Designated Targets

Cocooned in her titanium-weave reactive matrix armor, her own responses deadened by ten years of this bullshit, Julia Duffy logged the screams of the dying for recall as she checked her machine pistol. No damage. The best part of a full clip jacked in, alternating penetrators and dumdums with a single tracer round three from the bottom to warn her when it was time to reload. She’d taped two clips together, for grease. A little trick some of the marines had quietly copied from her.

She sucked a mouthful of chilled Gatorade through a rubber tube that emerged from the padded collar of her coveralls. Something heavy fell into their midst, and Julia nearly jumped out of her skin.

It was a koala, its fur burned to black tar and weeping red skin. It keened pitiably as smoke curled from its charred body. The marines regarded it, and her, with horror as she drew her sidearm, a SIG Sauer P226, and put one round of Nytrilium fragmentable hollow point into the animal. It blew apart like an overripe tomato.

“Jesus Christ,” someone croaked.

She looked at the men and essayed the faintest of shrugs as a furious eruption of small-arms fire broke over them.

In the distance on the slope above them, someone gave a shrill shout. “Banzai!”

“Ah, shit.”

Julia glanced quickly in the direction of the sergeant who’d just cursed, measuring his likely response to what was coming. She didn’t know him. The chaos and madness of the ambush had thrown them together. The man looked to be a good deal older than his two buddies. She couldn’t guess at his actual age, though, through the gore and dirt, but his eyes looked like pools of dead water.

“You ever shoot anything besides a stuffed toy?” he spat at her with unexpected vehemence.

She didn’t reply, but moved her selector to three-round bursts, unsafed the weapon, and drew her knife from its scabbard. Satisfied that she could get to it in a hurry, Julia sheathed the evil-looking blade.

The crescendo of Japanese rifle fire seemed to build in an infinite curve that merged with the kiai-scream of the charge and the cries of the shattered marine company on the hillside below. It was a vision drawn straight out of Hell. Small groups of men huddled around blasted tree stumps, the momentum of their advance completely spent. The false promise of safety offered by the scraps of cover was enough to fix them to the spot where they were soon to die. The dead lay everywhere, closely entwined, their bodies grotesquely violated by blast effect and speeding metal. One man still moved. He tried to drag the top half of his body back down the slope, clawing at the scorched earth to heave his torso away from the red smear of rag and bone that had been his legs. Julia’s eyes took in the information, the shreds and tendrils and obscene tailings that dragged from the stump where he now ended—but no part of her connected it to the humanity of the dying creature. She wondered if she knew him.

“Banzai!”

“Fuck fuck fuck!” cursed the sergeant in the hole with her.

He was shaking like a frightened dog, and what little color had been in his face drained away now.

“Cover me!” he yelled as the leading edge of the charge appeared where they could see it from their shelter. He stripped four grenades from his belt, primed them, and pitched them into the descending horde. The grenades detonated in a condensed drum solo, ripping a thirty-meter hole in the Japanese line, which staggered almost to a halt.

Julia smacked one of the other two marines on the shoulder and gestured for him to turn around and cover their rear, before training her Sonycam back on the sergeant just in time to see him scramble from the shell hole and rush at the enemy. He fired long bursts from a Thompson submachine gun, and plucking still more grenades from his webbing, he threw them into the ranks of Japanese, bizarrely reminding Julia of a rioting anarchist outside a Starbucks.

“Come on! Come on! Get moving!” he called back at the small knots of marines farther down the hill.

Julia was struck by the scene of this one, aged, slightly potbellied white man, surrounded by dozens of stunned Nipponese soldiers. It could have lasted only half a second, but it looked like something out of an old movie, as if the enemy were standing completely still, just waiting to be mowed down.

Then she realized her own weapon was up and pouring fire into them, as well. Shouts reached her from below, but of a different pitch and timbre to the sounds of terror that had come from there before. Rallying cries gathered more survivors than she thought possible as the light of more grenade explosions glinted off the steel of at least two dozen American bayonets, suddenly moving at speed again toward their targets.