Another long salvo came in. Connors tried to count the number of shells and gave up.
“AID, can you track the shells and provide analysis?”
“Yes, sir,” the AID answered. “If you will look at the map” — Connors’ left eye saw a map of the highway area, with great black rectangles superimposed on it — “the black represents areas where the strike of shells indicate minimum Posleen remaining alive and able to resist.”
Connors only had two platoons, really, remaining to him, plus the weapons platoon. The last line unit had been scattered to scout to the flanks or broken up to provide commo for Suarez. The shocked survivors of the flankers — and the casualties among those had been horrendous — were in no shape for the battle and wouldn’t be for perhaps days. There were too many holes in the chain of command, too much death, among that platoon.
The destruction visited upon the Posleen, Connors saw, was for the most part oriented along the highway. He assumed the other black rectangles on his map were Posleen assembly areas the pilot overhead had called fire upon. Since the highway was what the 1st Panamanian Mech needed…
“B Company, formation is V with weapons at the base and the line platoons to either side of the highway. I’m with weapons. B Company… form.”
He gave the men a few minutes to settle in to the formation before ordering, “B Company… advance.”
It was eerie, walking that highway. Smoke lay heavy along the ground. Posleen bodies, and more than a few human ones, littered the path. Many were torn to shreds, chopped up, disemboweled. Others showed not a mark.
Connors passed a tree that had miraculously survived the bombardment. In the tree was a God King, dead. The alien’s harness had been ripped off, but it was otherwise untouched save for the tree limb that entered its torso from behind and stuck out, yellow with blood, from its chest. The alien’s head hung towards the ground, gracelessly, by its twisted neck.
Shell craters, huge indentations in the earth, pockmarked the landscape. Something nagged at the MI captain. Something…
“Pay attention to the shell craters,” Connors warned over the general company net. “Don’t assume that just because nothing that was in them when they were created has survived that something might not have crawled in afterwards.”
A Posleen staggered up out of one, dragging its rear legs behind it. It was just a normal, Connors thought, but no sense taking chances. He raised one arm as if to fire. Automatically a targeting dot appeared over the Posleen, painted on Connors’ eye. He fired a short burst and the alien went down, splashing up muddy water that had collected in the crater even in the short time since it had been formed.
From time to time, one of Connors’ platoon leaders reported in that “X and such number of Posleen had been sighted, engaged and destroyed at Y and such location” or “Posleen oolt fleeing north” or “south.” He took no casualties and, in a very odd and bizarre way, that disturbed him, too.
“Are you guys sure you are seeing absolutely no God Kings? No tenar?”
“Just wrecked ones, Boss… only some wrecks, Captain… there ain’t enough of ’em, even wrecked, to account for the number of other bodies, sir. I don’t trust it.”
Even so, Connors pushed his company on past the broad area of destruction and into the parts still untouched by the heavy guns. And there were still no God Kings or tenar.
“AID, pass to Suarez that the way seems open.”
“Wilco, Captain.”
The tracks and trucks were draped with the bodies of the wounded… and the dead. Suarez was pleased to see the discipline, that his men were leaving nothing behind for the enemy to eat, even as he was appalled at the cost. Because it wasn’t a vehicle here and there covered with bodies. It was every tank, track and truck that passed.
Jesu Cristo, but it’s going to be a job rebuilding this division. If we’re even allowed to.
Suarez had the devil’s own time of it, already, trying to extricate the bloodied scraps from the cauldron. Without the communications advantages — let alone the mobile, armored firepower — given by the MI he didn’t think he could have done it at all.
Logically, Suarez knew, he should be having his sergeant major go over those trucks, pulling off some of the walking — even nonwalking — wounded to serve as a “detachment left in contact,” or DLIC. These would have been die-in-place troops, left behind to cover the withdrawal of the rump of the division.
I just don’t have the heart, I guess. Takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to do that — to even ask that — of men who’ve already given everything they have.
Cortez remembered his uncle often speaking of the need to be ruthless in politics and in life. Well, now’s the time to find out if I am as ruthless as my uncle always wanted me to be.
The Isla del Rey loomed ahead. Cortez’s Type-63 light amphibious tank churned its way laboriously toward the island. The big Planetary Defense gun atop the island was silent. And a good thing, too, Cortez thought. The blast might be enough to raise waves big enough to swamp this tank.
But then again, would that really matter?
The crew had not spoken an unnecessary word to Cortez since he had bugged out. Perhaps they thought they were merely showing disapproval. In fact, the effect was to make them even less human and less valuable in Cortez’s mind. Thus, faced with the silent treatment, it was easier for him to take the hand grenade he had secreted earlier, remove the safety clip, pull the pin and drop it into the bottom of the turret even as he dove off to swim for the safety of the island.
Interlude
“… or perhaps we were forced into one.
“We had claimed a large island on a world. This was something new to our clan, to settle on an island,” Ziramoth continued. “Normally, the chief of a clan would never do so. Yet this was a world of — mostly — islands and the lord saw little choice. It was large enough to support our refugee population for several generations. Moreover, the barrier of the seas around the island should serve as barriers to other clans. So the lord claimed.
“The island was fertile, and had much mineral wealth. The People prospered there. For a while.
“That entire world was gifted with fertility. None of the clans who settled felt the need to eat their nestlings. And the population grew in a way we had rarely experienced.
“Unfortunately, this world was also on the edge of a barren sector of the galaxy. We had nothing but wasted radioactive worlds behind us and we had nothing but the void in front of us. All the clans sent out scouts into the interstellar blackness. None returned soon. None returned in time.”
Ziramoth again grew still, though Guanamarioch didn’t know whether that was because the memory was so distant — seven orna’adars was a very long time! — or because they were so painful.
The Kenstain began to speak again. “Local scouts were sent out, across those coppery seas. It must have been that other clans had prospered as ours, for none of those scouts came back at all. Certainly other clans scouted out our island, and just as certainly their scouts were destroyed by us.
“And our population still grew. Then we did begin to eat nestlings, but it was too late. The normals had laid their eggs everywhere. No matter what we did to hang on until the scouts we had sent into space returned with the location of a new home, our population still grew. As you know…” And the Kenstain’s voice tapered off.