The mound was now within effective range of the Posleen weapons and the forces on the mound were starting to take serious casualties from the fire of the approaching wave.
* * *
«Forward!» shouted Kenallai. «If we take that monument we break their backs!» He did not know what the obelisk was that had drawn the threshkreen to it. Perhaps it was a power generator or some other important structure. Whatever it was, it was obviously vital and he intended to capture it.
He had the pleasure of seeing the thresh begin to fall, some to the plasma cannons in the host around him, or thrown up and away by strikes from railguns. Still others were hit square on by the massed HVM fire of the force around him. They were being whittled away and in a few more moments the host would be upon them. And then they would feed.
* * *
Duncan took a suck on his suit rations and grimaced. The Old Man seemed to love fried rice, but it wasn't his favorite. He punched in the last few fire commands and looked around for a good spot to sit. There was a badly beat-up Suburban sitting forlorn on the torn lawn of the Mall. He walked over and sat on the tail as he monitored his readouts. It looked like the ball was about to begin. The fuckup with Bravo had cost them a few minutes and the poor bastards on the mound a few casualties. But no plan worked perfectly. As it was, this one was close. He compared the Posleen positions to his readouts and smiled. They were not going to like what happened next. But he was gonna love every fucking minute of it.
* * *
Mike checked the feed from his rifle and smiled. The Posleen were making headway against the fire; there weren't really enough guns to stop them. The fire, however, was having another, more salient, effect.
It would be useful if the whole host became focused on the Monument. Not vital, but useful. And it had required taking some casualties to let the Posleen live long enough to draw attention away from the north. Now if Bravo would just get in position they could fuck them all, not just the few.
* * *
Stewart slid into position with a sigh. The Pharmaceutical Institute building on the corner of Twenty-Third and Constitution had a wonderful view of the Potomac and the Memorial, even on the ground floor. Well, normally. Now it had a wonderful view of more Posleen than he had ever wanted to see in his life. The position was horribly exposed and if the captain's plan screwed up in even the smallest detail it would be a death trap. But it was also the best possible place to kill Posleen. And he found that he was looking forward to that.
His squad had slipped in the back way and was now preparing to dig in. There had been a few scattered normals on the ground floor, but without their God Kings normals were cold meat and had been dispensed with quietly. The suits were in place with their deception holograms on, waiting for orders to trigger their cratering charges.
* * *
Mike glanced at his readouts and waved at the rejuv colonel who seemed to be in charge of the mound defenses. The officer had not even asked why they were just sitting there, out of sight, while his soldiers were taking all the casualties. Which meant he knew why, more or less. At the gesture he started shouting to the riflemen along the slope to retreat. He had to pull some back by main strength.
Mike smiled and punched in a few last-minute commands. The moment had to be timed perfectly, not because it would effect the outcome of the battle, but because it meant the difference between winning and winning with style.
«Duncan,» he whispered. «Now.» And stood up.
* * *
«The thresh flee!» Kenallai shouted in glee. He waved to the force. «Forward! Take the hill! The Host shall be invincible!» He did not believe it, however. He knew full well the fact that the Host was doomed. But the more damage he could do to the thresh that had taken his eson'antai the better.
The first of the host were at the base of the hill when the sky rang out with thunder.
* * *
Over the crest of the mound came a creature from nightmare. The beast was a dragon of a hundred heads, every swiveling head spitting silver fire. It was preceded by a horrible caterwauling and the thunder of drums as the silver lightning of its breath tore the host apart.
The Posleen of the host were shocked by the appearance of the fell beast but they held their ground. There were tens of thousands of their fellows behind them and their massed might was sure to bring it down. The breath flying down from the height was opening huge rents in their wave but they drove forward against the fire, clawing to engage the beast talon to talon.
* * *
Atalanara had retained his tenar on the stumbling retreat to the Mall. The damage from the metal threshkreen had been bad enough but to find that the «treasury» was filled with nothing but paper and the offices of castellaines was enraging. Now he simply hoped to rejoin a force with a decent oolt'ondai who might be able to explain this strange world to him.
As he crossed Virginia Avenue on Eighteenth Street, just short of the Mall, a monitor on his new sensor suite chirped.
«Incoming artillery fire,» it relayed in its androgynous tenor. The term was familiar. It meant the hated ballistic weapons of the thresh. «Time on Target, fire. Forty rounds.»
That sounded like quite a lot. He started looking at the surrounding buildings, wondering if it would be better under cover. Forty rounds would be very bad.
«Sixty rounds. One hundred and twelve. One twenty. One sixty three. Two twenty-four. Two fifty-eight. Splash.»
* * *
The fire was a complicated curtain barrage. The technique had been developed in World War I as a method to prevent movement of forces across no-man's-land. In this case it was being used to drive the Posleen into the anvil of the ACS.
Duncan had had the full authority of the Continental Army Commander and the artillery of two decimated corps. Most of it was 155mm mobile cannon. The variable time and cluster rounds dropped in a veritable curtain of death along Constitution Avenue, heaviest in the opening leading to the Watergate, but everywhere in incredible density.
Forces squeezing out of the press towards the north ran into this wall of death. The few that stumbled out were hit from the side by the silver lightning of the ACS now firmly dug-in on the ground floor of the pharmacy building and the distant fire from the Watergate.
Duncan switched to the next stage of the game, which was smoke. Four batteries were tasked purely to obscurement missions and they began to lay a curtain of white along the Potomac. This effectively stopped the Posleen across the river from determining what was happening in the cauldron. Then he started to walk the curtain barrage down from the north.
* * *
Kenallai looked at the approaching wall of steel rain. Then he looked to the east where the strange beast wrestled with the first ranks of the host. Steel-rain. Beast. Steel-rain. Beast. His crest slowly lifted until it was straight up. He looked at the Kessentai gathered around him and started snapping out orders.
«Alrantath, take your oolt'ondar to the right. Tenal'ont, take the left. All the rest, form behind them and my own oolt'ondar. Call to all the Kessentai in reach! Cry unto the oolt'os! Upon my signal, we shall lead the host in a te'naal charge the likes of which has never been seen!»
* * *
Mike had expected the Posleen to move towards his position, had, in fact, depended on it. But not with the immense unanimity they displayed. The word that came to mind was stampede as the huge mass, the AID counted it as a quarter million, turned ponderously to the east and made a concerted bolt for the monument and freedom from the steel rain. He stopped the battalion and started snapping out orders. As usual, timing would be everything.