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The bolt of nuclear fire hit the new-made rubble before it even had a chance to settle properly, and the broken walls and falling stones simply lifted back into the air. Some of their mass was converted to slightly cooler plasma, but most of it simply added its weight to the shrapnel flying from the explosion, as if the city itself was rising up against its invaders.
The same actinic fire, mixed with bits of half-molten stone, washed over the surviving Boman ... who promptly stopped surviving.
"Krin," Bistem Kar half-whispered as the first battalion of K'Vaernian infantry slid to a skidding halt behind the armored figures it had intended to relieve. No unarmored individual was going to be able to survive in the blast-furnace fury of that shattered gate tu
Now, he'd seen it ... and he still wasn't certain he believed it. The power of the plasma ca
He turned to Pahner and shook his head.
"Why don't you use them to clear the whole city?" he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the armored Marines, still standing unconcernedly in the inferno of the gutted gate tu
"Power," Pahner said. "Not enough of it, that is."
"Ah," the K'Vaernian commander said with a gesture of puzzlement. "I'm just a simple old soldier, of course, but-"
"Ha!" the Marine laughed. "Some 'simple old soldier'!"
"I stand by that description," Kar said with a dignity which was only slightly flawed by the twinkle in his eye. "But, simple old soldier or not, that-" he waved at the gaping wound which had once been a gate tu
"Not that kind of power," Pahner said. "Or, not directly, that is." The K'Vaernian regarded him with obvious confusion, and the Marine shrugged. "You know how some of the hammer mills in K'Vaern's Cove use wind power, and others use water power from your storage cisterns?"
"Yes," Kar said, his expressions suddenly thoughtful. "Are you saying those things-" he nodded at the quartet of armored Marines once more "-don't have enough rainwater stored in their cisterns?"
"In a way," Pahner agreed, trying to figure out how to explain "potential energy." "The suits run on very powerful energy storage devices. We don't have many of them, and we need those we have for later use. And the weapons themselves only have so many charges, so we can't afford to use them unless we really need them. And we are going to need both them and all the power we've got left soon enough; there's a real battle waiting for us down the road."
"I can see that you wouldn't consider this a battle," Bogess said, glancing at the carnage of the gate. "But that's because we pulled the main force away from the city, and because the Boman were considerate enough to assemble right in the middle of our kill zone, exactly as we'd hoped. Unfortunately, we've used up the rockets now, so we won't be able to blast them this way again. Although," he added thoughtfully, "I still don't know how useful the rocket wagons would be in a real mobile battle. We knew where the city was, so we could plan exact trajectories. And better yet," he chuckled grimly, "Sindi couldn't exactly dodge."
"That's true enough," Kar acknowledged, "and it's also the reason I agreed that we should use them all now-there's not any point in holding back weapons which might not work later if their use now helps to assure a victory we have to have."
"Agreed," Bogess nodded. "But it still looks like there were at least ten thousand warriors still in the city, and that's only a small fraction of what's out tramping around chasing Rastar and Honal. Sooner or later, we're going to have to face up to the rest of the horde, after all, and I suppose that would qualify as a battle in almost anyone's eyes."
"I wasn't talking about the rest of the Boman," Pahner said, pulling out a slice of bisti root. "We haven't been totally up-front with you guys. Oh, we haven't lied to you, or anything like that, but we've ... neglected to mention a couple of things. Like the fact that the port we keep saying that we have to reach on the other side of the ocean happens to be held by our enemies."
"Your enemies?" Bistem Kar said carefully. "With similar weapons, I assume?"
"Yes."
"God of Water preserve us," Bogess said faintly.
"Anyway, there won't be many holdouts to find in there," the Marine observed. "As you said, Bogess, most of them were right where we wanted them, waiting for us on the walls. Most of the ones we missed there got themselves killed in the gate tu
"Well," Bogess said, "now I understand why you Marines don't look upon a battle with the Boman with dread. This isn't much of a battle to you, is it?"
"In a way," Pahner said, "but it's not just a matter of scale, you know. That-" he gestured with his chin at the huge pall of smoke and flame still billowing above the rocket strike "-is just as destructive, in its way, as any plasma ca
"Even something like this."