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creature, but there was an opportunity here to hit something far more vulnerable.
    The furnace-like mouth of the Spider was angled down towards the ground, towards Palladio. Grec’s target was small, but relatively stationary. She opened fire, sending white tracer pulses towards it. The first couple impacted on the surface plates on the front of the Spider, but the next flew true, vanishing into the interior of the machine.
    At the ends of the Spider’s arms, pincer claws opened, shut, opened, shut.
    Grec’s shot had no effect. The Spider was unstoppable, even in this immature state. She heard Furusawa order her to run, but the roaring of the Spider’s distress call was deafening and Grec decided that she hadn’t heard her properly. She raised her rifle to her eye again, pressed her cheek against the side of the weapon. Perhaps she could take out the legs, or the arms—maybe the joints were fragile, more susceptible to plasma bolts—before the thing got Palladio.
    She took aim, trying to track the movement of the creature’s arms, but she was too slow. The pincers grabbed Palladio by the legs, and he cried out as he was pulled backwards. Grec swore, fired, but too high—if she tried for the arm joints now she’d hit the Psi-Marine. Her shots tore up the front center of the machine, dragging a vertical line between the sensor array on the front, but as the impact flashes faded, she could see the shots hadn’t even scratched it.
    The Spider was oblivious, apparently content with its catch, as it began to sink back into the snow, dragging Palladio with it. The machine’s legs folded in and then the body itself vanished below the ground. Palladio slid backwards, the pincers still around his legs, and then was gone. Soon there was nothing but a mountain of torn-up snow and ice, surrounded by a small lake of steaming melt water. Palladio and the Spider were gone.
    Grec dropped her rifle, screamed at the sky, then looked over her shoulder. Furusawa had resumed their journey back to the drop zone.
    Grec grabbed for the lightspeed transmitter, then pushed herself to her feet, using the rectangular box for leverage.
    Then she trudged after the sergeant, and she kept the safety on her rifle off.
    *   *   *
    Furusawa had stopped, and was looking up at the gray sky like she expected the unbroken cloud layer to part and for salvation to descend from the heavens. Grec could see her body heaving with effort, her breath gathering in a cloud in front of her. Since the Spider had taken Palladio, their journey had been uninterrupted, the geophys scanner silent.
    Furusawa turned around and Grec raised her plasma rifle. She had it aimed right between the sergeant’s eyes.
    “You need to tell me about your orders,” said Grec. For her part, Furusawa didn’t react, she just regarded the marine with a smug expression. Grec ground her teeth and kept the rifle level. Perhaps that was to be expected. Spec Ops were different from the rest of the regular recruits, and the two divisions rarely mixed well.
    “S-A-R, plain and simple,” said Furusawa. It was like she said it as a challenge, a dare for Grec to accept or reject.
    Grec’s finger curled around the rifle’s trigger. Like Furusawa, she was hot from the run, but the air temperature was perilously low and she knew that out here in the open, without the protection of their helmets, they would freeze to death soon enough. If they weren’t evacuated.
    If the Spider didn’t get them first.
    “Fuck S-A-R.” Grec sniffed the frozen air. “Is the Fleet so desperate to capture a Spider in secret they’ll send down a ground team with a false briefing?”
    Furusawa laughed. “The briefing was accurate. You just weren’t given the whole picture.”
    Grec moved the rifle forward. “Try me.”
    The sergeant rolled her lips, then pointed at the transmitter Grec had dumped in the snow.
    “Get the transmitter set up so we can signal the Hit and Run. ”
    “Tell me what’s going