must have been cold. The snow had already started to pile up. A quarterinch layer of it already covered the roof. On the runway, the tarmac looked gray instead of black.
“General,” a major said when he turned and saw me. He snapped to attention and saluted. His men remained as they were; this was a battle situation.
I pointed to one of the snipers and asked to see his rifle. The major retrieved it for me.
I lifted the rifle and peered through the scope. Nine-tenths of a mile away, men in armor lit the edge of the runway as they poured out from between trees and ran onto the tarmac. I could hit them from that distance. Most of my snipers could hit a target from a mile away, but we could not afford to waste ammunition. At that point, our high-powered rifles were no more effective than a swarm of mosquitoes.
As I watched through the scope, the flood of men in glowing armor continued to flow out from behind the trees. They came from every direction, completely closing us in. Confident their armor could protect them, they jogged toward us. By that time, only the blizzard conditions stood between us and them.
Looking for a clean shot through all of the snow, I aimed the rifle at one Marine’s head and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked in my hand. It did not have much of a kick. Three seconds passed. My aim was off, the scope was calibrated for another shooter. My bullet missed the target and struck the man behind him. There was a flash where the bullet hit, just over his right cheek.
I handed the rifle back to its owner. The other snipers waited for me to give the order to fire. The snow would not help their accuracy; but at seven hundred yards and firing at a slow-rushing tide, the bullets would hit enemy Marines.
Using a channel that only the snipers would hear, I said, “Fire.”
Along the roof, the muzzles of the guns flashed and went dark. The boys spent more time aiming than I would have liked, waiting ten and sometimes twenty seconds between shots.
“When the Unifieds get within one hundred yards, bring your boys in,” I told the major.
“Should I take them down to the third floor?” he asked.
“No, just bring them in from the ledges. We’ll leave them up on the roof for now.”
“Aye, sir,” he said.
At one hundred yards, M27s and RPGs are nearly as accurate as sniper rifles. Once the Unifieds reached that point, we’d need to dig in and prepare to fight at close range.
By that time, a thick layer of snow had begun to crunch under my boots. I slid in it as I walked back to the stairs. When I stepped in the open doorway, I kicked the jam to get the snow off my boots.
Cutter’s voice came over the interLink. “Harris, where are you?”
“We’re holding a spaceport just outside Washington, D.C.,” I said. “The bastards have us surrounded.”
“Just hold on,” Cutter said. “We’re almost ready to launch.”
“Thanks,” I said in a voice that was distracted and weak.
As for me, I liked the idea of going down swinging. I didn’t feel hope, but I did feel a sense of excitement. I ran down the stairs and took my place by the grenadiers on the second floor.
The Unifieds were four hundred yards away, too far away to return fire with their flechettes. Along with my snipers, my grenadiers began firing rockets and grenades, squeezing off shots, then tossing old tubes out the window and grabbing the next. Below us, the runway looked like a moonscape. It was white from the snow and pockmarked with craters from our rockets, grenades, and even a few mortars. And crossing that moonscape, slowed more by the damage to the tarmac than the rockets themselves, the Unified Authority Marines tightened their ranks as they approached the building.
There were more of them than there were of us. I couldn’t count them, wouldn’t even have tried, but I estimated them at fifty thousand strong.
“Harris, I’m almost at the spaceport,” Freeman said.
“Go away,” I said.
“I can …”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a nuke that knows the difference between clones and natural-borns?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Ray, there’s nothing you can do here.” I thought for a moment. “Ray, can you hack into their shields?”
“What?” Freeman asked.
“The shields. The shielded armor. Do you think there’s some way you can hack into it with a computer?”
“No,” he said. “How many are you up against?”
“I’m guessing fifty thousand.”
“And you?”
“Not even half that many.”
They were closing in. In another few minutes, the Unifieds would enter the building. They would pour into the vacant bottom floor of the terminal. They would charge up the stairs, and we would be in range of their flechettes—depleted uranium needles coated with neurotoxin. Once they entered the building, the slaughter would begin.
It was while I stood by that broken-out window that my combat reflex began. Calm washed over me as testosterone and adrenaline flooded my bloodstream, and my anxiousness disappeared. I heard the music of the battle in my head. The men around me seemed to move in slow motion. They aimed their weapons, fired shots that did not matter, and held their line against an unstoppable enemy that had not yet begun to fire back.
Using the telescoping lenses in my visor, I took a closer look at the Unifieds. Some stumbled as they ran through the snow. They were natural-borns. Their genes were not selected for battle, they did not have our abilities. Some sprinted, some trotted, some had already run out of breath. A few stared back in my direction as they ran. Snow fell on them, and their shields vaporized it. Steam rose from the spots where their shielded boots kicked through the snow.
As I watched, a rocket struck one of the U.A. Marines in the chest, exploding in a flash of fire, steam, and shrapnel. That rocket was designed to fell small buildings and turn tanks upside down. Had he not been in shielded armor, it would have left the man nothing more than a splash of blood on broken concrete. Instead, the blast slammed him to the ground. He hit hard, bounced ten feet in the air, and fell limp into the snow. The fall hurt him, and he rose to his feet like a dazed fighter, stumbling, weak in the knees. He limped as he took a few steps, then he fell to the ground. The bastard had landed badly and hurt his leg. That was the most we could hope for, to make them trip.
They were closing in, twenty-five yards from the terminal building and closing fast. Some paused to fire flechettes at us. They ran, pointed arms in our direction as if saluting us, and fired darts that mostly hit the ceiling above our heads. A man a few feet from me was hit. He dropped his gun, reached for his neck, and fell to the ground, where he convulsed for several seconds before dying. A thin and steady stream of blood leaked from the hole in his armor.
If we demolished this building, we would die, too. I did not mind that idea. Was the combat reflex influencing my thinking? At least we would take two of theirs for every man we lost.
Outside, the front edge of the Unifieds had almost reached the building. They were close enough to hit us with their flechettes, and the fusillade had begun. A steady stream of uranium needles flew in through the crashed-out window, forcing us to our knees. I crawled over the jagged glass fringe that remained in the window casing, climbed to one knee, and fired my M27 down at their heads. Flechettes zinged past me, like wasps chasing prey, but I held my ground and fired, and I ignored everything around me.
