A Hymn Before Battle

37 Andata Province, Diess IV 1004 GMT May 19th, 2002 ad

Tulo’stenaloor, First Order Battlemaster of the Sten Po’oslena’ar, considered himself a connoisseur of war. He had studied the three disciplines and all the history available to his rank. Not for him the te’aalan battle madness that he had seen destroy his nest mates. But never in all his study, in all the time upon this conquest and other conquests, during his rise from scoutmaster to his current rank, had he ever faced ferocity such as the gray-clad demons his oolt’ondai now faced. The enemies’ ill-favored red fluid stained the walls in the fury of the combat, and still they resisted the might of the Sten Po’oslena’ar.

“Tele’sten,” he shouted over his communicator, “take your oolt to the left to support Alllllntt’s, and prepare to receive his oolt’os.”

“Your wish,” chimed the communicator. The nearby eson’antai was panting with exertion. He had dropped from his tenar to aid another kessentai, wounded by the thrice-damned threshkreen. Such selflessness was rare among the Po’oslena’ar, almost unheard of. Possibly even immoral. The young kessentai leapt back to his tenar, the mission successful. “You believe he will fail upon the path?”

“As sure as the sun rises,” said Tulo’stenaloor. He looked up at the ill-favored green sun of this blasted world. He should have stayed on cloud-shrouded Atthanaleen. It might be well on its way to ordonath, but at least there was rain! And none of these fistnal gray thresh!

“Those thrice-damned demons infest the upper stories no matter how we flail them. Note how he moves his tenar in a regular pattern, soon one of their simple chemical rifles will remove him from the path. Learn from his mistakes, eson’antai!”

“Your wish my edas’antai.”

“Tulo’stenaloor!” His communicator boomed at him in turn, “get your tel’enalanaa oolt’os into that building or I’ll pass through you!”

Al’al’anar, his fellow battlemaster, had been heard from.

“I wish you would, Al’al’anar. Then you could lose oolt after oolt on these threshkreen.”

“You always have been too soft! Move or lose the path, a’a’dan!” snarled his fellow battalion commander.

“You want the path!” shouted Tulo’stenaloor, sudden rage turning his vision yellow. “Take the fistnal path!” He had lost half his oolt’ondai so far and was in no mood to listen to this puppy’s complaints.

“Tulo’stenaloor! Al’al’anar!”

“Your wish,” said Tulo’stenaloor, the rage still rippling in his voice. He clacked his teeth and fluttered his crest in a battle to regain control.

“My edas’antai,” chimed Al’al’anar.

“Tulo’stenaloor will take the path,” ordered the higher commander from the distant dodecahedral landing circle. “Al’al’anar will wait and learn wisdom.”

And I will lose my whole oolt’ondai because he is your eson’antai. “Your wish, aad’nal’sa’an. However, soon I will be without oolt to progress.”

“I discern this. Al’al’anar, pass behind Tulo’stenaloor’s position and prepare to attack from the seaward flank again. I discern a weakness there; there are less of those tel’enalanaa tenar.”

“Your wish!” exulted Al’al’anar.

“Your wisdom,” said Tulo’stenaloor. Thus I lose status, he thought. Now, to make the best of it as that thrice-damned puppy bungles a simple movement.

Again and again Al’al’anar had failed to effectively support other oolt’ondai, instead succumbing to battle madness and chasing the defenseless green thresh like a wild oolt’os. Without the influence of his gene derivative he would be a scoutmaster at best, or more likely dead. Such is the battle of the Path.

Alllllntt’s saucer suddenly spun out of control as the God King’s head burst like a melon; a German G-4 had successfully targeted him after he raised his tenar for a better angle on the front line. The oolt’os of his company flailed the upper stories of the building for a moment in a berserk rage, then began clawing their way to the rear. As they did the panzer grenadiers pressed in a hard local counter attack and retook their secondary positions.

“Tele’sten! Get your oolt in there now!”

“Yes, aad’nal’sa’an, your wish.” The young God King, only recently promoted from scoutmaster, was attempting for the first time in his life to rebind the normals of a deceased God King in the heat of battle. At the same time he was trying to retake the lost positions. Since each normal had to be physically touched, there were, for a moment, simply too many demands on his time and he paused in his random shuffling. A single 7.62mm round ended the path for the young company commander.

“Tel’enaa, fuscirto uut!” cursed Tulo’stenaloor at the death of his son. “Alld’nt! Drive the oolt’os of Tele’sten and Alllllntt into the gray demons and be damned with them!” Tele’sten, my eson’antai, how many times did I tell you: Never stop moving.

“Major Steuben, we have retaken the secondary positions!”

“Wonderful Lieutenant. Hold them hard! I am trying to get some help here but I am now confident we can hold this position until relieved!”

“Yes, sir, the Tenth Panzer Grenadiers will never surrender!”

“Good job, Lieutenant Mellethin. I have to go now. Hold like steel!”

“Like steel, sir.”

Like steel, indeed, thought Major Joachim Steuben, even the steel is burning.

From his position on the lower floor of the megascraper he could clearly see the tanks of his depleted division burning, charnel pits for their dead crews. Worse than the sight was the smell, strong even at this distance, of burning pork and rubber. The remnant of the 10^th Panzer Grenadiers could not make a decent reinforced battalion and they were out of contact with the majority of the supporting divisions of French, British and Americans elsewhere in the megascraper. If something didn’t happen, and soon, they were all finished.

He had just said as much to high command and they had responded with their usual platitudes. Help would come, the American Armored Combat Suit battalion was still mobile and was on the way. What they could do when they arrived he had no idea. The officers of the 10^th Panzer had spent the division as frugally as a miser, as frugally as any officer corps in Germany’s illustrious history. But it had been to no avail.

Early on they discovered that in the heat of battle the God Kings’ targeting systems could not spot sniper fire and Steuben’s late battalion commander had pressed that to great advantage. By targeting God Kings and relentlessly counterattacking in the confusion immediately following their deaths they long delayed the inevitable. But now it was simple mathematics. They were surrounded by overwhelming force and the best they could do was spend their lives as carefully as possible.

“Major,” said the one of the few remaining communication technicians, holding out a microphone, “Corp Command.”

“Major?” barked the voice of the American Corp commander.

“Yes, Herr General Leutnant,” he replied tiredly.

“You are about to receive a pleasant shock. It will not take the pressure off you, but it will allow the other units to reinforce you. The megascrapers to your east and north are about to fall over, hopefully missing yours.”

“Ex… excuse me, sir? Could you say that again?” As the startled major stuttered into the microphone, the ground began to shake. “Mein Gott! Was ist so heute los, hier?”

Around him the sturdy panzer grenadiers were screaming in supernatural terror as the ground surged beneath their feet. The communications tech, with the consummate discipline so characteristic of the panzer grenadier, hurled himself into their last remaining long-range transmitter just before it crashed to the floor.

“Major!” screamed an operations NCO from the landward side, “the other buildings!”

The street to the east was suddenly filled with dust and rubble as the building to their northwest scattered its upper stories along the boulevard. Rubble crushed the front rank Posleen and a few of their remaining Leopards were covered until they huffed and grunted out from under the debris. However, most of that front was covered by the French and English, with the remnants of the American 3^rd Armored and 7^th Cav on the north. Now if he only had viable contact with those units he could call on them for aid to break out toward the lines. He suddenly realized he had a Lieutenant General on hold.

“Herr General?” said the major, coughing on the cloud of dust that blasted through the headquarters.

“I take it worked?”

“Yah, all ist so heute los at the moment but we’ll soon be over it. This may give us a chance, Herr General!”

“That’s the idea. Now order those other armored units over to your position, we’re out of communication with them, and break out as fast as you can.”

“I would, Herr General,” said the major, apologetically, “but I regret to inform you that we have been out of communication with those units as well, for over two hours.”

“Damn! Well, send runners.”

“I have, sir, and radios, but none have returned. We have Posleen infiltrated into the building in company strength at this point. My flank is in contact with a French unit but I am out of communication with that flank and I cannot get to the other NATO units without detaching all of my reserve.” He paused and considered the situation. “I have had to use it too many times to be willing to do that, sir, without a direct order. For all practical purposes I am only in control of the troops in my immediate vision.”

“No, you’re absolutely correct. Major, this is a direct order. If you can get your unit out without the support of those units, do so. Do not hold that position in the hopes they will turn up, we can’t take that sort of gamble at this point; for all we know they could already be gone.”

“Jawohl, Herr General.”

“Good luck, Major.”

“Danke schön, Herr General. Good luck as well.”

“Yes, we all need a dose of luck at this point.”

“Major!” shouted an NCO, listening to a radio. “The seaward flank!”

Would the a’a’lonaldal battle demons of this world never quit? What new surprise would await them? Tulo’stenaloor had heard of the great fall near the mesa, but that had been put down as battle damage by most observers or perhaps poor construction. This was clearly an action designed to deny the area from the oolt’ondai to the north and west. Here on the south, they would soon face the full wrath of the combined or’nallath in the building.

The only good note was that Al’al’anar’s oolt’ondai had completed its move to reinforce his seaward flank and had started a te’naal charge the likes of which he had rarely seen. He might not like Al’al’anar but he had to hand it to him, he could motivate his oolt’os. The oolt’ondai had descended on the gray demons as they tried to recover from the disaster to the west and had been pressed home hard. It was taking tremendous damage but they were down to hand to hand at which the Po’oslena’ar excelled. The fistnal or’nallath would soon be cleared to the seaward side and they could press forward here in the center.

The 10^th Panzer Grenadier command post was completely abandoned. Major Steuben hurled the entire reserve and every clerk and walking wounded he could find into the seaward flank but the new Posleen battalion pushed them steadily backwards into the building. The grenadiers were down to hand to hand and as he reached the line he saw the turret of one of the remaining Leopards leap into the air in a catastrophic kill. The sheet of fire from the exploding ammunition cooked the grenadiers and Posleen packed around the tank into one continuous bubbling mass.

Seeing there was nothing else to be done, he grabbed a G-3 from a dead trooper and raced into the battle, determined at the end to at least get an honor guard in Valhalla. Overcome with emotions, all the anger and frustration of the day welling up out of control, he leapt to the top of a pile of rubble, fully exposing himself to fire, and searched for the enemy commanders.

Al’al’anar of the Alan Po’oslena’ar, battlemaster and warrior, was in his element. The ill-favored blood of his enemies anointed his head and he searched for honorable single combat. His oolt’os and oolt commanders knew their jobs, leaving him free to engage himself as he would. He drove his tenar forward, driving down oolt’os that failed to leap clear and striking down the gray-clad thresh like so much wheat. He saw, on the far side of the battle line, a thresh brandishing its puny chemical weapon. It met his eyes and contemptuously tossed the weapon aside, drawing an even more puny knife. Al’al’anar drew his blade, raised his saucer on anti-grav and pounced on the thresh with a bitter laugh.

The Posleen saucer swept across the battle with blinding speed. Major Steuben’s Gerber combat knife was contemptuously sliced off three inches from the tang by the God King’s monomolecular blade and the saucer banked around for another run. Steuben spun around, determined to go to his end like a man, on his feet and facing the enemy. As he turned to meet his fate he stopped, arrested by a form rising from the sea. A multiheaded red dragon the size of a building was humping itself up out of the green waves. Dozens of heads were snaking low out of the water, while one central head was raising itself to full extension with a broad fringe ruffling and puffing around the purple-lined maw.

As the battle-maddened and oblivious God King lined up for another charge, the dragon heads opened their mouths and began to breathe silver lightning.

With the first silvery breath a ringing scream, so loud that it was for a moment a physical thing, burst forth from the beast. At that first scream of rage and raw emotion Major Joachim Steuben, oblivious and uncaring of the closing death, sank to his knees and burst into un-Teutonic tears. Then the drum riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” at the maximum volume available to the sophisticated sound systems of the Armored Combat Suits, brought every action to a momentary stop.

Mike’s first action was to destroy the Posleen God King attacking the lone soldier on the mound of rubble. Since three other troopers had the same target, the God King and his saucer disintegrated under the concentrated fire of the grav guns. The slap of explosion as its energy bottle let go killed hundreds of the packed Posleen normals. Since the God King had been lined up almost across the boulevard from the soldier, the effect on the panzers was negligible.

Next Mike targeted God Kings elsewhere in the battle. When the platoon had been consolidating he had taken a few moments to consider the first contact battle. That battle had been fraught with mistakes. Deploying the battalion without any fixed fortifications, without mines, barbed wire or bunkers, meant that the Posleen had been able to use their full mass and fury against the troopers without any distractions. Furthermore, deploying the battalion vertically, while it permitted fire into the rear ranks of the enemy, had opened the unit up to fire by tens of thousands of Posleen instead of hundreds.

By contrast this style of battle was what the suits had been designed for. At ground level with both flanks secured, there were only so many Posleen that could fire at the troopers at one time. And the pile of Posleen and human bodies acted as a breastwork over which the platoon could fire.

The one item that would have helped the battle of Qualtren, no one had thought of until afterwards. The battalion had been ordered to open fire at the mass of the Posleen. However, deployed vertically as they were, hundreds of God Kings had been in sight. If the battalion had been ordered to concentrate on the God Kings, the mass of Posleen normals would have been left bereft and leaderless. The deadly mass that destroyed the battalion in minutes would instead have been as insignificant as the loner rogues they had been destroying for the last day. Mike intended to rectify the situation if possible.

As he potted God Kings, the main body of the troopers began concentrated and continuous fire into the Posleen mass. There was nothing elegant about the conflict, no charges or feints, it was simple, brutal slaughter. Most of the Posleen by the beach had allowed themselves to get so packed in their rush to reach the panzer grenadier positions that they could not even deploy their weapons. Since they completely filled the boulevard, it was first necessary to move them out of the way and the only way to move them was to mow them down. For the first few minutes of the battle hardly any fire was returned toward the main body of troops as they fired continuously and without contest into the mass of Posleen.

The hypervelocity grav-gun rounds caused an energy wave front to build up in front of them. As the stream of rounds hit an individual Posleen, the effect was catastrophic; the hydrostatic wave front advanced away from the rounds at a fraction of the speed of light. Despite the relatively small size of the teardrops, the explosive force on the first Posleen hit was equivalent to packing a hundred pounds of TNT into its body cavity and detonating it, splattering yellow finely distributed muck over the landscape. And then the teardrops, hardly degraded in form or velocity, would seek out the next Posleen in line, and the next and the next. Most of the fire drove six or seven layers into the mass, cleaving them like a nuclear weedeater.

Rather than stacking them like cordwood, they piled them like hay, from a lawn left uncut too long in the summer. Heaps and mounds of yellow leaking corpses and unrecognizable bits built up on the ramp to the beach. The blood began to pour in a yellow river to the sea as the Posleen heaved and bucked under the explosive fire of the kinetic energy rounds.

At the same time, cloaked by their holographic technology, the scouts flew unnoticed to the nearest windows, gossamer soap bubbles floating through the green-tinged air, and rushed to find sniper positions.

The statement that the Posleen could not retreat was disproved in those hideous few minutes. Faced with a being from myth, the semisentient normals shattered like glass. Mike could see the rear ranks peeling away in fear of the unknown. Many of the normals were returning fire and he was taking some hits but the hologram around him distorted his true location. The only accurate targeting point was the barrel of his rifle as it spat dot-accurate streams of fire each of which removed one more link in the enemy’s morale.

He was suddenly struck by a wave of fire and Michelle careted a distant God King surrounded by the disciplined forces that had him targeted. He fired at the God King, but it had slickly moved aside. Mike fired four more rapid and accurate bursts but each missed by the skinniest of margins, destroying dozens of normals in the wake. Whoever that God King was it handled its saucer like a master and was too hard to bother with. Instead, Mike auto-targeted his grenade launchers on the normals around the dexterous God King and forgot about it.

“Thral nah toll. Demons of the sky and fire, what is that?” Whatever it was, thought Tulo’stenaloor, it favored the gray-clad demons. He took a precious moment to consider as his oolt’os broke around him, the bindings fraying under the primal fear of a beast both larger and more dangerous than they.

“Tel’enalanaa,” he whispered after a moment. “It is illusion!” he shouted. “Alld’nt! Look you! There are simple soldiers in the midst of the beast! Target the breath! There! The lifted head! Target and fire!”

The oolt’os, faced with positive orders and a clear and defined action, opened fire with all their will. The railguns spat their slender needles downrange and disappeared into the dragon’s head without apparent effect. Hypervelocity missiles passed through without detonating.

“There! No blood! It is a trick! False demon! Somewhere in it is the kessentai! Fire at the head! Target and fire!” He manually swiveled his heavy laser and began cutting at the dragon. In return it roared and swiveled towards him. His talons tapped controls and the tenar danced aside as the dragon’s breath came near enough that the heat seared its covering. He tapped the controls again and the dragon missed once more. Two more times and the beast seemed to lose interest. But then, even as it spat fire at a distant third-level battlemaster, tremendous explosions began falling all around him. As his oolt’ondai fell to the terrific explosions he decided that enough was enough. For now the enemy would take the field; the People always triumphed in the end.

“Lo’oswand!” he ordered, gesturing to the rear. “Oolt’ondai, lo’oswand! Together we retreat fighting!”

As the scouts reached their positions and began to peck away at the God Kings, Mike felt it acceptable to return to the ground. He had also used up over thirty percent of his available power, mostly hovering, and needed to return to ground mode.

As he hit the ground the squads started their first bound forward. By odd squads they leapt over the wall of Posleen bodies into a less cluttered area beyond. The suits automatically compensated for the treacherous footing and the squads opened fire again. They were taking far more fire now, but on the ground at such close quarters the only Posleen that could target them were those in direct contact so it was effectively a one-on-one battle. The massive pressure of Posleen was funneled to the troopers whose only realistic fear was that the ammunition would run out.

Mike landed just as the second group prepared to bound and he bounded with them. In the air he checked the status of the platoon. Very few losses and the majority of the troops were at over seventy percent power. Ammunition levels were dropping, but the heavy-duty fire would reduce soon. When they landed he checked the battlefield schematic and decided that the Posleen were nicely bunched.

“Platoon! Volley fire grenades, program: single line deep, fifty percent overlap, close support FPF softies to the left! Ready… Fire!” There was a rapid series of thuds around him. “Check grenade fire!” He did not want the troops to randomly fire their grenade launchers given that they were in close contact with friendly forces.

The grenades were antimatter charges wrapped with osmium self-forging projectiles. Each had the explosive power of a 120mm mortar. They had a hard kill radius, a zone of total destruction, of fifteen meters and a soft kill radius of nearly thirty-five meters. Using them at all with the Panzergrenadiere in close contact was dangerous. However, since they did not have as much shrapnel as a 120mm, they were slightly less effective at distance; the “soft-kill” zone had less than a fifteen percent likelihood of a kill against human targets in the open.

The programmed fire shot a double line of grenades down the 75-meter-wide boulevard, the grenades landing 15 meters from the Posleen-held building and 20 meters apart. Thus the total destruction zone stretched outward 50 meters from the Posleen-held megascraper with a further “soft kill” distance of 25 meters. The line stretched from thirty meters in front of the combat suit line for nearly a kilometer. The soft kill radius stretched to the Panzergrenadiere lines but most if not all of the grenadiers had sought cover by this time and those who had not would have to take their chances.

The explosions started rippling down the boulevard and Tulo’stenaloor could see what was coming. The white fire seemed to expand from side to side of the avenue, each pair of enormous explosions coming a fractional second apart. There was no escape through the south building; most of the entrances had been destroyed in the fighting and those that remained were choked with the most fleet of foot or saucer.

As the barrage progressed towards his retreating battalion, the battlemaster found himself cringing at each drawn out pause between crashes. All of the grenades were fired at the same time but some had farther to travel. So each hellish interval got longer and longer as the rounds neared them.

He knew he could flee, leave his oolt’os and take the other kessentai and escape on their tenars. But to lose his oolt’ondai that he had built so carefully over the years of only the finest genetic material; no, it would be better to die than to start over. Like Lot, he turned his face away and led his flock to safety as the doom came nearer and nearer.

As they reached the far intersection the latest pause drew out and out. Tulo’stenaloor finally took heart to look back.

From the ocean inward half the length of the building was a carpet of Po’oslena’ar dead, oolt’os and kessentai intermingled, in death their difference reduced to a fraction in size. No living Po’os moved in all that vast abattoir, no living thing. The energy of the explosions caused superheating of the immediate surroundings. The smell of cooked Posleen filled the air, a soft steam arising from the baked flesh, and smoke rose from the shattered tenar as well.

As his oolt’ondai turned south into the cross street he looked back once more and saw the sea demon ripple and dissolve into a grouping of thresh in hulking metallic space armor. This then for their sea demon. As he watched they finished off the few scattered oolt’os with their terrible silver lightning and began to advance implacably down the boulevard in ground-devouring bounds. He had seen and would remember; these thresh’akrenallai were tricky, tricky.