Lieutenant Cheng paced up and down behind his troops, his trained laser gunners now thrust into the role of cannon fodder. They knelt behind or stood braced above several overturned utility carts, makeshift barricades. Around them and interspersed, armored Marines hefted heavy pulse guns and plasma rifles. He wondered just how much his people would add to the defense of the main intersection, but this was where he was assigned, and this was where he’d stand.
The technicians waited, nervously fingering their safeties.
“Bogeys inbound. Third and fourth squads, make grenades ready,” Cheng heard over his comm. As it was set to the Marine NCO in charge of this intersection, he knew that meant the crap was about to fall into the pot.
“Steady, people. Hold this line. The Marines will shred them with grenades first. Don’t fire until I give the order,” Cheng said on his channel. “And Hassan...if anyone runs, shoot them down like dogs.”
“No problem, sir,” the cheerful voice of his sergeant replied. Cheng wasn’t sure if Hassan would do it, but at least the threat might get anyone considering chickening out to think twice.
“There they are,” one of his people gasped, and Cheng saw a wave of skittering, crawling, ravening creatures come around the far bend, filling the corridor from side to side and top to bottom. He slapped down the speaker’s weapon before he could fire. “Wait for the grenades!”
As if on cue, the Marines fired explosive shells from their arm launchers. The weapons made a chug-chug-chug sound as they sent groups of warheads toward the enemy.
The first group burst, and the leading edge of the wave of Scourgelings dissolved into a green-tinged mass of broken bodies and severed limbs, reminding Cheng of crab legs at a buffet. Immediately, the living boiled past the dead, and then another round of grenades went off, and then another.
Closer and closer the mass pressed, slowing somewhat with the ichor in its way, but Cheng could see that the spidery four-limbed creatures simply did not care about their casualties. The bugs were mindless; at least, the infant Scourgelings were, caring no more about casualties than did a river of army ants.
“Wait for it...” the Marine sergeant said, and then, “fire!”
Cheng didn’t even bother to echo the command, just joined his people in aiming for the mass of bugs coming to eat him. Fifty meters, then forty, then thirty. Someone was screaming with bloodlust and fear, and as his pulse gun ran out of ammo he realized it was himself.
Changing the magazine as he had practiced, he realized return fire was peppering the line of troops huddled behind the barricade. Slapping the helmet of one who seemed to have frozen, he yelled, “Get firing, Hankins!”
“Ah-ah-ah-” was all Cheng could hear from the man and, looking in his faceplate, he could see nobody home behind the staring eyes. Cheng left him and turned to add his own fire to the line.
Several of his people were down, but he ignored them for now as Soldiers appeared among the Scourgelings. That was supposed to be a good sign: the better-trained, better-armed adolescents always came in the second wave, letting the infants soak up the brunt of the damage.
The Marines stood like rocks, blazing away with their weapons. One staggered when a Soldier hammered him with some kind of projectile, but quickly brought his pulse gun back on target and blew the bug to bits.
Abruptly, the firing tapered off. Silence fell over the intersection, broken only by the intermittent shots of Marines striding forward and executing fallen enemies. “You. Lieut,” the Marine sergeant said, pointing at Lieutenant Cheng. “Get your people to start gathering up these Soldiers’ weapons and put them in a pile fifty meters out.”
“What?” Cheng replied, adrenaline buzzing in his veins, but he complied, taking his unwounded techs and helping the Marines to gather the guns. He could have tried to pull rank and argue about who was in charge, but somehow, in this situation, he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut. “Why are we doing this?” he asked.
The sergeant ignored Cheng except to wave him back. “Zema,” the man said to one of his Marines, “set three charges on the bottom of this pile of goodies. Command det, my code.”
“Aye aye,” the Marine said, her voice startling Cheng with its high pitch. He didn’t know Marines let females fight. Under the Empire’s rule, most Yellows had forbidden the defense forces to women, the better to breed more slaves. Genderless in her suit, the Marine planted three large explosive rigs and then hastily stacked some of the enemy weapons atop them.
“Back on the line, people,” the sergeant barked. “When they come again and try to pick up their guns, they’ll get a little surprise.”
***
Lieutenant Cheng drifted in a sea of pain. His left arm was gone, somewhere in a pile of similar body parts scattered about the deck. With the stump constricted by his suit and his body sustained by nano and Eden Plague, he knew he would survive the injury if he lived through the fight, but still...it hurt.
“Here they come again,” Corporal Zema said. The sergeant, whose name Cheng had never learned, lay back at the Alpha intersection, faceplate shattered by an unlucky shot from one of the Soldiers. Hassan was the only one of Cheng’s techs left. They’d already fallen back and fought at redoubts Bravo and Charlie, gathering other technical crews and surviving Marines as the defense collapsed toward the center of the vast sphere.
In front of the five remaining Marines, another wave of Scourgelings came. Cheng couldn’t help recalling the fact that the things outnumbered the defenders by a hundred thousand to one. A thousand or so crew on the orbital fortress: one hundred million Scourgelings trying to eat him. He was so tired, though. It was hard to care.
“Fire in the hole,” Zema said, and Cheng ducked. A blast blew Scourge parts over his head and then he opened up, pouring projectiles and plasma into the oncoming mass. He no longer screamed, just pulled the trigger and held onto his shuddering pulse gun with his one good hand.
“I’m out,” he heard Zema say. “Fall back to the next redoubt.”
As Cheng turned toward the rear, wearily dragging his weapon, he saw movement in that direction. “Corporal...” he said, pointing.
“Shit,” she said in a voice like death, looking at the oncoming waves in front and behind. “If you got ammo, shoot now.”
As the other four Marines and Hassan began laying fire, Cheng saw Zema crouch by the armored body of a dead Marine captain and open up his chest plate. Taking off her gauntlets, she began to tap out a code on a small panel.
“Corporal, what are you doing?” Cheng asked.
“Never you mind, Lieut. Go shoot some bugs.” She ignored him.
“Corporal...”
Zema turned her faceplate toward him. “I ain’t lettin’ them buggers eat me, so with all due respect, piss off, sir.”
“It’s okay, Corporal. I know what that is. It’s the right thing to do.”
Rotating her faceplate back to her task, she said, “Thank you, sir. Now shoot something. It will make it easier if you don’t know when it comes.” She put in a final number, and then flipped a switch.
“Right.” Cheng turned his back on Zema and emptied his weapon at the Scourges. As the edge of the mass reached for him, he thought of his new wife Brenda and how she smelled, how she felt in his arms.
Mercifully, the command suit’s Final Option bomb detonated before the first Scourgeling jaws closed on Cheng, obliterating him, Zema, Hassan and the other four Marines in an avalanche of fusion flame.