His oolt now approached a building where his sensors told him a group of thresh huddled, some of them armed. He thought of spreading his oolt to envelop it in its arms but decided not to bother. He would order a few oolt’os forward, to reduce the loss if the building erupted as others had. But for the rest they would remain between the many highway markers to either side.
These thresh certainly had odd habits. On this stretch not only were there overhead lines with many objects attached, there were markers every few feet and they were adorned with the same sort of odd contraption as the overhead lines…
Sergeant Tri watched the first few Posleen normals head for the church door, hefted his AIW, turned and nodded significantly at Lieutenant Lee.
As Lee moved the jumper cables into contact with the car battery, a fat blue spark jumped through the shadows of the darkened church.
Simultaneously, to the human ear, over three hundred improvised claymores detonated over a four-hundred-yard length of road. Each of the mines spewed out over a hundred missiles traveling much faster than a bullet. The mines were on both sides of the road, attached to ropes slung across the road, on the ground, at every level. Thousands of deadly missiles swarmed the road, and the Posleen were torn to shreds.
The nails tore the centaurs apart, yellow blood flying through the air along with bits of flesh and bone. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition detonated and the rear-rank God King’s saucer was consumed in silvery fire as its onboard energy cells shattered. In that first violent instant, over a hundred Posleen were destroyed and the Battle of Concord Heights was joined.
“Colonel,” said the S-3, “Lieutenant Ray reports they are in contact with the Posleen. The front ranks walked right into the ambush and they finished off the survivors pretty quick, but the rear ranks are pushing forward hard and he doesn’t think he can hold his position much longer.”
“Right. Well.” Colonel Robertson looked around at the figures hurrying in and out of the armory. The pile in the center of the armory floor was getting to a respectable size. “We need to pull this operation back. What’s the situation at the interstate?”
“The main Posleen force has basically extinguished itself, pun intended, but reinforcements are moving in from the north and south. They’re going to be able to hold out for about fifteen minutes more.”
“It’s better than we had any right to expect. And the bunker?”
“Just about loaded.”
“Heaven be praised. Okay, tell the sergeant major this is the last load.”
“Who gets to do the honors?”
“I think I’ll leave it up to the sergeant major. You and I need to head into town.”
As they walked out the front of the armory for the last time, the colonel turned and looked at the sign just inside the front door and snorted grimly. “I hope that our enemy at least has enough intelligence to begin to recognize insignia.”
“Why?” asked the S-3.
The colonel gestured at the two-turreted castle. “Just imagine how much they’ll come to hate that crest.”
“I will have the get of these Alld’nt threshkreen for my supper!” Kenallai stepped mincingly through the offal clogging the road, having abandoned his saucer for a closer look at the carnage. A haze of dust and smoke still hung over the battlefield and the shattered bodies of the Posleen companies were steaming in the cold night air. “What in the name of the nineteen fuscirt did this?”
“This, my eson’antai,” said Kenallurial, gesturing into the building that had been the center of the fighting. He pointed to a large green-clad thresh missing most of his foreparts. An explosion had occurred that ate most of the thresh’s mass, leaving little to salvage for rations. From the spray of oolt’os outward from the thresh, it was an explosion designed to kill the oolt’os as they tried to come upon him. Kenallurial tore a bit of the green garment away.
“Note the marking. In the reports it stated that all the green- and gray-clad thresh wore markings. Many await deciphering, but this one is recognized. It translates as something like ‘leader of military technicians.’ There are others that wear rifles that are leaders of warriors.”
“Military technicians?” scoffed Ardan’aath. “What rot! What does war have to do with repairmen? War is for the warriors, not skulkers who use explosives for their weapons! Show me the ones with the rifles and I shall bring you their get on my blade!” He spun his saucer and darted off towards his advancing oolt’ondar.
Kenallai took the proffered piece of cloth in his hand, turning the symbol so that the protrusions were upward. “It appears to be a building.”
“Yes, eson’antai. It may be their headquarters. And although their purpose includes construction, they also are the primary artists of explosive destruction,” he gestured around, “as you can see.”
“Well, do these military technicians have a name of their own?”
“Yes, they call them the ‘engineers’ or ‘sappers.’ ” Kenallurial’s muzzle made a hash of the syllables.
“ ‘Sappers.’ ” Kenallai tasted the word. “I hope that this encounter is the last that we see of them.”
“Damn,” muttered Colonel Robertson under his breath, “it’s working.”
The tail end of the line of women and children shuffled forward another few steps as he passed under the railroad bridge over Sophia Street.
He could see Lieutenant Young talking earnestly with a civilian construction worker as he neared the pump house. The power to the city had been lost, and thereby the streetlights, but construction Klieg lights had been set up and the bulldozers and earthmovers worked unabated. The hill that had flanked Frederick Street opposite the train station was leveled and the street was practically gone. There was no trace of the buildings that had been there, or of the Montessori School on the corner. In their place the Rappahanock had a new bluff. The area looked as if it had been attacked by a group of giant gophers.
The pump house had been a low concrete building, about fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, surmounted by what appeared to be a twenty-foot-high silo. The lower building had been partially covered by alluvial deposits, but otherwise was protected overhead and on the river side only by its three-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls. A narrow catwalk had led to the door at the top of the silo where there was a room ringed by windows: the “delightful view of the river.” To the side of the catwalk had been another, wider, door with a crane mounted above it. It was through this door that replacement equipment was lifted when the pump house was still in operation.
Now fill dirt reached nearly to the door, as load after load of what the military referred to as overburden was dumped onto the lower building. It was in this lower compartment of the bunker that the noncombatants were being secured. The catwalk had been replaced by a wider ramp constructed of structural steel. Colonel Robertson could see military engineers rigging it to be destroyed as the noncombatants shuffled up. At the top, the wall had been ripped out around the door and other engineers and construction workers were driving holes for demolition charges. The line of women and children, their breath steaming in the air, disappeared into the maw of the beast at the top of the ramp.