and the rest of the platoon as they fell back, then moved up to take point as they circled the hill.
“I told you to secure that hill,” Moffat called to me. He was screaming like a lunatic now. I imagined more than a little spit flying inside his helmet.
“We’re on our way, sir,” I said.
A Jackal skidded to a stop to the left of the beacon. The Marine in the turret sprayed heavy-caliber shells into the growing bank of Mudders as they came swarming out of the woods. The three-inch shells tore through trees and Mudders alike. One alien tried to charge the Jackal, wading into the heavy fire. The bullets slowly ground the crazy bastard into mulch, shredding it even as it continued its charge. The Mudder managed to get about twenty feet in that barrage before falling in a heap of pieces.
A line of five Jackals sped in from another direction, firing into the enemy line while weaving through the trees. Moments later they emerged for another pass, their tires kicking up mud and twigs as they skidded past.
The Mudders fired back. When three bolts struck the first of the Jackals, the driver lost control, and the vehicle flipped. More bolts hit the chassis as it burst into flames. The Jackal spun through the air and settled roof down.
The Mudders opened fire on the other Jackals. Two made it to safety; two more crashed.
“Heads up!” Thomer yelled, as hundreds of Mudders crested a distant ridge and opened fire.
Grenadiers standing near the top of the hill fired rockets into the Mudders’ ranks, then dropped back. The ground around the aliens seemed to boil as the rockets kicked up a veil of steam, mud, and leaves.
We could not let the Mudders drive us back, but a single platoon could not hold this hill. At least a hundred Mudders had gathered on a nearby ridge. Hiding proved useless when the aliens returned our fire; the bolts from their weapons cut through the ground like needles through a sheet. I saw a bolt pass through a boulder and hit one of my men in the face. The bolt continued on through the back of his helmet as the Marine fell to the ground, his dead body still trembling as the muscles in his arms and legs exerted their last impulses of life.
Thomer sent three grenadiers to scatter the Mudders, but the grenadiers attracted too much attention. When they appeared at the top of the knoll, the Mudders fired at them and continued firing at them even after they dropped back behind cover.
Another squadron of Jackals skidded into range, fired a hailstorm into the Mudder line, then vanished. Under the cover of the chaos created by the Jackals, platoons crowded in beside us. Another force attacked the Mudders from the right, and it looked, for a moment, like we would hold. The enemy line seemed to crumble in disarray, but then a small herd of Mudders charged into our fire. The platoons on either side of us gave way, and my platoon suddenly became the point of the spearhead.
“We need to hold this area!” the regimental colonel yelled over an open frequency, and a virtual beacon appeared around us.
Now the battle hinged on our little hill as the entire specking regiment followed the colonel’s beacon. Ten thousand Marines headed in our direction as hundreds of Mudders, looking like three-dimensional shadows, aimed their guns in our direction. Jackals streaked by and fired into them, but the crazy bastards did not fall back.
I would have given a year’s pay for air support, but that was not going to happen in this battle. The Mudders had destroyed two-thirds of our gunships during the last battle, and whatever gunships were left would be ineffective in this heavily forested terrain.
ATVs poured in from every direction, firing rockets into the enemy line, then charging through it, weaving in and out around the trees as if they were running a slalom course. One leaped over a ridge, firing two rockets in midair. The rockets pummeled the enemy line, leaving a gap in it, but when the driver tried to thread that gap, a Mudder stepped in the way. That alien must have weighted one thousand five hundred pounds, maybe even a full ton. When the light-armor ATV struck it, the Mudder only spun and fell backward as if it tripped.
And still the Mudders did not drop behind cover or halt their disorganized march in our direction. Thousands of bolts of light rained down on the ATVs. But the ATVs were fast and low to the ground, difficult targets to hit.
The rest of the regiment arrived en masse. Grenadiers launched rockets over the ATVs, and automatic riflemen fired an endless hail of M27 fire into the enemy line. The Mudders continued to fire at the ATVs—a wasted effort. They hit a few of the fast vehicles but left themselves open to our grenadiers and fire teams. A gap had formed in the enemy line, and in came the Jackals.
I could feel it. I could taste it. The battle had swung in our direction, and in another moment the Unified Authority Marines would begin another charge. Tension built as I waited for the order. When the regimental colonel finally gave the order to advance, it came as a relief. I allowed the momentum of the regiment to draw me forward. This was not a wild charge. It began slowly and methodically, but it was also unrelenting. There were men in front of me and behind me. We pushed over a rise, beyond a line of trees.
As I left the protection of the trees, I experienced that pleasant stinging in my veins, the combat reflex. A mixture of adrenaline and testosterone flowed through my blood. It was like the return of an old friend, maybe more pronounced on this occasion than ever before. I felt both calm and excited at the same time. It left me peaceful, almost blissful, and ready to kill. I did not become part of the mob; my thoughts remained my own. But I shared its purpose—we had come to kill.
By this time I had lost track of which men belonged to which company. With so many Marines pushing in around me, I simply ignored their virtual dog tags as they appeared in my visor. There comes a time when chaos takes over, and all strategy is lost on the field. We had reached that point.
When I saw Mudders, I aimed and fired. I no longer entertained any objectives other than to kill. It was hard to shoot with men jostling around me, bumping me, constantly forcing me forward. When I shot at enemies, I never shot alone. We were ten thousand men moving in unison, and we fired at every Mudder we saw. When small groups of aliens stepped over a ridge or out from behind the trees, so many bullets ripped into them that they simply shredded before our eyes.
As I reached the top of the rise, I saw a Mudder no more than fifty feet away and fired over the helmets of several Marines. Hundreds of bullets bounced off the alien’s hide. I did not see if it fell. The momentum of the regiment shoved me on, and I lost sight of it.
A knee-deep stream ran across our path. I splashed into the water, high-stepping my way across, afraid to fall because I knew I’d be trampled. It was not until I emerged on the other side of that stream, slipping on the rocks along the shore, that I looked back and saw the extent of our casualties. As we crossed the far bank and stepped over a rise, all of our cover had fallen away. The slippery rocks I’d stumbled over as I crossed the river were dead Marines. Dozens of them lay facedown in the water.
A thousand Marines now funneled in through a bottleneck no more than three hundred feet across. The aliens fired into our ranks, and we fired into theirs. Still we pushed ahead. When I crested another ridge, I saw that the ground that I had first thought was a snow-covered forest was really piled with dead Marines in white combat armor. Yard-long bolts of light soared through the air at speeds we could see but not dodge. Men around me were hit in the head, the chest, the arms, the legs.
Had I not been part of the herd, I would have found cover and dug in. But this was not a battle in which men dug in and fought—this was a charge. Marines pushed at my back. Marines ran ahead of me. We splashed over the banks of the creek, stormed across the field of fallen men, and crashed headlong into enemy fire.
A few feet ahead of me, a bolt seared through a Marine, and the Marine behind him, then a third Marine. The bolt pierced the first man in the head, the next through the chest, and barely grazed the final man in the arm, but all three would die. Whenever those bolts connected, it caused such trauma that a shot through the arm was every bit as lethal as a shot through the head.
We continued our rush, all the time hearing officers taunting us, coaxing us, their voices ringing in our helmets and merging with our thoughts. “Run!” “Get going!” “Move it! Move it! Move it!”
An ATV skidded around a hollow, catching three Mudders from behind. It fired a missile that blew the Mudders apart, and the ATV rumbled over their bodies as if they were no more deadly than overgrown roots.
Switching from my M27 to a particle-beam pistol, I continued to run in the stampede. My pistol was made for close-combat situations, and that phase of the battle was about to begin. The aliens were all around us now, their massive single-colored bodies blending in with the landscape.
The men to the right and left of me fell a few moments apart. The one on my right was hit in the gut, and his legs crumpled beneath him. The one on my left was hit in the face—I saw the bolt coming and turned in time to see it strike his visor and tear through it. The plasticized glass in his visor had already melted as he fell backward
