Gust Front

* * *

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 ca

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 ca

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 than 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, Gu

* * *

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.»