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The cold-blooded rendering of the defenseless Indowy was almost more than Reese could take; with their tiny stature and love of bright colors they seemed almost like children to him. As the Posleen closed the distance he found himself pulling his M-232 tighter into his shoulder and rubbing the breech. "Come on. Come on." As his eyes flicked to his ammunition level readouts he did not notice the tears ru
Mike drew his magazine again and actually looked at it this time. Yup, thar's bullets init. He reseated it and touched the charging button. With an u
" `It seems to me as though I've been upon this stage before,' " he quietly sang. The AID, correctly surmising that it was a personal moment, did not broadcast it. " `And juggled away the night for the same old crowd . . .' "
"Charlie company, stand by."
Mike snugged the butt into his shoulder. Talk about target-rich environment." `These harlequins you see with me, they too once held the floor . . .' "
"Fire!"
Over three hundred rifles and machine guns, the combined firepower of Charlie and Alpha companies, and four terawatt lasers, belched coherent light and metallic lightning at the Posleen horde. As if one animal, the whole phalanx was shocked, its front third vanishing in the silver fire of detonating relativistic projectiles.
Fuckin' A! thought Mike. It fuckin' works! We're go
Then the thousands of remaining Posleen in view raised their weapons at the source of the fire.
"For what we are about to receive . . ." whispered Mike, shifting fire to the rear body.
In the front phalanx there remained eight thousand normals and twenty God Kings. The combat suits were proof against the majority of the weapons, but there were still fifteen heavy lasers and five multiple HVM launchers with automatic targeting systems, nine hundred 3mm flechette guns and four hundred fifty handheld HVM launchers. As a storm of fire struck the battalion's positions the battle descended into an orgy of mutual a
A heavy laser, targeting on the Charlie company machine gun, scythed into the room housing Mike and the squad. Spec-Four Be
The laser slashed through the front of his armor but was stopped by the combination of his mass and the rear armor from cutting all the way through. The tremendous heat of the coherent beam of light caused his torso to flash into steam and sublimed calcium. The armor held together, however, except a two-inch-wide strip blasted out of it, and Be
The laser served as an aiming point for the God King's brigade of Posleen normals and a broadside of flechette and missile fire vomited at the hapless machine gun team. The missiles were wildly inaccurate at the seven-hundred-meter range of the current engagement. It would have been the greatest of bad luck to be hit by one, but Madam Chance knows no favorites.
Lieutenant O'Neal and Sergeant Reese were hurled backwards by the weight of metal. For a few moments O'Neal returned fire, riding the wave of rounds as he had practiced, and his heavier prototype armor was proof against the hail of fire. Private McPherson was less lucky. Two 3mm rounds penetrated his abdominal storage, setting off a cache of grenades and popping the blowout panels in a sea of actinic fire, then through his body armor. After that they were unable to exit and began bouncing around inside. McPherson's suit began to hop and flip randomly through the air, arms and legs flailing to keep up as the two hypervelocity flechettes bled off their kinetic energy within the body of his suit. Two seconds later, when it finally, mercifully, stopped, the only evidence of damage were two tiny holes, one above the right hip and one almost centered on the navel. The storm of directed fire had died to a light shower and Sergeant Reese started towards him.
"Forget it," said O'Neal, sca
"He was having convulsions!" said Reese, surprised and angered to find the lieutenant interfering in first aid.
"He's dead. Check his telemetry. Convulsions don't . . ." he said as he turned to stop the trooper but it was too late. Sergeant Reese popped the seals on the helmet and a red mass, unpleasantly reminiscent of spaghetti sauce, poured out on the floor. Reese began to dry heave as McPherson's head rolled out of the dead helmet and squished into what remained of his body. The underlayer gel, red tinged, oozed out behind it.
" . . . flip you backwards for a full gainer and a half twist through the air. Come on, Sergeant, time to scoot." O'Neal popped the power cartridge out of the grav sled, laid a charge on the ammo, picked up two boxes and trotted to the door. "Come on. They're dead, we're not. Let's keep it that way."
The next thirty minutes were forever a blur for Sergeant Reese. He had forgotten his rank, his unit and even his name; all he could do was blindly follow Lieutenant O'Neal, firing when and how he was told. He vaguely remembered, as in a dream, the views from various windows and rapidly firing before moving to another location. He remembered the order from Lieutenant Browning, the XO, voice cracking in terror, to fall back to Saltren. He remembered inexplicable orders from Lieutenant O'Neal to shatter certain beams and arches, placing demolition charges, in low, brightly lit corridors down which he crouched while the shorter lieutenant floated with lethal, catlike grace. He returned to stark reality during their first close encounter with the Posleen.
They were in a subbasement headed he knew not where ru
There were six high-density inertial compensators along the spine of the suit. They had been placed there to prevent severe inertial damage to the most vital portions of the user. Lieutenant O'Neal launched himself into the air and away from the threat, an instinct of hundreds of hours of simulations, while his AID dialed the inertial compensators as low as they would go. This had several effects, good and bad, but the net effect was to make it less likely that the flechettes would penetrate his armor as they had the private's; at this range their penetration ability was vastly improved.