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The grenades temporarily cleared the wall, turning the Kranolta who'd scaled it into hamburger. Most of the Marines' chameleon-suited wounded were unaffected by the air-burst grenades, but the unarmored barbarians were slaughtered.

Fragments also tore into Cord's legs. Roger had thrown himself across the shaman's torso, preventing instant death, but the native was horribly injured, and Roger himself was considerably the worse for wear.

He was stumbling to his feet, ears ringing, vision doubled, and more than half stu

"Okay," Despreaux snapped. She seemed, he noticed, to be upside-down. "Are you done playing hero, Hero?"

"Get Cord," he croaked. It had to be either St. John or Mutabi carrying him, he decided; nobody else was big enough.

"Already done," she said, taking one corner of the shaman's stretcher. Wounded Marines were being dragged off all along the wall while others recovered their weapons.

The last thing Roger remembered was an upside-down scummy coming over the parapet, with his ax raised over Despreaux's head.

Pahner listened to the reports and nodded.

"One more time on the walls. But make sure everyone makes it back to the bastions this time."

He looked out at the sea of scummies and shook his head. The jam-packed mob looked as if it hadn't been reduced at all, but that was an illusion. They'd already lost almost a fifth of their force to the wall assaults and the grenades. Now it was time to start the real killing.

"Blow the gate."

The timber barrier replacing the ruined gates had been carefully constructed. The original purpose of the emplaced demolition charges had been to permit a sally by the armored suits, but the explosives designed to let Marines out worked just as well to let Mardukans in.

The loss of their ram had reduced the Kranolta at the gate to clawing and hacking at the timbers. Their howls of frustration had been clearly audible even through the din of battle... and so were their shrieks of agony as the demo charges' explosions mangled them and blew them backwards. The warriors behind them paid them no heed, however, except to stream forward over their writhing bodies, screaming exultant war cries as they fa

"Oh, Captain, that was mean," Julian whispered as he peered through the firing slit at the open gateway. He watched the tide of scummies split, some charging for the keep, and others for the i

There were a number of available munitions for the weapon. Besides the standard ten-millimeter ceramic-cored, steel-coated beads, there were both armor piercing and "special actions" munitions. The armor piercing beads were designed to be effective against any known suit armor, and against most armored vehicles, as well. The "special actions" munitions were mixed. Some were crowd-control devices: sticky balls to coat rioters in glue, knockout gas, or puke gas. And some of them were for close quarter conditions where the object was pure, unmitigated slaughter. The company didn't have many of those with them, but this was just about the perfect time to use the one magazine he had.

He stroked the stock of the bead ca

"Come to Poppa," he crooned.

Pahner gazed down into the courtyard from the gatehouse's upper story, calmly masticating his gum and waiting. He blew a bubble when First Platoon reported that spears were being thrust into the ground floor slits of its bastion. He nodded when the keep reported that the Mardukans were chopping at its door, and he steepled his fingers when the sound of ax blows started beneath his own feet. Then he nodded again.





"Fire," he said, and stepped back from the spear slit.

Julian had already programmed his visor HUD to show the round's footprint, and he aimed his first shot carefully. The ten-millimeter cylinder was fired at very low velocity, relatively speaking, but the instant it exited the barrel, it blossomed like some hideous flower to deploy its twenty-five depleted uranium beads in a beautiful geometric pattern like a high-tech spider's web.

Strung with monomolecular wire.

The advanced adaptation of the ancient concept of chainshot was lethal almost beyond belief, yet it never made it across the courtyard. Its designers wouldn't have believed that was possible, for the wire sliced through weapons, limbs, and bodies almost effortlessly. But only almost. If enough flesh and bone was crowded together in its path, eventually even wire a single molecule thick would find sufficient resistance to stop it.

This wire did, but not before it had torn over a third of the way across the bailey and sliced every native in its path into neatly severed gobbets of flesh. The destruction sprayed blood and bits of Mardukan in every direction, and so did the second shot in Julian's magazine. And the third. And the fourth.

The paved courtyard was an abattoir, filled with Kranolta who'd finally seen sufficient concentrated slaughter to stem even their frenzied advance for just a moment. The survivors were frozen in momentary shock and disbelief, like lifesize sculptures coated in the blood of their hideously dismembered fellows.

Sculptures which were cooked an instant later by plasma ca

There were four of the weapons at ground level: one in each bastion, and two mounted in armored suits in the keep. Some of the natives had begun poking spears into the firing slits before Pahner gave the word, but a few blasts from bead rifles had cleared the Kranolta away. Now all four plasma gu

The charges from the ca

The remaining plasma ca

The handful who survived threw themselves shrieking from the wall's height, accepting broken bones or death itself—anything—to escape that ravening, hideous furnace.

Pahner stepped back up to the spear slit and looked out over the area in front of the citadel. The true horror within the bailey and atop the walls had been invisible to most of the enemy outside the fortress, and its impact had been lost on them, for all their attention was concentrated on gaining entry themselves. As he'd expected, the horde continued to push forward into the citadel, although with slightly less haste.

"Check fire," he said calmly, face and voice leached of all expression as he gazed down upon the unspeakable carnage.

No need to rout them. Not yet.

"Pull back, you old fool!" Puvin Eske shouted. "Now will you believe us? This is the death of the clan!"

"Great rewards require great sacrifice," the clan leader said. "Do you think we took this town before without loss?"

"No," the chieftain snapped. "We obviously lost everyone with any sense! I'm taking the rest of my people to the camp. We will prepare to try to hold off the humans when they come forth to take our horns. And may the forest demons eat your soul!"