He next turned his scorched pistol on the far God King's vehicle, devouring it as well. Then he kicked the vehicles over one by one, pulling all the pieces of the God Kings he could find out of the wreckage. He made a pile, hopped up and down on it until it was flat, piled it back up and put an antimatter grenade in the resulting mass.
He set the timer, stepped back and watched the last remnants of the two God Kings blown sky high. Then he picked up the nearest saucer and hammered it into the roof until the roof was massively holed and the saucer was junk. His rage sated, he picked up the two heads by their crests and flew his suit back to the platoon.
By the time he returned the other fire had slackened. Those had been the only God Kings so far in contact and the normals were ineffective except in overwhelming numbers. He thrust the fresh heads at the first trooper he encountered.
"Go put these on Sergeant Wiznowski's smear," Mike snarled. The paratrooper hurried to obey.
"I swear before all the gods," he said to himself, but Michelle faithfully broadcast it, "that samadh will grow beyond all measure."
He stared off toward the ocean, without thoughts, avoiding recent memories. Immured in his armor, he had killed soldiers under his command in numbers beyond count, but every one of those was a mere electronic chimera. For the first time he had lost actual human beings, living breathing entities with whom he had established a bond.
The sudden intrusion of reality into his highly developed notional world of bloodless combat was momentarily stupefying. He shuddered in his armor, conscious for perhaps the first time that these were not shadows on the wall of some electronic cave, but people who had hopes and dreams. These were people whose mothers carried them for nine long months, the trail of their lives leading to a barren rooftop under a sun not their own.
As the platoon consolidated and checked equipment, he stared off into the distance in a moment snatched from eternity, infinite and finite. Unnoticed, one of the engineers connected new auto-grenade launchers and filled his magazines. Finally Sergeant Green broke into his reverie.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Sergeant Green."
"We're ready to move out."
"Thank you." Duncan handed him a rifle. Mike checked the magazine then checked that his store was still in place. He noticed he was still staring off into the distance. He was loath to move.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Sergeant Duncan."
"We need to move out."
"Yes, I suppose we do." He still hesitated. Something vital was missing, the drive that usually carried him through the tough times. If they hit a tough spot without it, it might mean all their lives down the toilet. He hunted around for it, but the house in his soul where it lived seemed to be empty. That particular mask was in hiding.
"Michelle," he said wearily, "download coordinates of all destruction points.
"Platoon, mission order." O'Neal's voice was an emotionless monotone. The team might have been taking their commands from a non-AID computer. "Consolidated platoon, second battalion three twenty-fifth infantry battalion will perform a covert insertion of the megascrapers Daltren, Arten, and Artal. The platoon will separate into designated two and three-man teams. Each team has a series of points that they either will directly destroy or lay charges upon.
"Once all the charges are laid and all the primary points are destroyed, the unit will pull out of the buildings then destroy them." As he spoke the troopers drew in around him. The action was tactically unsound: one lucky burst by a God King laser could have gotten them all. But the platoon was reacting to the deaths of their fellows much as Mike was and each of the soldiers felt a need to feel part of a group, a need for touch and feeling. The suits created a strong emotion of alienation through their control of every sense. Moments like this were a slice of humanity bitten on the run.
"Subject megascrapers should drop in an L shape leading from the ocean and curving around the trapped units. That will leave those units free to concentrate on pushing out of the encirclement towards the friendly lines. This is the good part, people: the major mass of Posleen on this whole damn continent is in the group trying to pry the Deuxiéme and the Lancers out of those buildings, so when we drop those buildings on them the war is half done." He paused and there was a tired but heartfelt "Hoo-wah" to that. The clustering of the platoon was sounding a warning to him, but he was beyond caring. The flip side was that the same clustering was beginning to act upon him, beginning to bring him out of his fugue. Even with all his time in suits, he was as susceptible as the troopers to the sense of alienation.
"We are going to be operating in two-man teams. If you run into any Posleen you can't handle, break contact and call for support. Headquarters will support third squad and the engineers in the `L' building. The engineers will work on that building 'cause it needs a lighter touch. One team from each squad will stay in support and as the other teams get finished they will go into a support role and be tasked as needed." He looked over at the gathered scouts and felt a stab of grief at the lack of a tall lanky suit in their midst.
"Scouts, your job is to emplace some charges, but mainly I want you to launch flicker-eyes across the unmined buildings. You should be above the line of fire but if the Posleen notice you you'll be in for a hot time tonight. After the charges are all laid, head towards the ocean-side processing plants through the water lines."
He paused in his flat monotone delivery and looked around, the slight twitches of his neck muscles swinging the viewpoint from side to side. The suits were featureless as always; the platoon might have been a set of poorly cast plasteel statues. A sudden question intruded upon his narrowed reality as he wondered how many would be alive on the morrow.
"Because of all the damage the lines are mostly empty; if yours isn't, blow out the walls and drain it; according to my data, none of the water plants are functional in this area.
"We're about to start moving over to our respective buildings. We don't have time to dick around so we're going down the outside on compensators. Your AIDs have the drop programs loaded. Fall fast then punch up the compensators and hit hard. It'll be just like a jump except we'll fall faster and won't disperse. When we hit the ground, split up and do the mission." He looked around the rooftop then back at the gathered platoon.
He was not sure what to say. It seemed a moment for a motivational speech but he was damned if there was one in him. "A quick prayer," he said finally and bowed his head. He paused for a moment longer, running through the short list of prayers he could remember. None of them seemed appropriate. Then, suddenly, a fragment of verse from an unknown poem came to mind. He thought about it and found it highly appropriate. He took a deep breath.
* * *
"Sergeant Green!"
"Sir?"
"Move 'em out."
"Yes, sir. Scouts, Second, First, Fourth, Third, Headquarters, Fifth. Move it!"
When they reached the first building to be mined, the squads broke up and moved to their buildings. Third squad, tasked to this building, waited lined along the roof with headquarters for the other squads to get into position. When the other squads were in position, the platoon stepped over the edge. The suits dropped under an artificially induced two positive gravities to within one hundred meters of the ground then began to slow. They hit the bottom still traveling at nearly six meters per second, but the suits absorbed this with bent knees. There were a few Posleen milling aimlessly on the boulevards.