Most of them were already leaning in that direction, but his orders set everyone moving with a vengeance. Eric climbed up to the top of the bank, taking a knee as he unlimbered the Priminae gravity rifle he carried, judging the range both by eye and by the suit’s range finder.

The key weakness of the Priminae weapon, in his experience, was that on the higher power settings everything you could put into it as a projectile would inevitably ablate in atmosphere. That meant that it had a stupidly low effective range for when you really needed the power. So he kept the power under two-thirds, not wanting to kill anyone standing beside him from the shock wave of the round alone, and took aim.

It also fired relatively slowly. He put out about one round a second, and honestly it couldn’t do a lot better than that even if he hadn’t wanted to pick his shots. The depleted uranium rounds he was firing now were far more massive than the diamond ones the Priminae favored, but also far softer and more prone to ablation, and they kicked up a rooster tail behind them with every shot. The ablated metal slammed into the front line of the charging aliens, blowing one to hell and back. Others were thrown across the line with enough force, he hoped, to break some of what passed for bones in the alien beasts.

“Fire as they enter your range,” he ordered. “Hold the line until the civilians get clear, or everything we’ve done will be for nothing”

The heavy machine guns joined in a few moments later, the punctuated roars of the anti-matériel rifles already echoing across the defensive perimeter. Eric just kept his steady rate of fire, nudging the power a little higher as the alien swarm got closer.

The Drasin particle beams sizzled across the line, burning men down and tearing into the defensive fortifications with hellish effectiveness. Eric didn’t move, but he could hear others fall back . . . some probably running . . . and a few people just fell over and began retching from the smell.

He was thankful for his environmental armor. At least that wasn’t going to be a problem for him, but he knew that he had to firm up the line or it was all over.

“Hold your ground!” he called over every speaker and PA in the place. “Don’t show those bastards your back. All they’ve got coming is from the muzzle of your rifles!”

Swenson, who was somehow still standing beside him, joined in quickly.

“If this is our Alamo, then so be it!” the ranger called. “This is Texas, and we ain’t running from no jumped-up bugs from fucking space! Get your sorry butts back in the line before you have me to worry about, ’cause I swear I’ll make you wish those buggers were the only thing after you!”