Hell's Faire

CHAPTER NINETEEN Porter’s Bend, NC, United States of America, Sol III 0648 EDT Tuesday September 29, 2009 AD

Tenalasan looked to the north, waiting for the great tank, the “SheVa” to appear. It had so far cut through two groups that were supposed to stop it and was expected to come down the road at any moment. But so far there had been no shooting from the north, much less signs of the great beast.

The moon had set and the night would have been pitch black to humans. It was quite dark to the host as well, but their eyes expanded to drink in what light there was from the stars glittering overhead. The skies had cleared and the temperatures dropped, but as with most physical conditions that was of little interest to the Po’oslena’ar; they could survive temperatures that would kill an unprotected human.

Snow was bad not so much for the cold or the way it slowed them but because it meant little to forage. Away from their bases the Po’oslena’ar generally depended upon forage for food. They were designed for pure efficiency and could move for days on the food that a human would need for one. Eventually this caught up with them and they would have to feed, but in the meantime they would keep going.

His oolt had not properly fed in two days and it would probably be another day before he let them rummage in their food bags. They had been given a few scraps of flesh from the human thresh and more lately from the battles over the mountains, but it was not enough to build them back up. With luck the coming battle would go to them and then there would be much thresh upon which to feed.

But until then they must wait.

“I hate waiting,” Artenayard said. The younger Kessentai shifted his tenar from side to side idly and flapped his crest. “We should be moving out to find it.”

“We agreed to obey the estanaar,” Tenalasan replied. He had been in enough fights against the humans to appreciate waiting in ambush rather than throwing himself on their defenses. He didn’t like it, but it was better than dying.

“We should be moving with them,” the Kessentai snarled, gesturing at the solid line of Po’oslena’ar moving up the road. “They are taking the way to the riches! An untouched land is just over the mountains!”

“And if the SheVa reaches Franklin the entire advance will be cut off. So we wait.”

“Human ways!”

“Ways that work,” the older Kessentai replied. It was Artenayard’s first battle and so far it had consisted of lining up to pass through the Gap and then walking through the night. He would learn soon enough that humans were no joke to fight.

“It’s another ambush group,” Pruitt said, adjusting the angle of his gun.

“Yep, they’re learning,” Mitchell mused. “But they forgot something that less control would have given them.”

“What?”

“Flank security.”

The ground was starting to rumble and Bazzett leaned into his rifle as the first flight of 40mm went overhead. Since it was near its maximum range the spread was wider than normal but in a way that was good; it spread though half the Posleen force, throwing them quickly into disarray. A disarray to which the hastily dug-in infantry began to add.

“Who needs a Barrett?” he whispered as he zoomed in his scope on one God King that was just beginning to move and stroked the trigger.

Tenalasan backed his tenar and gestured to the east as Artenayard’s head exploded in yellow blood and brains.

“To the east!” he yelled, waving at his oolt’os as he began bonding Artenayard’s. “Attack to the east!”

“Pretty,” Mitchell said as the first monitor came in view of the Posleen. The force was splitting its fire between the SheVa and the troops on its flank, which was just fine by Mitchell. But that wouldn’t last long.

“Major LeBlanc, tell your troops to withdraw to their vehicles. Now.”

“Fall back!”

Bazzett looked over at the platoon sergeant and shook his head. “We’re good!”

“Orders!” the sergeant called. He was only an E-5 but he was the senior remaining NCO in the platoon. And the hard-core fucker was serious.

“What the fuck?” the specialist called, slithering out of his hole. The trees were being stripped of their branches by the fire pouring into the wood but most of it was, fortunately, going high. He slung his rifle and did a leopard crawl to the rear as fast as he could, noting other gray shadows in the trees. The Brads had pulled right into the edge of the wood, pushing over the saplings at the edge; the L-T must have been serious about pulling out.

“Into the Brads!” Wolf was running down the line slapping at stragglers. “Do NOT look towards the Posleen!”

“Colonel, we’re mostly loaded,” LeBlanc called dubiously. “And the Posties are coming hell bent for leather.”

“Works,” the colonel said. “Button up and prepare to move. Pruitt, fire.”

“Demon-shit!” Tenalasan shouted as the blast from the giant tank’s fire flipped scores of oolt’os and Kessentai through the air. But that was the least of his problems. Because this time the penetrator dug itself into Windy Gap Hill and blew the top off.

Besides the human buildings, the hill had been surmounted by Posleen, oolts that were trying to get reestablished after the fire from the snipers and MetalStorm packs and the reinforcing units just cresting the hill. All of them disappeared with the hilltop which now was dished out in a rather nice reverse hemisphere.

The majority of the granite at its heart was pulped to dust but the outer sections came off in the form of fast-moving rock, from gravel to boulders the size of cars, all of which lifted into the air and began flying in every direction.

As the silver-cored avalanche blasted outwards, Tenalasan flapped his crest in momentary wonder at human ingenuity in the field of killing.

“Quebec Eight-Six, move forward to finish off the survivors then sweep south.”

“Next stop, Franklin,” Pruitt said, loading another penetrator.

Glennis twisted the controls on her TC’s viewer and highlighted a group of Posleen that were still trying to move north on 28. It was pretty evident that the aliens hadn’t seen the tanks as they nosed out of the woodline and she preferred to keep it that way.

“Target, Posleen company.”

The battalion had moved through the remnants of the Posleen force then turned to the south, screening the SheVa and probing for resistance. There were still scattered forces both on the hills and moving up the road. But so far they hadn’t hit anything that managed to return fire, much less do damage. For once the humans had the Posleen off balance and that was just the way she liked it.

The gunner slewed the combo guns onto the target and fired a burst, turning most of the oolt into dog-meat. A few got off rounds in their general direction but the tank was still outside their range of accurate fire so all of their fire flew high or wide. Another burst finished those off and the unit rolled out of the thin covering of scrub and on towards Franklin.

They were beginning to hit the fringe of the small city. Houses and buildings had been thickening as they approached and most of the open fields had been replaced with houses and light industrial buildings or facilities for the support of the local corps. There was a smattering of trees around the buildings but much of the area was still open fields or roads.

“Quebec Eight-Six, this is India Three-Niner.”

LeBlanc keyed her microphone and glanced up the hill where a scout team of Bradleys had taken position; a small suburb occupied most of the hill and she guessed from the map that it had a view of the town of Franklin itself. Which was why she’d sent the Brads up there.

“Go.”

“You probably want to come eyeball this, Major.”

She looked up at the hill and shrugged her shoulders. They were probably right.

LeBlanc slid off the front of the tank and walked up through the backyard of the house to where two of the Charlie Company troopers were hunkered by a picket fence. The house was apparently deserted; the back door was torn from its frame and tossed into the yard and a brief view of the interior showed the sort of mess the Posleen normally left in their first pass through an area. As she passed the back patio she trod on a teddy bear, still fairly fresh despite the rains. She looked down at what had caused her ankle to turn and then walked on; after ten years of battle the pathetic tale told by the doll was an old and worn one.

“Morning, ma’am,” the senior trooper, a specialist, said, handing her his thermal imaging scope. “Take a look at the town.”

“Horse-dicks,” she muttered after a glance through the scope. “Don’t these guys know they’re beat?” The town was swarming with Posleen and more seemed to be pouring in from the east and south. Furthermore, many of them were working on some sort of underground structure near the center of the town. It looked very much like they were “digging in.”

“Apparently not, ma’am,” the scout answered with a chuckle, taking the scope back. “What are we going to do this time?”

“My guess is blow up the town with the SheVa,” she said after a moment’s thought.

“What’s that thing they’re building, ma’am?” the junior trooper asked.

“At a guess it’s a command bunker of some sort,” LeBlanc answered. “No, I take it back,” she said, thinking like an S-2 instead of a battalion commander. “Most of the Posleen infrastructure is underground. I’d say that’s either a factory or a food processor. Maybe both.”

“Like they’re getting ready to move in?”

“Or they’re trying to establish a logistics point,” the major replied. “Whatever it is, it’s about to receive a ten-kiloton retirement present.”

Orostan looked over at the Kenellai that was running the resupply effort. “How is the work progressing?”

“The tunnels will be completed soon, oolt’ondai. After that perhaps twelve hours to complete the basic factory.”

“Too long,” he growled, looking around at the massed oolt’os and Kessentai. “We’ll be out of ammunition and thresh by then.”

“It can progress no faster, oolt’ondai. But I will see what I can do.”

“Oolt’ondai, the SheVa approaches.” The operations officer gestured to the north. “And the forces with it. The force at Windy Gap…”

“Is gone, I know,” the warleader growled. “Well, they cannot attack us the same way. Send two oolt’ondar out to engage the tracks around it and have the others spread out on this ridge; we will not allow it to reach its firing point.”

“As you command, oolt’ondai.”

The warleader looked to the north then keyed his communicator, waiting as it hunted for the distinct address of Tulo’stenaloor.

“Orostan, here,” he said when it pinged acceptance.

“Orostan, how goes there?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.

“Like the Sky Demons were driving the war,” the oolt’ondai said with a flap of his crest. “When I arrange forces to attack the SheVa from the side, it comes in on their flank. When I arrange them in front of it, it turns to the side. For something so large it is being infernally hard to pin down.”

“Will it reach Franklin?” the estanaar replied.

The warleader thought for a moment then rippled his skin in a sigh. “Perhaps, estanaar. Perhaps. It is… difficult to stop. No… I will stop it before it reaches Franklin. But I don’t know at what cost.”

“The cost is no matter,” Tulo’stenaloor said after a moment. “If you have to take it in a tenaral charge of the last of your forces, stop it. We will have the Gap back shortly. Then I can pour forces through. But you must stop it; we cannot take the Gap in the face of nuclear fire.”

“I shall, estanaar,” Orostan said. “I’ll stop it.”

“Do so,” Tulo’stenaloor replied. “And then, we will own this world. Good luck.”

“I will stop you,” Orostan growled. “By the bones of the Alld’nt I will stop you.”

“No can do,” Pruitt said, shaking his head.

“Why?” Mitchell asked, glancing at the map.

“The other shot, the hill was pretty steep; there was a real target. This one, the hill is a long, winding slope on our side. Not a steep one, either. I can’t put a round in unless I’ve got something like a bluff in the immediate area.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of Posleen,” Mitchell said, pointing at the map. “And they’re not just going to sit on their hands.”

“I know, sir,” the specialist replied. “But we don’t have a shot. If we were on the south side we would, but I don’t think you want to swing around to there, do you?”

“Not with the force structure in the area,” the colonel replied. “Suggestions?”

“Hmm,” Pruitt looked at his display and made some adjustments then did some measuring. “If we back up to our last FP…”

“Minimum distances of four thousand meters,” the colonel said with a glance at the map. “We can make it, barely. What about drift?”

“That… will be a problem,” the gunner admitted. “In general the winds aloft are from northwest to southeast. Who knows, we might have to fire twice!”

“We’ll be firing practically straight up; if the damned round comes back on us we won’t be firing ever again!”

“Quebec Eight-Six, pull your advanced units back. We’re going to have to back all the way up to damned near our starting point. Please detach a sub-unit to cover us.”

LeBlanc thought about the combination for a moment and shivered despite the heat pouring up from the interior of the tank.

“Am I to assume that your answer to this problem involves something that is danger close at four thousand meters.”

“Roger, over.”

“Even at our starting point, if we don’t cross the river we’ll be less than four thousand meters from the target, over.”

“Roger. Recommend we back up and hunker down.”

“This ain’t gonna be good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You know the problem with the SheVa gun?” Utori said. “No damned finesse.”

“What do you mean?” Bazzett replied, cutting open an MRE as the track lurched from side to side. If they were going to be stopped for a few minutes, might as well eat.

The battalion had rapidly backed up, retreating over ground they had captured at cost. Only a single Abrams had been left behind, hull down in a revetment, with all its electronics shut down and turned away from the blast. All of the troops had been pulled into their vehicles as well; if a Posleen force came through they were probably toast.

But it beat being out in the cold with a nuke going off over the next hill.

“Look at this thing. It’s got a choice of nuclear annihilation or nothing.” The Squad Automatic Weapon gunner had broken down his SAW and was brushing at the breech with a worn, green toothbrush.

“It’s got the MetalStorms,” Bazzett argued. Both of them were ignoring the fact that at any moment an antimatter round could land on their heads. Part of the reason for the four thousand meters minimum range of the SheVa area effect round was that it was notoriously inaccurate at short ranges. Because it was designed for a fifty-plus kilometer range, firing at short ranges meant firing practically straight up in the air. At that angle, it was practically a matter of luck where it would land.

“Sure, but they’re just forty millimeters.” Utori snapped his weapon back together and took a drink from his camelbak. “It needs some 105s with some small antimatter rounds. Like… I dunno a ten KT round, maybe. That would be enough to clear a hilltop. Not a fucking hundred KT, which requires clearing out the whole damned county.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t designed for direct assault like this.” Bazzett set his spoon down as the TC stuck his head into the crew compartment.

“The SheVa just fired.”

“Shit, what’s the time of flight?” Utori asked, grabbing his helmet and pulling on it as if he wanted to crawl up inside.

“Must be nearly a minute,” the TC answered, crawling back up into his chair. “Hang the fuck on,” he added, shutting down his radios and throwing all the breakers; the blast would have an unpleasant electromagnetic pulse that could damage the electronics of the track.

Bazzett raised the plastic and metal pouch to his mouth and squeezed out the last of the entree, beef and beans, then tossed the packet into the ammo can they used as a trash can. He washed it down with a swallow of water then put his fingers in his ears, bending over and opening his mouth. “This is gonna suck.”

“Damn,” Pruitt muttered, watching the shifting reticle of the estimated impact. The SheVa tracked the round on its upward flight and predicted its probable point of impact based on observed flight. “Not good.”

“Where’s it going?” Mitchell asked.

“Looks like it’s veering northeast,” the gunner replied. “If it doesn’t veer back it’ll land as close to LeBlanc’s unit as it does to the Posleen. The only good point is that I set it for proximity impact. So as long as it lands on the Franklin side of the valley, they should be in the blast-shadow.”

Mitchell just grunted; there was nothing anyone could do at this point.

Tulo’stenaloor looked at the report of a high ballistic fire and flapped his crest in agitation.

“Demons of sky and fire eat and defecate their souls,” he snarled. “Orostan!”

But the oolt’ondai had already seen the belch of fire skyward. It was far away but he knew that it could only mean one thing.

“I’m sorry, estanaar,” he said, without even looking at the communicator. “It’s up to you now.”

Then he turned his face to the sky and awaited the fire.

The 100-kiloton round was heavier than the penetrator. This was due to a carbon-uranium matrix that was designed to armor the potentially dangerous round against stray impacts. The armor, however, fell away after firing, and the round tracked upward and then over at apogee, after which the tracking system lost lock and the round became an unknown actor.

Fortunately for all the humans involved it caught one more blast of wind from the recently passed cold front and nosed a tad further south, angling in to land just south of the Franklin water tower. And at one hundred meters off the ground, just above the tank farm, it detonated.

The antimatter blast created a hemisphere of fire, the ground zero zone, in which everything but the most sturdy structure was destroyed. Directly at the center was a small patch, the toroid zone, in which many structures were, remarkably, virtually untouched.

Outward from ground zero a blast of plasma and debris from the detonation expanded in a circle, destroying everything in its path. It was this shock wave that did the majority of damage, sweeping over the Posleen gathered in the town center and, unfortunately, over the tank left at the top of the hill. The Abrams was rocked by the blast-wave and the terrific overpressure but all the seals, designed back in the 1970s for full-scale war against the long-defunct Soviet Union, held and the crew survived. They were shaken, but alive.

The blast spread outward, sweeping across the hilltop occupied by the city center and erasing the majority of the historic buildings that made up the previously idyllic town. As the circle of pressurized air increased in size it decreased in power until an equilibrium with the surrounding air was reached… and passed. Then the air rushed in to fill the vacuum at the center and a return wave collapsed inward destroying much of what had survived the outward wave. When the dual shock waves passed, the only thing that was recognizable on the hilltop was the basement and foundations of the courthouse and half of the gem-and-mineral museum.

Bazzett rocked to first one and then another blast-front, leaning back and forth in his crewman’s seat, then started dancing in his seat.

“ ‘If the Brad is a rockin’ then don’t come a knockin’…’ ” He looked over at Utori, who was just starting to look out from under his helmet, and shrugged. “I just noticed the track was rockin’ to the beat.” He lifted his AIW out of the rack and thumbed on the sight, going through an electronics check. “I’m gonna get me a tattoo. I always said, I’d never get a tattoo unless I was in a nuclear war. I think this counts. Even if it is our side that’s shootin’ at us.”

“Fuckin’ nuts, man,” the SAW gunner muttered as the Bradley rumbled to life.

“Most of the tracks are up,” the TC called. “We’re making a speed run from here on out. Hang the fuck on.”

“ ‘If the track is a rockin’ then don’t come a knockin’.’ ”

“Tango Eight-Nine this is Quebec Four-Six,” Glennis said. “I lost three tracks to the EMP; the shields on all the rest held. Also various and sundry electronics and shock damage.”

“You’re mobile, though, right?”

Glennis looked at the tanks and AFVs moving through the predawn darkness and shook her head. “I guess you could call it that, Tango.”

“Next stop firing point Omega, Quebec. Tango Eight-Nine out.”

“Right, the mission is to get the SheVa to where it can support the ACS. Not to kill every Posleen in the valley.” Glennis looked around at the devastated landscape, the smashed houses, tree trunks tossed hither and thither, the blackened ground, and shook her head. “Although…”

“Boss man,” McEvoy called over the platoon circuit. “Posleen lander emissions. Three sources, one heavy two light. System says two Lampreys and a C-Dec. Should we head back and attach anti-lander systems?”

Since the suits had been detailed to resupply the Marauders, Tommy had had them change out their heavy grav-guns for flechette cannons. If the shit hit the fan, it was much more likely that they would need to stop, or at least slow, an attack by the ground-pounder Posleen than that they would have to stop landers. It looked, to most of the battalion, as if the gamble had played out.

Tommy had been looking at the same indicators and now he grinned. “Nah, I’ll take care of it.”

The lieutenant left the puzzled suit to wonder what that meant and laid out two power packs as he prepared the item that he had kept under a blanket.

He turned as his sensors indicated a suit entering the hole and started to nod at the battalion commander. His head just sort of wallowed in the mush within the helmet and his vision swung wildly. But he corrected after a moment and saluted instead.

“So how, exactly, were you planning on taking out three landers, Lieutenant?” Mike said, returning the salute with a wave.

“With this, sir!” Tommy replied, removing the silvery cloth from the device in the hole. “Ta-da!”

“Hmmph,” O’Neal grunted, looking at the terawatt laser. The weapons had been common in the early days of the war but had been dropped out of service within the first couple of years. They were, however, remarkable anti-lander systems, at least against Lampreys and unsuspecting C-Decs. So it would probably work in this instance. “And why were you keeping it a secret?”

“I figured if nobody else knew about it, neither would the Posleen, sir,” Tommy said. “I hope that was all right.”

“Your AID knew,” Mike said thoughtfully.

“I asked it to modify the inventory it sent back,” the lieutenant replied, carefully. “If you didn’t get the word, then neither would the Posleen. Sorry about that, sir.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Mike waved. “Do you know why these were removed from service?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Tommy said. “It never made any sense to me.”

“Well, it won’t affect anything in this battle,” the battalion commander replied. “I’ll just head back to the battalion hole. Good luck, Lieutenant. Good shooting.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

Mike slithered into the hole that had been dug out for the battalion headquarters just as the first lander crested the ridge.

“Why isn’t he having his suits rearm?” Stewart snapped.

“Oh, he’s got a better idea,” Mike said with a chuckle. “I had a terawatt laser in the cache.”

“And he’s going to use it?” the battalion S-2 said.

“Looks like it. Should be fun to watch. Preferably from a safe distance.”

“I think they’re serious this time,”

SheVa Nine crawled forward slowly over the ruins of downtown Franklin searching for a firing point.

The hill that had once held downtown Franklin, and all the rolling hills in every direction as far as the eye could see, was covered with detritus of the nuclear strike. There was rubble from the houses as well as lighter debris scattered across the roads, and in the neighborhoods around the city there were trees fallen across the roads and fires smoldering from the intense heat of the fireball. There was a fan of tracks out in front of them but for once since its wounding the SheVa could make nearly as good time as the Abrams and Bradleys; what they had to dodge, it could crush underfoot.

Somewhere around Franklin they should reach a point in range of the Gap. The problem was twofold: angularity — they had to be able to fire into the Gap — and height — the Gap was slightly higher than Franklin and since they had to use air-bursts they needed a tad more range than a ground burst would require. The first and best chance was the hill that Franklin had once occupied, even though it would make them a better target. Failing that, they would keep moving forward until they had a good and secure firing point.

Pruitt was watching the ballistic targeting reticle slowly creep up the Rabun Valley, sometimes getting closer to the Gap, sometimes farther away, when the SheVa rocked in the shock wave from a heavy plasma gun.

“Jesus!” the gunner yelled, slewing the turret as he kicked on his long-range radar and lidar.

“Colonel! We’ve got four, no six C-Decs cresting the ridges! And they’re spread out.”

“Crap,” Mitchell muttered, flipping up the terrain map. The SheVa had taken on more than six ships during the retreat, occasionally at the same time. But in that case they had had terrain to hide behind and “shoot and scoot.” Unfortunately, the Franklin Valley was relatively open, at least for something on the scale of the SheVa: rolling hills with the occasional higher stony prominence. It offered some obscurement to the ground-mounted Posleen but it was as open as a putting green when taking on ships.

The sole and only chance they had was that Posleen gunnery was not all that great; the ship guns had to be manually aimed at ground targets like the SheVa and it had been apparent on the retreat that the concept of “training” was foreign to the invaders. So they didn’t get really accurate until they were inside the firing range of the SheVa. But taking on six with nowhere to hide, especially with only four rounds of anti-lander left and a max speed of fifteen miles per hour, wasn’t going to be particularly survivable.

“Better call the ACS and tell ’em we’re gonna be a little late.”

Tommy crouched behind the laser and targeted the first C-Dec cresting the ridge. This was going to be tight.

The holographic sight showed interior and exterior targets as well as the antimatter containment system. Tommy deliberately avoided that, firing the beam along a vector to penetrate on a weak point and enter the battlecruiser’s engine room.

The weapon spat a beam of coherent purple light just as the C-Dec opened fire with the first weapon that bore, an anti-ship plasma weapon. The ship’s fire missed the battalion, striking north of it on the graded roadbed laid down by the Posleen and digging out a crater the size of a house.

The weapon was a poorly controlled nuclear reaction that was captured between massive electromagnetic fields and converted to pure photons. The beam itself was rated in gigajoules per second and cut through the heavy armor of the Posleen ship like tissue paper. It lanced through interior bulkheads and into the engineering compartment, destroying the antigravity system and removing power to most of the external weaponry. Denied its antigravity support, the cruiser lurched and dropped through the air.

“Oh, crap,” Duncan snorted, looking up. He had seen the cruiser drifting towards his position but the weapons of the three on the ridgeline would have been love-taps to the ship so he had just hunkered down and hoped it would find another target. But when the terawatt laser hit it in the side, it was just about directly over their position.

The cruiser staggered and then started to drop, fast, and he knew there was nothing he could do.

The ship fell straight down at thirty two feet per second per second and impacted on the top of the ridgeline, only fifteen meters from his position and, fortunately, on the Posleen side of the ridge. Then it started to roll.

The impact of the multiton ship had flipped all three suits into the air and they fell back with a couple of bounces. But Duncan was up on the ridge again almost immediately. This he wanted to see.

The dodecahedral ship was not the best item at rolling, but the slope was steep and it didn’t really have much of a choice. Still randomly firing, with occasional blasts of fire and plasma jutting out of hatches and along weapons positions, the gigantic ship rolled down the hill, over the Posleen scrambling to find a purchase on the side and onto the roadbed below, partially blocking it.

“Damn, couldn’t have planned that one better myself,” Duncan muttered, looking over at the other two ships. They were Lampreys, far smaller and less dangerous than the C-Dec. But dangerous nonetheless. “Now if that damned laser will just hold together.”

Tommy swung the laser onto the leftmost Lamprey, which was a tad higher and had a better shot at the battalion. It had already opened fire with one of the heavy lasers on one of its five facets and the line of fire was wiggling randomly across the ground but in the general direction of the battalion command post.

In this case Sunday didn’t target quite so carefully; the ship was farther away and if the antimatter containment system detonated it wouldn’t disturb things quite as much.

The purple laser flashed out again, digging into the side of the ship in a flash of silver fire and penetrating deep into its vitals. The shot missed the containment system but cut the feeds from it to the engine. Once again the ship stopped and dropped like a stone. Some of the Posleen in both ships would be alive but they were relatively unimportant compared to stopping the ships themselves.

He quickly rotated the weapon onto the third ship but in this case he was just a tad too late.

“Captain Slight!” Mike called, cursing. “Behind you!”

Karen Slight had survived innumerable battles and skirmishes in the five years since she had taken over as the Bravo Company commander. Sometimes she felt like a fugitive from the law of averages. But if so, they had just caught up.

She flipped her vision to the rear and leapt to her feet as she saw the line of flashes from a heavy HVM launcher closing on her position, but it was just a fraction of a moment too late. Before she, or First Sergeant Bogdanovich, could do more than stand up the weapons had hit their hole. And when it walked on there was nothing to be found but scattered armor.

“Shit,” Tommy muttered, as he targeted the third ship. This ship had learned from its predecessors and tried to jink aside, spreading the fire. The terawatt laser was not, however, like the lighter grav-guns. They had only a fraction of the power available to the laser. It scythed into the third ship, clawing through crew quarters and the command bridge. For that matter, the ship pilot had not had significant training in flight at such low levels. The Posleen ships, by and large, managed their operations on automatic, so manual flight was something for which very few Posleen were trained or prepared. And it was evident in this case as the ship, accelerating sideways to avoid the laser, slammed into Black Rock Mountain and bounced backwards, hard, into the very laser it was trying to avoid.

In this case it was unclear if it was the laser fire or the sudden impact, but the third ship stopped, droppped and rolled down the hill and impacted with the C-Dec, where the two of them almost entirely blocked the narrow pass.

Tommy watched the ship roll down the hill then extended the tripod on the laser to jut over the top of the fighting position to where it had a clear line of sight on the approaching Posleen. Down below they must be having a tough time forcing their way past the roadblock created by the two fallen ships but there was still a solid wall of them attacking the front ranks. And with the death of their first sergeant and company commander, Bravo company had started to slacken its fire, letting the Posleen drive forward against that side.

Tommy had a fix for that, however, and he opened fire at the approaching centaurs with a snarl of anger.

“Good job, Lieutenant,” Mike said with an unheard sigh of relief. “But you might want to cease fire, now.”

“With all due respect, sir, Bravo needs the support,” Tommy replied, pouring laser fire into the line of Posleen. Already the beams of purple light, designed to destroy ships, had sliced deep into the Posleen ranks, cutting through six or seven of the centaurs at a time as he swung it from side to side.

“Yeah, but it has a little problem,” Mike said. “Let me put it this way…”

The “little problem” with the terawatt laser had been discovered within a year of its actual fielding in combat. The weapon was, as previously noted, a poorly contained nuclear explosion. Anti-hydrogen was injected, in carefully measured doses, into a lasing chamber filled with argon gas. The anti-hydrogen, opposite of real matter, impacted with argon and immediately converted itself and some of the argon into pure energy.

This energy release was captured by other argon atoms and when they released the energy it was as photons of light. These photons were then captured and held until a peak pressure was reached when they were released.

All of this happened in a bare nanosecond, managed by vibrating magnetic fields that drew their power from the same reaction.

The same laser, to an extent, was used shipboard and in space fighters. In both cases it was a regarded with awe and respect, for the barely chained sun at its heart was as much a danger to the ship as to the enemy. And so, in the case of the ships and the fighters, massive secondary fields ensured that the slightest slip on the part of the primary fields meant that the system simply got out of alignment for a moment. Perhaps the weapon would “hiccup.” But that was all.

On the ground-mount version, however, these secondary systems were unavailable. And thus, when in a brief moment of chaos the power levels in the lasing cavity peaked over the maximum rated, or posssible, containment levels of the magnetic fields, the highly excited argon, and a bit of still unconverted anti-hydrogen, escaped the confinement. And proceeded to destroy the weapon. Letting all the rest of the highly excited argon out in a manner that was quite catastrophic.

One second Tommy was firing the laser and the next moment he was flying through the air. Well, not “flying” so much as hurtling uncontrollably. Once again his sensors were overwelmed but what he managed to read in the maelstrom and under the G forces that were slipping through the compensators indicated that the external temperature, while dropping rapidly, was pretty similar to that found in the photosphere of a star.

There was one short, sharp shock and then he was no longer hurtling. As far as he could tell he was sliding. Probably down a mountain.

He noted that he wasn’t thinking very well just about the time he passed out.

Mike looked up from the battalion command hole at the smoking atmosphere and sighed.

“I told him he’d better quit while he was ahead,” he said. The air was still filled with incredibly hot gasses and dust but the systems were already starting to stabilize and it was clear they hadn’t lost anyone to the detonation. In fact, it looked like the laser, which had blown up as usual, had actually cleared the Posleen off their position. Again.

“Nukes,” he muttered. “We should have brought nukes.”

“Oh,” Stewart said, then laughed. “Yeah. Why hadn’t we thought of that before?”

“I dunno, maybe because they were a no-no?” O’Neal muttered. “But some big damned bombs? Why have to ask other people to scratch our back?”

“Or maybe we should just have brought lasers.” Stewart laughed. “Why didn’t you tell him about the secondary ‘issues,’ as the manufacturer puts it?”

“Oh, well, experience is the best teacher,” O’Neal answered. “And, hell, nobody else was going to fire the damned thing.” He glanced at his telltales and gave an unseen half shrug. “He’s alive. Out like a light but alive. And the ships are gone and so are the Posleen. Looks like he did a pretty good job to me.”

“Same here,” Stewart said, chuckling. Then he sobered. “We still lost Slight. Dammit.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I could give the company to Sunday, as soon as he regains consciousness, but I think I’ll just turn it over to one of the platoon sergeants. They’re down to about a platoon and a half anyway.”

Stewart stood up and looked around in the clearing dust. “Time to go find out how they’re doing.”

“Yeah, and I’ll call Duncan back down. Not much more to do up there.”

O’Neal looked at the battlefield schematic. “I don’t know that there’s much more to do. Period.”

“Well,” Stewart said. “I suppose we could charge.”