As the battle-maddened and oblivious God King lined up for another charge, the dragon heads opened their mouths and began to breathe silver lightning.
With the first silvery breath a ringing scream, so loud that it was for a moment a physical thing, burst forth from the beast. At that first scream of rage and raw emotion Major Joachim Steuben, oblivious and uncaring of the closing death, sank to his knees and burst into un-Teutonic tears. Then the drum riffs of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," at the maximum volume available to the sophisticated sound systems of the Armored Combat Suits, brought every action to a momentary stop.
* * *
Mike's first action was to destroy the Posleen God King attacking the lone soldier on the mound of rubble. Since three other troopers had the same target, the God King and his saucer disintegrated under the concentrated fire of the grav guns. The slap of explosion as its energy bottle let go killed hundreds of the packed Posleen normals. Since the God King had been lined up almost across the boulevard from the soldier, the effect on the panzers was negligible.
Next Mike targeted God Kings elsewhere in the battle. When the platoon had been consolidating he had taken a few moments to consider the first contact battle. That battle had been fraught with mistakes. Deploying the battalion without any fixed fortifications, without mines, barbed wire or bunkers, meant that the Posleen had been able to use their full mass and fury against the troopers without any distractions. Furthermore, deploying the battalion vertically, while it permitted fire into the rear ranks of the enemy, had opened the unit up to fire by tens of thousands of Posleen instead of hundreds.
By contrast this style of battle was what the suits had been designed for. At ground level with both flanks secured, there were only so many Posleen that could fire at the troopers at one time. And the pile of Posleen and human bodies acted as a breastwork over which the platoon could fire.
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.