DREADNOUGHT 2165 by A.D. Bloom Page B

point of a spear – a wedge. They drove forward in a
formation designed since ancient times to punch a hole through
battle lines by dividing the enemy. The price of it was fighting on
three sides at once.
    The Squidies hit the last two
knuckledraggers with a salvo from their stovepipe anti-armor
weapons that caught Pardue's and Hong's suits in the legs and the
hip. They went down face first in front of the Marines and slid
along the hull to a stop. Lucy's squad only paused around them for
a second, but when Jordo ran past with the rest of Hardway's crew, he could see the
pilots of both suits had been extracted.
    The line of Squidies in mechanized battle
suits held their ground. Jordo watched in utter amazement as the
Marines' combined and directed fire blew the aliens open one by one
until they fell like shattered monuments before the charge.
    "Stay close to them! Widen the wedge!"
Devlin shouted to Hardway 's
crew. The XO ran a few steps ahead of Jordo, sweeping his sidearm's
beam like a sword. It was some kind of antique, x-ray laser pistol
terror weapon one of the NCOs said was illegal on earth. Jordo only
saw it fire briefly, but as they drove into the line, the XO's
antique cut the ropey, armored legs off three mechanized Squidies
before it overheated.
    Jordo ran and fired the bulky MA-48 rifle
they gave him. The double-barreled, over-under weapon pumped out
sabot and pulsed laser fire. They told him to stick to the laser
until he could handle recoil in low-gees. He couldn't distinguish
his own fire from the fire of all the other MA-48s, so he didn't
know if he hit anything, but he aimed where they aimed, and the
Squidies went down. Where they pointed their rifles together, they
tore the enemy apart.
    The Squidies who managed to fire at point
blank range were guaranteed to hit something. Huge streaking rounds
from alien battle suits on either side tore into the crewmen making
brief and gory tunnels through crowd.
    Like the Marines in front of
them, Hardway's crew picked
up the wounded and threw them over their shoulders in the low gees
and ran with them.
    200 meters from the edge of the hull, the
Squidies closed in. After that, the fire came from all sides. It
rocketed in from behind and the crewmen it hit got thrown forward,
past him, propelled by the big alien shells in their backs. Men and
women on either side of him burst into flame in their suits under
fire of the Squidies' masers. It was a roll of the dice who got hit
and who didn't. It was as random and brutal as the torpedo-filled
furball he'd sent his Lancers into.
    "Company Marines! Cover fire to the
rear!" Ahead, the Marines had punched through the Squidies' line.
Now, they could turn and kneel and fire at the aliens cutting
down Hardway's crew.
    They all charged the last hundred yards and
made the final push together.
    The Squidies that remained in their path
fired from over the edge – from the top of the ship. Their nubby
helmets poked up over the metal horizon with their long arms and at
the end of each one was the flashing barrel of a hand maser. Where
they pointed, running figures flared and fell, burning inside their
suits. The ones that got hit point blank just flared up and
disappeared where the beam caught them.
    Jordo couldn't tell if it was a Marine or a
crewman that reached the edge of the enemy hull first, but they
poured over the top and blasted left and right down the line of
Squidies there, firing full enfilade down their line – aiming along
the edge of the hull where the aliens had lined up to kill
them.
    Behind every towering Squidy that Jordo
aimed at there was another Squidy. He fired his MA-48, and the
freakish thing in front of him fell and crumpled into an small pile
of torso and coiling limbs to reveal another behind it. He fired
the x-ray laser again, and then, after the alien he'd holed fell
like the first, he burned a hole through the one behind it. The
Squidies fell and fell and fell, and guns to his left and right
flashed and