“Fall back,” Brennan ordered tersely, not liking where this was going.

He wanted all of his men positioned on firm ground, nowhere near the edge of the crater. “Prepare to engage.”

“Permission to shoot the fucker in the face when it comes over the rim?” Sergeant Harris asked, tense as he watched the alien headed for the Bravo unit briefly lose its footing. The creature punched a fist through the rock wall to catch itself and continued to haul itself up with barely a hitch.

They weren’t big, but damn it, Brennan didn’t look forward to confronting one of these things up close.

“Affirmative,” Brennan said, frustrated and angry, mostly with himself and his men. They’d missed their one chance to de-escalate.

Time seemed to slow when the alien’s metal-sheathed head popped over the edge of the crater and the creature heaved itself into view. The adrenaline kick gave Brennan the opportunity to take in details of the armor: angled faceplates with mirrored visors, a tapered breastplate that protected the vulnerable front, flexible layers of metal everywhere else that shifted smoothly with every movement of the alien soldier as it heaved itself over the rim. Up close, it looked even smaller. Maybe three foot eleven, though sturdy and broad-shouldered. Humanoid, except for those weird legs. No weapon in sight, which was easily the scariest thing about it.

It made it seem too damn sure it wouldn’t need one to deal with them.

Sergeant Harris fired a controlled salvo before the creature had completely cleared the rim, which was when they learned that not only did the armor repel bullets at close range as effortlessly as at long range, it also anchored its carrier to the ground so the force of the impact wouldn’t push it back over.

“Fuck,” Harris muttered.

The alien growled something that was probably the alien equivalent of

“my turn,” and waded in.

BULLETS didn’t faze it.

Grenades merely slowed it down.

Brennan watched one of his men empty a clip at the visor at point-blank range. It was a good idea, since the visor was the only perceptible weakness in the helmet, but, as it turned out, the material covering the head was as sturdy as the rest of the armor and getting within striking distance was fatal. The armor sprouted serrated claws in the blink of an eye, long enough to eviscerate the soldier with one swipe right through his bulletproof vest. He fell with a howl and was silenced almost instantly by a spike driven through his temple as he went down.

Brennan fired several rounds at the creature’s knee joints, then barely escaped being skewered by a double-edged blade himself, pure instinct making him flinch back before the weapon could make contact. The fucking armor wasn’t even dented.

“Fall back!” he screamed, thinking of the vehicles and the weapons stashed there. “To the jeeps! Get the Spitfire!”

They’d spent the past few days testing the newest generation of high-explosive antitank missiles—HEATs—and in particular the AT-742 Spitfire.