They reached within five hundred yard, four hundred, three hundred, the laser cannon spat out its vicious hail of death and they all saw the Tauron vehicle buck and sag as the heavy round smashed into it.
“Keep firing, Brad. Make sure of it.”
“I’m on it.”
He fired a long, continuous burst that almost demolished the vehicle. It was as if the fire had hit something vital in the guts of the vehicle. Rahm grinned mirthlessly as the Taurons looked at their transport.
“That’s a punch in the guts for them. Can you hit them, Brad?”
“No, they’re too near Josh and his men. We’ll have to get closer.”
Rahm kept the buggy moving at top speed until they were on the Taurons, who were running towards Josh’s men, intent on their deaths. It was as if they were aroused to a white hot killing rage by the actions of the humans. Not until Rahm’s crew started shooting did they realize the danger and halt. They were unarmored, but not unarmed. The Taurons backed away and took cover behind their damaged transport and started shooting. One of Josh’s crew fell with a cry and then they were all behind cover, all except for Brad.
“Get down, Brad, you’re a sitting duck up there,” Rahm shouted.
“No way, it’s time to make these bastards pay for what they’ve done.”
Rahm jumped up and climbed onto the frame, wincing as the Tauron blasts smashed past him.
“Brad, get this fucking gun off its mountings and get under cover.”
The big man nodded and started to unfasten the clips that held it. As it came free the big gun tumbled into his arms and he went to leap off the buggy to get into cover. Rahm was right behind him, as they jumped he saw Brad stagger and slump to the ground, Nathan was waiting to help and took the big man in his arms, Josh’s crew carefully lifted down the gun and began to set it ready to fire. Rahm dropped next to Brad.
“Are you hit?”
“Yeah, nothing serious,” he replied, his voice hoarse and dulled with pain. “I’ll be able to shoot the cannon, don’t worry.”
Then he slumped, unconscious. Rahm checked down his pressure suit, there was a bloody slash in his side. Because of his portable air scrubber, he wasn’t losing air. But the climate of Mars was invading his suit, and he was slowly freezing to death.
“Kacy, get over here. Can you patch this and get his life support working again.”
She ducked as a barrage of shots lanced past here, six inches above her head.
“Yep, I’ll see to it, just take care of those Taurons. They’re getting closer.”
He looked up. The aliens were working closer to them, rushing from cover to cover. They’d realized that the laser cannon was out of action, the rifles were a deterrent but not enough to kill or seriously wound them. They were born warriors, trained to instinctively seek out and exploit any enemy weakness. There wasn’t much time. Rahm called Josh over.
“Can you get the laser cannon back in operation?”
Josh looked at it dubiously. “I don’t know how we can hold it. The cannon needs to be fired from a mounting. I know Brad could manage it, but I doubt we could.”
“Josh, if you don’t do something fast they’ll be all over us. Look at that big bastard.”
They looked up at the huge alien, who was moving from cover to cover, but not running, he moved more slowly, with a degree of disdain for their puny efforts. While they watched he took two hits from the laser rifles, he barely flinched.
“I see what you mean.” He looked around. “The drilling tower, we can use the alloy, it’s only a tripod after all. If we use the top piece and mount the gun on that, it should hold it. The clamps are all the same, they’re the universal ones we use on the base.”
“For Christ’s sake do it, Josh. Get it firing.”
The crew leader called to one of his men and together they ripped the top of the drilling tower out of the buggy and set it on the surface behind the cover of the vehicle. They began to mount the laser cannon, as Rahm went to rally his troops. The Taurons were almost on them. Saul and Nathan stood together and unleashed a long, furious burst at almost point blank range that knocked down one of the Taurons, he fell to the dusty surface, his body at last split open with the intensive gunfire. But the other three were more than a match for them.
Josh’s remaining three men were still firing while the crew leader and one man assembled the cannon. Their rifles spat out repeated bursts at the attack of the monsters, but the enemy had somehow sensed that they would be the weakest link in the human defenses and worked their way around to attack them at almost point blank range. Two of them found a narrow fold in the ground and were able to use it to worm their way towards Josh’s men until when they stood up they were only ten yards away. They roared their thunderous battle cry as they started forward, rifles firing constantly. The two defenders were torn to shreds by the continuous and unexpected heavy fire. Before they could get over their frozen shock, they were shredded by the blasts.
“They’re almost behind us,” Saul warned. “We need to move to a better defensive position.”
Rahm looked around. They’d almost readied the laser cannon. “Negative, Saul. The cannon is here and the girls are here, as well as Brad. We need to keep firing and hold them off.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the huge, alien brute watching, not even bothering to take cover. He felt enraged.
“Saul, Nathan, with me. Let’s get these ugly bastards.”
He charged at the two Taurons, who were advancing almost without care for any cover, so easy had been their victory. They brought up their rifles to fire, but this time Rahm, Saul and Nathan were ready for them and their combined rifle fire smashed into them. The three men kept their triggers pressed down and the fire was so intensive as they walked forward that the Taurons were unable to respond. All they could do was cower from the shots. At first, the laser blasts just hacked into them, causing little or no serious wounds. As they got closer, the gunfire started to tell and they watched the laser strikes begin to cut into the thick, Tauron flesh. They kept shooting and the Taurons sagged to their knees, still the fired, still they walked forwards. Until they reached the monsters themselves. Even kneeling, dying, their heads were at shoulder height. They put their rifle barrels to the squirming, ugly heads and fired, and fired again until at last the monsters collapsed. Their bodies lay ruined and broken in the Martian dust. At last the crew stopped firing and looked around for other targets.
The two surviving Taurons were more cautious, standing behind cover. One of them was the giant. Josh had the laser cannon ready and sent a burst towards the transport that smashed holes and knocked chunks off its body, but the armor protected the two aliens behind it. To his horror he heard a radio transmission from Dan Weathers.
“Rahm, we’re on the way back. What’s the situation there? I can’t raise them at Mars Base.”
“No, don’t come back here, Dan. The power is out at the base, so they’re out of contact, all they need from you is to get those air scrubbers working.”
“Of course they need them working, but there’s a problem at their end inside the base, that’s’ why we decided to walk back and fix it ourselves. We’re nearly ready to start up. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Dan, no! The Taurons are attacking us, they’re…”
He saw movement and looked across the plain. Two figures in pressure suits had just come into view. Dan and Pete, walking back from the cave. He looked at the two Taurons and saw to his horror that they’d seen them too, for they were staring in their direction. Then the giant started walking towards them.
“Josh, for Christ’s sake, stop that bastard, he’s going after Dan and Pete!”
Laser cannon bursts struck all around the Tauron, but he was almost out of effective range, the shots bounced off his armored hide.
“Dan, run for it, the big Tauron, he’s seen you!”
He saw the two men start to move away, but they were too slow. The giant alien didn’t appear to be making any effort to move fast, yet he was still catching up with the two engineers. He saw the big Tauron turn and look towards him, then carry on marching in the direction of Dan and Pete.
“What the hell is he up to?” Saul asked. “It’s almost as if he’s daring us to try and stop him. The bastard is almost human.”
But Rahm knew exactly what that look meant. It was the most atavistic of man’s impulses, the beating of the chest. The urge to see the opponent’s blood spilled in the dust.
“He wants to fight.”
“The hell he does. I’ll go over there and blast him a new hole in his ass.”
Saul picked up his rifle.
“He doesn’t want you. He wants me.”
“He wants to kill all of us, this isn’t personal.”
But Rahm knew it was. There had been something drawing him to this moment ever since he’d arrived on the planet. Perhaps some deeper destiny had propelled him in this direction ever since that time on Earth when his project had been destroyed. Or maybe it was this hostile planet that seemed to curse every creature who set foot on it, human or alien.
“I have to go. He’ll kill Dan and Pete, which means we’ll lose any hope we have of recovering our life support systems.”
He could see Gabi looking at him from where she was sheltering behind cover with Kacy. She’d heard it all, of course, over her helmet speaker.
“Rahm, no. He’ll kill you.”
Her voice was strained, if it was possible to hear tears, he heard them now.
“If I don’t do this, Gabi, we all die. I don’t have a choice.”
“There must be some other way. It doesn’t have to be just you.”
He checked over his laser rifle and stood up. It did have to be him. He knew that there was no other option. If he didn’t face the giant alone the creature would continue on its path and kill the two men. He reached up and switched off his helmet communications. He didn’t want any distractions, for he had a tiny chance to pull this off. A very tiny chance. He thought of David and Goliath. That hoary old tale from the almost forgotten Bible myths. Was it true? Maybe it was, for many of those old stories were reputed to be taken from fact. And many from fiction. He recalled the tale, where a youth named David had fought Goliath, a giant many times his size. David was armed only with a slingshot, yet he managed to kill Goliath. Maybe history, or myth, would repeat itself today. He switched his headset back on.
“Keep and eye on that other alien, I’m going after the big one.”
Without waiting for an answer he switched his communications off. It was time to go hunting.
The alien saw him coming and waited. Yes, Rahm hadn’t made a mistake, for this was exactly what the creature was challenging him to do. He reached a spot within fifty yards of the Tauron and watched. The creature was watching him too. Rahm realized he was talking to it. He felt stupid. He may as well talk to a rock. Except that rocks weren’t psychotic aliens trying to kill you.
“What do you want, you ugly bastard? Are you going to make the first move? How do you fight on the planet you came from?”
Still the creature waited. He fired a casual shot from his rifle that hit the giant squarely on the chest. It flinched, but there was no sign of a serious injury. So how could he take it down? He stared at the monster, searching for a weakness. He pulled out his laser pistol, the best weapon for close in fighting. The creature was moving towards him now, he fired off a shot and saw it strike the chest again, yet the giant didn’t even flinch. Showing its contempt for the puny handgun, it strode towards Rahm. He dodged a massive blow that smashed past him, but the monster caught him with its foot and sent him crashing to the ground. He was reminded that even though Mars had only a sixth of the Earth’s gravity, his inertial mass was the same. The fall knocked the wind out of him but he managed to stand up with his pistol still in his hand. But he’d lost the rifle. It was the only weapon that had any chance at all of doing serious injury to this Tauron giant. He ducked under another huge blow and then backed away. The creature had its eyes fixed on him, but behind it he saw Dan and Pete reach the safety of Josh’s buggy. They had the other Tauron to deal with, but they also had the cannon. The Tauron came for him again, moving fast on its long legs. He tried to dance back, but he nearly blacked out when another blow smashed into him and sent him flying across the dusty surface.
Rahm shook his head again to clear it. The giant waited for him. He understood the reason.
“Yeah, you big ugly bastard, you want to make this more of a game, don’t you? Well fuck you! I’m not going to play it your way, you ugly mother. He stood up again and looked at his fearsome opponent. Damnit, where was its weak point, its Achilles’ heel? He searched the massive body. Of course, the eyes. If he could blind the thing, it would be almost helpless, and he could finish it off at will. The alien started forward again, Rahm whipped up his pistol and sighted on the right eye. He pulled the trigger three times, saw his shots strike on the forehead, but the creature had a reflex that whipped down an armored covering over its eyes as soon as the shot was fired. The strikes hit armored tissue and the giant was nearly on him. He ran, as fast as he could, to the shelter of a small formation of rocks. They were about twelve feet high, he was able to leap to the top, twist and fire a long burst from his pistol that hit the Tauron as it leapt at him. The forward momentum of the beast increased the impact of the shots and this time he saw the creature start to bleed from a wound just above the groin. But it wasn’t enough, for the Tauron took hold of him, clamped a claw over his gun hand and started to pull. At first, Rahm thought the creature was trying to take his pistol. Then he realized that it wasn’t the gun it was after, it was the whole arm. He pulled back, but his hand was locked in a vise-like grip. The giant had the other hand fastened on his shoulder, and he felt his body beginning to stretch beyond its limits. It was like being tortured on a medieval rack. He looked up, to see the Tauron head looking down at him. There was no passion, nothing that resembled human emotion. No hate, no rage, it was an organic killing machine, nothing more.