He almost felt embarrassed by the appropriation. The company had been surprisingly enthusiastic in their support of the defense. The local vice president for facilities had organized most of the support and had rousted out the MIS head and dozens of technicians to cobble together the network Keeton was working from. Integrating the military system and the various PCs and Macintoshes that were being used would have taken a military contractor ten years and two hundred billion dollars. The Reynolds' MIS folks, told to just figure out a way, had jury-rigged a fully functional system in hours. It just showed what happened when you gave clear goals, plenty of resources and let competent people get on with the job.
The whole defense was like that. Once the plan was in place, he had barely been able to keep up. So many little details had been handled by people who realized there wasn't time to argue. From Keene, who had been a veritable whirlwind, directing projects here and there, to Sergeant Gleason from the SF team who had strong-armed half a dozen intransigent hospital administrators into providing impromptu MASH units.
There had been the other side as well. He had generated a simple order. If a situation came to the attention of a general officer in which an officer of captain's rank or above was slowing down the progress of the defense for political or bureaucratic reasons, that officer was to be relieved of commission and sent to the front to dig foxholes. He had fully twenty former field-grade officers and three flag officers wielding shovels. When the defense was all over he was going to have to sort it all out. The generals were likely to be a problem.
In the meantime he had a godlike view of the approaching enemy, a clear view of the thousands of them spreading through the kill-box and enough support in place to fight for days. And he'd only had to deal with three problems in the last hour. Remarkable.
But it was about time to give the signal to open fire. He suspected he was just about to be very, very busy.
He keyed the headset microphone that connected him to the Tactical Control Officer. «Okay, ADC. Open the ball.»
* * *
The technique was called time-on-target. Depending on the distance to the target and the type of weapon, it takes a certain amount of time for an artillery shell to reach its objective. Some artillery, like mortar, fires at a high angle. These projectiles describe a high arc and take a relatively long time to reach their target. Some artillery is fired on a flatter angle and takes less time to reach a target.
This phenomenon was known, but up until World War II no one had paid much attention to it. However, early on during that war a senior American artillery officer had determined that a better «punch» could be gotten if the initial salvo of an artillery barrage arrived more or less simultaneously.
After thinking about this for a relatively short time, he decided to try having guns fire at timed intervals. With proper planning, all of the rounds would arrive within seconds of each other. The technique was discovered to work quite well, as surviving Germans were happy to attest after the war. And a new technique in the old, old game of artillery was born.
* * *
Arstenoss shot a spiteful plasma bolt at the towering wall. The lead Kessentai had loaded their tenars with heavy metal and retreated to the rear. The treasure could be bartered for prime genetic samples and fiefs, disdaining the necessity to fight for them. Now the host had reached this demon-bedamned wall, with the symbol of those thrice-damned and soul-chewed military technicians on it, and there seemed no way to follow the trinkets onward. The few God Kings that had floated their tenars above the wall had been removed from the Path. To make matters worse the trinkets had been getting larger and larger as the road progressed. Demons only knew what the eventual horde would look like. Faced with the potential for riches and the sudden blockage, tens of thousands of the host were packing into the valley, looking for more treasures or for the cowardly thresh to at least show themselves. A small bridge had been found to the east and many Kessentai were leaning that way, but it was both heavily defended and very small. It would take days for the host to cross the river and take the thresh from behind. Occasional blasts of fire out of frustration would drift up towards the dots of positions in the towers without eliciting response.
«We'll have to go over it,» said Artulosten thoughtfully as the Posleen normals packed around his tenar jostled it on its ground-effect. The tens of thousands of oolt'os were reassuring. Surely nothing in the universe could stop such a host. «If we get a number of the Kessentai together, we can assault over it and take the gate from the far side. Then . . .» He stopped as a sound over his shoulder made him look back and up. It appeared that the top of the towering hill to his left had exploded as a ripple of purple fire and smoke exploded upward. His sharp eye caught a flicker of objects lifted on the columns of fire. There were hundreds of the things. He froze in indecision, unsure what action would help the situation. A human would have screamed «incoming.» That action would have been just as useful as paralysis.
There were five divisions of infantry involved in the defense of Richmond. Three of those divisions had contributed their mortars and artillery to the Libby and Montrose Hill firebases. The relatively low velocity and high arc of mortars ensured that they would be the first to fire. The 120mm rounds arced gracefully upward to apogee then tilted over and headed down. It would take twenty-three seconds for the one hundred fifteen rounds to reach their targets. Before they were one-third of the way a second salvo was fired. And a third. At the third salvo the ninety-seven artillery pieces finally fired.
* * *
The Posleen were packed practically shoulder to shoulder in Schockoe Bottom. Many of them had started to try to climb the obstacles into the city. Others had started pressing against the wall of rubble across Williamsburg Road. A stream was headed towards the Belle Isle footbridge. None were prepared for the incoming salvo.
The devastation was impossible to describe. Within seconds of each other two hundred rounds of artillery landed in a space that could be occupied by four football fields.
The center artillery fire, well away from the infantry positions along the wall, was set to variable timed fire. VT rounds exploded above the Posleen force, scything downward in an oval pattern of death. Posleen caught under the hammer of the guns were torn apart by the artillery bursting charges, their yellow blood flying in an unnoticed mist from the fury of the charges.
The mortar rounds were, if anything, more effective. Using a proximity fuse they exploded a mere meter off the ground. The circle of death that spiraled outward slaughtered packed centaurs by the dozen. And another salvo hit. And another.
The infantrymen and women packing the buildings and defenses around the Bottom had been told that they would know when to fire. «Fire when the artillery goes off.» For a few moments they were shocked into immobility as the black puffballs of VT and purple flashes of proximity rounds struck the world with a jackhammer of the gods. But as the stunning overpressure of that first devastating time-on-target passed and the guns set into the steady rhythm of eight rounds a minute the forces arrayed along the line popped up, took the safeties off the various weapons and started hunting targets.
The manjacks started going off before the first rifle. The entire kill zone was still packed with dazed and wounded Posleen, stumbling here and there under the thunder of the guns. As one would cross the interlocking target beams of the manjacks the robotic weapons would fire. Often the same Posleen would break three or four beams at a time, so densely packed were the weapons. The 7.62mm rounds, admirably designed for killing the centaurs, would tear the luckless alien apart, adding the slime of its juices to the ichor-soaked ground.