“I think it’s all of ’em this time,” Blas said, gazing as far to the left and right as she could see under the guttering flares—and then the Dom artillery opened fire. Either they hadn’t been using all their guns before, or they’d brought up more, because it seemed like the entire distant tree line erupted in flaring strobes of yellow-red light. Cascades of sparks arced out, quickly followed by the choking smoke, and roundshot began impacting the earthworks, causing the very earth to shake. The Dom artillery still couldn’t do much damage or inflict many casualties, but the clouds of earth and shattered wood from the entanglements were making things very hot.
More rockets whooshed into the sky, and there was Colonel Blair, trotting his horse along behind the line, yelling for the protected guns to commence firing at the advancing infantry. “Ignore their damn guns. They can’t hurt us!” he cried. “Captain Blas!” he said, seeing her there. “Have your riflemen hold fire until the enemy is in musket range! They think you’re Guayakans, remember. Mustn’t frighten them away!”
Blas looked at the advancing Doms, then back at Blair. “I don’t think that much matters now, sur, an’ they were close to musket range when we saw ’em!”
“Nevertheless. At least keep your rate of fire down a bit until they’re committed. Don’t want them to veer off, into the First of the Tenth for example. When they’re in musket range, you may go to rapid fire.”
Blas felt her ears lie flat. “I’m tellin’ you, Col-nol, they’re daamn near in musket range now, so why don’t you come up here and see for yourself if they’re ‘committed’! Have you even looked? It’s a gener-aal advance! Their ranks look deeper in front of us, sure, but there’s nowhere for ’em to bloody veer to! And if we don’t start killin’ ’em right daamn now, as fast as we can, they gonna ‘veer’ the hell all over us!”
To her surprise, Blair actually urged his horse to claw its way up the embankment onto the fighting step behind her. More flares popped just as he arrived at the top, lighting the grim expression on his face. “General Shinya was right,” he murmured. “Quite right, Captain,” he said louder. “My apologies. You may certainly commence firing at once.”
Blas nodded. “Battaalion!” she roared. “Load!”
The roughly four hundred ’Cat Marines under her command raised their weapons, pulled their hammers to half cock, flipped the hinged breech blocks up, and inserted fat cartridges into the chambers. The failing flares glinted dully on the brass. Spook stood beside Blas with his cherished BAR and handed her an Allin-Silva rifle and cartridge box. She already had a cutlass and pistol on her belt. She slung the box, taking one of the new cartridges—new to the Allied troops in the West at least—and looked at it. Quite ingenious, she thought. That monstrous Dennis Silva has never been as silly as he pretends, and this conversion was his idea. The weapon is identical in appearance and function to those we’ve used so long, but now they can be loaded from behind and, being rifled, are much more accurate. The only thing people had to get used to was how easy they were to load. She inserted the cartridge, latching the breechblock closed behind it.
The colonial “frontier” troops checked the priming on their massive flintlock rifles, already loaded, and leveled them. “Runner,” she called aside, with a quick glance at Blair. “Hurry over to the right and get our own flag back from the Eighth Maa-ni-laa, if you please.” A satisfied cheer followed that, and Blair didn’t object. She turned back to the front. “Take aim!” Four hundred rifles went to shoulders and pointed toward the enemy. The Imperial Battalion to her left with their smoothbores would have to wait a little longer, but they were ready. On her right, the 8th Maa-ni-la might as well have been following her commands, so quickly did Captain Finny repeat them. Cannon started firing, their sputtering shells arcing out to explode among the enemy ranks, now little more than three hundred yards away, and mortars emplaced on the ramparts of the inner wall started thumping, sending bombs rising over their heads. She waited an instant longer for the smoke from the guns around her to clear, but it just hung there in the still, humid air. It didn’t matter. The Doms were visible even through the smoke, and she opened her mouth. “Fire!”
It wasn’t a perfect volley, but considering it was still dark and most who fired it had been asleep shortly before, she thought it was fine—particularly considering the effect. The front rank in front of hers and Finny’s battalions staggered amid the delayed, resounding, stuttering blop! of heavy lead bullets slamming into men. Blas figured that maybe a quarter of the volley hit somebody, but, as usual, more were struck by slugs passing through men in front of them, or pieces of things the bullets shattered such as equipment or even bone. A roundshot hit nearby, throwing up a geyser of dirt and broken rocks. “Carry on, Captain Blas,” Blair said, coaxing his frightened horse back down the slope.
“You heard the col-nol, First Sergeant,” Blas said. “Pass the word to all company commanders: commence independent fire.”
“Ay, ay.”
Blas was a big believer in volleys, under certain circumstances, but except for the initial impact they produced, she preferred to let her Marines pick their targets and fire when they were ready instead of when someone else told them to. They got a lot more hits that way. And her Marines were good, certainly among the best marksmen in the Alliance even before they got the newer weapons. Almost immediately, the clatter of fire resumed from her position and became a continuous roar. More rockets burst in the sky, illuminating the enemy, and the battle became a slaughter—but the Doms kept coming, and it grew increasingly clear that she’d been right: They were bringing everything they had this time, and they wouldn’t stop. No matter how many men her people killed, heaping the ground behind the advancing ranks with bodies, the Doms would hit her line—probably the entire sector at once, she thought—with a remorseless, senseless abandon reminiscent of the Grik. Her Marines were slaughtering them, but she began to grow concerned. There were just so many! And the Dom guns didn’t stop even when their shot started falling among their own men. It was madness—but it might just work. She began calculating how many Doms they could kill before they reached the top of the wall.
When an approximate answer formed in her mind, she grimly joined the firing line and began the mechanical process of firing, loading, and firing again as quickly as she could, the rifle slamming her shoulder and her bullets trailing vapor in the humid air before knocking another Dom to his knees or to the ground.
“Fix bayonets,” she called. “Don’t stop firing all at once, but fix bayonets! They’ll charge us soon, and you won’t have a chance.” At one hundred tails, about where the thickest entanglements began, the Doms stopped to dress their lines even as men tumbled to the ground, dropped their weapons, and fell in grotesque heaps, screaming and clutching themselves.
“Here it comes!” someone shouted. The commands they heard were clear.
“Apunten! Fuego!”
Several thousand musket balls struck near the crest of the berm, sending dozens of ’Cats who hadn’t ducked in time flailing backward down the slope. A pair of guns near Blas sprayed the massed enemy with canister and whole companies went down, but those in the second rank leveled their muskets and fired again, hitting more of her Marines. “Keep your stupid heads down, for the sake of the Heavens!” she roared. More canister whirred through the air, but so did the balls of the third Dom rank. That volley didn’t catch as many of her people, but when she glanced over the crest, she saw two things. First, a gray-yellow light was staining the sky, silhouetting the great mountains to the east. Second, the enemy was now advancing between volleys, getting closer! They’re learning, she thought grimly. Before, they would’ve just stood and exchanged the unequal fire until they couldn’t take it anymore, then fixed their bayonets and charged from where they were. For an instant, she contemplated the inevitable casualties to come but realized there’d be far more if the Doms reached the top of the wall. Nothing for it.
“Let ’em have it!” she roared. The staccato
crackle immediately resumed, and continued even when the whirlwind of the fourth volley engulfed them. More of her Marines fell back, most struck in the head, and loose helmets rolled and clattered down the slope. The big rifles of the colonials, meant for giant game on the northern continent, boomed intermittently. Cannon, mostly six- and twelve-pounders, but mixed with a few Imperial eights and who-knew-what-size Dom guns captured at Guayak, fired all along the line. Blas suddenly realized the scope of this fight was beyond anything she’d ever seen, in firepower if not numbers. The noise was tremendous, and the thick smoke made her body try to reject the short, rapid breaths she took. Coughing, she pushed another shell in her rifle and cocked the hammer. She couldn’t see! The sun was still far from cresting the mountains to the east, but the brightening day on the smoke and fog actually made visibility worse. She searched the smoke, found a yellow-coated shape, and squeezed the trigger. Even more white smoke jetted from her rifle, and she had no idea whether she hit her target or not. She didn’t know how long she fought like that, loading and shooting at blurry shapes, but it felt like moments and hours at the same time. It couldn’t have been the latter even though it was somewhat brighter when, through the maelstrom of roaring fire, drifting dust, grit, and flying lead, she heard a muffled command. The shout was picked up by other throats, indistinguishable in the streaming, dirty white haze.
“Armen la bayoneta!”
“Keep firing!” she screamed, her voice now rough.
“Calen bayoneta!”
A high-pitched, desperate roar followed that command, and the massed, fuzzy ranks surged forward.
“Keep it up! Keep firing! Wait for it… .”
The firing around her intensified, the big colonial rifles still booming, but soon those men would draw pistols for the up-close work to come, then eventually the long, two-handed “hunting swords” they carried. The first Dom troops to squirm through the entanglements appeared at the bottom of the works about thirty feet below. They died in a hail of bullets, but more quickly replaced them. The barbed wire stretched between the planted stakes had grown choked with dead over the last few days and lost much of its effectiveness despite attempts to clear it. A bigger mass of Doms lapped below, clawing at the slope, pushing men ahead of them. Blas could see their faces now and though the meaning of human face moving was still somewhat mysterious to her, she clearly recognized the desperate terror she saw, but there was also a kind of frenzied determination as well.
The yelling had all but stopped on both sides. Her Marines were too busy loading and shooting, and the Doms’ cries had been replaced by gasping, grunting, and short, sharp calls she didn’t understand. She saw they were getting closer, though, heaving one another up the berm, climbing bodies, a wall of glistening plug bayonets bristling slowly but remorselessly nearer. Dozens of times, she’d trotted up and down that very slope herself, taking only seconds to do it. But only now did she realize what a dreadful, unattainable height it must seem to those men now scrabbling upward under such a murderous fire.
Blas’s Marines weren’t the only ones doing murder, though. More enemy ranks had moved up to replace those that charged, and were still firing, killing Blas’s Marines as they were forced to expose themselves to shoot downward. Cannon still sprayed them with clouds of canister, but there were just so many! The flag ruse was unnecessary now, but the Doms had clearly assembled a heavier force to assail the Guayakans. Maybe too heavy even for her. She considered sending to Blair for reserves; the Doms climbing the berm would reach its top in moments. But she decided Blair had to know what was going on and doubtless saw the same thing all along his line. He’d trust her to stem the tide with what she had, and she would try.
“Now! Gree-nades!” she roared, taking one of the lumpy hand bombs from her cartridge box strap. They didn’t have many grenades in the East yet, but the few crates they’d received had been distributed along the line. Now her Marines pulled pins and tossed or rolled the things down the slope as fast as they could. She threw hers a little farther, hoping to catch an officer she’d glimpsed waving his sword in the press. With a stuttering whump, the grenades went off, showering them with more dust, rocks, and a fine red mist. Momentarily, there was a kind of stunned silence below her position, then a mounting, horrifying roar that seemed to combine fury, anguish and terror in equal parts. That was when she knew she couldn’t break this attack with bombs and firepower alone. The men coming for her were already dead. They’d die attacking her, or die much more horribly later if they failed. Victory was their only hope. More grenades rolled down among them, throwing bodies and clouds of dirt in the air, but the greater mass of Doms still surged upward. The first to reach the top were met with a withering fire; they tumbled back, screaming, but their bodies only widened the shifting, rolling platform for others. Their footing was unsure, but they had the numbers, and more and more reached the crest.
“Shields!” she coughed, hoping she was heard, but other voices carried the command.
“Up an’ at ’em!” sergeants bellowed. “In their faces! Meet ’em at the top!”
Shields, fearful weapons themselves, slammed against the unsteady men, throwing them back. Those that stood were shot or bayonetted by ’Cats behind those banging their shields forward. The distant ranks of Doms stopped firing, already hitting too many of their own with their inaccurate weapons, so most of what little shooting remained came from Blas’s Marines—and the cannon in their protected embrasures.
Blas fired past a shield, its holder crouching low behind it, grunting with the effort to stem the tide of men. Muskets pounded or slammed down on it, trying to knock it away, and Blas caught glimpses of desperate faces, mouths open in silent or unheard roars. Some sprayed spittle as they gasped; others managed short, defiant cries she couldn’t understand. She shot as many of those faces as she could, and her ammunition was dwindling fast, but most of her attention was devoted to stabbing with the long, triangular bayonet on the end of her rifle. She stabbed at eyes, throats, arms, anything that appeared before her. She didn’t always connect, but when she did, she drove in hard and twisted savagely before pulling her weapon back.
A huge man, swinging a pair of muskets by their barrels, flailed at the tiring ’Cat in front of her. He absorbed the blows on his shield with loud grunts of pain as the muskets shattered, but a Marine beside Blas drove his bayonet into the man’s upraised armpit. He shrieked and tried to knock the shield ’Cat over with his dying bulk, but already sliding backward, he merely grabbed the shield and took it with him. For an instant, the brave ’Cat had no defense, and a pair of the wicked, swordlike Dom bayonets found him before he could scrabble back. Blas stabbed at his killers, and the shields closed up over his corpse. A pair of colonials flanked her now, laying into the Doms with their long swords, like axes, and slinging blood in all directions. They didn’t have the reach of bayonets, but at such close quarters, they could hack the enemy with flesh-cleaving, bone-smashing strokes. She wondered briefly why they’d chosen to fight at her side; colonials could be cliquish. But ever since Saint Francis, they’d shown a fondness for Lemurians in general, calling them “kitties,” to mixed annoyance and amusement, and she was grateful for them.
The fighting raged like that for at least an hour, maybe more. It was impossible to tell. And the bayonet work was the most prolonged and grueling Blas had ever endured. The new rifles made a huge difference since they could be loaded much more quickly and she doubted she’d have held if not for them, but her Marines were exhausted, the grenades were gone, and their ammunition was spent when the pressure on the faltering shield wall suddenly just… ended. Her hearing was destroyed, but she did perceive the sound of trumpets braying beyond the second massed ranks of Doms that had never advanced. Those opened fire again as their comrades melted back, scurrying over the heaped bodies and through the corpse-choked entanglements.
“Back!” Blas shouted, not recognizing her own voice. “Get down, back behind the wall!” She needn’t have exerted
her voice. Her Marines were already dropping down to the firing steps.
“Thanks, guys,” she managed to the two blood-smeared colonials.
“Our pleasure!” One of them grinned. “An’ a rare fightin’ kitty, ye are!”
She contemplated a retort, but then just grinned back. The small cats that had spread across the Empire of the New Britain Isles, arrivals with the same ancient “passage” that brought its people to this world, did look a little like Mi-Anakka, and she wasn’t offended by the diminutive, considering the present source.
“It was the shields,” First Sergeant Spook declared as he joined her, handing her his water bottle again. She drank greedily. He was just as bloody as the two men, and his beloved BAR hung from his shoulder with an empty magazine well. She suddenly realized she’d never even heard him fire, but apparently he’d shot everything he had. He tugged on his sling, noticing her gaze. “I’m not completely dry,” he said, blinking irony. “Savin’ a couple maag-a-zeens back for if it gets really bad.”
Blas barked a laugh, and Spook peered carefully over the wall, watching the retreating Doms near the next ranks, still firing over their heads. It was scant protection. Mortar bombs and canister still clawed at the enemy, and Blas didn’t know how they could just stand there and take it. The smoke and lingering fog beyond made the world invisible past the ongoing slaughter.
Spook’s tail flicked annoyance. “I was hopin’ those others’d kill the ones that ran, but I guess the Doms ain’t Griks after all.”
“No,” Blas managed, handing the bottle back. Her throat was better, and she also felt a growing sense of triumph. Not that they’d won; she didn’t really believe that, and suspected the fight was far from over. Just that she was still alive. “And they didn’t just quit. They were called back. But why?”
“They were gettin’ wasted.” Spook shrugged. “We’d have killed ever’ daamn one.” Blas wasn’t so sure, but she said nothing. The sun had risen above the distant mountains, and she could see it up there, amid bright blue gaps in the streaming white haze. It would be a clear day once the last of the fog burned away. But the smoke remained dense down low, still being generated as fighting raged on at other points along the wall. She expected the Doms to come back, but she’d enjoy the respite no matter how brief.
Straits of Hell: Destroyermen Page 36
