Lord God, he prayed silently, let me do what is right in your eyes.
When the booming reached Esau Wesley, he knew what to expect. Actually he knew and he didn't. Live fire exercises, with the rush of rounds passing overhead, and buried explosives simulating shell bursts, had given them a notion of it, but they weren't the same thing. He realized that before the first rounds struck. Stepping down from the firing step, he crouched in the bottom of the foxhole, Jael beside him. This is it! he thought. The games are over! The thunder of howitzers told him-that and Jael's wide eyes, and Captain Mulvaney's calm voice in his ears.
Then the shells arrived, the noise indescribable. Many exploded in the treetops. Wood and shell fragments whirred and whistled, thudded and slapped. Dirt flew, hissing. The couple ducked under their little roof. The ground shook, and now Esau was glad for all the tough woody roots; they helped keep their foxhole from caving in on them. Jael's eyes were no longer wide. They squinted, perhaps against flying dirt, perhaps in response to the noise, the violence.
He read her lips. "Blessed Jesus," she murmured, then said nothing more. The shells kept arriving, roaring. After the first salvo, they arrived more irregularly. Along the line, the sound was a steady roar, but the nearer explosions were sometimes overlapping, sometimes single. Esau spit dirt. Heard a scream. A tree crashed down. "Medic!" someone cried. Captain Mulvaney's voice spoke in his ear, in his skulclass="underline" "Listen up, B Company. They're sending out armor-tanks and APCs. Stay down, ready on my command. Blastermen, fix bayonets."
As squad leader, Esau was no longer its slammerman. He slipped his bayonet over the studs of his blaster barrel and clamped it firmly. Then, unable to resist, he stepped out and popped a peek over the berm. What he saw riveted his attention. The tanks, those still coming, were already halfway across, riding their AG cushions, their antipersonnel slammer pulses invisible in the sunlight. Other tanks had stopped, more or less askew. He saw one take a heavy trasher pulse and hit the ground skidding, plowing dirt. No one emerged from it. Close behind came the APCs. He became aware of Jael tugging at him, and ducked down again, staring at her. "Good lord!" he said. "What a sight!"
She did not rise up to see, simply looked anxious. Captain Mulvaney's voice spoke in their ears again. "B Company, on your firing steps!" Esau stepped onto the firing step again, hardly able to restrain himself, wishing he still carried a slammer instead of just a blaster. The line of tanks, much thinned, was about a hundred yards short of the forest. An angled file of killer craft swept across the field, armored belly turrets laying trasher fire on the tanks. Which kept coming, those that could. Another file of aircraft followed. Not many tanks were left, and a number of APCs sat smoking.
"B Company, fire!" Mulvaney almost shouted it, excitement in his voice. "Give 'em hell! Wipe 'em out!"
Esau rested his blaster on the berm and sought targets. The artillery had stopped, but Wyzhnyny tanks continued to pump heavy trasher bolts into the forest. Wood still flew; branches and treetops still crashed down. The APCs had also thinned, and as if on signal, stopped sixty to eighty yards away. Wyzhnyny poured from them-real Wyzhnyny! Others, from crippled APCs, were already coming on foot, running at speeds a human couldn't hope to match, firing their blasters with a sweeping motion from what might be thought of as their waists. Esau had set his for semiautomatic. He fired aimed fire, almost every shot a mortal hit. When he paused to insert a fresh power slug, he saw Jael firing aimed fire too. She'd become skilled with the blaster-not as good as he was, but good.
All along the line, Wyzhnyny kept coming. A running Wyzhnyny launched himself to clear the Wesleys' foxhole, his blaster muzzle swinging toward them. It had no bayonet. Esau squeezed off a bolt that tore the Wyzhnyny open, spraying them with fluids and tissue. The alien landed behind them in a heap. Another lay on its belly-blood flowed from its neck, red blood!-its torso upright, swinging its blaster toward them. Too high; Esau fired back as pulses passed barely overhead.
They kept coming, coming. Another flight of friendly aircraft swept the field, and another, and another, killing, but the attackers did not pause. Esau half heard fighting behind him. Those who'd broken through had been engaged by reserves.
"Trasher crews! Trasher crews!" This in a voice new to Esau. "Our own armor is moving in from the north, with camouflage fields and red pennants. Don't shoot the good guys! More Wyzhnyny armor is coming, all of it tan."
That was nothing Esau needed to worry about. He kept firing, glad he'd started with a full bandoleer of power slugs. This wasn't likely to stop for a while.
The bot APF had settled through a hole in the canopy about three hundred yards back from the forest edge, and unloaded its five-bot squad. They were somewhat back from where the shells were landing, except for the occasional long round. Their built-in radios told them the first wave of Wyzhnyny was halfway across the field. The bots didn't immediately run to engage them. No foxholes waited to shelter them-bot tactics centered on high mobility-and they were too few to waste.
Instead they waited till the barrage stopped, then started toward the fighting at a lope. Their camouflage fields hid them better than any fabric could. Again they paused, near the end of 1st Battalion's battle line, but still back within the woods. The line was anchored by a battery of antiarmor trashers, themselves well armored. They'd waited to fire till the barrage lifted, to avoid the special attention they'd otherwise have drawn. Now they were firing trasher pulses at Wyzhnyny tanks and APCs.
The bots stayed where they were. Sergeant Ali Al-Daiyeen was in touch with the battery CO, and with Division's G-2B, which monitored constantly the input from the surveillance buoys. The order to move would come from them.
And come it did. The battery had been flanked, with Wyzhnyny in the woods behind it. Now the bots moved, running smoothly. A dozen or more Wyzhnyny had sheltered behind standing and fallen trees, and were shooting at the battery, suppressing protective fire from its dug-in blastermen. Another twenty or more had begun moving along behind the Jerrie defense line, attacking foxholes with blasters and grenades.
"We'll handle them," Al-Daiyeen radioed back. "Tell your people to keep firing. We'll be fine." Then, to his squad, "Podelsky, you and I'll take the skirmish line. Vernon, you three take out the Wyz moving west. Go!"
Isaiah and his two loped off, eyes seeking. Seconds later they saw the other Wyzhnyny, kneeling behind trees, firing at the foxholes, forcing their occupants to keep their heads down while grenadiers moved in, crawling on their bellies like dogs.
"Get 'em!" Isaiah said. They moved in, firing both clamp-ons: the right-arm blaster, and the left-arm, short-barreled slammer. The Wyzhnyny who survived that first burst of fire responded sharply and violently. Isaiah felt pulses strike his armored body, and ignored them, striding along the line, pumping short bursts, unaimed but accurate. Shortly the Wyzhnyny were all dead or dying.
"Anyone damaged?" he called. None were. "Ali," he said, "we're done here. Where next?"
"Back where we were before. I'll let G-3 know we're available."
Running to rendezvous, Isaiah felt a sense of accomplishment. He'd killed half a dozen at least, and it felt right.