Slow as the Gerin were moving, we had time to set up several surprises, fill every available container with water, all that sort of thing. They ignored our flyspy, so we could tell where they were, what they had with them, estimate when they’d arrive. It was spooky… but then they didn’t need to bother shooting down our toy; they only outnumbered us maybe a hundred to one. If every one of our ambushes worked, we might cut it down to ninety to one.
Gerin ground troops might be slow to arrive, but once they were there you had no doubt about it. Just out of range of our knuckleknockers, the column paused and set up some tubing that had to be artillery of some sort. Sure enough, we heard a sort of warbling whoosh, and then a vast whump as the first shells burst over our heads and spit shards of steel down on us. After a couple or three shots, fairly well separated, they sent up a whole tanker load, and the concussion shuddered the hills themselves.
We watched them advance through the smoke and haze of their initial barrage. They were in easy missile range, but we had to save the missiles for their air support. Everyone’s seen the news clips—that strange, undulating way they move. They may be true amphibians, but they’re clearly more at home in water or space than walking around on the ground. Not that it’s walking, really. Their weapons fire slower on automatic than ours, but they can carry two of them—an advantage of having all those extra appendages. And in close, hand-to-hand combat, their two metal-tipped tentacles are lethal.
They came closer, advancing in little bobbing runs that were similar to our own tactics, but not the same. It’s hard to explain, but watching them come I felt how alien they were—they could not have been humans in alien suits, for instance. The very fact that I had trouble picking out the logic of their movements—why they chose to go this way up a draw, and not that—emphasized the differences.
Now they were passing the first marker. Rolly tapped me on the shoulder, and I nodded. He hit the switch, and a stormcloud rolled under them, tumbling them in the explosion. Those in the first rank let off a burst, virtually unaimed; the smack of their slugs on the rocks was drowned in the roar and clatter of the explosion, and the dust of it rolled forward to hide them all. Chunks of rock splattered all around; a secondary roar had to mean that the blast had triggered a rockslide, just as we’d hoped. When the dust cleared a little, we couldn’t see any of the live ones, only a few wet messes just beyond a mound of broken stone and uprooted brush.
One of the wetears down at the far end of the trench stood up to peer out. Before anyone could yank him back, Gerin slugs took his face and the back of his head, and he toppled over. Then a storm of fire rang along the rocks nearby while we all ducked. Stupid kid should have known they wouldn’t all be dead: we’d told them and told them. Our flyspy crew concentrated on their screens; at the moment the critter was reading infrared, and the enemy fire showed clearly. Garrond gave us the coordinates; our return fire got a few more (or so the flyspy showed—we didn’t stand up to see).
But that was only the first wave. All too soon we could see the next Gerin working their way past the rockslide toward our positions. And although I’d been listening for it, I hadn’t heard an explosion from the other side of the strip. Had they been overrun, or had the Gerin failed to attempt an envelopment?
Suddenly the sky was full of light and noise: the Gerin had launched another barrage. Oddly, the weapons seemed to be intended to cause noise as much as actual damage. And they were noisy: my ears rang painfully and I saw others shaking their heads. Under cover of that noise, Gerin leapt out, hardly ten meters away. Someone to my left screamed; their slugs slammed all around us. We fired back, and saw their protective suits ripple and split, their innards gushing out to stain the ground. But there were too many, and some of them made it to us, stabbing wildly with those metal-tipped tentacles. One of them smashed into Rolly’s chest; his eyes bulged, and pink froth erupted from his mouth. I fired point-blank at that one. It collapsed with a gasping wheeze, but it was too late for Rolly.
Even in all the noise, I was aware that the Gerin themselves fought almost silently. I’d heard they had speech, of a sort—audible sounds, that is—but they didn’t yell at each other, or cry out when injured. It was almost like fighting machines. And like machines, they kept coming. Even in the dark.
It was sometime in that first night when I heard the row between the captain and the major. I don’t know when it started, maybe in private before the Gerin even got to us, but in the noise of combat, they’d both raised their voices. I was going along, checking ammo levels, making sure everyone had water, and passed them just close enough to hear.
“—You can’t do that,” Major Sewell was saying. “They said, hold the strip.”
“Because it’s that bastard Ifleta’s,” said the captain. He’d figured it out too, of course; he didn’t turn stupid when he got his promotion. I should have gone on, but instead I hunkered down a little and listened. If he talked the major around, I’d need to know. “So no heavy artillery, no tactical nukes, no damage to his art collection or whatever he thinks it is. And it’s crazy… listen, the Gerin are amphibs, they even have swim tanks in their ships—”
“So? Dammit, Carl, it’s the middle of a battle, not a lecture room—”
“So they’re territorial.” I could hear the expletive he didn’t say at the end of that… Sewell was a senior officer, however dense. “It’s part of that honor stuff: where you are determines your role in the dominance hierarchy. If we move, we’re no threat; if we stay in one place they’ll attack—”
“They are attacking, in case you hadn’t noticed, Captain. We’re dug in here; if we move they can take us easily. Or were you suggesting that we just run for it?” The contempt in Sewell’s voice was audible, even through the gunfire.
The captain made one more try. I knew, from our years together, what it took for him to hold his temper at the major’s tone; the effort came through in his voice. “Sir, with all due respect, after the massacre on Duquesne, there was a study of Gerin psychology in the Military Topics Review—and that study indicated that the Gerin would choose to assault stationary, defended positions over a force in movement. Something about defending certain rock formations in the tidal zone, important for amphibians…”
“Yeah, well, what some egghead scientist thinks the slimes do and what the slimes out here in combat do is two different things. And our orders, Captain, say stand and defend this shuttle strip. It doesn’t matter a truckful of chickenshit whether the strip is Ifleta’s personal private hideaway or was built by the Gerin: I was told to defend it, and I’m going to defend it. Is that clear?”
“Sir.” I heard boots scrape on the broken rock and got myself out of there in a hurry. Another time that I’d heard more than I should have, at least more than it would be comfortable to admit. Not long after, the captain met me as I worked my way back down the line. He leaned over and said in my ear, “I know you heard that, Gunny. Keep it to yourself.”
“You got eyes in the dark?” I asked. It meant more than that; we’d used it as a code a long time ago. I didn’t think he’d choose that way, but I’d let him decide.
“No,” he said. A shell burst nearby, deafening us both for a moment; I could see, in the brief glare, his unshaken determination. “No,” he said again after we could hear. “It’s too late anyway.”