The one item that would have helped the battle of Qualtren, no one had thought of until afterwards. The battalion had been ordered to open fire at the mass of the Posleen. However, deployed vertically as they were, hundreds of God Kings had been in sight. If the battalion had been ordered to concentrate on the God Kings, the mass of Posleen normals would have been left bereft and leaderless. The deadly mass that destroyed the battalion in minutes would instead have been as insignificant as the loner rogues they had been destroying for the last day. Mike intended to rectify the situation if possible.
As he potted God Kings, the main body of the troopers began concentrated and continuous fire into the Posleen mass. There was nothing elegant about the conflict, no charges or feints, it was simple, brutal slaughter. Most of the Posleen by the beach had allowed themselves to get so packed in their rush to reach the panzer grenadier positions that they could not even deploy their weapons. Since they completely filled the boulevard, it was first necessary to move them out of the way and the only way to move them was to mow them down. For the first few minutes of the battle hardly any fire was returned toward the main body of troops as they fired continuously and without contest into the mass of Posleen.
The hypervelocity grav-gun rounds caused an energy wave front to build up in front of them. As the stream of rounds hit an individual Posleen, the effect was catastrophic; the hydrostatic wave front advanced away from the rounds at a fraction of the speed of light. Despite the relatively small size of the teardrops, the explosive force on the first Posleen hit was equivalent to packing a hundred pounds of TNT into its body cavity and detonating it, splattering yellow finely distributed muck over the landscape. And then the teardrops, hardly degraded in form or velocity, would seek out the next Posleen in line, and the next and the next. Most of the fire drove six or seven layers into the mass, cleaving them like a nuclear weedeater.
Rather than stacking them like cordwood, they piled them like hay, from a lawn left uncut too long in the summer. Heaps and mounds of yellow leaking corpses and unrecognizable bits built up on the ramp to the beach. The blood began to pour in a yellow river to the sea as the Posleen heaved and bucked under the explosive fire of the kinetic energy rounds.
At the same time, cloaked by their holographic technology, the scouts flew unnoticed to the nearest windows, gossamer soap bubbles floating through the green-tinged air, and rushed to find sniper positions.
The statement that the Posleen could not retreat was disproved in those hideous few minutes. Faced with a being from myth, the semisentient normals shattered like glass. Mike could see the rear ranks peeling away in fear of the unknown. Many of the normals were returning fire and he was taking some hits but the hologram around him distorted his true location. The only accurate targeting point was the barrel of his rifle as it spat dot-accurate streams of fire each of which removed one more link in the enemy’s morale.
He was suddenly struck by a wave of fire and Michelle careted a distant God King surrounded by the disciplined forces that had him targeted. He fired at the God King, but it had slickly moved aside. Mike fired four more rapid and accurate bursts but each missed by the skinniest of margins, destroying dozens of normals in the wake. Whoever that God King was it handled its saucer like a master and was too hard to bother with. Instead, Mike auto-targeted his grenade launchers on the normals around the dexterous God King and forgot about it.
“Thral nah toll. Demons of the sky and fire, what is that?” Whatever it was, thought Tulo’stenaloor, it favored the gray-clad demons. He took a precious moment to consider as his oolt’os broke around him, the bindings fraying under the primal fear of a beast both larger and more dangerous than they.
“Tel’enalanaa,” he whispered after a moment. “It is illusion!” he shouted. “Alld’nt! Look you! There are simple soldiers in the midst of the beast! Target the breath! There! The lifted head! Target and fire!”
The oolt’os, faced with positive orders and a clear and defined action, opened fire with all their will. The railguns spat their slender needles downrange and disappeared into the dragon’s head without apparent effect. Hypervelocity missiles passed through without detonating.
“There! No blood! It is a trick! False demon! Somewhere in it is the kessentai! Fire at the head! Target and fire!” He manually swiveled his heavy laser and began cutting at the dragon. In return it roared and swiveled towards him. His talons tapped controls and the tenar danced aside as the dragon’s breath came near enough that the heat seared its covering. He tapped the controls again and the dragon missed once more. Two more times and the beast seemed to lose interest. But then, even as it spat fire at a distant third-level battlemaster, tremendous explosions began falling all around him. As his oolt’ondai fell to the terrific explosions he decided that enough was enough. For now the enemy would take the field; the People always triumphed in the end.
“Lo’oswand!” he ordered, gesturing to the rear. “Oolt’ondai, lo’oswand! Together we retreat fighting!”
As the scouts reached their positions and began to peck away at the God Kings, Mike felt it acceptable to return to the ground. He had also used up over thirty percent of his available power, mostly hovering, and needed to return to ground mode.
As he hit the ground the squads started their first bound forward. By odd squads they leapt over the wall of Posleen bodies into a less cluttered area beyond. The suits automatically compensated for the treacherous footing and the squads opened fire again. They were taking far more fire now, but on the ground at such close quarters the only Posleen that could target them were those in direct contact so it was effectively a one-on-one battle. The massive pressure of Posleen was funneled to the troopers whose only realistic fear was that the ammunition would run out.
Mike landed just as the second group prepared to bound and he bounded with them. In the air he checked the status of the platoon. Very few losses and the majority of the troops were at over seventy percent power. Ammunition levels were dropping, but the heavy-duty fire would reduce soon. When they landed he checked the battlefield schematic and decided that the Posleen were nicely bunched.
“Platoon! Volley fire grenades, program: single line deep, fifty percent overlap, close support FPF softies to the left! Ready… Fire!” There was a rapid series of thuds around him. “Check grenade fire!” He did not want the troops to randomly fire their grenade launchers given that they were in close contact with friendly forces.
The grenades were antimatter charges wrapped with osmium self-forging projectiles. Each had the explosive power of a 120mm mortar. They had a hard kill radius, a zone of total destruction, of fifteen meters and a soft kill radius of nearly thirty-five meters. Using them at all with the Panzergrenadiere in close contact was dangerous. However, since they did not have as much shrapnel as a 120mm, they were slightly less effective at distance; the “soft-kill” zone had less than a fifteen percent likelihood of a kill against human targets in the open.
The programmed fire shot a double line of grenades down the 75-meter-wide boulevard, the grenades landing 15 meters from the Posleen-held building and 20 meters apart. Thus the total destruction zone stretched outward 50 meters from the Posleen-held megascraper with a further “soft kill” distance of 25 meters. The line stretched from thirty meters in front of the combat suit line for nearly a kilometer. The soft kill radius stretched to the Panzergrenadiere lines but most if not all of the grenadiers had sought cover by this time and those who had not would have to take their chances.