Masses of shimmering metal oozed through the soil across the swale as if the hillside was sweating mercury. The blobs were larger than those which had appeared at the start of the first attack, and they merged again as soon as they reached the surface.
Clattering rifle fire had no affect on the creatures. None of the command team bothered to shoot.
Three plasma weapons, then a fourth, sent their dazzling radiance into the new threat. Blazing metal splashed a hundred meters skyward. The whole hillside glowed with an auroral lambency.
The ball of metal continued to grow. It was already the size of a cathedral’s dome. Plasma bolts no longer touched the creature’s shimmering skin.
It slid forward. The crater it left in the side of Hill 224 was the size a nuclear weapon would make.
Only two plasma weapons were still firing. The one nearest the command team had run almost through its belt of ammunition. The weapon’s barrel glowed, and the rock a meter in front of its muzzle had been fused to glass.
Sergeant Bradley aimed his RAG grenade and waited. Sie arranged all her grenade clusters on the forward lip of the dugout so that she could throw them in quick succession as soon as the target rolled into range.
Kowacs emptied his assault rifle into the shining mass. It was halfway across the swale. Because of its size, the creature moved with deceptive speed.
As Kowacs slid a fresh magazine into his weapon, his eye caught the message on the excavator screen:
THIRTY-SEVEN KILOMETERS. TARGET DESTROYED WITHOUT INCIDENT. A PIECE OF CAKE. BEGINNING ASCENT.
Top fired his RAG grenade. The shaped-charge explosion was a momentary smear against the monster’s shielding, nothing more.
Heatwaves shimmered from Kowacs’ gunbarrel. He fired the entire magazine in a single hammering burst and reloaded again. When the creature got within forty meters, he’d start throwing grenades.
And I’ll say to Toby English, “Boy you bastards cut it close! Ten seconds later and there wouldn’t have been anything left of us but grease spots!”
Nick Kowacs laughed and aimed his rifle again at a towering monster framed by a sky that was empty of hope.
FACING THE ENEMY
1
Oval membranes along the Ichton’s lateral lines throbbed as the creature writhed against the table restraints. Two audio speakers flanked the observation screen which Sergeant Dresser watched in the room above. One speaker keened at the edge of ultrasound, while a roll of low static cracked through the other.
“What’s the squeaking?” Dresser asked tensely.
“Just noise,” said Tech 4 Rodriges, looking up from his monitor. “Moaning, I guess you’d say. Nothing for the translation program—” he nodded toward the hissing second speaker “—to translate.”
He hoped Dresser wasn’t going to nut, because the fella didn’t have any business being here. That was how the brass would think, anyway. So long as the Ichton was alone, Rodriges’ job was to flood it with knock-out gas if something went wrong. That didn’t seem real likely; but if the creature damaged its so-valuable body, there’d be hell to pay.
Dresser’s lips were dry, but he wiped his palms on the thighs of his fresh utilities. The uniform felt light compared to the one he’d worn during the most recent mission on SB 781. The scout boat’s recycling system had cleaned away sweat and body oils after every watch, but there wasn’t anything machines could do about the fear which the cloth absorbed just as surely. . . .
That was thinking crazy. Had to stop that now.
“Don’t worry,” he said aloud. “I’m fine.”
“Sure an ugly bastard,” Rodriges commented in a neutral voice.
Upright, the Ichton would be the better part of three meters tall. The creature’s gray body was thin, with a waxy glow over the exoskeleton beneath. By contrast, the six limbs springing from the thorax had a fleshy, ropy, texture, though they were stiffened internally by tubes of chitin. Now they twitched against invisible restraints.
“First good look I really had of him,” Dresser said softly. “Of it.”
He wasn’t sure how he felt. He wiped his hands again.
“Huh?” said Rodriges in amazement. “But—it was you caught him, right? I mean—you know, the real one. Wasn’t . . . ?”