Now the Posleen were just below the ridgeline, at the point called the "military crest." The wash of nuclear fire had probably opened up a fair sized hole in the Posleen on the height, so it was undoubtedly time for the ACS to earn their pay. Mike tapped a control and the entire battalion took one leap to the edge of the natural parapet. They probably weren't going any farther and with the way the ridge was shaped it wouldn't even be necessary to dig in. After ensuring that that was the case, he elevated his main gun and took a peek through the sensor system.
"Oh, shit," Mike whispered. At the first view of the conditions in the valley beyond, his readouts had gone blood red and he just had to clear the visor to see what was really there as the entire battalion opened fire.
* * *
From his perch Horner had been able to see some of the forces beyond the ridge, but the view from the ACS made his belly clench; as far as the eye could see the ground was a seething mass of Posleen. Earlier estimates had been something on the order of four million; assuming the density that they saw there and continuing only four miles out of sight Little Nag was calculating it at over for-ty million.
* * *
"We can't do this, we can't do this . . ." Mike heard. The circuit was open to the entire battalion and he was picking up bits and snatches of conversation. The suits were protected by the cover of the top of the hill, with only their guns elevated above the crest. But a plasma cannon or hypervelocity missile fired from the far side of the other valley could tear through the ground and take them out with just a couple of hits. For that matter, the number of Posleen meant that some of them were bound to make it through the fire, if for no other reason than that others were masking them. And once the Posleen got to hand-to-hand range, their boma blades could get through the armor. Not to mention point-blank cannon and railgun fire.
"Steady down," Mike said. He'd turned off the unpleasant view and had pulled up the schematics again. They were saying the same thing, but the view wasn't so visceral. "Steady down, keep your barrels low and maintain fire dispersion." He glanced at his readouts and chuckled. "The good news is that even we can't miss." Because of the automation of the systems and the fact that the ACS was designed to "spew" fire, it was an article of faith among the conventional forces that they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
"Major," said Captain Holder. "We're getting heavily flanked to the north. It's not like they're meaning to do it, but that's where they're being pushed."
"I'm aware of that, Captain," O'Neal said calmly. The numbers on Bravo did not look good. They had twice the separation, which meant half the fire pressure, that the rest of the battalion did. And in the face of forty million Posleen the main battalion's fire lanes seemed woefully inadequate. For that matter, Bravo had already expended forty percent of their onboard ammo. "Duncan, get all available fire in front of Bravo Company."
"What about us, sir?" asked Captain Holder.
"Well," Mike answered, "we're just going to have to kill all these Posleen by our own selves."
"We're in the right place, though," Mike whispered to himself. Shelly, correctly, didn't transmit the mutterings. "We've got the heights, we've got the position, one flank, at least, is secure. We can do this. All we have to do is hang on."
The majority of the Posleen directly in front of Alpha and Charlie company for a half kilometer or so had been killed by the explosion of the second lander. But that dead zone was quickly being filled up by the tremendous pressure from the rear. The Posleen, as normal, were coming on fast, hard and blind, charging right into the fire. But this time there were so many of them it might just work.
Mike had gamed out scenarios just about this bad and "won." That is, some personnel survived and they held on long enough that the follow-on forces were able to get into position. But in this case he had no artillery support and the battalion was just too spread out. It didn't take him long to calculate their odds of survival.
"Slim to none," he muttered.
"Battalion," he called. "All units lay down interlocking fire with your sharpshooters concentrating on the God Kings. Bravo, you need to tuck your corner in a little. All Reapers from all companies to the corner and dig in. All medics and technicians just became ammo runners; start ferrying ammo and power packs. And bring up the Reapers flechette cannons; I think this is going to end up being some close-in work." He worked his dip and spat as the first hypervelocity missile flew overhead. Over the past five years he swore he'd used up his entire fund of motivating things to say at moments like this. "I can't get my boots off to count on my toes, but if we win this one I do believe it will be one for the record books."
CHAPTER 6
Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III
0817 EDT Sunday September 13, 2009 ad
Staff Sergeant Thomas ("Little Tommy") Sunday realized that he just loved this shit too much.
He stepped off the platform attached to the side of the tenar and shot one of the Posleen in the head and smiled. The normal had been hacking at one of the pieces of shattered combat armor adorning the ridgeline. The extender for the suit's grav-gun was blown away and Sunday couldn't tell if the ACS trooper had tried fighting in direct view or if he'd been killed by one of Posleen at short range. Whatever, the position looked just about right for him to hunker down and do some killing of his own.
Reaching onto the tenar he hefted a two-hundred-pound battle-box in one hand and then marched up the hill, firing the twenty-pound railgun one-handed at any Posleen that showed its head over the ridge.
Thomas Sunday, Junior, had joined the United States Ground Forces on his seventeenth birthday. In the intervening years he had grown into the spitting image of his father, an All-Pro linebacker in his time, and "Little Tommy" now stood six foot eight inches tall in his stocking feet and weighed in at nearly three hundred pounds. He hadn't been this big when he joined, though. His seventeenth birthday had been four months after the fall of his hometown of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
In the first landing, Fredericksburg had been surrounded and cut off from any aid by an estimated four million Posleen. A scratch force of the local Guard unit, a combat engineering battalion, and the local militia had held off the advance of the Posleen force for nearly twelve hours while a special shelter was prepared for the women and children. At the end of that long night the defenders had detonated a massive fuel-air bomb as cover for the hidden noncombatants and to remove any capability for the Posleen to use the bodies of the defenders as food, "thresh" as the Posleen called it.
The Posleen had come away from Fredericksburg with a healthy respect for the twin-turreted castle that was the symbol of the Engineers. Thomas Sunday had come away with a girlfriend and memories.
Of the people that he had grown up with, only four were left alive. Of the defenders of Fredericksburg, people with actual guns in their hands, he was one of only five still alive, including his girlfriend.
Not one member of his militia group. Not one friend, only a few acquaintances. His mother and sister had survived in the shelter and were now in a Sub-Urb in rural Kentucky. Everyone else was gone.
All of them were gone, wiped from the face of the earth as if they had never existed.
The Posleen had gone away with a respect for the Engineer, and by extension all humans. Little Tommy had come away with memories. And a burning desire to kill Posleen.
He did so now, dropping into the prone, snuggling up to the shattered combat suit for better cover and sticking his head up over the ridge to get a look at the conditions.