"Maybe they do," Pahner said, "but that's not what you could call a hard and fast number. And it's really difficult to support more than five thousand in these sorts of conditions. I don't see any sign of a baggage train, for example."
"And if it is more?" Roger asked dubiously.
"More than the stars in the sky?" Pahner smiled wryly. "If it's more than five thousand, well... we'll just handle it. The important part is to survive and damage them badly enough that they decide that fucking with Imperial Marines is a short road to Hell."
"Oh hell," Corporal Kane whispered.
The humans had been working in shifts throughout the night to prepare their defenses, and she stood on one of the recently constructed platforms within the burned-out bastion, monitoring the sensor remotes planted along the approaches to the citadel. That gave her the dubious pleasure of an advanced look at the approaching horde, and a horde it was. She took one more look at the numbers estimate, blanched, and keyed her radio.
"Sergeant Despreaux, could you step over to the west bastion?"
The company command group had gathered atop the curtain wall gatehouse, watching the gathering horde on their visor HUDs. Captain Pahner's maximum estimate had unquestionably been exceeded.
"How the hell could they have gathered fifteen thousand warriors?" Pahner demanded irately. He couldn't seem to decide whether he was more incredulous or more offended that the Kranolta had not abided by his professional estimate.
"Between fifteen and eighteen, actually, Sir," Lieutenant Gulyas corrected, looking at the readout on his own helmet heads-up display.
"Should I have Poertena start warming up the other suits?" "Lieutenant" MacClintock asked.
"No," Pahner said, thinking furiously.
"We could engage them at longer ranges," Lieutenant Jasco suggested. "The plasma cannon would range from here, and they've got the punch to burn through the undergrowth. Hell, for that matter, they could blow through most of those walls without much sweat."
"No," Pahner said again, shaking his head. He pulled out a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth without any sort of ritual.
"This is gonna get real interesting, boss," Kosutic said, taking another look between the battlements.
"Pull the plasma cannon off the walls," Pahner said abruptly. "Put them in the bastions ready to move up. Put one on each of the bottom floors, and the rest at wall level. When we come to grips, it's bead rifles only. No grenades, no plasma."
"But—" Lieutenant Jasco said. "Sir, we'll lose the walls!"
"Yep," Pahner agreed with a grim smile. "Better make sure the door to the keep is heavily reinforced. And tell Julian his people stay put in there until I tell him different. And make sure those damned pack beasts are tied down!" If the elephant-sized flar-ta got loose in those close confines, it would doom anyone who wasn't in armor.
"I'll take care of that," Jasco said, heading out the door.
"Get those plasma cannon moved back," Pahner continued to Gulyas. "Remember, at least one downstairs in each of the bastions. We have five, so two upstairs in Third Platoon's bastion, and one downstairs. One up, one down in the east bastion."
"I'm on it," the lieutenant replied, already leaving, and Pahner turned back to the oncoming Kranolta.
"I still don't believe this." He shook his head. "Where do they get the food?"
"They've had word of our coming for some time now," Cord pointed out. "Undoubtedly they heard through rumors from Q'Nkok, and with that warning, the warriors would have gorged and gorged for days, then set off with packs of food for Voitan. We were lucky to arrive before the main host."
"They were probably waiting for us wherever the crossing of that Satan-damned swamp was," Kosutic agreed, nodding her head. "Good thing we didn't know where it was, or we'd be dead in the jungle."
"They can't stay together long," Cord admitted. "Only a few days, at most. But they don't intend to stay long; only long enough to kill us."
"And if we just hold them off," Roger continued, "they'll be waiting for us every few kilometers in the jungle."
"Which is why we have to do more than drive them off," Pahner confirmed. "And we will."
"Let's hope so," Roger said. "Let's hope so."
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
All through the long morning, the enemy gathered in a swarm just inside the ruined outer wall of the city. The mass of natives blew their horrible trophy horns and pounded drums, taunting the humans hunkered down in the citadel. Finally, when their numbers were fully gathered, they started in good order for the citadel.
Pahner, watching the approach from the gate bastion on the HUD fed by the remotes, nodded as he surveyed their formation. The lead group carried scaling ladders, and about a third of the way back from the front of the formation a mass of warriors with ropes carried a large ram. They'd prepared well, he decided, but then, they'd taken this city before.
Of course, they've never tried to take a city away from The Empress' Own, he thought grimly.
"Third Platoon, when that ram gets to a hundred and fifty meters from the gate, take it out with plasma fire."
Roger watched from a position on the wall. The heavily reinforced firing point had been prepared for one of the plasma cannons, so it was a "safe" spot from which to watch the approach of the enemy. It seemed folly to wait for the Kranolta to overrun the company before using heavy weapons, but he was taking Pahner's lead. He keyed his microphone and passed on the order.
Corporal Cathcart was almost over the failure of his armor, but he was still pissed about being taken off the wall and told to hold his fire. So when the word came down to engage the ram, he was happy to oblige.
The designers of Voitan's original defenses had faced only muscle-powered weapon threats, and that had dictated the clear areas they had allowed as fire zones. The citadel's approaches had been paved and flat for approximately a hundred and fifty meters from the curtain wall gatehouse, and just a bit over a hundred meters from the rest of the wall. The city's buildings had begun beyond those ranges, and the wrecked, decaying, luxuriantly overgrown ruins of those buildings were what cut up the company's fire lanes and would have deprived it of the full use of its range advantage even if Captain Pahner hadn't opted to let the barbarians close. But those ruins were also liberally seeded with remote sensors, and Cathcart had been using them to watch the big log approach.
Now he rolled his plasma cannon over to a handy spear slot and mentally licked his chops as he positioned it carefully. The cannon was designed for use as either a crew-served weapon or from a powered armor mount. In its crew-served configuration, its mount included retractable wheels, which were really quite useful in situations like this. He got the gun lined up, and hit the switch to take it off the wheels and drop its firing platform firmly into place.
"Everybody stand back. There's liable to be some backblast."
The barrel of the weapon was aligned with the exterior of the mini-fort as he hunted until he spotted the ram again. It had advanced another fifty meters as the lead elements approached the wall. In fact, it was in direct line of sight from his position now, and he punched a button and grunted as the entire ram was outlined in red on his sighting screen. The computer recognized it as a target and began to track automatically.
There were quicker ways to do things like this, but he had plenty of time, and it never hurt to do the job right. He designated the entire ram as a target, then designated three specific target points along its length before he took his eyes from the display to look carefully around his position one last time. He was behind the blast shield, but anyone else nearby might be caught by backscatter as the plasma charge exited the spear slit. Fortunately, everyone was well under cover... helped, no doubt, he reflected, by memories of exploding plasma rifles.