Guns!
Jim told himself that as he grabbed the battle rifle. And the five full magazines the sepoy still had with her. Alex reacted to that. “Better armed than we are, dammit!”
“But not, I think, better trained,” responded Jim. He pushed the selector switch back to single shot. Some unsung saboteur had convinced the Invaders to copy the fully-automatic version of the FN FAL, and damn the recoil. “Where’s the rest of them?” — and, as if on cue, a burst of gunfire went off, far too close to them. Jim ducked behind the cover Alex was using. “Never mind. How can they see anything?”
“They can’t. Invader smoke bombs are good like that. You can even breathe in it. I wonder what species they stole it from.” Alex nodded at the corpse. “Did the seedy have comms?”
“Nothing obvious, not even a phon. So we need to find those other sepoys, before this smoke clears. Maybe the others are better shooters. Speaking of…” he handed Alex the rifle. “I haven’t fired one of these in a year.”
“Tsk, tsk, Sir James.” She shouldered the FAL. “Those shots came from over there. I’ll take point.”