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No more bad guys seemed to be coming over the hill, so Keren took the long walk up the Mound. The smoke across the Potomac was fading, but there was a solid core of it around the Arlington Bridge and the Memorial. It was an eerie sensation to look out over the battlefield. The view was famous from movies and TV shows, the green lawn, the Memoria, the cherry trees. Now it was torn by fire and the tracks of armored vehicles, with white obscurement smoke drifting in the light wind, the scent of burning and slaughtered Posleen carried upon it.
What was going on in the pocket around the Lincoln Memorial was invisible, but it didn't sound good. The occasional red-cored puff of VT could be seen above the curtaining smoke and there was a continuous clatter from cluster rounds, sounding like the world's largest Chinese funeral. And that was exactly what it was. The Posleen were being forced into a sausage grinder.
The aliens, without any real internal communication, could not see what was happening in the smoke. And the few who survived for a moment were pushed willy-nilly into the caldron of fire by the pressure from behind. What was happening, however, was clearly evident to the armored combat suits. Their all-weather, all-conditions systems made it all too clear.
The Posleen were literally being ground by the fire. The Variable Time fire would explode overhead, scything down a cluster of Posleen. Then the cluster ammunition would butcher the downed group. As wave after wave fell, the earlier ones would be chopped into smaller and smaller bits under the hammer of the guns. The ground was ru
And it was unrecognized by the oncoming tide. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of the centaurs poured across the bridge in a continuous flood. A few made it through the caldron. A very, very few.
These few were picked off by the interco
The battalion had been similarly split, with half firing to the south side of the memorial and the other to the north. Posleen in the pocket trying to escape to the north ran into the intersecting beams of Bravo and Alpha Companies. Those trying to escape towards Inlet Bridge ran into the fire of Charlie Company. And all of them ran into artillery.
A few of the survivors made it to the Roosevelt Park, on the south side of the pocket around the Tidal Basin. These shell-shocked survivors were all that told the Posleen something bad was happening.
The forces massing to cross in Arlington could clearly see these battered and bloody remnants of the horde. From that, some few began to deduce that entering the smoke was a bad idea. These few told others. And they told others. Then they started taking notes on the color of the river. North of the bridge, brown. South of the bridge, yellow-brown with lots of yellow streaks. Those few who had made a study of sensors studied them. And came to conclusions. And turned away from the inviting bridge.
But . . . most stayed. The Posleen were, by and large, a not very bright species. On that horrible afternoon of blood and slaughter they went through a brutally Darwinian evolution. The few, the smart ones, the ones who used their eyes and the sensors wrested from the long-gone Alld'nt, turned away. The many, the stupid and ignorant, those for whom being the warrior was the all and be damned to the technological claptrap, crossed the bridge.
The few survived. For the day.
* * *
Mike watched the slaughter stonily. He had come to understand the Posleen in a way that many humans did not. Sometime in the past of the species tinkering had occurred. And that tinkering, rather than some «normal» process, had led them on the long journey to this field of death. Led them on the quest for newer, fresher worlds to conquer.
Understanding them meant that he could not hate them. They were trapped in a cycle they had not created. But he could be a professional about destroying them. And there was a small, professional satisfaction in the carnage before him. He keyed the AID. «Give me General Horner.»
«Captain O'Neal,» said Horner.
Mike thought he sounded more tired than ever. Maybe they could both get some rest. «General, I would like to report that we have the infestation stopped at the Potomac. As soon as forces are reassembled we can begin reducing them in northern Virginia.»
«That is good, Captain,» said Jack.
«So, formal, sir?» he quipped. It was a heady high to have succeeded so totally in the sight of his old mentor. «It's okay, General. We've taken too much damage, but we'll take it to them next.»
«Yes, we will, Mike,» said Horner. «Captain O'Neal . . .» he continued with a catch and stopped.
«Jack,» said Mike with a smile, «it's okay . . .»
«No, it's not, Mike. Captain O'Neal, I regret to inform you that your wife, Lieutenant Commander Sharon O'Neal, was lost in action this morning at approximately oh-five hundred hours.»
«Oh, shit!» said Mike, in a near wail. «Oh, fuck!»
«I convey the regrets of the new President.»
«Oh, goddamn, Jack!»
«I've ensured a qualified contact team is on the way to the farm.» Horner waited through the silence, not sure what was happening on the other end. «Mike?»
«Yes, sir,» said Captain O'Neal in a toneless voice.
«Are you going to be okay? I, you can ask for some time, if you want it.»
«No, sir. That will be fine,» the captain said in a monotone. «I'll be just fine.»
«Mike . . .»
«I will be fine, sir.»
«If you're sure?» The general knew that this was not going to be the end of it. But there were other demands on his time. Other needs to fill.
«I will be just dandy, General, sir,» said the captain in an icy voice. «Just dandy.»
And he was, as he watched the remorseless destruction of the centaurs. As he led his battalion in the part of the anvil. For the anvil never cries for the iron.
Visions
Fredericksburg, VA, United States of America, Sol III
0926 EDT October 27th, 2004 ad
The sensor wand was much more sensitive than the detectors on their suits. And Mi
The cold, pouring rain was washing the remaining soil and grit off the ridge. It had already formed gullies around the bits of buildings and roads, uprooting ancient flagstones and undercutting the three-hundred-year-old foundations that were all that was left of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Mi
Using the untouched Fort Belvoir as a base, the battalion had split up into companies and had ravaged through the remnant Posleen. When a unit found a concentration they would call for fire then finish off the survivors. If the Posleen force was too large the company could either join up with other companies or fall back on Belvoir. The Army Engineer had been only too enthusiastic about turning his base into a giant fortress. The work was still ongoing, with concrete slowly replacing compacted dirt, but the facilities were more than adequate for the purpose. When a couple of thousand Posleen came up to the walls topped with a giant wooden effigy of the Engineer Corps symbol, they got the point. Just before the battleship rounds started falling. In the south the same was being done by a brigade from the Eleventh MID. With much the same result.