“Over the mountains,” he sung, swinging the monitor around, “take me across the sky…”
There was a cluster of Posleen on the ridge above East Branch and something about them made him sweep back for another look. He dialed up the magnification but it wasn’t until he hit the thermal imaging system that he was sure what he was seeing.
“Colonel,” he breathed after a moment. “You’re going to want to take a look out of monitor seven.”
Mitchell tapped the control and brought the monitor up on the main viewscreen. “What am I looking at, Pruitt?”
“Check out the group on the ridge to the left.” Pruitt sounded dead, as if someone had just ripped his soul out.
“What’s wrong?” the colonel asked, dialing up the magnification. “The ridge just above East Branch?”
“Yes, sir,” Pruitt replied. “Switch to IR.”
Mitchell did, then swore. “Those are… are they human figures?”
“Captain Chan, reload your guns,” Mitchell said, coldly. “Prepare for close fire support. Reeves, back us off the hill. Pruitt, get your ass down to personnel entrance one.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver checked his monitors and then spun the gun in place, pulling back down the hill. Suspecting what the next drive order would be he pulled all the way back and pushed the rear up the Savannah Church hill. He could see the crunchies arrayed on the hill panicking as the giant mass of metal backed towards them but he had other things to worry about. Like, how much longer he was going to be alive.
“Romeo Eight-Six this is SheVa Nine,” the colonel said on the division artillery net. “I need a brigade time on target box centered on UTM 29448 East, 39107 North. I want everything you’ve got.”
“Uh, roger SheVa,” the controller called back. “That will take a few minutes to effect. And, that’s not our priority of fire.”
“Do it,” Mitchell said. “I don’t care about your priority of fire, do it now.”
“SheVa Nine, this is Quebec Four-Seven.” It was Captain LeBlanc’s voice. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“We’re preparing to move forward to East Branch.”
There was a pause while the local commander assessed this statement. “SheVa, that wasn’t the plan.”
“Plans change. There’s a group of humans that are being used as a mobile feed lot for the Posleen. And we’re going to get them.”
Angela Dale had turned to look when the amazing series of flashes had occurred to the south. But since then she had dropped back into her own straitened world. It seemed they had been walking for days since the Posleen had captured her near Franklin. She had already lost track of her parents in the desperate retreat in front of the Posleen advance and she was pretty sure that, like everyone in the group who hadn’t been able to keep up, they were dead. And probably eaten.
She couldn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, how many had died. The group had been much larger to begin with. Sometimes people were added. Once the group had been broken up and occasionally a group of confused refugees would join them, including a bunch of Indowy with massive packs and bundles on their backs.
She had spoken to the Indowy, a simple greeting she had been taught in school, and the little green aliens had apparently decided she was their best friend and huddled around her as far away from the Posleen, and other humans, as they could get. The leader spoke English, haltingly and with a strange accent, and he had told her that the Posleen had brought them from another world, apparently to do engineering for the invaders. They had built some bridges and then, when the centaurs were forced to retreat, they had been added to the group of humans, he used the Posleen term “thresh,” as a mobile pantry. And so it was.
For, most of the time, instead of adding refugees one of the escorting Posleen at some unseen command would reach into the group and drag people out. Then the knives would descend. The humans in the group had been offered the food from time to time but even with their stomachs pressing against their backbones, no one had taken the dripping gobbets of flesh that had until moments before been one of their group.
Now, though, the Posleen seemed to have plenty of food; groups had come to the rear bearing masses of yellow flesh that could only be coming from the battle to the front.
Mostly, she didn’t notice anymore. She had retreated into a warm mental place where nothing could touch her. Someday she would be warm again, safe again. Someday she would be happy again and all of this would be over. She knew that it was unlikely that place would be this side of heaven, but she really didn’t care anymore. She just walked where she was pointed to walk and sat where she was pointed to sit.
So it took her a moment to notice that the artillery fire that covered the plains had stopped and that the fire from whatever had been laying down masses of red death had stopped as well. What went on in the battle didn’t really matter. Nothing was going to save her short of death. And death was beginning to look pretty good. It was the being eaten that still seemed bad.
But after a moment the mutters of the people around her, and the agitation of the Posleen, cut through her fog. She was afraid it meant they were going to choose another and she edged to make sure she was near the center of the group. But quickly it became apparent that something else was going on. And she looked to the north just in time to see, by the light of the fires in the valley and the gibbous moon that had appeared in the east, a mass of metal crest the distant ridge just as the artillery started to fall again.
“Pedal to the metal, Reeves!” Mitchell shouted. The driver had gunned down Church Hill and back up the far ridge at maximum possible drive because this was the worst moment of all. For just a moment the vulnerable underside of the armored gun system was exposed to fire and if the Posleen poured fire into it they were dead. That was where the drive systems and reactors were. Much fire in that area would leave them stopped on the hill, a sitting target for at least fifty thousand Posleen.
But the combination of the artillery fire and the speed and surprise of the assault seemed to work. Fire started almost immediately, but by then they were accelerating down the far side.
“Kilzer! Water curtain, Now!”
“Uh…” Paul looked over and shrugged. “I guess I forgot to mention: we’re out. We’ve only got five minutes and we used it up before.”
“Shit,” Mitchell cursed. “Chan!” But the command was unnecessary as every MetalStorm opened fire as if for dear life. And it was.
The valley was still filled with Posleen and even those that were in close combat with the human defenders on the ridges turned to fire at the giant tank as it tore down the slope and up the road towards Savannah. A storm of fire licked out towards it but SheVa Nine was giving as good as it got.
Again the ribbons of red fire lashed out at the Posleen, jumping from remaining concentration to concentration. The artillery box had opened up a zone of more or less open space and into that space the SheVa rocketed, belching fire in every direction.
“Mitchell!” General Simosin seemed a little upset. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“You wanted a breakout, General,” Mitchell said as rounds caromed through the interior of the SheVa. “You’ve got a breakout.”
“You dumb son of a…”
“There’s a group of humans by East Branch,” Mitchell said. “We’re going there and ain’t nothin’ gonna stop us.”