* * *
«Colonel,» said the S-3, «Lieutenant Ray reports they are in contact with the Posleen. The front ranks walked right into the ambush and they finished off the survivors pretty quick, but the rear ranks are pushing forward hard and he doesn't think he can hold his position much longer.»
«Right. Well.» Colonel Robertson looked around at the figures hurrying in and out of the armory. The pile in the center of the armory floor was getting to a respectable size. «We need to pull this operation back. What's the situation at the interstate?»
«The main Posleen force has basically extinguished itself, pun intended, but reinforcements are moving in from the north and south. They're going to be able to hold out for about fifteen minutes more.»
«It's better than we had any right to expect. And the bunker?»
«Just about loaded.»
«Heaven be praised. Okay, tell the sergeant major this is the last load.»
«Who gets to do the honors?»
«I think I'll leave it up to the sergeant major. You and I need to head into town.»
As they walked out the front of the armory for the last time, the colonel turned and looked at the sign just inside the front door and snorted grimly. «I hope that our enemy at least has enough intelligence to begin to recognize insignia.»
«Why?» asked the S-3.
The colonel gestured at the two-turreted castle. «Just imagine how much they'll come to hate that crest.»
* * *
«I will have the get of these Alld'nt threshkreen for my supper!» Kenallai stepped mincingly through the offal clogging the road, having abandoned his saucer for a closer look at the carnage. A haze of dust and smoke still hung over the battlefield and the shattered bodies of the Posleen companies were steaming in the cold night air. «What in the name of the nineteen fuscirt did this?»
«This, my eson'antai,» said Kenallurial, gesturing into the building that had been the center of the fighting. He pointed to a large green-clad thresh missing most of his foreparts. An explosion had occurred that ate most of the thresh's mass, leaving little to salvage for rations. From the spray of oolt'os outward from the thresh, it was an explosion designed to kill the oolt'os as they tried to come upon him. Kenallurial tore a bit of the green garment away.
«Note the marking. In the reports it stated that all the green– and gray-clad thresh wore markings. Many await deciphering, but this one is recognized. It translates as something like 'leader of military technicians.' There are others that wear rifles that are leaders of warriors.»
«Military technicians?» scoffed Ardan'aath. «What rot! What does war have to do with repairmen? War is for the warriors, not skulkers who use explosives for their weapons! Show me the ones with the rifles and I shall bring you their get on my blade!» He spun his saucer and darted off towards his advancing oolt'ondar.
Kenallai took the proffered piece of cloth in his hand, turning the symbol so that the protrusions were upward. «It appears to be a building.»
«Yes, eson'antai. It may be their headquarters. And although their purpose includes construction, they also are the primary artists of explosive destruction,» he gestured around, «as you can see.»
«Well, do these military technicians have a name of their own?»
«Yes, they call them the 'engineers' or 'sappers.' « Kenallurial's muzzle made a hash of the syllables.
« 'Sappers.' « Kenallai tasted the word. «I hope that this encounter is the last that we see of them.»
* * *
«Damn,» muttered Colonel Robertson under his breath, «it's working.»
The tail end of the line of women and children shuffled forward another few steps as he passed under the railroad bridge over Sophia Street.
He could see Lieutenant Young talking earnestly with a civilian construction worker as he neared the pump house. The power to the city had been lost, and thereby the streetlights, but construction Klieg lights had been set up and the bulldozers and earthmovers worked unabated. The hill that had flanked Frederick Street opposite the train station was leveled and the street was practically gone. There was no trace of the buildings that had been there, or of the Montessori School on the corner. In their place the Rappahanock had a new bluff. The area looked as if it had been attacked by a group of giant gophers.
The pump house had been a low concrete building, about fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, surmounted by what appeared to be a twenty-foot-high silo. The lower building had been partially covered by alluvial deposits, but otherwise was protected overhead and on the river side only by its three-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls. A narrow catwalk had led to the door at the top of the silo where there was a room ringed by windows: the «delightful view of the river.» To the side of the catwalk had been another, wider, door with a crane mounted above it. It was through this door that replacement equipment was lifted when the pump house was still in operation.
Now fill dirt reached nearly to the door, as load after load of what the military referred to as overburden was dumped onto the lower building. It was in this lower compartment of the bunker that the noncombatants were being secured. The catwalk had been replaced by a wider ramp constructed of structural steel. Colonel Robertson could see military engineers rigging it to be destroyed as the noncombatants shuffled up. At the top, the wall had been ripped out around the door and other engineers and construction workers were driving holes for demolition charges. The line of women and children, their breath steaming in the air, disappeared into the maw of the beast at the top of the ramp.
As Colonel Robertson waited patiently for the young lieutenant to finish with his conference he found himself starting to nod off. He glanced at his watch and realized that they had successfully held the Posleen back for over six hours. On the other hand, with the Posleen across 95, through the defenses on the Jeff Davis and pressing up Tidewater Trail, it was really all over but the shouting.
Lieutenant Young turned away from the construction worker and nearly walked into the colonel. When the lieutenant finally focused on the obstacle he swayed for a moment and snapped off a salute. Sometime during the hellish evening he had lost his glasses and peered at his superior owlishly.
«Good evening, sir.» He looked around and swayed again in fatigue. «I am pleased to report that we have sufficient room for all the remaining women and children.» He looked at the line of crying children and worn women who were all that remained of the Fredericksburg noncombatants.
Only hours ago they had been as relatively carefree as any group of people could be in the face of an impending invasion: middleclass matrons and their children, the flower of American suburbia. Now they shivered in the freezing dark as predatory aliens closed in on either side and only a forlorn hope stood between them and an end in the belly of the beast. «This had better work.»
«It will,» the colonel assured the plan's developer. He had his own dark thoughts about the likelihood, but it was far too late to voice them. And when it came down to cases it was not a choice between this plan and a better one, but a choice between this plan and nothing.
«Well, even if it doesn't, sir, they'll never know.»
«You're going to Hiberzine all of them?»
«All except the last few coherent mothers, sir. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong that is fixable, it would be a hell of a note to have the whole group die because nobody was awake to fix it.»
«Like a leak or a fire or something?»
«Yeah, or somebody having an allergic reaction, whatever. It just seemed like a good idea. Sir,» he added belatedly.
«I think at this point we can more or less dispense with military courtesy, Kenny. Aren't they going to use up too much air? I thought that would be a limiting factor.»