Under Strange Suns by Ken Lizzi Read Free Book Online Page A

clearly hadn’t noticed Aidan, nearing Aidan’s position without slowing, so Aidan raised the barrel of the SAW as the man passed within two feet of him and depressed the trigger. Four rounds caught the man in the side, tearing open his rib cage and sending his corpse sprawling, Kalashnikov launching from dead fingers to land yards away.
    The chattering of the SAW so near reverberated in his head, muting the sounds of the conflict in the encampment. He thought he heard firing from Sinclair’s position. Then a furious exchange of gunfire from within Farouq’s house. He couldn’t see the house from his position, but he spared a glance in that direction, his night-vision catching gunfire as jagged white flares that provided strobes of illumination to walls and hard-packed mud streets. Well, he had his fire sector. If the Captain needed him, he’d call. He returned his attention where it belonged.
    Yells, exhortations to God he’d heard too many times, announced his next visitors. Shit , thought Aidan, twenty fighters my ass; fucking intel can’t count . There might have been twenty in just this group, filling the space between the village wall and the nearest houses. They came on like a wave, flooding toward him, rifles, naked blades, and at least a couple of RPG launchers bobbing up and down in the mass of humanity. His visor kept up, the individual components of the human wave were picked out and given a sense of depth.
    Right . Aidan wished he’d gone prone and set up the bipod. He tucked the buttstock tight to his shoulder and opened up. The wave came on, sections collapsing, breaking apart. Still it came on, bright flashes and loud reports telling him the firefight wasn’t one-sided. Rounds embedded into the mud bricks behind him, others skipping off of the hard-packed earth around him. He kept the trigger depressed, sweeping across the front of attackers, his shoulder absorbing the jack-hammer recoil. Spent brass and the disintegrating links from the belt littered the street about him.
    Shit! They kept coming. How many did he have to kill before they stopped coming? There, one kneeling with an RPG. Traverse left. More rounds hammering from the SAW. Got him. But, oh fuck, another one. Traverse right . God, he was getting so tired of this. But, keep firing , he thought wearily. They keep coming so keep knocking them down .
    And then the firing ceased. Click. 200-hundred round plastic magazine empty already. Still one man coming at him, brandishing a goddamned scimitar. Or was it a tulwar? Aidan wasn’t clear on the difference. He also wasn’t clear on why military procurement insisted on clinging to fifty-year old weapons platforms. Why wasn’t he carrying something with electronically ignited, caseless rounds, something with a greater magazine capacity? Something that wasn’t strapped so tightly to his chest and was a bit more practical in a close quarters fight?
    Aidan didn’t have time to load another magazine of linked ammunition or even slap a thirty-round M-16 magazine in the well. The strap configuration on his rifle was optimized for weapon retention, security, and ease in bringing it to a firing position. It wasn’t optimized for hand-to-hand combat. The weapon wasn’t really built for bayonet lunges or delivering a butt-stroke to the head. Wasn’t a bayonet lug on the short SAW anyway and its collapsible butt-stock wouldn’t deliver much of a wallop.
    But there was the bolo knife in the belt of the first man he’d killed. He released his grip on the SAW, let it dangle, and lunged for the long knife. Seemed so far away from him.
    He imagined the scimitar arcing down at him, burying deep in his neck. Not hard enough to take his head off but hard enough the bastard couldn’t tug it easily free, had to yank it out. Take a couple more whacks, and he’d feel each one before the dull blade severed his spinal cord.
    And then Aidan’s gloved fingers reached the handle of the bolo; he snatched it free