Free Crucible by Gordon Rennie

o'clock, thirty-one metres distant. Target two at three o'clock. Picking up two more of the sentry guns we passed on the way in, now coming online behind us."
    "Gunnar?"
    The rifle weapon in Rogue's hand loaded with the biochip of the fourth member of the original GI fire team, was waiting for his cue.
    "RPG shell in the pipe and ready to go, Rogue."
    "And I've got your back," confirmed Bagman, as Rogue heard the whine of his backpack's servo-arm mechanism being activated.
    Rogue fired the RPG attachment slung underneath his rifle's main las-barrel, confident that Bagman would take care of the danger behind them. The missile shot away, unerringly finding its target. The closest sentry gun position disappeared in the incandescent flash of a gamma bomb explosion.
    Moments later, the sound of the detonation was echoed by a similar blast from somewhere behind him, as the plasma sphere grenade Bagman had hurled out took care of one of the targets. True to his word, Bagman was watching Rogue's back. That was how he had died, during the nightmare of the Quartz Zone Massacre, taking the impact of a lethal blast aimed at Rogue. Even as a memory recording stored on a biochip board, Bagman was still there to watch his clone-brother's back.
    Rogue was up and running, on the move, defying the two remaining sentry guns' ability to track and kill him. Designed specifically for Nu Earth combat conditions, the sentry guns' targeting programmes were set to detect and zero in on slow-moving, human targets wearing the bulky, cumbersome armoured chem-suits standard to all Souther front-line infantry. A Genetic Infantryman target, fast moving, unencumbered by any kind of chem-suit protection, his speed and reflexes boosted to para-human levels, was a different proposition entirely.
    The sentry guns' twin lascannons chattered loudly, filling the air all around Rogue with noise and the hissing passage of volleys of las-bolts. Their aim was textbook precise, achieving everything their programming parametres demanded, but the blasts of las-fire struck the space where their scanner senses told them their target should have been split-seconds after Rogue had vacated it.
    Their target gave them no time to correct their programmers' mistake. He jumped, twisting in midair, firing another rifle-launched missile into the chem-murk behind him, blowing apart a sentry gun. Even before he had hit the ground again, his enhanced GI reflexes and instincts were already going to work on zeroing in on the position of what was now the last remaining enemy target.
    He hit the ground, the plasti-flesh material of his skin protecting him from the jagged shards of half-buried shrapnel and rusting war debris that would have spelled instant death to anyone wearing a chem-suit. Las-fire from the sentry gun tore up the ground behind him, tracking remorselessly back to where he now lay. It would be on him in moments and then the benefits of even his toughened GI skin would make little difference. The concentrated fire from the sentry gun's weapon would tear him apart just as it would for any other flesh-and-blood target.
    "Zeroed in, Rogue," confirmed the voice of Gunnar as Rogue took aim with the rifle. "Fire capacity now set to max."
    In life, Gunnar had been the squad marksman and he was still able to put his skills to good use, figuring out the required range and most effective firepower setting even before Rogue raised the sight scope to his eye.
    Alone, his marksmanship skills were lethal. Working in tandem with Rogue's, they were straightforwardly devastating. The GI rifle chattered in Rogue's hands, spent power cartridges flying from its ejection port as it cycled through the magazine clip at a terrifying rate. On its own, one lasround from the weapon would make little impact on the sentry gun unit's armoured housing. Fired together, at a rate of several hundred a minute, their combined effect would be more than enough to get the job done.
    Multiple las-rounds smashed