A Hymn Before Battle lota-1

by John Ringo

  “Lo’oswand!” he ordered, gesturing to the rear. “Oolt’ondai, lo’oswand! Together we retreat fighting!”

  * * *

  As the scouts reached their positions and began to peck away at the God Kings, Mike felt it acceptable to return to the ground. He had also used up over thirty percent of his available power, mostly hovering, and needed to return to ground mode.

  As he hit the ground the squads started their first bound forward. By odd squads they leapt over the wall of Posleen bodies into a less cluttered area beyond. The suits automatically compensated for the treacherous footing and the squads opened fire again. They were taking far more fire now, but on the ground at such close quarters the only Posleen that could target them were those in direct contact so it was effectively a one-on-one battle. The massive pressure of Posleen was funneled to the troopers whose only realistic fear was that the ammunition would run out.

  Mike landed just as the second group prepared to bound and he bounded with them. In the air he checked the status of the platoon. Very few losses and the majority of the troops were at over seventy percent power. Ammunition levels were dropping, but the heavy-duty fire would reduce soon. When they landed he checked the battlefield schematic and decided that the Posleen were nicely bunched.

  “Platoon! Volley fire grenades, program: single line deep, fifty percent overlap, close support FPF softies to the left! Ready… Fire!” There was a rapid series of thuds around him. “Check grenade fire!” He did not want the troops to randomly fire their grenade launchers given that they were in close contact with friendly forces.

  The grenades were antimatter charges wrapped with osmium self-forging projectiles. Each had the explosive power of a 120mm mortar. They had a hard kill radius, a zone of total destruction, of fifteen meters and a soft kill radius of nearly thirty-five meters. Using them at all with the Panzergrenadiere in close contact was dangerous. However, since they did not have as much shrapnel as a 120mm, they were slightly less effective at distance; the “soft-kill” zone had less than a fifteen percent likelihood of a kill against human targets in the open.

  The programmed fire shot a double line of grenades down the 75-meter-wide boulevard, the grenades landing 15 meters from the Posleen-held building and 20 meters apart. Thus the total destruction zone stretched outward 50 meters from the Posleen-held megascraper with a further “soft kill” distance of 25 meters. The line stretched from thirty meters in front of the combat suit line for nearly a kilometer. The soft kill radius stretched to the Panzergrenadiere lines but most if not all of the grenadiers had sought cover by this time and those who had not would have to take their chances.

  * * *

  The explosions started rippling down the boulevard and Tulo’stenaloor could see what was coming. The white fire seemed to expand from side to side of the avenue, each pair of enormous explosions coming a fractional second apart. There was no escape through the south building; most of the entrances had been destroyed in the fighting and those that remained were choked with the most fleet of foot or saucer.

  As the barrage progressed towards his retreating battalion, the battlemaster found himself cringing at each drawn out pause between crashes. All of the grenades were fired at the same time but some had farther to travel. So each hellish interval got longer and longer as the rounds neared them.

  He knew he could flee, leave his oolt’os and take the other kessentai and escape on their tenars. But to lose his oolt’ondai that he had built so carefully over the years of only the finest genetic material; no, it would be better to die than to start over. Like Lot, he turned his face away and led his flock to safety as the doom came nearer and nearer.

  As they reached the far intersection the latest pause drew out and out. Tulo’stenaloor finally took heart to look back.

  From the ocean inward half the length of the building was a carpet of Po’oslena’ar dead, oolt’os and kessentai intermingled, in death their difference reduced to a fraction in size. No living Po’os moved in all that vast abattoir, no living thing. The energy of the explosions caused superheating of the immediate surroundings. The smell of cooked Posleen filled the air, a soft steam arising from the baked flesh, and smoke rose from the shattered tenar as well.

  As his oolt’ondai turned south into the cross street he looked back once more and saw the sea demon ripple and dissolve into a grouping of thresh in hulking metallic space armor. This then for their sea demon. As he watched they finished off the few scattered oolt’os with their terrible silver lightning and began to advance implacably down the boulevard in ground-devouring bounds. He had seen and would remember; these thresh’akrenallai were tricky, tricky.

  38

  Andata Province, Diess IV

  1009 GMT May 19th, 2002 ad

  Major Steuben pulled himself up on a block of masonry and wiped the blood from his mouth. The ringing in his ears seemed permanent but he was alive, something on which he would not have taken odds at any point in the last twenty-four hours. Total hearing loss seemed at the moment a small price to pay. He tried to stand but a wave of dizziness overcame him and he sat back down. It was then that he saw the first squad of MI bounce forward and spit silver fire downrange. The crash of the kinetic energy weapons was a dull ringing in his ears, but it was the first sound he had heard since the explosions.

  He remembered the flame from the illusory dragon wiping the attacking God King out of the air like swatting a fly. That sight was a bucket of cold water to his sanity and he dove off the masonry mound, scooping up the G-3 in passing, and headed to one of the hasty bunkers the grenadiers had cobbled together. He needed to get to communications now that it seemed the unit might miraculously survive. Before he could reach it he was blocked by a Leopard panzer snuffling forward, scenting Posleen blood in the water. The blast from its main gun was an assault on his ears and he despaired for a moment of regaining any control in this mad and chaotic world.

  He ducked behind a shattered wall support and poked his rifle around the corner. The scene beyond was shocking even given the horror of the past few days. He was slightly elevated so he could see the holographic dragon heads pouring fire into the massed Posleen on the division’s seaward flank. The Posleen were unable to maneuver or flee, trapped by the inertia of bodies, and they were now being blasted apart like a clay cliff before a fire hose; bits and pieces flew into the air under the concentrated hammer of the dragon’s breath. When the pile had grown so large as to be an impediment, the lower heads leapt up and forward over the mound of bodies, first half the heads, then the other half, the streams of fire never stopping, even in midair. As the second set of heads landed the single lifted head dropped to the ground and a group of small, round objects flew upward and outward from them.

  It took a moment to think about what those might be. Major Steuben had been briefed, a thousand years ago on Earth, about the capabilities of the Fleet armored combat suits. He watched the harmless looking, relatively tiny little balls drift lazily upward then begin to drift down. He suddenly turned sheet white, screamed “INCOMING!” and dove backwards with his hands over his ears.

  Now he pulled himself to his feet again, determined to force his recalcitrant body to bend to his will, and stumbled out into the street. As the second group of MI bounded forward he lurched directly in front of one of the flankers, an NCO by the stripes on his shoulder. Steuben hoped the sergeant would be able to see him. There was no apparent visor, the front of the helmet was blank, sloped gray plasteel.

  “Officer!” he shouted at the trooper, pointing at his collar tabs. “I need to talk to your commander!”

  The trooper’s weapon never wavered from the targets downrange and continued to hammer at them. Major Steuben swatted the trooper’s arm; it was as useful as punching an I-beam and nearly broke his hand. He felt he was talking to some insensate robot and wondered for a moment if there was a human in the suit.

  “Eine Minute, bitte Herr Major. Der Leutnant ist hierher unterwegs,” the trooper said in
accentless Hochdeutsch.

  “Was? Was? Ich bin ein wenig taub.” Louder!

  “Eine Minute bitte, Herr Major. Der Leutnant ist hierher unterwegs,” the suit boomed again.

  “Sind Sie Deutscher?” shouted Major Steuben, surprised; he could see the red-white-and-blue patch on the suit’s shoulder clearly, despite the gouges it had taken in the day’s battle.

  “Nein, Herr Major, Amerikaner. Die Rüstung hat einen Übersetzer. Bitte, Herr Major, ich muss gehen.” (No, Major, American. The suit has a translator. Excuse me, Major, I have to go.) The platoon bounded off leaving a short set of combat armor behind. It stumped over to the major and saluted with a clang of gauntlet to helm.

  “Leutnant Michael O’Neal, Mein Herr,” the suit boomed loudly. “Tut uns leid dass es so lang gedauert hat. Wir hatten unterwegs eine Störung.” (Sorry we took so long. We had a spot of bother along the way.)

  “Better late than never, Lieutenant. Do you need to move out with your unit? Where is your commander?”

  “I’m it, sir. The rest of the battalion is either dead, buried under Qualtren or in the MLR.” O’Neal suddenly had a pistol in his hand. The weapon spat a stream of fire into the darkness of the far building’s lower story. There was a dwindling scream and by the time the major looked back the pistol was in its holster again. The whole action happened in less time than Steuben could have pulled a trigger.

  “Well,” Steuben said, shakily. “You are looking at the last of the 10th Panzer Grenadiers as well. We don’t even have enough left to bury our own dead, if we could find them.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the suit of armor, stoically. “We’ll all face the reaper someday but just too damn many met him today.”

  “Ja. What are your orders?” asked the major. He began to blink with fatigue as the adrenaline rush of the last few minutes wore off. He felt a sudden urge to vomit, barely suppressed.

  “I have verbal orders from General Houseman to relieve the units in this building and expedite getting them to the MLR, sir.”

  “Well, we are fairly relieved and I think that the fallen buildings will be a relief to the British, French and Americans as well,” said the major, sitting down abruptly on a convenient pile of rubble. “But we are completely out of contact with them. We can’t even tell them that the way out is clear.”

  “Well, technically it isn’t, sir. We will have to fight our way to the MLR.”

  “Yes, but we can, now that the main bulk of Posleen have been pushed out of position. Anyway we can if we leave before they counterattack in force and that I cannot guarantee. The avenue to the west is open and we have three more buildings and two avenues to contend with on the way.”

  “Hold on a moment, sir. I gotta do some handling.” The combat suit was immobile and featureless but something about the set of it told the major that this young, he thought young, lieutenant was as tired as he.

  “We’ve secured the intersection, Major,” Mike continued after a moment, “and are in contact with your units there. I submit that we should move up there, at least I should. We need to get this wagon train a-rollin’, sir.”

  “Ja, verstehe.” Steuben’s head swiveled around and spotted the Leopard that had blocked his retreat. The commander and driver were now up out of their hatches, as the battle moved out of their sector, surveying the piles of Posleen dead. The tank commander was a lieutenant from Third Brigade with whom he was only distantly familiar. No matter. He stood up, walked over and grasped the handhold. He swayed for a moment from a head rush then planted his foot and on the second try managed to boost himself onto the front deck. He took a deep breath.

  “Lieutenant,” he barked, “we are going to a mobile phase. I need transportation and this sector needs to be secured, the wounded dealt with and the personnel prepared to pull out. I am taking your tank and you are taking command of this sector.”

  The lieutenant gulped and prepared to protest but swallowed it manfully. “Jawohl, Herr Major. I understand.” With that he hopped out of the TC’s seat, unbuckled his helmet, traded with the major and hopped off the panzer to begin organizing the survivors.

  Major Steuben slumped into the comfortable seat gratefully as the armored womb of the Leopard enfolded him. He had come up through panzers and loved the days he had spent as a TC. He wished that was all he were now, with only the responsibility of his tank and survival. But no, greater and greater responsibility was a drug to him, something to be sought not shirked. He must face this moment as so many others had in history, as a German, and a Steuben. Head up, shoulders back and thinking.

  “Driver, head up to the intersection, schnell.”

  * * *

  When Mike reached the intersection the situation was well in hand. The street to the north was entirely blocked by the fallen megascraper to the east. The few remaining panzers with dozer blades had shoved debris into a line, and a hasty barricade of masonry now blocked access to the road east. The wall was shored with structural membranes ripped from the buildings by the MI troopers and was lined with Panzergrenadiere mingled with a squad of MI. The Posleen were in evidence in the distance, over a kilometer away, but those groups seemed to be in full retreat. Mike wished he had the forces to harry them but he could not even think about that now.

  The street to the south was also blocked but a large sally opening had been left. Here the Posleen were still in evidence, as the groups between the intersection and the MLR were firing heavily in both directions. Most of the remaining platoon was here, exchanging long range fire with the Posleen. Most of the HVM fired by the Posleen were detonating in the barricade, requiring constant reinforcement but again the situation for the time being was well in hand. The MI were maintaining fire like the veterans they now were and scouts even now entering the flanking buildings were beginning to pick off the God Kings, ruining the force’s command and control. Mingled with them were the snipers of the Panzergrenadiere, nearly as effective with their scope-mounted G-3 rifles.

  “Sergeant Green,” Mike called and the platoon sergeant moved back from the southern barricade.

  “What’s the breakage, Sergeant?”

  “We lost Featherly and Simms, Meadows is badly injured but his suit took him under and he’s stable.”

  “Not bad considering what we did.” Still, Mike now knew that each loss would ache at him in the depths of the night. His casual approach to combat was as gone as Wiznowski. From here on out each counter on the screen was a real person and he would not forget it.

  “We need to reestablish contact with the other units in the building. The Germans are out of contact with them and they say that Corp is too. Send Duncan’s squad with two scouts into the building and have them find those units. We will hold here until I order us to retreat. As each unit exits the building it will temporarily reinforce the lines to cover the retreat of the other units.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll get with this Kraut major to make sure they’ll hold here until we can pull the other units out. Then we’ll skeedaddle, daddy-o.”

  “Yes, sir, good luck.” Sergeant Green headed over to the barricade to pull out second squad calling for two scouts on the platoon push.

  As he left a Leopard snuffled forward, its main gun questing to the east. With a crash and a burst of flame a distant saucer flipped into the air. Mike noted that the TC was the German major and hopped onto the turret. He checked his energy levels but he was still at over twenty-five percent.

  “Sergeant Green, call for a general energy and ammo check. Redistribute ammunition and check on the engineers’ progress. See if you can raise higher for some evac for wounded — they can come in from out to sea through the secure vector. Push some troops into the building to the south and make sure this avenue remains secure.”

  He tried to think if there was anything he was missing, but he was so tired. He felt his eyes start to close as he stood on the tank and knew it was time for another stim.

  “Michelle, another Wake-the-Dead and then ge
t me General Houseman.”

  “You are about to exceed your maximum prescribed dosage.”

  “Just do it,” Mike snapped, driven far beyond courtesy to a machine. “Order them throughout the platoon, we’re not out of the woods yet.”

  “Yes, sir, General Houseman is on the line.”

  “O’Neal? What’s the situation? We’ve lost contact with the Tenth.” The general sounded upset.

  “We have relieved them at this time, sir,” said Mike, tapping a command to upload the data. “And have cleared their positions of Posleen. The other flanks are covered by the fallen scrapers. We have secured the intersection and created hasty barricades with the Tenth’s support. We’ve, we’ve… retaken the position and are attempting to contact the other units at this time. We have sustained affordable casualties in the movement and engagement. What are your orders, sir?”

  “Lieutenant,” the general started and then stopped to clear his throat, “you just hold on there for a bit while some of those units get out of the buildings and then come on home. Now that you’re in line of fire of the MLR you can call for limited artillery support. As you retreat we’ll cover the road behind you in fire. Just hold there for a bit. Can you do that?”

  “Airborne, General, we’ll hold on here until ordered to retreat. Could we get some evac on the wounded, sir? Aircraft should have a clear zone out to sea and they can come into the boulevard for pickup. I’ve got one trooper in a bad way and the grenadiers are up to their necks in wounded.”