“Mr. Kilzer, forward antipersonnel systems if you will,” the colonel said calmly. “Let’s finish these visitors off. Maj — MetalStorms, fire at targets of opportunity. Be aware for friendlies to the east.”
“I hate humans,” Orostan said with a ripple of skin that was the Posleen equivalent of a sigh.
“Yes, oolt’ondar.”
He looked over at the younger Kessentai and flapped his crest.
“You’re tired of hearing this?”
“I, too, am tired of humans,” the Kessentai admitted hastily.
“I took hours to set it up! I promised everything but my personal fiefs to its preparation! I made promises, the Net knows, I cannot keep. Those oolt’ondai were waiting to take it in the flank! They were supposed to ambush the SheVa. Not the other way around!”
“Yes, oolt’ondar.”
“I am tired to death of them,” the warleader snarled, looking at the fighting near Iotla. “Why, why, can’t these miserable, duo-sexual, hairy, two-legged, demon-shit, sons-of-grat just once take the sensible path?!”
“I don’t know, oolt’ondar.”
The warleader watched as half of his barely controlled force at the base of the pass turned to regard the distant fighting. And then as the groups, all of them individuals under no discipline except the coercion of the Path and some minor bribery, turned in three different directions, one group moving towards the fighting by Iotla, one to face the main enemy coming down the pass and one to the rear where, surely, there were greener pastures. In no particular order. More or less simultaneously.
What was left was a devil’s cauldron of angry Kessentai and confused oolt’os, many of whom were losing track of their Gods. This tended to make them touchy and that led to them taking it out on the other oolt’os around them.
“Herding cats,” he snarled. “That is what humans call it. Herding cats!” he shouted as the first oolt’os lost its fragile grip on sentience and discipline and started to shoot its way through the group between it and its God. At which point things could only get worse. Especially as a new barrage of artillery started to fall.
“Herding cats. What the hell is a cat?”
Bazzett lifted himself up on his elbows as the fire started to slacken and shook his head; the front slope of the ridge was glazed.
But what was more important was that the Posleen weren’t trying to fire at his position anymore. Some of them were directing their fire at the returning SheVa, which had just rumbled around the side of the hill. As he watched, the SheVa fired, killing a few thousand of the centaurs in front of it from the backwash of the gun; where the penetrator went was impossible to guess.
With the blast from the SheVa, the Posleen were starting to come apart. Some were trying to get reoriented to face the tanks rumbling down on their flank. And a fair number of them were streaming off to the south. There were a few still struggling up the slope of the hill but they were probably outnumbered by the company. And, really, they weren’t all that dangerous one on one.
“Cowards!” he yelled, snugging the rifle into his shoulder and picking out targets for aimed fire. He shot off an entire magazine in single aimed shots, most of them hitting, then slipped in another. To either side he could hear other rifles barking and the stutter of one platoon machine gun. Interspersed he could hear the boom of one of the sniper rifles and see the occasional flare of silver-purple as one of them blew up a God King’s saucer. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the red fans of fire from the SheVa as it ground forward into the river and up the far slope. Suddenly there was a titanic explosion from either side of the SheVa and he was afraid that it had blown up. But afterwards it just ground on and the ground to either side was an abattoir; the damned thing had giant claymores on the side!
Finally, unbelievably, there weren’t any more targets and no more fire was coming their way. He stood up and looked around at the ghostlike figures around him, at the heat rising in waves off the slope and raised the rifle over his head in with a bellow.
“Take that!” he screamed. “Take that you yellow motherfuckers!”
“Quite a few of the yellow motherfuckers,” Stewart commented.
“I think they’re serious this time,” O’Neal replied.
The Posleen had been coming in a solid stream for the last four hours, an unremitting tide of yellow bodies that had done little but create a massive pile of corpses.
However, unlike the earlier attacks, where they had come in waves permitting a moment’s pause between assaults, this had been absolutely continuous. Any break in the line of fire, and there had been many as the occasional lucky shot had carried away weapon or dug into a hole deeply enough to destroy the suit within, had permitted the tide to push forward by increments.
The God Kings were using their saucers again, occasionally popping up above the bulk of the horde to spot and engage the human defenders. While they were easy prey under the conditions, especially since they were automatically designated for engagement by whatever suit had that sector of the line, they had caused damage disproportionate to their numbers. It was mostly the God Kings that had struck into the holes, killing another dozen of the suits, and it was the God Kings that moved the line forward, charging into the teeth of the fire in an attempt to reach the hated humans, or at least get one last clear shot.
The pile of corpses was now more of a broad wall, a wall that concealed both sides equally until the aliens presented themselves at the top of it, slipping and slithering in the body fluids of their brethren, and were swept away to form another layer. Over it all there was a bitter haze of steam rising from the slaughtered bodies and a mist of gaseous uranium so thick it had started to form a thin layer of silver on the ground.
But the rate of their advance could be distinguished by the slow creep of the bodies forward.
“This is annoying,” Mike continued. “We were supposed to be maneuver forces, for God’s sake. Sitting in place waiting to be slaughtered is for Line troops.”
“We’ve tried maneuver,” Stewart pointed out. “Not too survivable in these conditions. It’s just a good thing we don’t have to worry too much about barrel wear. I remember the old joke before the war about ‘if you use up your bin of ammo you can consider it as having been a bad day and take a break.’ The average trooper surviving has fired four million rounds in the last day.”
“I know,” the commander replied. “It’s just so… so asinine. Eventually they’ll force their way through. But we’ve killed, how many? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? A million? And they just keep coming.”
“They always do,” Stewart pointed out, turning his suit to face the commander.
“Almost always,” Mike replied. “This time I’m really surprised. Generally even the Posleen give up after a few million dead on one patch of ground.”
“Well, I’m not coming up with any brilliant stratagems,” Stewart replied, turning back to the battle. “You?”
“Nada,” Mike grumped. “Just sit here and take it.”
“Fortunately, neither are the Posleen.”