“Blatt, pick up that ammo pack,” Sunday said, pounding past the Reaper. “We’re going to need all the ammo we can load.”
“Yes, sir,” the specialist said, grabbing the bulbous plastic sack. He heaved it over his left shoulder and clamped it on then stumbled slightly as it threw off even the suit’s massive gyros. “Gonna be hell to move with.”
“You’re doing fine,” the officer replied, scanning up and to the left. “If you don’t keep up, the Posleen will eat you. McEvoy, take your squad and pick up the spare gun packs; I’m thinking we’re gonna need ’em.”
“Gotcha,” the specialist said. “When are we gonna rock and roll?”
Sunday looked around the smoking landscape and shivered. “Soon enough.”
“UP! Up the hill!” Gamataraal called. “Sweep down upon them.”
“The shuttles!” Aalansar said. His second in command gestured to the east. “We’re supposed to wait for their shuttles.”
“They send scouts up the hill,” the oolt’ondai snapped. “In a moment we’ll be under fire; we can’t wait.”
“Hey, we gots company, boss,” Stewart called. “I make it a lesser oolt’ondai, heavy on weaponry. And it’s right up in the gap on Rocky Knob.”
“Now ain’t that interesting,” Duncan said. “I got no fire support, boss. The nukes are shot out and we’re out of range of everybody else.”
“And the Reapers are all loaded for anti-lander,” Mike said. “Battalion grenade fire; we need to suppress these guys quick.”
“Call off the shuttles?” Duncan asked.
“Negative,” the commander replied. “Calculated risk; we need to move out, they need to come in. Spread ’em out, though.”
“By teams!” Captain Slight called. “Grenades, my target, mark!”
“We’re out of it,” Blatt cursed trying to swing the huge bag to a better position as he trotted to the northeast.
“Not quite,” Sunday said calmly. “Lamprey emanations over Black Rock Mountain. Platoon: Target!”
“Battalion, fire!” Mike called and watched the flight of the grenades to their targets. The suits mounted dual launchers and carried 138 of the 20mm balls in onboard storage. Each of the balls had a range of just over three thousand meters and an effective kill radius of thirty-five meters. So the battalion fire mission dropped across the oncoming oolt’ondar like the wrath of God, the grenades detonating at one meter above ground height and flailing the air with shrapnel.
“Check fire,” O’Neal called, noting that most of the enemy had been swept away by the fire mission. “Prepare to receive landers.”
The enemy landing craft were designed for space combat but their secondary weapons could reach down and destroy the spread-out battalion if allowed to engage without resistance. Unfortunately, the battalion had limited resources to take them on. “All Reapers, engage Lamprey targets west.”
“This is getting a tad hot,” Duncan remarked, dialing in the grenade targets.
“Yes, what,” Stewart said. “Scouts are reporting a movement up the valley. If we don’t get the hell out of here we’re going to be walled up.”
“It’s all a matter of timing,” Mike replied. “Battalion, rifle fire on the hills; suppress Posleen fire for incoming shuttles. All things considered, though,” he continued, switching back to the staff frequency, “it might have been better to bring them in with us.”
“Yeah, but we weren’t expecting an ambush,” Duncan noted. “Now, did they have every LZ covered I wonder?”
“Yeah, I wonder,” Stewart said. “I’m putting that in the intel folder with a high-priority mark. I think we were set up, sir.”
“But they bit off more than they could chew,” Mike noted as the battalion fire started to sweep the charging Posleen off the ridgeline. However, he could see trooper icons dropping as well; the force on the hill was as heavily armed as any he had ever seen. “I hope.”
“We are getting slaughtered,” Aalansar said bitterly.
“The way the Path has taken us,” Gamataraal said as another of the dismounted Kessentai was removed from the Path. “We close, and we kill. As long as they are unable to move, we are well off.”
“Shuttle coming in to the south,” his second noted. “But we have no targeting systems.” The superior Posleen antiaircraft fire depended upon the sensors and motors of the saucerlike vehicles the God Kings normally rode. However, they also made the God Kings easy targets.
“The Path is never an easy one,” the commander said. “Fire everything at it. Ignore the threshkreen.”
“Oh, damn,” Gunny Pappas noted. He had just come back from checking out the battalion as it tried to fight its way out of the pocket and the incoming shuttle couldn’t have been timed worse. And the reaction of the Posleen wasn’t all that peachy either.
“Now, why would they do that?” O’Neal asked as every single Posleen that was still under God King control turned their fire away from the suits and onto the shuttle.
“I dunno, but I think it’s gonna work,” Duncan noted, digging his head into the streambed. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah, probably,” Mike noted calmly. “Bank the other shuttle behind Oakey Mountain. Battalion: INCOMING!”
The oolt’ondai was armed with three-millimeter railguns, plasma guns and hypervelocity missiles. The shuttle crested the south shoulder of Oakey Mountain and headed down Stillhouse Branch, accelerating past Mach Four and preparing for a hot inertial drop along Black Creek. It turned out to be hotter than anticipated.
Most of the fire went behind or to either side, but the targeting systems of the God King’s weapons were still good enough to lead the craft, and a hurricane of railgun and plasma rounds hammered the shuttle as it rocketed down the stream. In a blink of an eye it started to come apart, scattering its highly volatile cargo into the fire.
Class Five Antimatter Reactors, the system installed on shuttles, were designed for combat and to withstand the occasional misdirected round. They were not, however, designed to be hit by a storm of plasma fire. In less than a millisecond the containment was pierced and all hell broke loose.
“ASS TO THE BLAST!” Mueller yelled, dropping to his face then pulling the shrieking children on his back around to cover them. The flash of white had been so bright, like a flashbulb on megaoverdrive, that he could still see the trees and bodies ahead of him even after he shut his eyes.
All of the adults dropped, grabbing any child still standing, and waited for the blast wave. By luck they were on a relatively flat hill, so when the ground shock hit they merely slid a short distance down the muddy slope then stopped. Shortly after, the outer layer of the overpressure wave hit, but at the distance they were from the explosion it amounted to not much more than a strong wind that shook the brown leaves from the surrounding trees and dropped streams of frigid water onto their backs.
Slowly most of the screaming dropped to sniffles. No one had been looking at the burst and the distance was far enough that there hadn’t been any flash-blindness or thermal pulse burns.
“This is insane,” Shari said, getting to her feet. “Insane.”
“Insane or not, we have to keep going,” Wendy replied, tiredly. She hugged Amber to her as the child shivered uncontrollably. “We have to get them out of the wet.”