Nails

"Merritt-claymores! Sightfuze monkeys!"

I tossed him the grenades, which he promptly armed and sat atop the rocktree stumps we took cover from. Their tiny rangefinders towards the fog, they would fill the air with depleted uranium pellets as soon as a Cygni target profile was within ten meters. Nasty surprise, monkeys.

Hill 610’s elevation was roughly forty five meters, at a very steep fifty-one degree incline. Add that to the ever present mud and thin air, and you have one hell of climb. It reminded me of my nightmares; you could work your legs as fast as you wanted to, but you were running through glue with some unseen horror on your ass. I had to reach up and slap my ox tube over my mouth to keep pace, and even then all I wanted to do was sit down for a minute.

I heard a short scream right behind me and Chen’s rifle went quiet. Two loud detonations followed, causing me to flinch. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Chen on his back, staring at the sky, his mouth trying to move. His chest plating was dotted with nickel-sized holes and red was already pouring out.I raised my eyes.

The "presents" we left behind had gone off. Standing amid the smoking remains of the rank that had preceded them, about a platoon’s worth of cautious Cygni began to sight in.

"Leave him, sir!", screamed Merritt as he fired at the now visible apes. "First squad move your ass!"

He didn’t have to tell me about Chen. One of the first lessons learned about the Cygni, aside from the fact they love the way we taste, was that the apes were a hunting society. Every weapon, from longaxe to assault rifle, was designed to inflict massive trauma upon soft tissue; we found this was to make their "targets"easier to consume. Supervelocity machine gun rounds were variable-proximity fused to penetrate our polyresin armor and explode once buried deep within us, and Chen had taken at least a dozen to the upper body alone. Sometimes our medics wondered why they even bothered showing up.

An ape grenade cooking off nearby jolted us to the ground, raining metal fragments and blood red El Dorado all over us. The concussion stunned me, and in a daze I looked up to the hilltop,getting closer but still so far away. Merritt and Winer were ahead of me now, and it looked like the rest of the squad was now reaching the crest. Some turned to face downhill, trading fire with the slowly advancing apes. I began to crawl up the hill, hands and knees sinking deep into the muddy slope but eventually getting to my feet. One voice boomed from the crest, making itself clear over the chattering firefight.

"Conrad! Merritt!",bellowed Sergeant Heberly from between two heavy slugger pits, "what are you waiting for, a fucking invite? GET YOUR ASSES UP HERE! MOVE!"

Only a few feet separated us from the crest now, but by that time I was too dazed, and tired from the uphill run to care anymore, even as an ape bullet nicked my thigh shell.

Hands reached out to Merritt, then to me, dragging us the last few feet up the hill, past Headquarter’s big sluggers. At Heberly’s signal, they opened up once we were clear, their chuff chuff chuff deafening, hot brass littering the ground around them. The supply pukes helped me up, unhooking my face mask while I kept my hands on my knees for a few seconds. It hurt to suck in.