Canister had won over flechettes because a 1.5-inch iron ball — traveling at moderate speed — would kill the Posleen quicker than even several hits by the lighter, faster, narrower flechettes. It was believed that if a Tiger needed to use antipersonnel ammunition in its main gun it would need the targeted Posleen to become “maus-todt” — dead in an instant.
For the first time since being encircled in this hellhole, Fulungsteeriot began to see some hope that the next instant would not see his body smeared and his life extinguished. Ahead, thresh fled. This he had not seen in many cycles.
Though his people had never been able to create, let alone disseminate, a plan, the wild hell-for-leather charge was possibly having a better effect than a coherent, logical plan might have. Certainly the threshkreen’s deadly artillery seemed to be having more than the usual degree of difficulty in adjusting their fire to destroy these more randomly appearing and disappearing targets. The very disorder and illogic of the enterprise seemed to be working in the People’s favor. There was hope.
Hope was short-lived. For some unknowable reason the fleeing thresh, most of them, halted and turned around. To the God King’s surprise many actually began to fight instead of flee.
And then Fulungsteeriot saw the most horrid sight in a life filled with horrid sights.
“Target!” answered Schultz.
“Fire!” ordered Brasche.
Oh, yes, Fulungsteeriot had seen as many as 100,000 of the People in dense-packed formation die in an instant. Yet that rare sight had only occurred with the use of the major weapons during orna’adar, the oft-repeated Posleen Ragnarok. There was thus little of carnage, little of blood, the sheer heat of the major weapons incinerating almost all traces. It was a waste of good food, of course — Fulungsteeriot had often though so. But it was clean and neat.
Not so this new weapon of the vile threshkreen.
A lesser propelling charge was used for the canister. Even though the weight of the total projectile was somewhat greater than that of the depleted uranium penetrators, not nearly as much velocity was needed or desired. The crew of Anna barely noticed the recoil.
Down range about 4.793 kilometers, at a spot Anna’s ballistic computer had judged ideal, a small burster charge detonated. Had the cargo of the shell casing been what is called “improved conventional munitions,” or ICM, this method of dispersal could never have been used; the very bursting charge would have destroyed the deadly, precious cargo. Canister, however, was inert iron — low-grade, low-cost, low-tech stuff. The detonation of two point five or so pounds of TNT barely disturbed its pieces, though aided by nine strips of linear shaped charge evenly and linearly spaced along the sides of the shell, it did manage to split the shell open.
The densely packed mass of four thousand large iron ball bearings began to split apart. Those most towards the earth at the time of detonation naturally impacted first. Had these balls been much smaller, or had they been moving much faster, they would likely have buried themselves harmlessly into the dirt. Flechettes certainly would have done so.
But at their speed and size these balls did no such thing. Instead, they bounced. Rather, they grazed, skipping over the earth in bounces of decreasing length. Few were wasted. Most managed to pass through one, two, even a dozen or more Posleen before coming to rest. So fierce was the damage inflicted on individual Posleen bodies that the harder pieces of those bodies themselves went down with fragments of their fellows, bones and teeth, imbedded roughly in soft, vital places.
And that was only the bottom four or five hundred of a cluster of four thousand!
The others came down at different times and different speeds. Yet all remained dangerous as they skipped and bounced, gleeful children of the gods of war, through the Posleen mass. Reptilian skulls were smashed, throats torn open, arm and legs roughly amputated. Many a Posleen found itself in possession of a large ball bearing inside its brutalized torso.
In all, the four thousand ball bearings, ricocheting and bouncing to the end, managed to graze over two point four million linear meters worth of death and destruction in an area only one square kilometer in scope.
The bleeding, sundered and torn Posleen horde shrieked as one in pain and despair and destruction.
Sitting atop his motionless tenar, Fulungsteeriot winced at the sound of agony multiplied to near infinity arising from the Posleen mass. The God King’s eyes swept over the scene with horror.
“What sins have the People committed that we should ever deserve this?” he asked of no one who could answer.
Where once a mass of nearly one hundred thousand had charged now only scraps remained. Fulunsteeriot saw one oolt, both forelegs amputated, circling unsteadily on shaking rear legs around the pivot of its too-weak centuroid arms. Others, a very few others, hobbled on three legs. Sometimes the lost leg still hung by a slender shred of muscle, dangling down uncontrolled and tangling the other limbs, the wrenching causing the victims to keen wildly and pitiably.
Many, perhaps as many as ten thousand, sought to stuff intestines back into torn frames. Sightless ones roamed with arms outstretched.
Worst of all to see, perhaps, were the three of four thousand of the unscratched. Once attacking proudly, borne up by the mass of their fellows, these for the most part now stood still, shuddering like the horses they somewhat resembled, when those horses, taken to the slaughter house, see their herds disappear before them in blood and horror.
Other muffled crumps and mass shrieks of agony told Fulungsteeriot that his attack had failed utterly. He snarled, set his teeth, flourished his crest. Fulungsteeriot might not have been the brightest of the Kessentai, but he was as courageous as any. He drove his tenar straight at the nearest of the enemy machines, seeking a warrior’s death.
Giessen, Germany, 1 May 2007
“Todt durch dem strang.” Death by the rope.
This was the verdict of the drumhead court-martial, issued en masse to two hundred thirty-seven of the two thousand three hundred and fifty-nine cowards who had sought shelter for themselves under the Tigers’ protective glare, while contributing nothing to the fight.
The Jugend Division had found them, passed them, and noted them for the next echelon, which arrested them. Then several days had followed wherein certain elements within the government had demanded the cowards’ release. Mühlenkampf had refused. Much to his surprise, the overwhelming bulk of the Bundeswehr had agreed with him, going so far as to refuse to obey any orders issuing from the Chancellery that might have led to such a release.
From the over two thousand, only ten percent had been chosen to expiate the sins of the rest.
“We can hang you all,” the court had announced. “And you all deserve it. Yet we find it expedient for the Fatherland if the deaths are more drawn out, and contribute more. Ten percent seems enough to remind the rest of your future duty.”
Guarded by representatives of both the 47th Korps and the other, Bundeswehr, Korps which had done good service in the area, the procession of death formed three groups.