While the master sniper serviced her targets, Trapp had another job. As the Posleen sentry nearest the nestling pens turned to look at the violent silver flashes, an unnoticed black shadow detached itself from the ground. Not trusting the power of the silenced 9mm rounds against something with the mass of a small horse, Trapp put seven rounds into the sentry's chest and three into its head in four seconds. The Posleen's head exploded like a yellow melon and it joined its brethren in repose. Trapp cautiously tracked it to the ground then moved west to cover the left flank of the entry team.
Richards moved directly into the compound and set up an M-60 light machine gun just beyond the pens as Master Sergeant Tung moved to the left with a medium laser. This left Mosovich and Martine to secure the objective.
One problem with the Tchpth was that the team had no translation devices. Human-adapted AIDs had not been available before they left and the Himmit had been exceedingly reluctant to give up any of theirs. Thus Mosovich was forced to try pidgin Tchpth on the prisoners who looked for all the world to him like blue Alaskan King crabs. Martine had, so to speak, drawn the short straw and he had three sacks to fill up with nestling Posleen.
Jake raced to the fence of the Tchpth compound and aspirated "TcKpth! !Klik! Tit! Tit!" which the Himmit had solemnly assured him meant "Friends here to help, move back, move back."
He was certain it would never work, but the instant the first word left his mouth, the remaining Tchpth jerked to the far side of the pen. He placed a sheet charge against the plastic slats and darted around the corner. The C-4 flashed white and a section of fence three feet across simply vanished. "Ikdee! Ikdee!" he shouted, gesturing for them to follow and ran for the jungle. He looked back and saw that none of them had moved. Each and every one remained in the pen. Cursing everything Galactic he ran back.
In the meantime Staff Sergeant Martine had his own extraterrestrial problems. He had had the foresight to wear gloves, since the carnivorous Posleen had teeth like razors even as nestlings, but standard issue leather work gloves were never meant to deal with carnivore jaws and raptor talons. When he bent over the fence and reached in for the first specimen, as he had seen the God King reach in months before, he immediately discovered that there was a knack to grabbing nestlings.
Like a snake, or a pissed-off cat, they were best grasped behind the neck. The blast of Mosovich's charge drowned Martino's bellow of pain and rage as the nestling snapped its tooth-filled maw onto his hand and whipped up to sink all six talons into his arm. But his imprecations could be heard clearly over the beginning sounds of battle in the distance.
"F-f-f-f-co-co-cocksucker!" he managed to say in an intense stage whisper. He pounded the tenacious whelp against the fence several times until he could stun it enough to lever its saurian jaws apart and detach its talons.
"Shit, shit, shit," he cursed as he stuffed the unconscious pullet into the sack. He surveyed the remaining throng while shaking the blood from his hand. They in turn watched him. They obviously hoped he was supper. He thrust his hand in again and this time managed to snag the floppy skin on the back of one of the nestlings' elongated necks. It let out a shriek and twisted in his grip, but he thrust the cat-sized extraterrestrial willy-nilly into the second sack.
Mueller and Ersin had laid a series of trip-wire and command-detonated mines along the path the Posleen would take in pursuit and their flashes served to maintain the distraction, but one God King, at least, noticed the commotion by the pens and began to rally a counter attack. That notion was effectively quashed by a .50 caliber high velocity round, but the normals of that God King, and the others whose bonds had been released, were in a hyper-aggressive mood with the death of their masters. A group of them moved toward the disturbance at the pens and it was time to rock and roll.
Richards opened the ball with direct fire from his M-60. The 7.62mm rounds tumbled Posleen to the ground, but the senseless carnivores totally ignored their losses and charged towards the source of the drifting tracers, few of them firing in return. Trapp and Ellsworthy added the weight of their fire, but until Tung added the power of his man-pack laser the tide was unstoppable. The combination managed to stop the first wave but the battle on the south side had drawn the attention of the main body away from the distraction, effectively negating its purpose.
Mosovich gave up coaxing the crabs when the firing started. He leapt into the pen, through a forest of pincers, to the far side and began kicking them out through the opening. The Tchpth first turned towards their former homes, but seeing the raging battle to the north, they scattered southward towards the jungle, chittering in fear. By tracking back and forth waving his weapon, which had better uses at the moment in his opinion, he managed to drive them in the right general direction. He heard silvery laughter on the team net and looked up towards the trees.
"Fuck you, Ellsworthy," he snarled.
She laughed again, preparing to meet the second wave. "Sorry, honey, but you look like a crab farmer with his flock." Her laughter broke off in a flurry of directed fire at the trees and a gurgle. He saw a black shape detach itself from a branch and fall thirty meters to bone crushing stillness.
"Incoming!" screamed Richards, as a God King saucer launched itself upwards. It swooped randomly up and left, as its heavy railgun tracked back and forth. Martine screamed and dropped as his legs were severed by the sheet of fire, and Master Sergeant Tung grunted and fell like a forest giant, blood pouring from his mouth.
Jake turned away from his animal husbandry and charged towards the spot where the remains of Sandra Ellsworthy sprawled. Sweeping up her massive rifle he tracked onto the God King saucer and gave it a little lead. The recoil of the powerful weapon rocked him backwards as he fired "off hand." The Posleen used an energy storage system similar to the Federation's. A solid state module buried deep in the "battery" generated a field that permitted molecular bonds to be twisted far out of alignment. As energy was released, the bonds twisted back into their correct position, releasing their stored power. It was a mature technology that, while inherently dangerous, worked just fine as long as the stabilization module maintained integrity.
The .50 caliber bullet punched through the light metal of the saucer and into its energy bottle. The round actually missed the stabilization module, but the dynamic shock wave of its passage transferred thousands of joules of energy through the matrix. Before the bullet had passed fully through the crystalline matrix the bonds had begun to shatter and release their massive energy in an uncontrolled explosion rivaling an antimatter charge.
The blast flipped the saucer into the air and the mass of the God King saucer disappeared in the bright white flash. The shock wave slapped the sergeant major and Trapp to the ground, tossed Richards through the air like a flapjack and stunned or killed most of the front rank Posleen. It was followed by a searing wave of heat.
After a moment Trapp and Mosovich stumbled to their feet, but Richards lay with his head flopped oddly to one side. Jake took one look at him, picked up Martine's sacks and his Street Sweeper then ran for the jungle.
20
Planetary Transport Class Maruk,
N-Space Transit Terra-Diess
1147 GMT March 14th, 2002 AD
Mike was lifting weights in a tiny gym tucked away between the number eighteen cargo hold and the gamma zone environmental spaces when his AID chirped, "You're requested to report to General Houseman at your earliest convenience."