Read Cold War for Free Online

“Incoming!”, and then three muffled thuds as Palladio opened fire with his plasma rifle. Grec turned to see the Psi-Marine shooting from the hip as a large area of the ground behind them began to bulge upwards, the snowy covering cracking and sliding apart in great slabs as the Spider stood up from its cover. Palladio swept his rifle up, spreading his shots up the shifting mound of snow. The pulse ammo sparked as it hit something, stripping away more of the ice and snow, revealing the machine rising up out of the ground.
    Grec fumbled with her own rifle to fire, but with the geophys scanner and the transmitter in hand, she was slow. Before she had brought her weapon to bear, the sergeant grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backwards.
    “Come on!”
    Behind, Palladio had ceased fire and was running away from the Spider, which seemed to pause, perhaps getting its bearings.
    It was silver grey, the same matte color as the herculanium of its egg. The machine’s body was spherical, perhaps ten meters across and formed from individual curved plates which slid and shifted as the thing moved. From between the plates, a red light shone—the light, Grec knew, of the solar plasma that boiled in the creature’s core, a power source held in check within a lattice of magnetic fields. Eight eyes—four large, four small—formed an optical array on the front of the body, surrounded by other stubby sensors and antennae of varying size and length, all made of something black and glassy.
    Palladio stopped and turned, firing on the enemy machine again. His pulse fire skittered across the machine’s sensor array, but didn’t seem to have any effect.
    “Scramble it!” Furusawa called out.
    “Affirmative!”
    Palladio stopped shooting and lowered his weapon. He stood still, and then after a moment the air was filled with the buzzing, clicking sound. This time it wasn’t just in Grec’s head. It was a real sound, reverberating over the snow plain.
    Palladio collapsed onto his knees. “I … can’t do it. We’re not the only ones needing evac—it’s sending out its own distress call. The signal is swamping everything else.”
    They were dead, Grec knew it. As if responding to her thoughts, the machine rose higher into the air, eight huge, curved, knife-like legs erupting from the snow, flexing, straightening as they lifted the Spider into the gray sky. Five meters. Ten meters. Twenty. Palladio toppled backwards.
    Grec dropped the transmitter and leapt forward, reaching for the Psi-Marine laid out in the snow. She got close, nearly close enough to grab one arm and pull, only Furusawa was on her shoulders again. The Sergeant yanked backwards and the pair fell into the snow.
    “Get off!” yelled Grec through a mouthful of snow. She jabbed an elbow backwards and was met with a cry from underneath her, then she pushed herself back to her knees. “Palladio!”
    The Spider stood over the Psi-Marine, who lay, unmoving in the snow. The machine’s spherical body rotated backwards a few degrees, until a pyramidal structure on its belly was pointed at the Psi-Marine.
    “No!” But Grec was helpless. Behind, she heard Furusawa unearthing herself from the snow.
    The Spider’s mouth opened.
    The heat was incredible, even from a distance, blasting out in a wide cone from the opening in the machine as its churning plasma core was exposed. Snow and ice vaporized in great clouds of steam around Palladio. He cried out and rolled over to escape the inferno, his face buried in his arms.
    The Spider lowered its body down, the whole structure leaning forward on the four larger, scythe-like legs, as two of the smaller forward supports—more like articulated arms than legs—reached forward.
    Grec scrambled in the snow until she had her plasma rifle back in her hands. She raised the sight to her eye and took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm, to make the shot. Their weapons had been useless against the herculanium shell of the machine