by John Ringo
"We're ready now, Herr Wachtmeister," the boy said.
"Father Dwyer," the Wachtmeister called out, "if we might have your benediction? Vexillation . . . KNEEL."
Solemnly, the priest stepped out around and in front on the small formation. There wasn't a lot of time for formal ceremony. The priest carried the processional cross, a crucifix on a pole, in his left hand. He held it there as he made the sign of the cross over them with his right.
"In hoc signo vinces," the priest said, simply, echoing the vision of Constantine.
Von Altishofen stood and nodded, then gave the order, "Vexillation . . . achtung. Vorwaerts . . . MARSCH. Links, rechts, links rechts . . ." Boot feet crunched on the gravelly path beneath them. "Sound off, you bastards!"
"Unser Leben gleicht die Reisse
Eines Wandrers in der Nacht.
Jeder hat in seinem Gleise . . ."
Finba'anaga heard the odd human sounds long before he saw the humans turn the corner into the square by the Statue of Courageous Defiance. He had no idea what the words meant and asked his AS to explain and translate.
"It's a song, Lord," the AS, "like the People's song of Flight and Resettlement. The words are . . . 'Our lives are like the journeys of wanderers in the night. Each has—'"
"Never mind the translation," Finba cut the machine off. "What do they intend?"
"See for yourself, Lord," the machine answered.
At that moment the first rank of the human warriors and their Posleen escorts appeared, wheeling around the corner of the Temple of War. Their steps, most unlike the People when they marched, crunched as one along the gravel way. The second rank quickly followed, itself being followed by the one human Finba knew as the chief, Dwyer. The weapons the warriors bore looked odd to Finba, yet he had no doubt that those heavy chopping blades on the ends of poles were weapons.
The priest carried only the odd symbol of his bizarre faith on the end of a pole much like those of the warriors' arms. All were armored, barring only the priest.
At the sight of his son and wife armed and accoutered for battle against hopeless odds, Guanamarioch set up a wail. "Frederico, go back. Querida, back," he called from atop the pile of wood intended for his funeral pyre. His wife and son ignored him. She, in fact, made a show of twisting her head and digging a claw into her right ear, as if to dislodge some obstruction. It was the only time in her existence she had ever defied Guano. She found she rather liked the feeling.
"Release my father," Frederico called aloud, in High Posleen. His adolescent crest erected itself automatically in a show of intent to do battle.
"Kill them," Finba ordered his assistant, Borasmena.
Borasmena nodded, then leaned the rail gun he had been carrying against a wall. Drawing his boma blade, the kessentai called out to a small group of others to follow.
"No, you idiot," Finba said. "Use the rail guns. There's no need to fight them fairly."
Borasmena shook his head and answered, "You are of the Way of Remembrance, not of the Way of the Warriors. We, who are of that way, have no choice, in honor, but to meet blade against blade."
The Posleen were bigger than humans, taller and wider both. While the Switzers with their flanking "cavalry" filled the street from wall to wall, with only eight beings across, the Posleen could fit only half that number in the single rank. Nor could the boma blades of the rear ranks reach out to support the kessentai in the front ranks, as the humans' halberds could.
Martin de Courten, youngest of the crew, drew first blood. While the Posleen in front of him waved his boma blade to ward off the halberds of Hellebardier Faubion, to de Courten's right, and the downward sweep of Gehrig's and Scheekt's, de Courten leveled his own and drove it straight in.
The Posleen shrieked and backed off, frantically trying to ward off another strike. De Courten then twisted the polearm to turn the edge about thirty degrees to his right. He swung the thing down and at that angle, letting the monomolecular edge neatly slice off the Posleen's left foreleg. The Posleen dropped his boma blade as he fell over, his claws questing downward to staunch the flow of yellow blood from his severed limb.
Like a drill, de Courten stepped onto the stricken Posleen's torso. Behind him he sensed rather than saw as Scheekt's halberd took the reptilian centauroid in the neck, through the spine, thus ending his cries of agony.
Unfortunately, another Posleen kessentai moved up to fill the space left by the fallen one. This one was more skilled, causing Martin to have to fight for his life, his halberd slashing frantically left and right and up and down to keep the creatures boma blade away, until Faubion and Stoever could move up to take the creature in flank.
Please hurry, Kameraden, the boy thought.
Borasmena felt no anger at seeing one of his people fall. Indeed, he was filled with pride and admiration for the humans. This was something he'd never expected to feel for an alien and enemy species.
But to fight so wonderfully, to give us the chance to struggle before the shades of the ancestors, hand to hand and being to being . . . for this, humans, I shall burn fine korobar incense in your memory to my last day.
Borasmena thought the human facing him had him once, when that wicked looking point above the ax blade nearly took him in the throat. He managed to deflect the thing, barely, with the flat of his own boma blade, then step inside the human's weapon's arc and slice down at his enemy's torso. The point of his blade slid off the human's cuirass, but continued on to his thigh. Red blood spurted up and out, its spray blinding Borasmena.
Now it was the Posleen's turn to frantically wave his blade about, trying to fend off unseen points and blades that sought his life. Just as frantically he backed off while scraping a scaly palm over his face in an attempt to clear his eyes. Another kessentai stepped in to take the place of his incapacitated leader.
The cut was so clean, so fast, and so unexpected, that de Courten didn't at first cry out. He saw that the Posleen to his front was blinded by something, a something he did not immediately connect with his own red blood, and lowered his pike and lunged forward to pierce the creature's chest.
Unfortunately, the wounded leg was half severed. The halberdier took no more than the one step before falling face forward. Confused, dazed, he saw a small forest of oddly jointed alien legs and a single barrel-chested torso before him. With both hands on the grip, de Courten plunged the point of the halberd into that torso and then ripped forward, spilling the Posleen's intestines out to the ground, steaming.
As the disemboweled kessentai fell, his sword arm continued the downward arc it had begun at seeing the human fall. Wounded as he was, he could not keep the thing directed at the human's armored back. Rather, it veered slightly to one side, slicing de Courten's left arm into three sections, the stump still attached to his body, the hand still gripping the halberd, and the central section with the elbow flanked by two other stumps.
Bridge, USS Salem
Sally cried out aloud to see de Courten fall in the image sent via Dwyer's and Binastarion's Artificial Sentiences. That poor wonderful brave boy, she thought, dry-eyed but crying inside.
The image was also being carried on another view screen, down in the assembly hall. At the moment de Courten fell, Sally heard three women cry out in despair. Though rivals, all three fell upon each others' shoulders, weeping.
And that is what I will feel, the sound I will make, if and when my husband falls. Fuck.
Posleen Prime
Hellebardier Gehrig saw de Courten fall and immediately stepped to the fore to take the fallen Guardsman's place. Behind him, Scheekt and Rossini shifted slightly left and right to cover the gaps. Rossini's halberd swung down, just inside Gehrig's arc of vision, to administer the coup de grace to the disemboweled Posleen. The being's agonized keening suddenly cut off, only to be replaced by a human's wail—Cristiano, Gehrig thought—somewhere off to the right.
Giovani Cristiano was having the time of his life.
All that drill . . . endless hour
s . . . pain and aching muscles and bruises galore. And now, finally, it all pays off. Thank you, Lord, for giving me this one opportunity to prove I'm worthy of my ancestors.
Cristiano was on the extreme right of the infantry line, with only Querida guarding his flank. She was faced with a kessentai, larger and stronger but not so well armed and completely unarmored. Still, that enemy kessentai pressed the cosslain hard. She was barely holding her own when Cristiano saw an opportunity. He lunged forward, causing his own opponent to back off, then twisted his ax blade to the right and slashed the kessentai opposite Querida deeply along its flank, severing ribs and opening at least one main artery. That kessentai gave off a scream and turned, automatically, to his wounded side.
He didn't scream long as Querida's ancient boma blade sliced neatly through the forward half of the creature's thick neck, further adding to the blood spilled on the ground.
Posleen blood, though yellow, was as slippery when fresh as any human's. Stepping forward into it, Cristiano's left foot began to skid. When he moved his right to try to regain his balance, it, too, ended up in the broad puddle of Posleen blood. At that point, both of Cristiano's feet went out from under him, letting him slam to the ground on his back. He instantly twisted over, onto his hands and knees, in an attempt to right himself. This, however, placed his unprotected rear end temporarily in the direction of the Posleen enemy.
Cristiano knew this was a bad position to be in, of course. Just how bad he didn't fully understand until the Posleen that replaced the one fallen in front of Querida decided he had just enough time to make a swing before Querida could take another attack position. The kessentai swung—more of a short chop, really and that swing cut into Cristiano's mid-section, just below the armor, slicing his spine in two. Control of his legs gone, Cristiano went down flat, adding his screams to the general cacophony.
Even screaming and slashed through the spine, the Switzer still managed to twirl himself around, his dead legs dragging behind him. The yellow blood now mixed with his own helped ease the move. He took hold of his halberd once again. Pushing against the ground Cristiano managed to roll onto his back, his dead legs twisting one around the other as he did. From that position, the Kaporal lunged upward at the Posleen who had felled him, even as that enemy raised his blade for another strike. The halberd's point took the Posleen full in the chest, but lower down, towards the underside. From that entry point, it pierced one of the creature's lungs.
The Posleen dropped his blade and looked down toward his pinioned chest. On the way, his view passed over the fallen human. Incredibly, as badly as he was hurt, the human was still laughing.
Just before he collapsed on top of the Switzer, which collapse would eventually be the cause—via suffocation—of Cristiano's death, the kessentai wondered, How do you beat beings who can find something funny in being half cut in two?
His eyes now clear of the human's blood, Borasmena was able to see the problem more clearly. There is only enough space for five or six of us abreast, he thought, and those with only the short reach of the boma blades, while the humans and their two Posleen allies can mass eight abreast and bring fourteen weapons to bear. We're simply outnumbered. Worse, they have armor to turn away any but the most precise blows. We're outnumbered and outclassed. Who would have thought it of those scrawny bipeds?
That calculation was slightly off, since two of the humans, de Courten and Cristiano, were dead or dying now. Even so, once von Altishofen stepped up to fill a vacant slot it was still thirteen to five, humans, and worse than that in close combat power. And the human threshing machine continued onward over the corpses of the fallen kessentai.
Maybe if we back off, Borasmena wondered, and charge them, try to bowl them over by sheer weight.
A few shouted commands in High Posleen caused those kessentai not most closely engaged to back off. The five who were face to face with the humans could not back off, lest their unprotected hindquarters be chopped as they turned. One by one, these fell, even as Borasmena used the time their deaths bought him to organize a charge.
From the center of the second rank von Altishofen saw what the Posleen had in mind. Our line's thin, he thought. A hard charge carried home just might break it. He shouted out a series of commands, "HALT . . . prepare to receive cavalry . . . Second rank . . . fill in first rank . . . KNEEL . . . Present . . . ARMS."
As one, the men of the single rank knelt down, pushing the pike points of their halberds to the fore and bracing the buttstocks on the ground behind them.
"What's that animal the humans have on their planet, AS?" Borasmena asked. "The one with all the points sticking out?"
"A porcupine, Lord."
"A porcupine," the kessentai echoed. He counted the points of the halberds, including the one borne by the juvenile kessentai, and divided by the space available. "If I order this charge, all six in the first rank will end up throwing themselves on between two and three of those spearpoints each."
"Do you see a choice, Lord?" the AS asked.
"Unfortunately, I do not. More unfortunately, I am not at all sure that this will work."
"Well," the AS observed, 'it isn't like you have a particular shortage of spear fodder now, is it?"
Borasmena looked over the ground the humans had trod. He knew two of them had gone down, but as near as he could tell five or six times that many kessentai had fallen to the humans' odd axes cum spears. It was hard to tell how many, actually, for all the severed limbs and heads. And each and every one of the fallen was a friend.
"There is a way to break them, maybe," Borasmena announced as he walked to the center front of his formation and beckoned with both arms for four of the kessentai behind him to dress on him. "It is a fearful way, however. Goodbye, AS."
"Goodbye, Lord?"
Leopoldo Rossini was in the front and only rank now, gasping for air but with both hands firmly grasping the halberd. His bronze tinted cuirass was speckled with blood, the dull yellow Posleen fluid mostly but intermixed along with that were brighter spots of human red. He thought none of the latter was his own but was really afraid to look.
Scheekt and Lorgus knelt at either side of Rossini, their halberds likewise gripped tightly and braced on the ground.
"Think we can hold them?" Lorgus asked.
"Think we have a choice?" Rossini countered. "Yes, we'll hold them. These are brave creatures, but not suicidal, generally. The one's in front will slow down when . . ."
He never finished the sentence as the Posleen began their charge.
Borasmena gave a half-accusing look over his shoulder. The object of his accusation was Finba'anaga. The meaning? That was hard to define but it seemed to be about half, There was no better way than this?
The kessentai then sheathed his own boma blade, turned his great crested head still further, and said to his followers, "I will create the opening. The rest of you, pour through that."
Chapter Thirty-eight
The Helvetians are a people of warriors, famous for the valour of their soldiers.
—Tacitus
Anno Domini 2024
Posleen Prime
One look at the Posleen facing him, both the look on his face and the resigned way he seemed to sheath his boma blade, brought a single name to Rossini's mind. Arnold von Winkelried. We're fucked.
Rossini didn't have time to explain to the men flanking him, Scheekt and Lorgus. He could only shout out the name, "von Winkelried," and hope they'd understand. And then the Posleen was upon him, using his free arms to gather into his own chest Rossini's halberd, as well as Scheekt's and Lorgus', and one other that Leo couldn't put a name to. As sharp as the things were, spearpoint and axeblade both, the Posleen managed to drive them each deep into his own body, effectively locking them there unless the Switzers affected were to back up several feet and break their own line. Even at that, they could not have moved fast enough, not as fast, in any event, as the Posleen had impaled himself. Worse, when the Posleen fell, he dragged the four
halberds down with him.
Bowing to the inevitable, Rossini let go his halberd and reached for his own sword, a stout monomolecular baselard produced by Sally in the forge. His blade was barely half out of its scabbard before a Posleen, charging over the body of their fallen hero, was slashing at him with fury. Rossini ducked the first cut, pulled his own blade out before the second, and barely managed to deflect that.
This is way too much like work.
Borasmena was a mass of pain, all too slowly fading into merciful shock. He could feel the precise spot of each spearhead and axeblade lodged inside him. Gods . . . ancestors, he silently pleaded, please take me to you . . . and please hurry.
The kessentai dimly sensed that all four bearers of the humans' long weapons lodged inside him had drawn secondary arms. They'd take some with them, Borasmena thought, but in the long run the strength of the People would overcome those little things.