A lander was hit, bodies and fragments scattering, tumbling, flailing through the dark emptiness. Another, and then another. Dying voices screamed in my earphones.
“Fire at the surface targets!” I bellowed into my helmet microphone. “Heavy weapons, fire at the surface. All other platoons, antimissile fire.”
My well-trained troops began shooting at the targets we had picked out. But the enemy was firing missiles from spots that had looked like nothing but bare rock until a few moments earlier. A missile exploded scant meters from my lander, I could feel the heat of its flare even through the armor of my space suit. Fragments ripped into us, clunking against our armored suits. A trooper’s oxygen tank exploded in a brief deadly flare of flame, killing him instantly.
We were hitting the ground targets, I could see. Explosions peppered Bititu’s surface. Missiles were still blazing toward us, several more landers were blown away, but we were hurtling toward the surface now. We would be there in a few seconds. Smaller weapons were blasting at us now; I could feel the lander shuddering as small solid slugs racked us. A trooper was hit just next to me, space suit erupting into fountains of gushing blood that froze in the vacuum into solid red pellets.
We huddled behind the lander’s forward shield as lasers and projectiles racked the vehicle from one end to the other. Half the troops on the lander had already been killed by the time we thudded onto the asteroid’s rocky surface.
I jumped in the negligible gravity, rifle in hand, and blasted a partially open hatch set into the rock. It snapped shut. It took an effort to keep from soaring into space; I adjusted the flight pack on my back to negative and felt some semblance of weight that helped me to flatten onto my belly while laser beams and volleys of slugs zipped over my head.
My earphones were ablaze with frantic voices:
“They’re all around us!”
“I’ve got seventy-percent casualties! We’ve got to get off this rock!”
“Where’s the weapons platoon? I need backup. Now!”
I slapped a magnetic grenade on the hatch and backed away. It blew noiselessly in the vacuum, smoke dissipating almost before my eyes registered its presence.
“Get into the tunnels!” I yelled into my helmet mike. “The only troops left on the surface are going to be the dead. Get inside! Move!”
I rolled another grenade into the opening of the blasted hatch, then slid into the tunnel headfirst, spraying rifle fire into the murky shadows to clear out any defenders who might have survived the grenade.
The tunnel was barely wide enough for me to crawl through and so dark that I had to turn on my helmet light, despite the infrared sensors in my visor. I heard something slithering behind me and rolled onto my back, aiming my rifle down the length of my torso.
“It’s just me, sir!” came a trooper’s voice, and I saw a space-suited figure, as anonymous as a faceless sculpture, crawling down the tunnel behind me.
Rolling onto my stomach again, I came face-to-face with my first Arachnoid. It was black, fully a meter wide, with eight spindly legs covered with what seemed like barbs. It held an oblong object in its front two claws, something with fins and a glasslike lens pointing at me. Behind that weapon I saw a face with horizontal mandibles clicking rapidly and eight glittering eyes, no two the same size.
I ducked my head, digging my visor into the bare rock of the tunnel, and pulled the trigger of my rifle at the same time. I felt a blast of heat against the armored top of my helmet, heard a high-pitched wail and the scuttling sound of claws on rock.
When I looked up the spider was gone, but there was a patch of sticky pus-yellow goo on the tunnel floor where it had stood. I saw a side tunnel veering off from this one. Pulling a rocket grenade loose from my belt, I set it for impact and fired it down the side tunnel. It exploded almost immediately, showering me with a hail of pebbles and dust and smoke.