And did I mention they were firing off bursts of automatic weapons fire? Wild sprays. Sudden staccato barks. Rounds smashing into the blood-orange rocks we were crossing along, sending up sprays of sharp fragments that raced for your eyes and exposed skin. Other rounds hit the sandy bottom of the canyon, throwing up grit fountains. These rounds made tactical-me wonder if they had snipers in the mix.
No time for that, Sergeant Orion, because we were literally about to get very overrun. And I’d be surprised if they had a hard and fast policy on surrender and captured prisoners.
Hoser unloaded, screaming, “Rock and roll!” as he burned brass and bled linkage, cutting down the first and fastest apes scrambling and leaping over the broken boulders. “Rock and roll” was Reaper Platoon code to anchor on the gunner until we figured out how to deal with the mess we’d just walked into.
SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.
I hunched down and duck-walked back, burning rounds to cover Punch and Choker as they tried to cover behind two sides of the same rock forward of our position in the tight, twisting canyon. Both were dumping mags danger close on targets I couldn’t see from my position. Meaning… the swarm of apes with automatic weapons had moved much faster than I would ever have thought possible.
“This is just great!” shouted Choker as he shot down an ape that scrambled around the rock on all fours, fangs gnashing, the great gray thing barking viciously as it came for him. Choker shot it several times and it was still thrashing. Then he shot it some more and it lay still, bleating at the sky amid the blood it had sprayed across the sand and rock. Its black-skinned hands opening and closing pathetically like it still wished with all its savage heart it could throttle the medic who’d killed it.
“Black on belt!” shouted Hustle, who closed in with our gunner to link up more belt-fed ammo and keep the gun working. I shouted for Hauser to move forward and cover the Pig as the reload went down. If Hustle was fast enough, he’d get the next few links up and connected before Hoser ran dry on 7.62, then we could maintain a base of fire along our forward line.
I looked back, poking my head over the rocks, and spotted Hauser opening up on a flanking attack of smaller apes with daggers and spears coming down the walls of the canyon to our rear. We’d walked into a trap, or they were fast enough to break off into separate elements and try a pincer movement from asymmetrical directions like the sheer rock walls of a canyon.
A second later I popped up, tagged a fast mover, and nailed him with two high-power APs we had for the Bastards in our thirty-round mags. We each had a full combat load, but it’s hard for a sergeant to stop counting. The thing went down in a tumble of dust and sand but there was no way I could confirm the kill because things were so frenetic.
A huge ape, bigger than the rest, a giant almost, massive chest covered in some kind of leather armor, leapt up on top of the rock Punch and Choker were fighting from the sides of. It beat its chest and gave a primal roar that raised the hairs on the back of your neck. The thing looked like it could rip all of us to shreds as it glared angry animal hate and intelligent menace both at the same time.
The captain, who usually was only armed with the matching Hardballer 1911s he carried in the pockets of the worn brown leather trench he always wore, strode forward, leaving the Monarch in their temporary fighting position to defend against everything coming at us from the left flank. Her light machine gun hummed on quick, brutal, suppressed notes as she spat fire at multiple incoming targets while the captain closed with the big ape.
I knew her rounds were having some effect only because we hadn’t yet been overrun. In the space of ten seconds, the battle had gone from eerie silence to sudden circus of death threatening to envelop us all.
The Old Man had brought along another weapon we rarely ever saw him carry but which was known to us all. His Beretta 1301 combat shotgun. An ancient weapon he’d gotten off a freighter we’d found derelict in deep space carrying a lot of five-hundred-year-old weapons in stasis containers. The ancient weapon and others had been stored factory new. Pristine and still smelling of gun oil. Now he strode right at the huge raging beast atop the rock roaring at us and started firing slugs into the thing’s chest. Six shots in two seconds from the semi-automatic combat shotgun and the thing had gaping holes and ragged flesh wounds where the slugs had torn into it.
It bellowed, gasping like a drowning ghost, and even that was still terrifying.
At the moment, I was engaging another fast mover that came out of nowhere to leap at the captain. I burned a half a mag and got him as the captain pulled his off-hand .45 from his coat pocket now that he’d burned all six slugs in the shotgun and shot the giant beast right in the head, blowing off half its skull with the Hardballer.
Crude spears arched over the rocks we were defending in a rough circle and one shattered against my plate carrier. The blow drove the air right out of me. It wasn’t like getting hit by a round. But it was like taking a thrown hammer right in the neck.
I staggered back, hacking and gasping for air, grateful the Monarch’s hidden munitions and equipment stash had included new state-of-the-art advanced small-arms protection plates to replace our old and basically unserviceable ones after nine months of on-world combat. She’d said these new plates were rated to stand up to rocket launchers. I’d never heard of a SAPI
