by John Ringo
"Stewart," the officer snarled. "One more word out of you and I'll have you court-martialed!"
"He's right, Nightingale," snapped Rogers as he stepped into line with his platoon and opened fire at the Posleen. The force was actually moving into the Executive Building, using the mass of the structure as cover and concealment. And the fire coming back was heavy. But they could bypass this resistance and move to their positions with minimal casualties. If the intel-weenie bitch could ever get off the stick. Giving vent to his frustration he sent a code to the platoon to open fire with grenades.
The small antimatter grenades sailed out in a volley, the spheres smashing through windows and bouncing off of walls before detonating. The arc-light bright flashes tore off the front of the building without noticeably impeding the Posleen fire. Whoever the God King in charge was, he was starting to learn human tactics.
"Cease fire with grenades!" shrilled Nightingale, horrified by the damage done to the building. It was on the grounds of the White House for God's sake. The consequences were going to be catastrophic.
"Nightingale," came O'Neal's voice, snapping across the company general circuit. "You are relieved. Move immediately to the area of the cargo canisters and remain there until further ordered. Lieutenant Rogers, you are in tactical command. Move immediately down G Street to Nineteenth. Take your positions along Constitution. You have three minutes to effect this maneuver. If you hit resistance punch through. Kick their ass, don't piss on them!" he finished in unconscious mimicry of his most junior squad leader.
"Yes, sir!" said the new acting commander. "Bravo Company! Follow me!" He locked his grav-gun and mortars on the building sheltering the entrenched Posleen and began a cascade of fire as he trotted off. By the time he reached the end of Lafayette Square he was at a full loping run, accelerating past forty miles per hour.
* * *
Stewart was right behind him with Lieutenant Fallon at his side and the rest of the company charging behind them. The hurricane of destruction from the company chewed away the north end of the Gothic structure, shattering the concrete and stone around the Posleen and covering them with cascading debris. Stewart realized halfway down the street that making the requisite turn was going to be nearly impossible. If they turned to the left it would take them towards the fire.
They had the Posleen suppressed at the moment, but when they turned the fire would break up, permitting the aliens to pick the suits off at the corner. However, if they turned right it would put the Posleen behind them. That was no good either since it would give the enemy a clear shot at the company for several blocks.
However, as they reached the end of Lafayette Square and faced the need to decelerate, he realized that Rogers had no interest in turning.
Accelerating past forty miles per hour, the combat suit of the acting company commander smashed into a building at the end of the street without slowing. The concrete and stone wall shattered at the impact of the thousand-pound suit, leaving a vaguely human-shaped hole as the officer disappeared into the depths to the echoed sound of destruction.
Laughing like madmen Stewart and Lieutenant Fallon lowered their heads and prepared to enlarge the hole.
CHAPTER 73
Washington, DC, United States of America, Sol III
1121 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad
Mike had one eye on the repeater from Stewart's suit as the battalion reached the Mound and he laughed as well. The two forces arrayed against one another were shaping up. The Posleen had the advantage of numbers but, since they had to pulse the forces across the Arlington Bridge, it would be difficult for them to gather enough forces to dislodge the defenders. If, that was, the humans killed them fast enough.
The humans were at an apparent disadvantage. Most of the units were barely recovered from a rout. There was no central command. And there was no vital rationale to defend this spot. The location was not clearly critical terrain.
But Mike could see that few agreed with that analysis. As he passed the line of figures hunkered down on the mound and firing steadily he could see others picking up weapons from the dead and thickening the line. The mortar tracks were firing their guns steadily and adding the weight of their .50-caliber fire to the mix. Snipers were interspersed with regular infantry, and officers and NCOs were moving among the troops cajoling, correcting or ensuring that everyone had enough ammo. The fact that they had barely slowed the Posleen advance was apparently lost on the soldiers on the mound. They were done running.
The Posleen, on the other hand, were advancing. The lead companies were already past the Reflecting Pool and nearly to Seventeenth Street. Mike was surprised that there were no saucers in the mix, but he quickly surmised by their regular order that the God Kings must have dismounted to make themselves less of a target. The force was not, however, solid. There was a large force advancing on their position, but just as many or more were still milling around in the area of the Memorial. If they stopped this force butt-cold they could deal with the others at leisure. If.
This was where having Bravo in place would have helped tremendously. Not only could Bravo have taken the force with enfilading fire, but the plan called for the battalion to wait for Bravo so that the shock of their first strike would turn the Posleen towards the Monument and into the killing field he intended to make of the monument area.
The mound was now within effective range of the Posleen weapons and the forces on the mound were starting to take serious casualties from the fire of the approaching wave.
* * *
"Forward!" shouted Kenallai. "If we take that monument we break their backs!" He did not know what the obelisk was that had drawn the threshkreen to it. Perhaps it was a power generator or some other important structure. Whatever it was, it was obviously vital and he intended to capture it.
He had the pleasure of seeing the thresh begin to fall, some to the plasma cannons in the host around him, or thrown up and away by strikes from railguns. Still others were hit square on by the massed HVM fire of the force around him. They were being whittled away and in a few more moments the host would be upon them. And then they would feed.
* * *
Duncan took a suck on his suit rations and grimaced. The Old Man seemed to love fried rice, but it wasn't his favorite. He punched in the last few fire commands and looked around for a good spot to sit. There was a badly beat-up Suburban sitting forlorn on the torn lawn of the Mall. He walked over and sat on the tail as he monitored his readouts. It looked like the ball was about to begin. The fuckup with Bravo had cost them a few minutes and the poor bastards on the mound a few casualties. But no plan worked perfectly. As it was, this one was close. He compared the Posleen positions to his readouts and smiled. They were not going to like what happened next. But he was gonna love every fucking minute of it.
* * *
Mike checked the feed from his rifle and smiled. The Posleen were making headway against the fire; there weren't really enough guns to stop them. The fire, however, was having another, more salient, effect.
It would be useful if the whole host became focused on the Monument. Not vital, but useful. And it had required taking some casualties to let the Posleen live long enough to draw attention away from the north. Now if Bravo would just get in position they could fuck them all, not just the few.
* * *
Stewart slid into position with a sigh. The Pharmaceutical Institute building on the corner of Twenty-Third and Constitution had a wonderful view of the Potomac and the Memorial, even on the ground floor. Well, normally. Now it had a wonderful view of more Posleen than he had ever wanted to see in his life. The position was horribly exposed and if the captain's plan screwed up in even the smallest detail it would be a death trap. But it was also the best possible place to kill Posleen. And he found that he was looking forward to that.
His squad had slipped in the back way and was now preparing to dig in. There had been a few scattered normals on the ground floor, but without their God Kings normals were cold meat and had be
en dispensed with quietly. The suits were in place with their deception holograms on, waiting for orders to trigger their cratering charges.
* * *
Mike glanced at his readouts and waved at the rejuv colonel who seemed to be in charge of the mound defenses. The officer had not even asked why they were just sitting there, out of sight, while his soldiers were taking all the casualties. Which meant he knew why, more or less. At the gesture he started shouting to the riflemen along the slope to retreat. He had to pull some back by main strength.
Mike smiled and punched in a few last-minute commands. The moment had to be timed perfectly, not because it would effect the outcome of the battle, but because it meant the difference between winning and winning with style.
"Duncan," he whispered. "Now." And stood up.
* * *
"The thresh flee!" Kenallai shouted in glee. He waved to the force. "Forward! Take the hill! The Host shall be invincible!" He did not believe it, however. He knew full well the fact that the Host was doomed. But the more damage he could do to the thresh that had taken his eson'antai the better.
The first of the host were at the base of the hill when the sky rang out with thunder.
* * *
Over the crest of the mound came a creature from nightmare. The beast was a dragon of a hundred heads, every swiveling head spitting silver fire. It was preceded by a horrible caterwauling and the thunder of drums as the silver lightning of its breath tore the host apart.
The Posleen of the host were shocked by the appearance of the fell beast but they held their ground. There were tens of thousands of their fellows behind them and their massed might was sure to bring it down. The breath flying down from the height was opening huge rents in their wave but they drove forward against the fire, clawing to engage the beast talon to talon.
* * *
Atalanara had retained his tenar on the stumbling retreat to the Mall. The damage from the metal threshkreen had been bad enough but to find that the "treasury" was filled with nothing but paper and the offices of castellaines was enraging. Now he simply hoped to rejoin a force with a decent oolt'ondai who might be able to explain this strange world to him.
As he crossed Virginia Avenue on Eighteenth Street, just short of the Mall, a monitor on his new sensor suite chirped.
"Incoming artillery fire," it relayed in its androgynous tenor. The term was familiar. It meant the hated ballistic weapons of the thresh. "Time on Target, fire. Forty rounds."
That sounded like quite a lot. He started looking at the surrounding buildings, wondering if it would be better under cover. Forty rounds would be very bad.
"Sixty rounds. One hundred and twelve. One twenty. One sixty three. Two twenty-four. Two fifty-eight. Splash."
* * *
The fire was a complicated curtain barrage. The technique had been developed in World War I as a method to prevent movement of forces across no-man's-land. In this case it was being used to drive the Posleen into the anvil of the ACS.
Duncan had had the full authority of the Continental Army Commander and the artillery of two decimated corps. Most of it was 155mm mobile cannon. The variable time and cluster rounds dropped in a veritable curtain of death along Constitution Avenue, heaviest in the opening leading to the Watergate, but everywhere in incredible density.
Forces squeezing out of the press towards the north ran into this wall of death. The few that stumbled out were hit from the side by the silver lightning of the ACS now firmly dug-in on the ground floor of the pharmacy building and the distant fire from the Watergate.
Duncan switched to the next stage of the game, which was smoke. Four batteries were tasked purely to obscurement missions and they began to lay a curtain of white along the Potomac. This effectively stopped the Posleen across the river from determining what was happening in the cauldron. Then he started to walk the curtain barrage down from the north.
* * *
Kenallai looked at the approaching wall of steel rain. Then he looked to the east where the strange beast wrestled with the first ranks of the host. Steel-rain. Beast. Steel-rain. Beast. His crest slowly lifted until it was straight up. He looked at the Kessentai gathered around him and started snapping out orders.
"Alrantath, take your oolt'ondar to the right. Tenal'ont, take the left. All the rest, form behind them and my own oolt'ondar. Call to all the Kessentai in reach! Cry unto the oolt'os! Upon my signal, we shall lead the host in a te'naal charge the likes of which has never been seen!"
* * *
Mike had expected the Posleen to move towards his position, had, in fact, depended on it. But not with the immense unanimity they displayed. The word that came to mind was stampede as the huge mass, the AID counted it as a quarter million, turned ponderously to the east and made a concerted bolt for the monument and freedom from the steel rain. He stopped the battalion and started snapping out orders. As usual, timing would be everything.
* * *
Lieutenant Rogers swore fluently. This was the moment that Bravo had been placed for, but the reality exceeded the Old Man's expectations by an order of magnitude. He wasn't sure that the original orders, to wait until the enemy was within two hundred meters of the battalion before he opened fire, should be followed or not. He finally decided that they were still extant. It would just be a lot more exciting.
* * *
"Forward!" shouted Kenallai, firing his plasma cannon over the heads of his personal oolt. The ranks of his own forces had been swelled by the majority of Ardan'aath's oolt'os and the reinforced company was leading the charge.
The fire of the beast was a silver waterfall, tearing the host asunder, but the return fire of the host was as deadly. Already many of the heads had fallen to the ground and were lying quiescent. They were finally reaching the point where the mass fire of the host could have good effect and within moments the horrid creature would be another trophy to brag upon.
* * *
"Jesus Christ!" shouted Major Givens, stumbling backward under the hail of railgun rounds.
The God Kings were interspersed in the body of the Posleen forces, effectively hidden by the intervening normals. However, every now and again they would target a particular suit. When they did, thousands of normals would follow the lead of their gods. Even catching the edge of such a hurricane of destruction was enough to damage the suits, and the luckless individual at the center was usually toast as a storm of 3mm railgun rounds and hypervelocity missiles struck their suit.
The exception, thus far, had been Captain O'Neal. Twice he had been targeted by God Kings. In both cases he was able to evade the majority of the fire, including the initial fire of the God King, while still managing to crank out a stream of orders.
The diminutive suit seemed to be everywhere. Whenever the fire of the Posleen forces appeared sure to destroy a section of the line, he was in the thick of the fighting. He was moving the suits in a complex pavane designed to avoid the majority of the damage. Whenever a section became bogged down, he was sure to be there first, loosening up the movement, directing the fire, calling for support.
Givens realized he had been still for too long and began his next movement. Even the acting commander followed the baton of the little hobgoblin.
* * *
"Why aren't they digging in!" shouted Lieutenant Nightingale. She had set her helmet aside, but she continued to follow the course of the battle on a computer-generated hologram. "He's killing them! The sadistic little bastard!"
"Teri, you need to get a grip," Pappas snapped over the communications circuit. "If he had them dig in, it would ruin the illusion. Right now, the Posleen believe they are fighting a dragon. As soon as he's sucked as many as possible into the kill-box, he'll go to ground. Until then, he's doing his job, as an officer, and accepting the casualties to further the mission."
"That is insane!" she shouted. "He is butchering the battalion for . . . for nothing!"
Pappas sighed quietly and decided he had more important things to do tha
n continue this pointless argument. "Lieutenant Nightingale, I think you need to find another job. There are realities about combat I don't think you will ever grasp." He tapped a control on the suit for privacy. "AID, unless I have to, I don't want to talk to Lieutenant Nightingale again."
"Very well, Gunny," said the female contralto. There was a slight pause. "Does that mean I'll be seeing more of you?"
* * *
Mike skipped past a private from Charlie Company and pointed to the right. "The bouncing ball is that way, Private Vargas. Follow the bouncing ball."
The suit followed the directions, sidling off to the right just as a cone of railgun fire tore through the space where it had paused.
"Nah, nah, nah, nah," Mike called, broadcasting the taunt over both speakers and the battalion broadcast frequency. He stopped and directed the holographic dragon head he projected to stick its tongue out at the advancing Posleen mass. "Youuu caaan't touch meee!" he taunted again, the cry this time going out in Posleen. As the fire of the division twisted towards his location he popped out a string of grenades and sidestepped. "Nah, nah, nah, nah," he taunted as the storm of fire swept by.
Gone were the fear and uncertainty. Gone were the question and doubt. The high of combat, the joy of battle had taken him and he was once again in his element. There were at least four ways to win the current scenario and do maximum damage to the Posleen. Each of them projected nearly identical casualties for the battalion. Given the choices, he had chosen the one with the maximum style. Even now with the casualty graph climbing and the whole mass of the Posleen force charging them. Whatever the outcome of the battle, they'd fought it "their way."
But the time for stylish destruction was coming to an end. The Posleen were getting close enough that they could overwhelm the battalion with their massed fire. They were still steering away from the curtain barrage to the north, but it was time to teach them that there were worse things than artillery.
He skipped to the left and hopped over a crossing trooper as he considered the timing. With human troops it was usually better to withhold your heaviest fire until they were within two hundred meters. At that point, human troops felt that no matter how much fire there was, they still had a chance of overrunning the position. So they would come on in droves, through any sort of maelstrom. If your intent was to kill as many as possible, and his was just that, then waiting until they were that close was best.
