Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [30]
The SEALS thought of none of these things as his hand automatically grasped the handle of his breaching tool and pulled it down and away from the sheath that held it between two formed sides. Even as the alien turned to face him, the SEALS’ point man was silently swinging the sharply pointed piercing end of the tool toward the helmet of the being that threatened him and his Teammates. There was no animosity, no hatred of the alien that might very well have tripped the controls that had killed his Teammates back at the station. There was only the sure knowledge that if he didn’t kill the being in front of him, his fellow SEALS in the sands surrounding them right now would be discovered before they could assault the dome behind him.
The hardened point of the axlike breaching tool struck at the base of the sentry’s helmet. The hard alien plastic at first resisted, then gave in to the onslaught. Air whooshed out before the alien could even scream, if such was an instinctual response of his kind. Nearly decapitated, the guard died almost before he knew he was under attack.
Another hostile had been trailing a dozen paces behind the first guard, but he didn’t survive his patrol partner by much longer. His dark green eyes widened as he watched a shadow rise up and strike down his comrade, and then his chest exploded outward as Falco’s big 10.2-millimeter bullet smashed into him. The guard fell, killed instantly, but the crackle of static and a strange language in their earpieces told the SEALS that the proverbial feces had struck the atmospheric oscillator.
More sentries came into sight, running around both sides of the broad, relatively flat dome. One of the long guns spit, and a round zinged off the ground near Sanchez, but that shooter, too, was slammed to the ground by a well-placed round from Falco’s squirrel gun. The other guards dropped flat, weapons tracking the two point men, who also fell prone, their cloaks helping them essentially vanish from sight.
But their enemies were trained soldiers, as evidenced by their quick reactions and coordinated deployment. As he realized that his men had been discovered, Jackson ordered the rest of his unit into action. Hitting the switch with his chin, he keyed his mike open to the broadcast command frequency.
“Bingo, bingo, bingo!” he said clearly and rapidly. The SEALS officer had released the dogs of war, and they had been straining at the leash.
As aliens came running from around the two sides of the dome, the SEALS got up from where they lay on the ground and started to send short, vicious bursts of fire from their suppressed G15 weapons. The short bullpup guns fired three-round mechanically controlled bursts at a cyclic rate of more than 2,000 rounds per second. They functioned so quickly that no human could have released the trigger before nearly a dozen rounds had been fired. But with the mechanically limited three-round burst, the last shot had left the barrel before the recoil from the first round had even been felt, let alone reacted to.
Under a barrage of dozens of tungsten-core 6.8-millimeter bullets, the approaching soldiers withered under the SEALS’ fire. Those who were farther away had time to raise their exotic-looking weapons, only to notice the odd feeling of the Martian air as their helmets and then their heads exploded from the impact of 10.2-millimeter projectiles fired from more than half a kilometer away.
While alien projectiles screamed away into the Martian sky, fired by unfeeling fingers that pulled triggers by reflex, Falco methodically searched for more targets. Even as the sentries came around the dome and dived for cover, the SEALS sniper struck down the alien forces, helping them down into the dry Martian