I turn and follow the squad into the ruined vestibule. Ahead of us, inside the atrium, the Lanky wails again, a sound only slightly less intense than an explosion.
The new fifth-gen residence towers are massive things, a hundred floors of apartments and facilities arranged around a large hollow core for ventilation. The atrium on the ground floor is a big plaza, fifty meters on each side. We rush in through the crumbling archway of the vestibule, weapons at the ready. The Lanky is impossible to miss even in the huge atrium. It has retreated into a corner of the plaza, and the shield-like protrusion on the back of its head is brushing the balcony of the sixth-floor concourse.
“MARS rockets,” Sergeant Fallon shouts. Four of the troopers with us take the launcher tubes they brought off their shoulders.
“Go armor-piercing,” I say. “Remember—joints and the neck nape. And if it comes for us, you get your ass to cover.”
We spread out and seek cover underneath the overhang of the second-floor concourse above. The atrium level has balcony ceilings that are at least triple the height of those on the floors above. The concourse levels open to the central core, are noisy with yells and shouts from hundreds of civilians with premium seats to the fight that is about to unfold. Then there’s some small-arms fire coming down from the higher levels, armed civvies unwilling to just be spectators. The rifle and pistol bullets splash off the tough hide of the Lanky, as effective as thrown pebbles.
“Two left, two right,” Sergeant Fallon orders. “On my mark.”
The troopers with the rocket launchers take position on either flank of our short firing line. I raise my M-80 rifle and aim it at the neck nape of the Lanky. If anything, the alien looks like it really doesn’t want to be here. It tries to merge with the corner of the atrium, letting out its sharp, earsplitting wails in irregular intervals. I almost feel sorry for the thing—it looks out of place, maybe even scared, as if it just wants to get away. It’s stranded on a strange world, surrounded by things that want to kill it, and separated from its own. But my empathy only goes so far. They chose to come here and bring this fight to us, and because they did, many of my friends are dead.
Sergeant Fallon turns up the public-address system of her suit, and her voice thunders through the atrium and echoes off the concrete chasm that stretches a hundred floors over our heads.
“Heads down, people! Get away from the atrium and cover your ears. Fire in the hole!”
The Lanky turns its head toward the new sound and responds with a drawn-out wail that hurts my ears even through the hearing protection. For a moment, all the gunfire from the upper floors ceases completely.
“Launchers One and Two. Fire!”
Two MARS launchers pop-whoosh, and four missile trails shoot across the atrium in the blink of an eye. The Lanky lowers its head toward the incoming fire at the last fraction of a second. One of the missiles clips the shield on its skull, and the armor-piercing warhead glances off with a dull, sickening thud and buries itself in the concrete of the sixth-floor overhang. It explodes out of the floor and blows out twenty feet of balcony floor in a cloud of debris. The second warhead bores into the Lanky’s side and knocks it back into the wall in a tangle of ungainly flailing limbs. The alien shrieks again, at a volume I’ve never thought possible. Out in the open, it would be earsplitting. In the confines of a hundred-story concrete box, it’s like standing in front of a starship’s fusion-rocket nozzles at full thrust. My helmet’s hearing protection kicks in and makes me deaf for my own safety, but I can feel the sonic energy of the Lanky’s scream slamming against my chest like a physical push. All over the lower floors, windows shatter, and when my hearing returns after a few moments, I can hear people screaming in agony and fear on the concourse levels right above us.
Then the Lanky scrambles to its feet on the other side of the atrium, unfolds its limbs again, and rises out of the dust. It plants a massive three-toed foot onto the concrete and swings its head toward us. Lankies have no eyes in their odd, elongated skulls, but I could swear an oath that if they can see at all, this one is looking right at us.
“Fire at will,” Sergeant Fallon shouts.
I yank the M-80 rifle to my shoulder and put the targeting reticle in the middle of the Lanky’s chest. Then I pull the triggers for both barrels. The recoil slams the stock of the gun violently against my armor. To my left and right, more rifles thunder their deep, sonorous reports. The Lanky takes half a dozen rounds to its chest and midsection, and for a moment it looks like it is going to falter and fall back into the debris. Then it puts one foot in front of the other and steps toward us. Whenever it puts its foot down on the surface of the atrium, I can feel the vibration through the soles of my boots.
We manage one more volley of rifle fire before the Lanky is already halfway across the expanse of the atrium, moving faster than I have ever seen one move, despite the very obvious still-smoldering hole that our MARS tore into its side.
“Get to cover!” I shout into the squad channel. Nobody needs the encouragement. We retreat from the atrium and dash underneath the overhang and toward the nearest hallway. Even with the equipment strapped to my armor, I am making what feels like personal record time for the fifty-meter dash. Behind us, the Lanky thunders across the atrium and toward the position we just abandoned in a hurry.
We’re into the hallway maybe twenty meters when the Lanky hits the overhang behind us with a thundering crash. I get swept off my feet and hit the floor hard. My M-80 skitters down the hallway in front of me. Then it feels like the entire building is coming down on top of us. I curl up and cover my head with my armored hands and arms as chunks of debris fall all around me and bounce off my battle armor. The air in the hallway is instantly saturated with dust, so thick that I can’t see half a meter in front of me. I turn on the augmented vision of my helmet visor and look back the way we came. The Lanky is wedged underneath the atrium overhang, blocking all the daylight from the atrium. His massive skull is maybe fifteen meters behind me. More debris is falling with every movement of the Lanky’s head. With my M-80 out of my grasp, I reach for the M-66 fléchette rifle on its sling, punch the fire-control selector all the way down to “FULL AUTO,” and fire an entire 250-round magazine at the Lanky’s head at maximum cadence, one hundred rounds per second. The alien recoils and lets out another wail, but this one sounds a lot more strained than before.