“Seriously? That’s inferior ground, Centurion. If you let me take the top of that hill with my 88s, I’ll—”
“The answer is no. Manfred is already setting up on that spot. You should have walked faster if you wanted your choice of ground.”
Grumbling, he stalked off and began setting up where I’d directed him to. I knew he’d do a pro job, so I didn’t micromanage. Instead, I searched for a comfortable spot to lounge and took off my helmet to get a little sun. The local star had risen up out of the sea to the east, and it was warming up already. After having spent so long trudging over the bottom of this ocean, I was really enjoying a clean beach. The air was fresh, the wind was up, and the crashing surf was kind of mesmerizing.
I’ll never admit it, but I might have nodded off over the next ten minutes or so that followed.
“Centurion! McGill, wake up! Something’s happening!”
Someone was shaking me. I looked up to see it was Veteran Moller.
Her words didn’t worry me all that much, but the look on her face did. Moller was a big woman, and by big I mean she could arm-wrestle plenty of men on an even footing. She was built like a fireplug, and she acted like it, too.
“What’s…?” I began, but I didn’t finish my thought. Looking out to sea, I saw the bubbling region had changed. Instead of a continuous circle of bubbles, a force wall was now in evidence.
Rising up out of the water in a great arc that completely encircled the island, a shimmering dome was forming. It came up from the water itself, and it kind of looked like water.
“What the hell is that, McGill?” Harris demanded, as if I had a clue.
“I don’t know. Looks like a wall of water.”
“Water with a hard-on, maybe.”
We watched and gawked in amazement. I’ve seen puff-crete go up in an unnatural fashion, and I’d seen personal shielding and the like—but this was different. It was a translucent dome of what looked like solid water.
“Could these aliens have some kind of control over the properties of water?” asked a voice behind me.
I turned to see it was Natasha. She was fresh out of the revival machine, and she’d only just gotten down to the beach to join our little party.
“You know what that thing is?” I asked.
She was scanning it, using her larger, backpack computer. It had serious power and lots of sensors and stuff I couldn’t even identify, much less operate.
“It’s water. A solid form of water, but not ice. I think… remember, James, when I told you about hot ice? It’s reading something like that. High density, high temperature… Very solid and semi-transparent.”
“Uh…” I said, staring out to sea. “It seems to keep going up and up, and it’s curving, kind of. Do you think it will form a solid dome over us?”
“That’s what it looks like. It will likely be very difficult to penetrate.”
“You don’t say?”
Intrigued, I left cover and walked over to Sargon. After a bit of rank-pulling, I took his belcher off him, raised it to my shoulder and tightened it down to the narrowest beam I could. Then, I held the firing stud down for about three seconds.
“You’re gonna overheat it, sir!”
I ignored him. I’d been a weaponeer for years, and I knew just how far over specs you could push one of these babies. I pushed it to that point—and a little bit further.
Out at sea, my beam struck the wall of hot-ice, or whatever the hell it was, and drew a line of billowing steam across it. When I let go of the firing stud at last, however, there hadn’t been much effect.
The water-wall showed a streak where I’d burned it, as if a fingernail had scarred the surface of a bowl of gelatin. Just as soon as I stopped beaming, however, the scar melted away. After a few moments, the water-wall was as smooth as before.
“Huh…” I said. “Looks like we’re being sealed in. I wonder what their next trick will be.”
Only Natasha and I seemed intrigued and curious. Everyone else in the unit looked like they wanted to shit themselves. I thought about razzing them for being chickens, but I didn’t want to lower morale any further.
-48-
After the water-dome thingie was complete, having encapsulated us and trapped us on the island, we hunkered down and waited for whatever was coming next.
Command chat was going crazy in my headset, and it was beginning to give me a headache. Every officer on the island seemed to be freaking out.
“This is nothing,” I told them all when I couldn’t take any more whining. “You should have been down there at the bottom of the sea with one of these clowns playing fisherman with you. Now, that was scary.”
“Not helpful, Centurion McGill,” Graves complained. “This is your CO speaking, people. We need two cohorts on the beach, and one in the center with the star-falls. So far, I don’t see the center cohort in position yet.”
“Star-falls?” I said out loud, but without keying the mic. That was damned good news. I didn’t even know we had any heavy artillery on this godforsaken rock.
“The enemy dome has completely encircled the island at a range of about one to two kilometers out. You might notice that the waves have stopped crashing on the beach. This indicates the barrier goes down to the bottom, which is estimated to be five hundred meters deep or more.”
“Cool…” I said, nodding in appreciation. These aliens were serious and above all competent. I liked that in an enemy. No legion man liked to waste his time with amateurs.
Graves kept talking and issuing orders. The troop arrangements and general
