Come on, I think. How could you miss those fireworks?
The Lankies close to eight hundred, then seven hundred, then six hundred meters. I take the spare magazines out of the pouches to speed up the inevitable reloads I’ll have to do. Nobody has ever stopped three Lankies in the field with just a rifle, as far as I know. The penetrative power of the anti-LHO rounds drops with range because of the physics involved, and once they’re close enough for the rounds to have consistent effect, the Lankies are usually too close to make a solitary defense against more than one or two survivable. I scan the area around me again for cover. There’s a shallow ditch starting thirty meters to my right and leading diagonally away from my position, and I resolve to burn through my ammo load in rapid fire and then duck into that ditch with my camouflage suit turned on. Hopefully the ATV will distract them enough to stop looking for the occupant once they reach this spot.
When my computer’s distance readout shows “600M OUT OF RANGE” in my helmet display, I take a deep breath.
“Fuck it,” I say, and take aim.
The Lankies stride on, more quickly but every bit as relentless and unconcerned as before. At maximum magnification, I can see their features in great detail—the massive cranial shields that are half again as wide as their skulls, the toothless mouths that look like something from a prehistoric stegosaurus, the tall and spindly bodies with the three-toed feet and four-fingered hands. They all look so similar to each other that I’ve never been able to tell any two apart, no variance in size or color or even behavior. It’s like they were made in some gigantic biological three-dimensional printer to an exact and unchanging template. And you don’t fully realize how enormous and powerful they are unless you are close to them and can see the amount of dust they kick up with each step, the deep impressions they leave on the soil, and the span of their arms when they stretch them out.
I put the target marker on the chest of the leading Lanky and override the “OUT OF RANGE” determination of my ballistic computer. Then I aim just a little higher to account for the extra two hundred meters of range and pull the trigger. The rifle barks its sharp, authoritative report, and the muzzle blast kicks up the dust around the ATV. I can see the first round hitting the dirt twenty meters in front of the Lanky with a puff just a few seconds later. I adjust my aim for the next shot—Up a body height and a half, I think—and pull the trigger again. The second round hits the Lanky in the hip midstride. It falters and stumbles a little when its foot comes down. With the range dialed in, I empty the rest of the magazine in quick succession, one round every two seconds, one—two—three. One round kicks up dirt right next to the Lanky’s foot, but two more fly true and hit it in the upper body. For the first time, it shrieks its warbling wail as it stumbles again, but then it rights itself and keeps walking.
By now, the Lankies are four hundred meters away and have definitely located the source of the annoyance. They are purposefully striding toward the spot where I am huddled behind the little ATV I’m using as a rifle rest. I eject the empty magazine, insert a fresh one into my rifle, and work the charging handle to chamber a round. Finally, my computer concurs that I may have a faint chance of hitting stuff reliably and displays “RANGE 385—OPEN FIRE.”
With the computer in the loop, I fire the next five rounds as quickly as the rifle will settle back down from the recoil, a second per shot. The computer actuates the servos in my armor to assist with the aim. All five rounds hit the Lanky square in the center of the chest, and this time they do more than just annoy it. At least three of the penetrators go through its hide and dispense their payload inside the Lanky’s chest. Then three thousand cubic centimeters of aerosolized explosive gas ignite together and blow the Lanky’s chest out from the inside. It lets out a tangled wail that is cut off when the thing crashes to the Mars floor, kicking up a billowing cloud of red dust.
The two other Lankies have closed to two hundred meters, and I have about ten seconds to figure out what to do next. I reload the rifle with my hands on autopilot, then jack a round into the chamber. At two hundred meters and closing, they are so imposingly large, so enormous in scale, that it feels like arrogant hubris to think you have a chance in battle against them.
Then I look past the arriving Lankies, and my heart sinks. Six more of them are coming the same way, five hundred meters behind the first group, heading for me like a twenty-meter wall of gray bio-matter. Even if I drop both Lankies in front of me, I won’t have the ammo or the time to take on six more. But at this point, I can’t run or hide, so I take aim and rip off five more rounds at the next Lanky.
This area has been secured for hours, I think. Where the fuck do they keep coming from?
The second Lanky goes to its knees when the salvo hits it, gas rounds spaced one second apart. One round hits the cranial shield and careens off. Two more hit the torso, one in the shoulder and one where the hip would be if they had human anatomy. One blows off the Lanky’s lower right arm, and the fifth one misses altogether. I’ve hurt it badly—it stumbles and crashes to its knees with an earsplitting wail—but it isn’t dead, and I won’t have time to engage the last one, which is now less than a hundred meters away, four or five steps for a pissed-off Lanky. I eject the empty magazine and fumble for a new one, knowing full well that I won’t be able to get the gun ready in time. I stumble backwards as I seat the magazine and grasp the charging handle, hoping that the Lanky will take an extra second or two to crush the ATV between us and give me just a little extra time.