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The ditch he was crawling in, which had really shallowed out for a while, had started to deepen. Enough that he felt he could raise up just a tad and move a little faster.
He got partially up on his elbows and knees. Not a high crawl, not enough cover for that. But not a low crawl either. Call it a really fucked up medium crawl. He started to shimmy forward, spread out like a crab, when there was a racket from the Posleen lines and all of a sudden his butt felt like it was on fire.
Dropping onto his stomach again he felt behind him and swore as his hand came away wet. Either he had the worst case of hemorrhoids in the world or some Posleen son of a bitch had just shot him in the ass.
* * *
Thomas shook his head at the poor brave son of a bitch down in that ditch. It was pretty clear in the thermal imaging scope that he'd just got shot in the ass—there was a noticeable blood splatter giving off residual heat—but he was still crawling forward. Another one was down on his stomach, not dead by the temperature, probably just too scared to move. And there was another bright white, headless body in the ditch. That one was so hot, and obviously dead, that it must have eaten a plasma round. Other than that, it looked like most of them had been killed in the first few moments.
He swung his scope around to the Posleen position and shook his head. All the fire from their plasma guns had left noticeable trails on the road and heated up the air under the bridge. And every time an artillery shell hit, the flare of light from it shut down the scope for just an instant. But he could still pick the horses out; they were slightly cooler than humans, but much warmer than the increasing chill of the evening and the cold ground under the overpass. And there weren't many of them, fourteen it looked like, maybe fifteen; there was one who was down on the bottom of the trench not moving.
Now to figure out which ones were the God Kings.
He noticed a haze around the head of one for a moment and switched off the thermal scan for visible light. In the green haze he could just barely see that that one had a crest; it must have lifted it for just a moment and created that thermal halo around its head.
He nodded to himself and switched back to thermal. Taking a breath he flipped the Barrett off of "safe," placed his finger on the trigger and began to gently squeeze.
* * *
Sergeant Buckley ducked as Posleen fire began to rave out of the trench, but it didn't seem to be directed at his position. Risking a quick look, it was clear they were firing everything they had at the ridge behind him and to his left.
Taking another risk, he got up on his hands and knees and shimmied towards a chunk of concrete that would make for good cover. It was probably a piece of the south span that had been blasted free by the nuke, but it looked like heaven and a womb to Buckley; he might even be able to sit up behind it.
He rolled into the shelter of the chunk as the fire died down and considered his position. He was within twenty yards of the Posleen trench, but the fire that had come out of it was from more guns than he had thought were there. And the artillery wasn't taking them out, only keeping their heads down. A bit.
It seemed like there was somebody else out there, maybe a sniper up on the ridge. If he had survived the counter-fire. That would be nice, it would be good to feel that he wasn't completely alone.
He rolled over to the south side of the chunk and thought about his options. There was another chunk, this one most definitely a piece of the bridge with a big hunk of steel sticking out, about five meters closer to the bridge. And it was lying against the center pylons. If he could make it to the cover of that chunk, he could work his way to where he would be on the flank of the Posleen, in a position to rake their trench from end to end. And with the way the south portion had fallen, he would be in "good rubble."
Good rubble was a special term for infantry. Rubble was the infantry's friend; armor couldn't negotiate it, it shed most artillery and Posleen hated it. Good rubble was rubble like the bridge, fallen and twisted with holes a person could worm into for protection and concealment. The south span looked like great rubble.
There were two problems with making it to that rubble, though.
The first was the artillery. The rounds were falling dead on target—they actually seemed to be digging holes in the concrete of the road—but they were also falling just a few meters from the route he would have to take to reach shelter. If he had a radio, he would have them switch to smoke. But he didn't and the RTO was way too far behind him to yell to. Even if yelling wouldn't give away his position, which it would.
He had heard that it was possible to move within a yard or two of artillery like this, if it was falling "away" from you, which this was. There was a solid "thump" of concussion from each shell, but what killed you with artillery was the shrapnel. Most of that was being thrown towards the Posleen positions. Technically, very little of it should be coming back towards where he was going to be crossing.
Technically. Very little.
The second problem, assuming that the artillery didn't get him, was that there was no cover or concealment between his current position and the next block. None. It was flat, level ground, stripped of any vegetation that might once have been there, directly in sight of the Posleen position and less than twenty meters away.
He could try to run it. Just get up and dart across. The problem with that was that Posleen tended to react much better to something like that than humans; it would be the equivalent of trying to dodge past a professional skeet shooter. They were sticking their heads up, bobbing up and down, even with the artillery. He'd have the chance of a snowball in hell of making it across.
The only other alternative was to try to sneak past.
The lighting was . . . confused. There was the sudden flair of the artillery, the moon scudding in and out among the clouds, but other than that not much. A few fires that had probably been started by the artillery gave a bit of flickering light, but none of them were nearby.
Posleen had good night vision, but not perfect. And they were taking fire from the ridge; their attention would be centered there.
All in all, it was worth a shot. But best to prepare.
He reached into his butt-pack and pulled out something he hadn't used in a long time.
CHAPTER 41
Cheer! An' we'll never march to victory.
Cheer! An' we'll never hear the ca
The Large Birds 'o Prey
They will carry us away,
An' you'll never see your soldiers anymore!
–Rudyard Kipling
"Birds of Prey" March
Near Balsam Gap, NC, United States, Sol III
2025 EDT Sunday September 27, 2009 ad
Thomas rolled over a log and started to crawl back up to the top of the ridge. He'd heard about the Posleen reaction to snipers, but that was the first time he'd experienced it. He'd also heard that they didn't react if other people were firing or if artillery was falling. Well, artillery was falling so he was pretty whipped how they had spotted him.
It didn't really matter. He had been pushed back by the recoil of the Barrett so most of the fire had gone over his head. He'd been hit in the face by a splinter, but that was just going to add another scar. No big deal.
He carefully nudged the rifle back over the edge and lifted himself to where he could look down into the target-zone again.
The one soldier had gotten up to the begi