Free Infinity Squad by Shuvom Ghose Page B

Joshua tree while Zazlu stomped around the crest of the hill, keeping us in sight. Ann-Marie was glistening pretty heavily at this point, her shirt sticking to her, and she rolled up her fatigue legs to let the dry breeze cool off her calves. I did too. The sand felt just as soft as Earth sand, and was a nice change from the muck and streams near the Night Hunting Grounds.
    We were most of the way down the hill when Juan heard a very faint buzzing, as he told me later. He had been looking through the electronic sights of the Heavy, practicing placing the crosshairs of his long range mini-missile on the Spider's torso.
    "Come on punta ," he was muttering to himself. "Move. I dare you."
    That's when something that looked like a slightly larger Earth bee circled and landed on his exoskelton's arm. Juan told me he looked at it annoyed, shook his arm once, and it buzzed off. He continued keeping the distant Hell-Spider in his weapon sights, putting the crosshairs right between its eyes. "That's right."
     
     
    By this point Ann-Marie and I had found the dead hunting party, mostly covered in sand. I brushed it away to reveal the tops of five adult Hell-Spiders.
    "Pretty well preserved," I noted. "They could pass for fresh killed if we cleaned them."
    "Dry desert air will do that," she agreed, then bent closer to one of the skulls. "Sir... look at this."
    One of the Hell-Spider skulls already had a bullet hole in it.
    "There's no way," I gasped. "No one would come out this far." I looked at Ann-Marie's buffering band. Instead of five green lights, there were only four. "I mean, we're already losing signal. No one would have come out this far."
    She was looking at another spider body, and pointed out a cluster of round holes on its side. The size of the entry wounds looked bigger than anything we carried by hand, and there was a burnt ring around each hole.
    ".50 cal chain gun?" I asked. "From a helo?"
    "We would have heard about kills made that way," she said. "All of Immortal's and Omega's kills have been on the ground."
    I sighed and started cutting through a neck with my knife. "Easier to explain than lightning snake bites on the bodies, I suppose." I keyed my mike. "Zaz, we've got them. Bring the Heavy and we'll start loading you up."
     
     
    At the top of the hill, Juan was still watching the Hell-Spider when the bee returned, landing on the same spot of his arm and crawling around. He shook his arm again but this time the bee stayed. Juan brought that part of the exoskeleton near his face and blew it away. We were loading up the cargo rack on Zazlu's heavy with a second severed head when the bee settled on Juan's arm a third time and he raised the other metal hand of the exoskeleton up and slapped it down on the bee, hard.
     
     
    Ann-Marie and I dropped into firing positions when we heard the single CRACK from the top of the hill, ringing out like a rifle shot.
    "Juan! What's going on?" I demanded as Zazlu deployed his weapons, one bristling arm facing each way. "Is it the spider?"
    "Naw, it was just a bee or something," he said. "Just dazed me a little."
    "You fired a rifle at a bee?" Butcher asked.
    "No man, it was the bee that fired on me!"
    "That doesn't make sense," Zazlu said. "Have you been drinking your water?"
    "I'm not seeing things! I'll show you the burn mark on the armor when you get here!"
    I looked at Butcher, then at the round holes in the spider bodies. "Let's cut faster," I said, and we both went to work on opposite sides of the same neck.
     
     
    That's when Juan saw his second bee, a tiny black dot in the sky trundling towards him. It bumbled closer, twenty feet above him, and then dive-bombed down into his chest and went off.
    "Owww! Damn it!" he cried. The bee had exploded against the chest plate of the exoskeleton, but he said it still felt like getting punched in the ribs. "Guys, watch out for these bees! They really kick when they explode!"
     
     
    Ann-Marie looked up at me quizzically. "Explode?"