The three of us watched for enemy laser fire for a couple of minutes, but there was none. Probably waiting for reinforcements.
Hilleboe called back. “I only get fifty-three, sir. Some may be unconscious.”
“All right. Have them sit tight until—” Then the second wave showed up, the troop carriers roaring over the horizon with their jets pointed our way, decelerating. “Get some rockets on those bastards!” Hilleboe yelled to everyone in particular. But nobody had managed to stay attached to a rocket launcher while he was being tossed around. No grenade launchers, either, and the range was too far for the hand lasers to do any damage.
These carriers were four or five times the size of the ones in the first wave. One of them grounded about a kilometer in front of us, barely stopping long enough to disgorge its troops. Of which there were over 50, probably 64-times 8 made 512. No way we could hold them back.
“Everybody listen, this is Major Mandella.” I tried to keep my voice even and quiet. “We’re going to retreat back into the dome, quickly but in an orderly way. I know we’re scattered all over hell. If you belong to the second or fourth platoon, stay put for a minute and give covering fire while the first and third platoons, and support, fall back.
“First and third and support, fall back to about half your present distance from the dome, then take cover and defend the second and fourth as they come back. They’ll go to the edge of the dome and cover you while you come back the rest of the way.” I shouldn’t have said “retreat”; that word wasn’t in the book. Retrograde action.
There was a lot more retrograde than action. Eight or nine people were firing, and all the rest were in full flight. Rudkoski and Orban had vanished. I took a few carefully aimed shots, to no great effect, then ran down to the other end of the ditch, climbed out and headed for the dome.
The Taurans started firing rockets, but most of them seemed to be going too high. I saw two of us get blown away before I got to my halfway point; found a nice big rock and hid behind it. I peeked out and decided that only two or three of the Taurans were close enough to be even remotely possible laser targets, and the better part of valor would be in not drawing unnecessary attention to myself. I ran the rest of the way to the edge of the field and stopped to return fire. After a couple of shots, I realized that I was just making myself a target; as far as I could see there was only one other person who was still running toward the dome.
A rocket zipped by, so close I could have touched it. I flexed my knees and kicked, and entered the dome in a rather undignified posture.
7
Inside, I could see the rocket that had missed me drifting lazily through the gloom, rising slightly as it passed through to the other side of the dome. It would vaporize the instant it came out the other side, since all of the kinetic energy it had lost in abruptly slowing down to 16.3 meters per second would come back in the form of heat.
Nine people were lying dead, facedown just inside of the field’s edge. It wasn’t unexpected, though it wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to tell the troops.
Their fighting suits were intact — otherwise they wouldn’t have made it this far — but sometime during the past few minutes’ rough-and-tumble, they had damaged the coating of special insulation that protected them from the stasis field. So as soon as they entered the field, all electrical activity in their bodies ceased, which killed them instantly. Also, since no molecule in their bodies could move faster than 16.3 meters per second, they instantly froze solid, their body temperature stabilized at a cool 0.426 degrees Absolute.
I decided not to turn any of them over to find out their names, not yet. We had to get some sort of defensive position worked out before the Taurans came through the dome. If they decided to slug it out rather than wait.
With elaborate gestures, I managed to get everybody collected in the center of the field, under the fighter’s tail, where the weapons were racked.
There were plenty of weapons, since we had been prepared to outfit three times this number of people. After giving each person a shield and short-sword, I traced a question in the snow: GOOD ARCHERS? RAISE HANDS. I got five volunteers, then picked out three more so that all the bows would be in use. Twenty arrows per bow. They were the most effective long-range weapons we had; the arrows were almost invisible in their slow flight, heavily weighted and tipped with a deadly sliver of diamond-hard crystal.
I arranged the archers in a circle around the fighter (its landing fins would give them partial protection from missiles coming in from behind) and between each pair of archers put four other people: two spear-throwers, one quarterstaff, and a person armed with battle-ax and a dozen throwing knives. This arrangement would theoretically take care of the enemy at any range, from the edge of the field to hand-to-hand combat.
Actually, at some 600-to-42 odds, they could probably walk in with a rock in each hand, no shields or special weapons, and still beat the shit out of us.
Assuming they knew what the stasis field was. Their technology seemed up to date in all other respects.
For several hours nothing happened. We got about as bored as anyone could, waiting to die. No one to talk to, nothing to see but the unchanging gray dome, gray snow, gray spaceship and a few identically gray soldiers. Nothing to hear, taste or smell but yourself.
Those of us who still had any interest in the battle were keeping watch on the bottom edge of the dome, waiting for the first Taurans to come through. So it took us a second to realize what was going on when the attack did start. It came from above, a cloud of catapulted darts swarming in through the dome some thirty meters above the ground, headed straight for the center of the hemisphere.
The shields were big enough that you could hide most of your body behind them by crouching slightly; the people who saw the darts coming could protect themselves easily. The ones who had their backs to the action, or were just asleep at the switch, had to rely on dumb luck for survival; there was no way to shout a warning and it took only three seconds for a missile to get from the edge of the dome to its center.
We were lucky, losing only five. One of them was an archer, Shubik. I took over her bow and we waited, expecting a ground attack immediately.
It didn’t come. After a half-hour, I went around the circle and explained with gestures that the first thing you were supposed to do, if anything happened, was to touch the person on your right. He’d do the same, and so on down the line.
That might have saved my life. The second dart attack, a couple of hours later, came from behind me. I felt the nudge, slapped the person on my right, turned around and saw the cloud descending. I got the shield over my head, and they hit a split-second later.
I set down my bow to pluck three darts from the shield and the ground attack started.
It was a weird, impressive sight. Some three hundred of them stepped into the field simultaneously, almost shoulder-to-shoulder around the perimeter of the dome. They advanced in step, each one holding a round shield barely large enough to hide his massive chest. They were throwing darts similar to the ones we had been barraged with.
I set up the shield in front of me — it had little extensions on the bottom to keep it upright — and with the first arrow I shot, I knew we had a chance. It struck one of them in the center of his shield, went straight through and penetrated his suit.
It was a one-sided massacre. The darts weren’t very effective without the element of surprise — but when one came sailing over my head from behind, it did give me a crawly feeling between the shoulder blades.