Harnessed onto two sides of every Worm warrior were ballistic weapons. The Worms believed in guns. These short-barreled weapons required no heavy power-packs, however. They fired chattering bursts of pellets that exploded upon contact. The bullets weren’t like Earth weaponry. They were not high-velocity, solid lead projectiles. Instead, each projectile was hollow and lighter-more like paintball pellets full of nitroglycerin than bullets. Each of the pellets was covered in a chitinous, brown shell and had a liquid center. We suspected they were partly or entirely organic in nature. I supposed, as I watched them spray my men down around me, that the weapons made sense. They were light-weight and the pellets were light, too. Heavy bullets wouldn’t have much range on a high-gravity world like this. Besides, if you did most of your fighting in tunnels, range and accuracy weren’t important. What you wanted was overwhelming firepower at close range.
The pellets fired with popping sounds and each round
I ordered my squad-which had shrunken to a four-man fireteam-to pull back to a cluster of big rocks. We squatted in there, breathing hard and firing at anything that humped or squirmed past.
“Okay,” I said. “If they get in here, I’ll switch to my blade. Who else is good with a blade?”
They all looked at me. These were not the kind of marines, I realized in an instant, who would volunteer for things like anti-Worm knife-duty. Those men had probably already died.
I slapped the head of the nearest PFC. “You’re it. When they get in close, we kill them. The others keep firing, or we will be overwhelmed as they keep coming in.”
It didn’t take long to test my plan. Two Worms made it into our midst almost at the same time. They had been behind other Worms, who now twisted and writhed in their death throes. The PFC I’d tagged didn’t have any choice about following my orders, as the first Worm practically fell on him. It flipped over the top of our sheltering rocks and dropped in our midst. Screaming, the PFC had his blade out and slashed at it wildly, taking off an entire row of those churning little legs.
I let my rifle drop from my grasp, knowing it would dangle by the black cord that led to my power-pack. I snatched out my knife and the fine edge gleamed green, reflecting the laser fire that flared all around me as the others kept their suppressing fire up in every direction. Before I could even take a step toward the PFC and his thrashing Worm, the second one joined the party.
I lunged at the second one. It was about to take out one of our gunners, who was directing his fire out into the oncoming enemy waves. I plunged the slightly curved blade into the monster’s tail, getting its attention.
It doubled back on itself, hissing. An alien face came at me very quickly. I saw those multifaceted eyes and a maw yawned widely, full of dribbling spikes and sharp, horn-like ridges that probably served to ingest food. The maw was big enough to swallow my head, so I slashed at it defensively. It was a lucky strike. The thing’s face exploded. Yellowish, semi-opaque liquids gushed over my goggles, which I was very glad to be wearing. The Worm wasn’t out of the fight yet, however. Pinchers clamped onto my arms and tore holes in my suit at both shoulders. I brought my knife in low, where I hoped it kept its throat. More liquids splashed out of it.
I could feel those pinchers cut into my shoulders. Blood ran down my sides, pooling up in my boots. My right arm was pinned now-the monster had figured out which of my limbs was causing the damage. I strove with the Worm, and despite my nanite-enhanced muscles, its power was unstoppable. It was like wrestling with a thousand-pound python.
I felt myself going down, and a second later I was on my back. All I could see was Worm. It had markings on it, I saw then. Blue tattoos depicting strange, cursive symbols. For a disconnected second I wondered if the tattoos indicated its rank or identity. Was the alien atmosphere that now leaked into my suit causing my mind to wander?
I managed to switch the knife from my pinned right hand into my left. Tearing my left free for a moment, I reached up and slashed across both those big, jewel-like eyes. That did the trick. The thing let go of me and reared up. Blinded and mad with pain, its mandibles activated the triggers on both twin, short-barreled cannons and sprayed everywhere in a circle. Before we killed it, the thing managed to blast the leg off one of my men and accidentally killed the other Worm, who had by now pinned down the PFC I’d placed on knife-duty with me.
When we’d gotten control of the situation again, I crouched with my remaining marines. “Okay,” I puffed. “New plan. We are fighting our way down to the bricks.”
This seemed to brighten their moods. I was injured, but not badly. I and the PFC who still clutched his knife, but had lost his other hand to his Worm, both grabbed and lifted the worst injury, the man with a missing leg. The five of us charged then, firing as we went, running downslope toward the bricks.
The men on top of the bricks and the remaining hovertanks saw us and provided covering fire. A hundred Worms tried to get to us, to stop us, to pull us down. Only one of my men didn’t make it. The PFC with the knife. A Worm sprang out from behind one of those big, squatty toadstool growths and rode him down, guns chattering, pinchers flashing in the black night. A hundred beams took the Worm apart, but when we dragged the PFC’s body into the protective square, he was already dead.
Handing over my wounded to a corpsman, I brushed off his attempts to patch up my injuries and trotted to the command brick. I slumped into the airlock. It seemed to take forever to ding and allow me through. Part way through the process, sheeting antibiotic mists and beams of lavender radiation sprayed me. We couldn’t allow any form of contagion to enter the command module-I knew this intellectually and had approved the scripts myself, but it was still maddening to experience the delay.
At length, I dragged myself into the command post. Everyone threw me a quick salute and turned back to what they were doing, except for Robinson.
Robinson turned to Captain Sarin. “Get a corpsman in here, we have an officer in need of care.”
I waved a hand at him and leaned the other heavily on the computer table. “I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ve just had the wind knocked out of me.”
They ignored my words and brought in the corpsman. I was surprised to see it was Sandra. She had taken the training, I’d known that. And it made sense that she was the closest certified noncombatant.
“Hi hon,” I said.
Sandra made an exasperated sound and went to work on me. It wasn’t the first time she’d performed emergency first aid on my sorry ass. I suspected it wouldn’t be the last. I tried to ignore her as she pulled my torso out of my suit and dabbed, probed and ripped lengths of tape. She whispered things to me, while she worked. Threats about what she would do if I ever got myself torn up like this again. These sorts of threats only made sense to Sandra.
“Give me the big picture, Robinson,” I said.
“We’re winning, sir.”
“Losses?”
“Five hovertanks were destroyed, but less than one hundred KIAs. The Worms surprised us, but they ran into our surprises as well. I think they meant to hit us from underneath simultaneously, timing it with the perimeter attacks. But our nanite-woven shielding under the base slowed them down and channeled their attacks into three breach points. We were able to burn them before they could get the interior assault underway.”
I nodded. “What about the big waves from outside?”
“Your position was hard hit. They did manage to take the rocky outcroppings, and the northern flank in general was overrun, but I pulled troops from the other walls where we’d repelled them and sent reinforcements to the breach points. We pretty much slaughtered them.”
“Enemy casualties?” I asked, wincing as Sandra jabbed me with something sharp. I heard a clicking sound, and realized it was as stapler. We didn’t bother with sutures these days, the nanites took care of the fine work. Rapidly stapling up a wound and wrapping it tightly to prevent blood loss worked best. The nanites would automatically push the staples out after awhile when they were no longer needed.
“The computer has done a recognition sweep with all the sensors. Over nine thousand Worms died, sir.”
I looked up at him, impressed. “We did slaughter them, then. You did well.”
“Yes sir,” Robinson said proudly. “Clearly, they miscalculated.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they were desperate. I believe they are smarter than they look. I don’t think they
