“Here we go…” Jaenisch said as they approached the long grass. This wasn’t the area where they’d seen predators, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
“Charlie, hold up,” Runner said. “Putting in a seismic monitor.”
The seismic monitor was simply a long spike. The Wyvern drove it into the ground until the sensor pod was flush with the ground.
“Okay, Jaen,” Runner said. “We’re going to be doing that every few hundred meters.”
“Got it,” Jaenisch said. “You picking up anything?”
“On seismic?” Runner asked, humorously. “No. Nothing on any channel. Bio wants us to shoot anything that moves, by the way. And ‘try not to chew it up too much.’ ”
“Right,” Jaenisch said, setting his Gatling to single fire. “Hattelstad, point.”
“Roger,” Hattelstad said, cycling in a shot round to the shoulder mounted auto-cannon. “If it’s small, though, there ain’t gonna be much left.”
The team slid into the grass smoothly, tracking for threats. The grass only came up to the “hips” of the suits but just about anything could be hidden in it.
“Got movement,” Hattelstad said. “Two o’clock.”
“Mine,” Jaenisch said, tracking the heat form. He fired one round and the form tumbled. But he didn’t see the expected hot flash from flying blood.
“Nice shot,” Berg said just as the form got up and started scuttling away.
“What the hell?” Jaen said, firing two more rounds and heading towards the form.
The two rounds had managed to kill it. The thing, yeah, looked something like a crab. A bright red crab. But the legs instead of being exoskeletal were long tentacles with footpads. It had no visible eyes, but it was pretty smashed up. They might have been in the smashed area.
“That’s grapping strange looking,” Hattelstad said. “Looks like a cross between a crab and an octopus.”
“Keep an eye on your sector,” Jaenisch said, pulling out a sampling bag, a heavy-duty zipper-lock the size of a trash bag. He dropped the… crabpus in the bag and got back in position.
“Movement,” Bergstresser said. “Multiple forms. Big. Nine o’clock.”
“Back up,” Jaenisch said, switching to full auto. “Geo, we are leaving.”
“Maulk,” Runner said, grabbing Dr. Dean’s Wyvern. “We need to get out of here, Doctor.”
“Nonsense,” the scientist said, pulling away from the master sergeant. “We’re in armor, you idiot.”
“Charlie is pulling back,” Runner said. “My orders are to keep you inside the security perimeter. I cannot force you to leave, but I strongly recommend it. I am pulling back. You can stay here on your own or you can leave. Up to you.”
With that Runner turned towards the boat and started trotting.
“Hey!” Dean shouted. “You can’t just leave me here!” The planetologist started running after him.
“As they say in Africa, Doctor, you don’t have to be faster than the lion, just faster than your companions,” Runner replied, still trotting. “Why don’t you try to be faster than me.”
“Charlie’s headed back,” Miller said, stopping as the team started pulling back and the two Geo members turned to run to the rear.
“Then I think we should stop, don’t you?” Weaver said, taking a knee and bringing up his .338 caliber machine gun. The gun fired hypervelocity scramjet rounds with an accurate range of over a mile. Given that they were essentially mini rocket engines, though, they had a theoretical range of anywhere in atmosphere.
“Charlie, Miller,” Miller said in reply. “We will screen your retreat.”
“Roger, Master Chief,” the team leader said. “We have multiple—”
“Grapp,” Hatt said, firing a 30mm shot round as the heat forms closed. The first form shuddered to the side, then came back up as its fellows ran past. “Switching to exploding shot.”
“Go,” Jaen said, opening fire. The minigun scythed down the grass between him and the target, giving them their first clear view of the animals.
Like the first one, they were crabpus but much larger. And whereas the mouth and “face” portion of the one Jaenisch shot had been mangled, these were clear. The things had huge mandibles, clearly designed to crunch through the crabpus armor. And they were less than ten meters away.
“Ugly things,” Two-Gun said, firing a burst from his minigun. Several of the rounds seemed to bounce off the armor, but the rounds that went under it cut the thing’s legs out and it tumbled to the side.
“Now is when I wish you had your pistols, Two-Gun,” Jaen panted.
“Cannon… on-line,” Hatt said in a deep voice, then opened fire.
The 30mm rounds landed in the midst of the pack of predators in flashes of purple fire and dust, flinging them through the air. A direct hit on one shattered the armor and splashed violet blood across the red grass.
The pack continued through the fire, spreading out and closing in in a pincer movement. The threesome went back to back, firing at the darting forms. Unfortunately, much of their fire was missing or bouncing off and the crabpus finally closed.
“Grapp,” Two-Gun shouted as one of the things grabbed the leg of the Wyvern in its mandibles. He couldn’t look down very well in the armor and felt himself swaying. “I’m going down!”
As one of the things leapt on his back, Jaenisch knelt and drove the armored fist of his suit into the top of the crabpus that had Berg by the leg. The thing had wrapped its tentacles around the suit and was chewing at the refractory armor which, incredibly enough, was smoking. Then he saw that the thing was “foaming” at the mouth. The foam was, apparently, some sort of acid.
The punch bounced.
“Mothergrapper,” he said, extending a sampling drill. The security Wyverns had some of the same equipment as the scientists’, just not as extensive. But the sampling drill was designed to cut through rock or metal. He laid it just behind the thing’s mandibles and turned on the drill as he heard a crunching sound over his shoulder.
“Grappers!” Hatt shouted, laying down point-blank cannon fire. The crabs were thrown through the air but most of them got back up. It was only when he hit one dead center that the cannon rounds would kill. Some of them were thrown fifteen or twenty meters and still got up and came back. “How do you kill these grappers?”
“Drill works,” Jaenisch said, reversing the drill as the crab’s tentacles spasmed into its body and then went limp.
“Jaen,” Hattelstad said, “hold still. One of those things is eating into your back.”
“Get it off!” Jaenisch said. “Get it off me!”
“Like I said, hold still,” Hattelstad replied.
Jaen was suddenly slammed to the ground by a massive explosion.
“You could have used the drill, behanchod!” Jaenisch shouted, his ears ringing.
“It wasn’t an armor penetrator,” Hattelstad pointed out reasonably.
The pack was now scattered in bits in the artificial clearing made by the small skirmish. A few were still waving tentacles, but most were in too many bits.
“I guess we got one sample for bio,” Jaenisch said, holding up the crabpus that had been eating Berg’s leg. “Maybe we should pick up a couple more.”