Free Crusade by Taylor Anderson Page B

battle. He didn’t care. For just a moment, all that remained of the enemy in front of him was a vast semicircle of churned, shattered gobbets of flesh. He barked an almost hysterical laugh and was surprised he couldn’t even hear himself. Recoil had driven the gun backward, and the wall closed up tight where it had been. Something caught his eye and he looked up. High in the air, beginning to descend, was yet another flare.
     
    “It’s fallin’ apart, Skipper,” Gray wheezed, his hands on his knees. He had lost his hat and his hair was matted with blood. To their left, they heard the rattle of a Thompson on full auto. None of the guys could have much ammo left, thought Matt as he inserted his last magazine into the butt of the Colt. He glanced at the barricade behind them just a lt U dast magazihe grass that had covered this plain.
    A tremendous roar went up from the Grik, a predatory roar of triumph as the shield wall broke yet again. This time, it was as if some critical point had been reached beyond all endurance. One moment, a few Grik were racing through a small gap, hacking and slashing as they came, and in the next, like a pane of glass in a hailstorm, the entire wall around the gap shattered and fell away. Lieutenant Shinya raced by, aiming for the breakthrough, but Matt caught his arm. The Japanese officer whirled toward him, an insane light in his eyes that dimmed just slightly when he recognized the captain.
    “Save the guns, if you can,” Matt croaked. “Try to form a square around them. If we can make it to the breastworks, we might be able to hold them there.” Shinya nodded reluctantly, deterred from his suicidal charge. He ran off shouting for runners. They both knew it was hopeless. Too many had already started to run. But it was all they had left and they had to try.
    Maybe not hopeless after all, Matt amended as he wiped his eyes and struggled to see through the developing chaos. The Second Marines and most of the First Guards had already formed a square of sorts. It was a maneuver the Marines practiced often and the Guards had simply retreated into the formation with the Marines. They’d managed to save at least a couple of guns too—suddenly a pair of bronze snouts pushed through and barked spitefully at the Grik that had begun to curve around and try to get between the square and the barricade. Scores fell beneath the billowing smoke and the banshee wail of canister. To the right, the line still miraculously held. But its severed end had curled back toward the wall to form a semicircle at its base.
    Separate from either force, however, Matt, Gray, and Keje stood alone as the shield wall in front of them melted away, oblivious to anything but the need to escape. Behind them raged the thundering horde. Matt gauged the distance to the Marine square. Many within it were shouting his name, or Keje’s, and waving, urging them toward it. There was no way.
    A lone Lemurian gunner, abandoned with her dead crew, stood waiting while the Grik swept down upon her. Crouching behind the axle as bolts whizzed by or spanged off the barrel of her gun, she looked small and frail compared to the monsters coming for her. There was no doubting the determination of her stance, however, and her tail flicked back and forth as if she was preparing to pounce. At the last moment, she touched the linstock to the vent and the gun blew itself apart with a tremendous blast. Grik bodies were hurled into the air or mowed down by fragments of the tube or pieces of the carriage. She must have loaded it to the muzzle, Matt thought, stricken by the act. Of the lone Lemurian gunner, nothing remained.
    “Come, my friends!” Keje bellowed, pointing at the Marine square. “We must try!” With a final glance through the smoke at the momentarily stunned Grik advance, Matt and Gray joined Keje, racing toward the square as it resumed a slow, shuffling retreat.
    Gray uttered a sudden, startled grunt of surprise and fell to the