II

"Don't run, you'll just die tired."

Airstrike ETA: 3:27

-"Sir, what's going on in there?' came in Bett over the com. "There's nothing left. They're all dead. Is that right?"

There was more chatter up on the lines now. We couldn't see anything around for a few hundred meters. People started getting uneasy.

what? if they were so easy to kill, why the airstrike? either INTEL was giving these "insectoids" too much credit, or someone really fucked up.

-"That can't be right," this time it was Masts, our engineer ex-officio. "That's impossible. We couldn't have killed 'em all. Not yet." The break in the com chatter made me restless. What was going on? "Did they move to the other ends of the canyon?"

-"Negative," came L.T.'s reply. "We're getting the same word from 1st and 2nd. Command is running satellite imagery through coms, but there's nothing showing up. I want everyone's thermals down to heart-rate stims. We need to be alert as hell."

Everyone tightened the lines in. Marauders reloaded and moved to the center of formation. We were just on the other side of the burm above a ravine into the canyon. My visor was set to motion. The silence broken only by the rattling of equipment among the other MI was unnerving. Lieutenant was busy on the horn. Section leaders Gomez, Arriez, and Larmos were busy keeping their guys in order. The mood changed quickly.

Through the static of the coms, Masts came in again,

-"Something's wrong. I'm getting seismic activity all over this place. There shouldn't be anything subterranean on this rock, but something's up."

oh shit. they dig.

"L.T.!" I screamed. "They're digging! They're under us!"

I'd never seen the marauders move so fast, repositioning themselves and realigning their sights. The sections hit the top of the burm seconds after my call rang out. I almost lost it. I screwed up with that com, but I didn't have time to think about being cool about it. I would have to deal with it later.

We could see the pebbles sliding around from the vibration underneath us. It wasn't so fun anymore.

But my com started a panic among the sections. Some guys wouldn't stand still. Others would almost mortar off at the mere vibration of the ground from the rest of the assault company.

Then everything went dead silent.

It was as simple as the release phrase, uttered by the lieutenant. Formation was established in a matter of seconds. It was no longer a matter of thinking. The hypnotic suggestion took care of all that. With the spoken phrase from the officer, a Mobile Infantry Unit comes to a dead standstill. I was no exception. The hypnotic implantation at the end of basic training put the mind of the soldier in the hands of his superior officer, but was only to be used in times of distress. I had screwed up with my com. I would pay for that later, but for now, we were cool, calm, and collected. L.T. was more than capable of fiddling with my brain.

Once we went under the phrase, I can remember what went on, but as a dream. Hypersensitive to touch and my pupils dilated, I became more aware of myself and my surroundings. When you're like that, in that trance, everything speeds up:

I can remember the thing pulling pieces of Cliffton out of the arm-slats of his marauder. It wasn't a mad dash, but things were definitely not at a comfortable pace. People suddenly forgot how to use their suits and froze where they stood, where they would be overrun by the animals. There were frantic radio calls for emergency retrieval being sent from all over the sector. There was the vivid image of the mangled body of an MI unit over the shoulders of another who had "Debber" stenciled on his helmet. Everything rushed past me, and there was the surreal look of the airstrike over the basin as we pulled away with the retrieval ship.

I'm told that our platoons were tunneled under by these "brutes" and flanked. All three platoons were pushed into the basin together. There were many casualties on the way in. They run fast. But once we took cover, we must've done our job. Not many fell after we were in the basin. Emergency retrieval didn't arrive until four and a half minutes after the originally scheduled airstrike ETA which had been scrapped upon knowledge of the counter-assault. One navy blab told me they even called in gusnships.

These things weren't stupid. They reduced the greatest military force mustered in the history of man into a mass of armored fools. INTEL had some catching up to do.

insectoids huh?