“On three. One, two, three.”
Panoratar drifted his tenar back and forth as he watched his oolt struggle to clear the way up the hill. The majority of the dirt of the mountains had been stripped away by the titanic fire of the human weapon but what there was of it was being stripped even further down and then roughly smoothed to lay down something resembling a road.
It would have gone faster with human equipment, much less Posleen, but there was none locally — any that had existed had been destroyed by the recent blasts — and even if there were, there was not one of the local Kessentai who had the skills to use it. So they had to make the road the old fashioned, and slow, way. Fortunately there were some of the oolt’os who had that as a skill and they were leading the way, skillfully using the rubble from the hill to reinforce the low places and create a narrow path.
Given time, and a few skilled stone-worker oolt’os, they could create a road that would last for a thousand revolutions of the sun. But that would be unnecessary. All that the local force needed was enough breadth to run their oolt up the hill and then take the humans from the rear.
“And won’t the humans be surprised,” he grunted to Imarasar just before his tenar exploded.
The saucer-shaped craft of the Posleen God Kings used a crystal matrix power storage system that was highly efficient; it was, in fact, virtually identical to the system used in armored combat suits. But while it was capable of storing enormous power in a very small space, that power was also barely controlled; if the crystalline matrix was disturbed it started a chain-reaction uncontrolled energy release. Which is another way of saying “massive explosion.” In the case of Panoratar’s half-charged system, it was the equivalent of a couple of hundred pounds of TNT. And then there was the shrapnel from the disintegrating tenar.
The blast slapped outwards and smashed the surrounding God Kings, along with all their most elite normals, to the ground, killing most of them and rendering all the tenar out of commission.
And then more lines of silver lightning dropped among the force at the base of the hill.
“Nice shot, sir,” Race called. The specialist ran a line of fire across the normals who were at the lead of the road-builders and watched as the depleted uranium teardrops blasted each of the normals into yellow gobbets. “I think those were the guys leading the build.”
“Probably the ones with the skills,” Poole said, targeting a God King at the edge of the massed group. “Darn.”
“Missed the power box, huh?” Duncan said. “Your targeting systems won’t pull those up. You have to specifically designate it.”
“How do you do that?” Race asked as a storm of 3mm rounds slammed into the concrete behind which he was sheltering.
“Here, I’ll show you,” Duncan replied, activating a command so that Race could watch as he brought up the menu.
“Uh, if you could just tell me, sir?” Race said, sliding backwards down the hill and scrabbling sideways. “We’re kind of busy.”
“First you bring up the menu for secondary targeting parameter,” Duncan replied, ignoring the private’s response and a series of HVMs that hammered below his position. “Then choose ‘power systems.’ Once you have that you can see that the gun targeting karat automatically starts prioritizing not just the God Kings but the power crystals in their storage compartment under the God Kings. Then you just stroke the firing button,” he finished, sending a needle burst of teardrops through the power system of an approaching Kessentai and detonating the God King’s saucer. “You’ll notice that it gives a pop-up reading of power levels as well, and if you have the time you can use those to fire on the better-charged saucers, giving you more bang for your buck.”
There were six overturned tenar and a couple of disintegrated ones at the base of the hill now and if there were any God Kings they were lying low. Duncan nodded his hand and highlighted a couple of the tenar.
“This is a widely gathered force,” he pointed out, bringing up the bows of the tenar in high relief. “Note the rounding. We’ve got two that are almost pointed, one that is rounded almost into a semicircle and one that is halfway in between. This sort of difference has been noted before in the saucers, called tenar by the Posleen, and in weapons design up to the design of the landers. There seem to be four or five broad styles.”
Poole ducked down below the concrete and scuttled sideways again, trying not to giggle hysterically at the lecture. “You know, sir, this is just the right time for a lecture on distinctive Posleen styles in saucer design.”
“What causes the style difference?” Race asked with a laugh.
“Nobody really knows,” Duncan said. “But it’s interesting to note that while our enemy seems like formless waves of one-ness, they do have some individual and group differences. Probably it’s the difference between Ford and Chevy, but they do have differences. At least the leadership, the Kessentai.”
He glanced down the hill again where most of the mass of normals was still trying to climb the hill.
“Not much you can do about these jokers, though,” he sighed, starting to pour fire into the mass. “You just keep killing them until they stop trying to kill you.”
Mitchell glanced up at the main viewscreen and shook his head; the whole valley beyond the river was peppered with red enemy indicators. Cresting the hill was going to be a “special” moment.
“Everybody ready?” he asked.
“We’ve got four minutes of water,” Kilzer said. “We found a community water supply but it only had forty thousand gallons. After that’s gone, we’re open to plasma fire.”
“We’re still here,” LeBlanc said. “We’re rearmed and we’ve got enough replacements that we’re at ninety percent strength. And the river looks fordable.”
“We’ve got about fifty percent power,” Reeves said. “When the MetalStorms are really going, cross-country speed is going to be cut by two-thirds.”
“Storms are up, the ones that are left.” Captain Chan sounded tired over the radio. Her crew had consumed half the IV’s in the SheVa and Glenn had had to be evacced. But other than that they were fine. Exhausted, but fine. “Garcia redesigned the reloads so we could have six available each. But we’re down to only fifty-three total reloads so I put six on each of the front systems and scattered the rest out. Once those are gone, the nearest are on the road from Knoxville. The long way. We need to shut these guys down soon.”
“Eight rounds loaded,” Pruitt said. “Six anti-lander and two of the euphemistically entitled ‘area of effect.’ Also known as God’s Lightbulb and The Big One. And behind us there’s a string of tacitly avoided and spread-out vehicles filled with more hellfire and destruction just in case four ain’t enough. We’ve got a half a pack of cigarettes, a tank of gas, it’s ten miles to the FP and we’ve got sunglasses on.”
“What??” “Are you crazy? It’s pitch black out here!” “Pruitt, get off the radio…”
Mitchell shook his head. Even after all the fighting Pruitt was irrepressible.