That last thought was enough for her. If this guy was shooting at those things, he was a friend.

“Hey, you got a charge pack for a Milosan Laser?”

She saw the figure twist to look at her and swore it looked somehow confused.

“Sorry, lady, got nothing like that.”

She let out a curse under her breath, an atrocious habit, but one she’d picked up a long time ago and had never been able to break. To her surprise, the armor turned around to look at her again, and when it spoke, the voice was laughing.

“Here.” It handed her a small hand weapon that was over four times the weight of her laser. “There’s no safety. Point and pull the small lever.”

Deacon grinned under his helmet. He’d been hanging around these people for days on the Odyssey and they never cursed. It irritated him to no end how reasonable they always seemed to be. Nobody was that calm. Nobody. So when the translator actually whispered a few choice invectives in his ear, he did something that he never thought he’d do: he handed her his sidearm.

Then he returned his full focus to the creatures. The Drasin ship had landed in what looked to be a peaceful suburb. They were ugly—that much was certain. Their armored forms were covered in something slick and slimy that gave the gigantic things a decidedly sinister air. They had a vaguely insectoid appearance, just like the long-range scans indicated, but he’d seen that before. Any exoskeletal armor tends to take on insect-like features when it’s taken far enough. God simply got things right when he made those things.

Sam Deacon leveled the big rifle on the thing again and opened fire. Across the street, he could see and hear the rifles of his two comrades joining in.

The Drasin soldier drones were enjoying this run as much as they enjoyed anything. This group hadn’t had a lot of chances to see action so far in the war, and it was only in the fighting that they found meaning.

The six members of the clutch walked through the area like they owned it. Local police were unable to mount an effective defense, and if the military’s ground troops were anything like their navy, it was going to be a pretty easy job.

The leader stopped when he saw a lone female human march out and demand that he leave her community. Laughter bounced back and forth between his clutch until he finally got himself under control and lifted his weapon toward the brave fool.

As he was about to fire, a blurring motion swept her from his sights, faster than he was able to track effectively as he fired on reflex. The particle beam erupted from his forward mandible, ripping up the stonework street but utterly missing its target.

He quickly summoned two others. Taking chances wasn’t part of his makeup, and the three of them approached the building that the motion had vanished behind. When they were within only a short distance, a mottled black-and-gray figure appeared from behind the building and hefted a weapon.