When the attack finally came it was nothing like we expected.  Johnson was on station, watching the direction the LT had gone with the rest of the platoon.  I heard him shift backwards.  “Uh, Collins?”

“What’s up?” I asked. 

“You should take a look at this.”

Reluctantly, I moved back from my post and squatted beside him.  At the curve of the corridor, I could see a round object that looked like one of our helmets.  It looked as if it had rolled some distance and stopped just within our visual range.  “Hmm,” I said.  “Trap?”

Johnson shrugged.  “Trap.” He replied.  He licked his lips nervously.

I switched on the comm.  “Dunkel, this Collins.  Looks like the Rak’Lan have rolled some bait out in front of us.  It appears to be a helmet from one of our people.”

“Any enemy contacts?”

“Negative.  All we can see is a helmet.  If they have that, then likely the rest of the platoon is in trouble.”

“Don’t speculate, Collins.” I could hear her sigh.  “Give it a few minutes and report back.  Hold your position.”

“Affirmative,” I replied.  “You heard the lady.  Hold here.  Let’s see what they’re up to.  Keep your eyes peeled in case this is a decoy.”  I moved back to cover my corridor.

We waited for nearly three minutes, before I heard Johnson curse behind us.  I moved over to squat beside him again, horrified to see a human head, recognizably that of the LT, roll down the corridor towards us.  It stopped about ten meters in front of us.  “Dunkel, this is Collins.  Uh…”  I didn’t know how to describe it.  “Someone just rolled the LT’s head to us.”

“Say again, Collins?” She asked.

“I said that someone just rolled the LT’s head to us, ma’am.  He’s dead.  Still no enemy contacts.  They’re staying out of visual range.”

“Collins!  Contact in my corridor!” O’Leary shouted. 

“Stay that weapon, Private!” the familiar bellow of the platoon sergeant sounded as he came into view.  O’Leary raised her rifle to port arms as she recognized our people.  The sergeant led a motley group of survivors, mostly of the heavy weapons squad, including Rogers in his massive, minigun-toting exoskeleton.  Where they had departed with nearly seventy people, he led back less than twenty.

“Sarge!” I said.  “The LT’s dead.”

He trotted into the intersection and looked down the corridor at the head.  “I know, son.  He bought it covering our retreat.”

“Retreat?” I asked.  “What happened, sir?”

“No time, Collins.  We weren’t pursued, but I can only assume they’re closing in around us.  We need to pull back to the assault boat and blast this place from a distance.”  He turned to regard my people.  “What happened to the squad from first section?”

I gestured behind us.  “Walking wounded, sir.  They’re with my squad at the first intersection.  We moved forward to secure this point.”

He accessed the naval frequency, warning the assault boat pilot to warm up the craft and to advise the intelligence staff ratings that the station was too hot for them to come aboard.

“By twos, leap frog retreat,” the sergeant said.  “Collins, you and O’Leary hold here with Rogers and then come back by the numbers.”  He saw me staring at the LT’s head in the middle of the corridor.  “No heroics, all right?”

“Yes, sir!” I said.  We took up position as the remaining marines moved backwards down the corridor.

That was when all hell broke loose.

I don’t have any explanation for what happened, even as I reflect on it.  One instant, the corridor was completely empty.  The next, it seemed as if a flood gate had opened.  Rak’Lan, in what I was coming to recognize as their equivalent of combat armor, began rushing down the hallway.  There was no orderly advance, no ranks.  They rushed headlong like barbarians into our position.  Beside me, I heard the whine of the minigun starting to spin up.  O’Leary and I both pulled grenades from our harness and tossed them down the corridor, clearing the first few heads and landing in the middle of the clump of aliens.  The minigun swept them backwards with contemptuous ease, breaking the rush shortly before both of our grenades went off.  There was literally a hazy, red fog in the corridor as the tremendous heat and shock from the grenades made a fine suspension of the Rak’Lan remains.  “Collins, O’Leary!  Fall back!”  Rogers began walking the exoskeleton backwards as he continued to pour fire into the mass of writhing Rak’Lan.

We could hear inhuman screams behind us, but still they came, with no regard to their own lives.  I heard the audible warning from Rogers’ exoskeleton as his minigun began to overheat.  With a curse, he used his chin controls to aim the minigun upward.  I could see the barrels glowing light orange.  Laughing, Rogers, swung the other weapon that his exoskeleton boasted to bear.  It was more for bunker clearing on Earth than for anything useful in a space station, or so we thought.

A titanium nozzle aimed back down the corridor.  With a snap and a hiss, a tiny, butane-fueled flame ignited in front of the nozzle and Rogers depressed a firing stud.  A pencil of white flame stabbed down the corridor, incinerating the Rak’Lan that had cleared the pile of bodies that he had created with his minigun.  It was a mixture of magnesium, aluminum, and napalm. Where it struck the corridor walls it continued to burn, the blaze almost too bright to look at. 

In a bizarre parody of humanity, the Rak’Lan danced as living pillars of flame.  The screams raised in pitch as we continued to move backwards slowly, one step at a time.  O’Leary tossed another grenade, but still they came.

I heard a familiar tiny thunderclap, and looked over to Rogers stagger within his exoskeleton.  A neat, two centimeter hole had been bored through his carapace, severely burning his sternum underneath.  It looked as though the beam had used up its energy to punch through the exoskeleton.  Through clenched teeth, he yelled at us.  “God damn it, Collins.  Get your ass back to the line!  Move!”  He continued to play the flame thrower back and forth like a hose.  Another thunderclap and another hole appeared in his carapace.  “Go!” he shouted.  He took a hand out of the firing cage enclosing his forearm and grabbed a grenade off of O’Leary’s webbing.  “I’m going to make a hellacious big boom in a second.  Now please…go.”  Tears of pain, frustration, and rage streamed down his face.  He lowered the minigun back into position and moved toward the horde of Rak’Lan still coming through the hell of napalm and depleted uranium slugs.  The heavy bass clang of his metal feet striking the floor echoed above the sounds of dying Rak’Lan and the hiss of flames.

I have to admit that my feeling of invincibility was long gone in the face of the onslaught we had just faced.  I turned and ran, my will broken, O’Leary close on my heels.  As far as I was concerned, it was a total rout.  Behind us, I heard several more thunderclaps, followed by the explosion of a grenade.  Less than a second after that, I heard the secondary explosions of Rogers’ ammo cooking off behind us.  Even with nearly fifty meters and the curve of the corridor sheltering us, I could feel the intense heat of the explosion against the back of my armor.   O’Leary staggered and fell on her face.  I grabbed her roughly and hauled her to her feet.

Rogers proved to me that he was my brother that day, no matter how diverse our backgrounds might have been.

We ran headlong into the remains of our platoon.  “Easy, Collins,” the platoon sergeant said and caught me by my harness.  “Easy, son.”  I shook my head to clear it.

“Rogers, sir.” I said, panting.  “He…”

“I know.  Pull yourself together.”  He turned to the rest of the squad.  “There’s just two hundred meters to the assault boat, ladies and gentlemen.  Let’s move.”

We continued our retreat, moving rapidly backwards.  We began to see Rak’Lan at the edge of our visual range, trading fire sporadically with them.  A marine that I didn’t know to my left fell, a hole punched neatly through his shoulder.  I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him with us, firing my assault rifle one handed, not really aiming, but trying to discourage pursuit.  O’Leary was next to me, so she grabbed a hold of his webbing and put her strength into moving him backwards.  I saw his eyelids flutter as he passed out with shock.

“Still…interested…in…dinner?” She asked, panting with exertion.

I fired a three round burst down the corridor, my last rounds without changing the magazine.  “Take him for a second.”  I hit the release and dropped the magazine on the floor, replacing it by touch.  I slid the bolt home and grabbed the webbing again.  “Did you just ask me…about dinner?” Sweat was stinging my eyes.  Every muscle in my body was crying out in protest from the over exertion and the adrenaline poisoning.

“Yeah,” she said. 

We cleared the airlock of the assault boat and collapsed inside.  We were the last in.  A klaxon sounded as the airlock slammed shut.  “Breaking hard seal in fifteen seconds,” the navy pilot said.  I heard the automated defenses of the assault boat engage through the airlock, the vibrations of gun fire faintly audible in the deck.

“Strap in!” the sergeant yelled. 

Between the two of us, O’Leary and I managed to strap the wounded marine into an empty seat.  Wearily, we sank into seats beside each other.  “Dinner sounds great,” I said.  Her gloved hand stole into mine as the acceleration pushed us into our seats before the internal gravity could compensate. 

The holographic pit in the front sprang to life, revealing a real time video feed of the station we had just left.  We rapidly gained so much distance on the station that the hologram snapped to a new zoom level.   The new perspective was just in time to see missiles from two of our picket ships strike the station.  A perfectly globular nuclear explosion enveloped it in purple and orange brilliance, a counterpoint to the ruddy image of Jupiter behind it.

Humanity had won its first engagement against the Rak’Lan, even if we didn’t achieve all of our objectives.

“San Francisco,” the pilot said quietly over the intercom.

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