled from cover and climbed on top of the rocks, but I strafed around them with a few other Marines at my back. When I peeked out from behind cover, I expected to see the bugs lying in a pile of dismembered body parts. Unfortunately, only a few had been killed by the grenade. According to my heads-up display, we still had three dozen Xeno to contend with. I guessed they’d been so tightly packed that only those on the outside were burned by the blast.
A pity, but at least the Marines would get to earn some points in close combat.
“Die, maggots!” Swede growled across the comm. He rolled out to the left, squatted between a couple of big boulders, and shot through the gap. Bolts lanced into the darkness, followed by the buzz of recharging capacitors.
The bugs danced in panic for a moment before some took to the walls on their six hind legs. Others crouched behind their dead comrades for cover. None returned fire, but their acidic firepower wouldn’t be long coming.
“Maggots? You couldn’t think of something more appropriate?” Lance Corporal Anthony “Bird” Nest asked.
“Can the shit-talk!” the sergeant ordered.
I witnessed a glorious sight as the team reacted with a single mind. Martian Storm Marines had the best training, and even soldiers with the least potential eventually shined as true warriors. Without communicating, they’d formed themselves into a firing line, and those on the ends turned outward to prevent the bugs from flanking them. The squad was focused on attack and procedure, but the bugs weren’t hindered by such things.
“Left!” shouted Corporal Kara “Reaver” Kennedy, the second fireteam leader.
Two Xeno charged the line and fired their rifles in bursts of marble-sized sacs of bug goo. The acidic compounds hit the boulders
