That graveyard was a deathtrap. Nowhere to hide, no room for manoeuvre. Pinned on the road, a squad of the alien heavies we call Mutons and a sea of Sectoids prowling among the gravestones.
Stone shards flying, masonry leveled. Grave dirt scything through the air.
Rk. Perez wasn't ready for this. She was a volunteer, eager to bag the first live X-ray. I'd made use of the arc thrower volunteer-only, and forbidden the more experienced officers from stepping forward: too much risk, too much to lose. Perez came up to my office the next day - nervous, confident, tightly wound.
When the plasma fire began to erupt around her, it was too much, too soon. She panicked, dropped to her haunches, sobbing into her mic. Tipped over the edge by her breakdown, Voodoo lost control, breaking cover and firing wildly at the enemy. Seizing this momentary distraction, Perez made a break for the Skyranger, sprinting across the open, head down.
Backed up against the cemetery wall, Twitch cursed, head falling. For a moment, his whole body slumped. Then a growl.
"Not again."
Bringing up a grenade, he wrenched out the pin with his teeth, launched it at the cluster of Mutons. Gritting his teeth, he pulled up his trusty shotgun for the kill.
The night before the op, I'd found Twitch in the bar, a chair pulled up in front of the memorial board. He was toying with a notched combat knife, one he'd kept strapped to his shin since he came back from Norway. There was a newspaper clipping on the table, a blurred monochrome photograph with a scrap of prose.
We sat in silence for a time. At last, he spoke, eyes downcast.
"How do you stand it, sir? The killing?"
"You're not falling for the X-rays, Twitch?"
He didn't laugh. "We killed them, sir. Lin, Jang... her."
He pushed the newspaper clipping towards me. I recognised a fuzzy shot of Willie Thorne, the Canadian politician suspected of collaborating with the aliens.
"I ordered those boys into that UFO," he continued. "I threw that grenade." He stabs the knife down hard into the wood, leaving it there.
"Listen, Twitch," I said, leaning in, "this isn't easy. I know. But you did your duty. You followed your orders, my orders. You did your job."
The Captain stood up, looking at me with pale eyes. "They'll be payment for what we've done, sir. There's a reckoning coming."
"It's game over, man. Game over."
Two Mutons were momentarily stunned by the blast. The third sighted expertly, shot Twitch right in the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
"Twitch is dead, sir." Sentinel's voice was heavy. Removing his fingers from the corpse's neck, he looked over at Voodoo where he was cowering behind the bonnet of a Renault, caught his gaze and signaled curtly. Voodoo tensed, ready.
There'd been something jaunty in Saxby's step that last week. A spring I'd not seen since he weathered the terror attacks in Kaduna, with the other vets. Did I wonder about it for more than a second, between plans and reports, risk assessments and briefings?
Sentinel stepped out, bestriding Twitch's body where it lay in the litter of the street, spraying suppressive fire across the Mutons' flanks. Voodoo leapt up, dropping one Muton; Cyclops took down the other.
The third was squatting behind one of the last of the gravestones, bulky arm raised to protect its eyes from Sentinel's precise fire. It's other arm jerked.
The grenade chuckled across the pavement, coming to rest in the crook of Twitch's knee. The explosion ripped off one of Sentinel's legs, sent him tumbling in a cloud of blood and dust. His screams pierced the coms.
Voodoo and Cyclops were wounded, hounded by Sectoids. Nix was fighting for his life on the far side of the cemetery.
Saxby bled out on the concrete.
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