Weapons were mostly small arms; some light field artillery would go in along with machine guns and explosives. Until we could take down the shields nothing in electronics went. We raided old technologies for chemical missiles, grenades, satchel charges, anything that did not require any form of electronics.
Latwasa even built a few hundred thousand electric doohickeys that did nothing except pop a little cap with a bright flash if the shield was still there. They allowed us to get as close as possible without touching it.
A year went by before the full assault group was ready again, including every Destroyer we had, ten GCs with nothing but boomer arrows and nail guns, twelve GCs armed with 100 Seekers and nail guns.
Almost a thousand GCs carried 80 pods, each pod could carry 100 paratroopers but for now, each was half full of troops. We found four thousand could live in the pods and have a bit of room to move during the long trip.
Another thousand GCs carried additional troops, six thousand aboard each. Just big transports. Our pods, when full, would drop a total of eight million troops and we had two million more in reserves for when the shields went down.
We sent all the ships except the troops to the fourth planet and they wiped out all the primary resistance but we still took heavy losses. Then the GC bombers started dropping their bombs, twenty-five to a rack. They got a little air charge to push them out the tubes in the bottoms of the ships. All waited to see if they went through the field. They went down unopposed. Rack after rack, ship after ship, 996 million bombs went downward. Failures could be seen burning up or exploding but all in all, it worked great. Two weeks of nonstop bombing, then, as the last bombs went through the tubes, the first of the GC troop ships were on station, full and ready to drop. I gave the word to go; we would meet them on the ground.
A blue bubble towed six half naked women, a few generals, and a large stack of equipment behind a saber tooth tiger upon which sat a guy in a blue suit of armor and a big plume.
Next to him was a lion with an armored girl in white, with a rope in her mouth, towing another bubble with a small field piece and ammo and other supplies. We farted our way down to the planet below unopposed.
We followed the first two pods down, watched them deploy and headed down to land a little ahead of them on a ground that was totally pocked with bomb craters. As we touched we released the bubbles and the women went into full alert, Aawasa and Queastra had bows, Katawasa had her 50 cal ready, I had my sword and pistol, the rest had swords at the ready.
The first pod troops arrived and formed skirmish lines as more and more dropped in. Weapons pods were raided and platoons formed. We mixed all the types. Earth had firepower and grenades and would provide forward units. Our Camelot shield and spear were behind those and a mix of our archers and the throwers from Big Guy’s planet formed the rear artillery.
Everything had been timed so we would arrive not more than 20 or 30 minutes behind the last bombs. We were outside what was left of a big city, but so far we were alone.
The various generals all dropped with different troops around the world—objective, find and destroy the shield generators. We had no idea were they were so everyone was blind. We knew we would have general chaos for a while, but all leaders were trained to form as we did, as best they could. If we hit heavy tanks we all had a problem. We did have some manually fired rockets along, but the heavy boomer archers were about our best bet against them. Katawasa checked the scope. Even shut off and batteries out, it was fried. Standard optics worked fine so we were good.
I scanned the city. I saw nothing moving and it was surprising how much damage the 500 pounders did. Fires, skyscrapers falling or fallen, even the roads destroyed. We formed a long skirmish line. Troops were still dropping in behind us and forming groups. If everyone else on the planet had the same luck we might actually win this.
I found out later that My Captain wasn’t the lucky one this round. Her task force landed in a bracketed artillery range of some kind. They started getting incoming almost as soon as they touched.
She formed the Earth weapons troops and sent them immediately toward the noise and they were to pick up all they could along the way. She went through hell for about 45 minutes then slowly it became more sporadic as the Earth troops and big boomers from archers were close enough to send walls of lead and devastation down range against their guns.
Big Guy was getting pot-shotted by what appeared to be small bands of Blood Sabers. Almost all were destroyed on contact by Earth’s heavy weapons people; just annoying. The General’s army was about like mine, unopposed.
I held up along the edge of a road that ran a perimeter of the city.
You could see the little flashes of blue/green in the sky as they dropped Latwasa’s electrical dummies.
We found I could put up a bubble but for some reason only Linda could drop it. I sent her off looking for any clue to where the shield generators were.
She came back 30 minutes later from behind us.
She said, “The closest one is underground. In the middle of the city and it has at least 500,000 troops around it with about 100 tanks and God knows what else. A big rod points up from atop a spire and there are a lot of spires scattered as far as I can see. When the shield fires, the rods on top turn blue/green.”
“Can we get archers close, unseen?” I asked.
“Not with enough to do any good and you know we don’t have the power in the swords to destroy that many tanks ourselves,” she said.
I turned to Queastra and Aawasa. “No heroics damn it! Take a group of archers, start crater hopping to the edge of their troops on the eastside. Split to get in range of their tanks. You’ll know when to go. Linda and I will create a diversion. Work slow, we will fly around a bit to keep their attention. Good luck.” I kissed Aawasa and Queastra and they were off. Funny, Aawasa wore some rubies in her hair, quite pretty but different.
Brigit, Katawasa, and Matawasa went with our last group of archers backing up the shield and spears. This was not a swords-to-the-front type battle.
Linda and I armored up, I grabbed a few grenades from the Earth group, and told them to follow us off to the left as the archers were working right. Linda also picked up a few and we took off, making high dives into the Blood Saber groups in and around the tanks. I popped a grenade about every third dive and it cleaned a good swath. They hit us with pure hell. Machine guns chattered, the tanks’ main guns had anti-aircraft rounds popping around us, even little missiles, but our armor held. I made several trips to the rear for more grenades and told the Earth troops to start engaging in small skirmishes but stay on the move and away from the tanks.
Pop up, fire a rocket or two, down and move. About 30 different groups worked along a mile wide line. We lost troops, but they were tearing new assholes into the tightly packed Blood Sabers. The Blood Sabers weren’t stupid, they saw what was happening and started pushing forward with troops and tanks, but then hell started walking like death as way off to the right, tanks were exploding and troops died by the hundreds. The whump, whump of the boomers could be heard. I pulled up my crossbow, loaded up five AP boomers, and took out the closest tank in three hits and disabled another. An Earther rocket finished it and we had a hole. I sent five more boomers in a straight path and the Earthers moved forward into the breach. Katawasa brought up our spears behind the Earthers and into that little breach we started pouring. Linda and I came up alongside Katawasa and the others, the Blood Saber’s small arms fire bounced off our shields and armor but finally we were surrounded on three sides. We went to swords. I was missing two of my top demons, but the rest of us were here. Linda in white with blue tints, sword flying, I in pale blue, pumping belt after belt of 44s down range until I ran out. Swords went up and we had a bugler sounding charge, over and over. We were losing troops, but not anywhere as bad as the great slaughter.
Finally all our archers were in the expanding breach and started loosing boomers, big and small. It didn’t matter what direction, al
l were Blood Sabers. They targeted tanks where they could. It took us six grueling hours of swinging and slicing and shooting but we were still intact and almost to the rod. The Blood Sabers tried several moves, like massed attacks. They deployed snipers, but ours were better and faster.
Queastra and Aawasa caught back up. I noticed immediately Aawasa’s katana was missing. She was holding a double-edged sword. When I asked she said she’d find it later, it was shot out of her hands when they were crater hopping so she borrowed one off a dead Blood Saber.
We formed our well-trained power square. Queastra would float. Linda and I, side by side. Aawasa and Katawasa front corners, Matawasa and Brigit just behind us left and right as well. We pushed past the Earthers, most were now out of ammo so they would fall to rear as a bayonet guard. We now led the front with our other swordsmen and spear and shield, and archers and throwers. We were dying but they were getting slaughtered. They were trying to get off the field of battle, but we still had a slew of archers that Aawasa had left on their right flank. Queastra fired a signal smoke arrow and boomers started walking into the rear ranks of Blood Sabers that were trying to run. We wanted no survivors. The pressure against our lines was lessening and Blood Sabers were starting to run. They were defeated and knew it. We kept moving forward, heads, arms, legs, whatever presented itself to our swords went flick, flick.
Linda went airborne to ensure we had no traps coming up. She moved forward and was off ahead someplace.
We met up with her fifteen minutes later standing on an impressive pile of dead Blood Sabers by a big door.
Everyone was exhausted. For the first time I looked behind us from an elevated position. The dead were obvious. Literally, walls of dead Blood Sabers for almost three quarters of a mile on both sides of our route of march. Most of our dead were at the initial contact point; once we penetrated into their mass, they went way down.
Everyone around us were heaving, trying to catch breath, and Linda used a little power to help the girls but we still had to get behind the big door.
The Earthers and our teams brought up shape charges and satchel charges. The door was blown and was followed immediately by satchel charges and hand grenades sent into the breach.
We went in and down, and down. A second, tougher looking door. We did it all again. This time there were cries and screams and more when the satchels and grenades went off inside.
We went in, Linda and I first. Small arms chattered but we quieted them quickly. A long narrow hall opened into a big room, or series of them really. All had massive transformers and capacitors of an unknown type with walls lined with control panels and a few hundred Blood Sabers, all with swords drawn and waiting.
We came in and all my wives went to skirmish line and there was chatter among the Blood Sabers. An Earther behind us said he heard the word, ‘demons’.
Aawasa smiled. “Think they heard of us?”
We moved to engage. A few of them were good and lived a few minutes. The Earthers behind were cheering us and offered no help. I caught bits and pieces of, “Shit, you see that?” “No!” “Damn, look at that little girl kill!”
“I been trying to watch the black girl; can’t, she’s a blur.”
It was over, there was nothing left to kill.
Earthers brought forward some of their electronics people and we had Latwasa and two of our own. After ten minutes the consensus of all said not a clue how it worked, but we were out of time.
We stacked explosives around anything and everything we thought might control the shield. All but Queastra and another of her race with the speed gift, and Linda, remained behind. They would set off the charges and run out.
We were outside and waited. Huge tongues of flames shot out the tunnel and other exits we hadn’t seen. A light blue ball with two black girls in it was seen as it literally shot out of sight. Linda came walking out laughing. “Queastra tripped! You believe it? Ha!”
The Earthers were putting together the chem-fired multistage one-shot signal rocket.
She called her lion and chased after the ball. They were back in twenty minutes.
I flew to the spire and verified it was dead.
The Earthers fired off the signal rocket about the same time I saw The General’s blood red cloud on the horizon. Ours popped royal red for Aawasa’s color.
We now had at least two holes in their shield. I sent Linda off to see about the other two parties, Big Guy and My Captain’s.
Thirty minutes later she was back and told us to load up, My Captain needed help and right now.
A lion with a girl hauling a bubble with eight archers in it by a rope in her teeth, and a saber tooth tiger hauling five half naked girls farted to the rescue. We landed next to My Captain, she had about four thousand troops left, I doubted any were uninjured. She had made it almost to her door, but was totally surrounded by at least another twenty thousand Blood Sabers. Linda had all the arches nock boomers, dropped her bubble, and they cleared a large area near the hard pressed lines of our troops. The Boomers slowed down the enthusiastic attacks of the Blood Sabers. My group formed our battle square and started walking right into the Sabers—they didn’t know what to make of us, but they heard legends and the rumors still went of demons and death.
We sliced into them, full lust, flick, flick, slice, slash. Blood everywhere. Boomers went off a second and third time and the archers went sword and widened the path behind us.
Took a little less than three hours and Linda had to zap us all two times, fix three wounds on Brigit, one light one on Katawasa, and heal My Captain’s bugler, almost dead herself. We were running out of energy fast. Flick, flick, slash, the Blood Sabers broke and ran. Archers finished many, a few left the field alive.
Linda had to heal My Captain, she had been hit by three bullets and had two nasty slashes in her, but she lived and never stopped fighting.
This battlefield was different. Almost 400,000 of our troops down. The artillery had been devastating. The tanks tore them apart but they never stopped, never turned, none ran, they moved through hell and were almost to the door, 4000 still left alive.
We started receiving two million fresh troops and the first among them brought com gear and earbuds.
Rodel was the first I heard. Coordinating ships to land to tend the wounded, four of our GCs were set to land as permanent hospital ships once they dropped their bombs. One to each dropped Army. I suggested The General’s or ours be diverted to help My Captain, she was almost wiped out.
Our Destroyers and GCs now skimmed the atmosphere and sent pulsed lasers, targeting the individual spire tops and were using seeker missiles on Blood Saber tanks. Their planet was breached, it was all a matter of time now.
We combined and reformed into four armies, one went to each point of the compass. One order, total destruction of all living Blood Sabers, all structures, everything. Gather any data and intelligence.
Took us almost six months of nonstop campaigning to get near the Blood Saber seat of power. Rodel said he smelled a trap, a big one, so we held off. Intel said only a few ten thousand Blood Sabers and a ruler remained, but Rodel insisted we were in a big trap, he ‘sensed’ it.
We had already started evacs of wounded nonessential personnel. Rodel said it was something to do with the way the force field was wired together; he just knew it was a trap.
Linda recharged the swords, still slow, while I pondered the trouble. Brigit said, “Unless they want to blow the whole planet, we can’t find anything.”
Rodel stopped her. “That’s it! The spacing and positioning of the spires. All create the critical force. The whole damn planet is one big f’ing A-Bomb!” I had never remembered hearing Rodel swear before.
Well, that settled that, “Evacuate ASAP, we will try to keep the capital city Blood Sabers entertained for awhile. All fully loaded ships leave now. Send jumpers to the third planet and get all the empty ships we have available…move people! If they sense we are pulling out, they are going to pop the cork.
” I got no resistance to orders.
An Earther captain came up with an idea—we could strap the hundreds of chem rockets they brought to the hull of one of the grounded GCs and with all the other ships to help we should be able to get it up a lot quicker, with a lot of the wounded aboard. Almost 100,000 wounded were stacked like cordwood, barely able to move or breathe. Rockets fired, my saber tooth was tethered and farting all over the place, more rockets were fired and slowly the goliath moved skyward. It took a week instead of several months as we got it to orbit and heading back to the fold toward the third planet. We strapped rockets to the eight-man and twenty-man ships from Camelot and Earth; they were stuffed full with wounded, and so it went, non-stop.
A GC came in, full of the big booster rockets from Camelot and another 100,000 wounded left on another grounded GC. Soon a third grounded GC was fitted with the boosters and it departed. About 40,000 troops to go. We had enough boosters for another GC but it was a long way off. Everyone that could leave had left, those remaining would all catch the last GC. Took a week. Rodel said they were trying hard to break his jamming and now that most of the ships he’d been tapping for power had left they would get through soon.
We set up and set off all the chem gens we had, several hundred as needed. He thought ahead and all the ships left theirs behind. The final GC was space borne, just needed a few hours. I kissed all my wives good-bye.
Aawasa said, “You know if what Rodel says is true you may not live, my husband.” She was crying.
“As one of us once said, we play the hand destiny dealt us, my love.” They were all crying as they loaded on the last GC.
We had slowly whittled the Blood Sabers down; I figured a few thousand were left.
Blood Sabers Page 41