Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (19 page)

*     *     *

Lt. J’rrantar
led his people forward, hitting the enemy battalion in the flank.  Bullets
cracked through the air, or bounced from the heavy armor of the Marines.  The
particle beams, weapons fired grenades and suit launched mortars of the Marines
did not have that problem.  Where they struck, they killed.  The enemy even had
some light armored vehicles, though how they had gotten them onto Tsarzorian
land without being discovered was a mystery.  Standard particle beams ripped
through the vehicles as easily as they did bodies, and several sat on the
streets pouring smoke into the air.

One armored
vehicle, really more of a scout track than anything, was able to get off a
burst from its turret mounted fifty millimeter cannon.  Four Marines were
within its cone of fire, all hit with multiple rounds from the fast firing
weapon.  Two sustained suit damage, but the rounds failed to penetrate the
tough armor.  Two more were not as fortunate, and took rounds through their
faceplates that splattered their heads within the helmets as the penetrators
from the shells bounced around inside.

J’rrantar was a
Phlistaran, a member of a species who had been members in good standing in the
Empire for over four centuries.  A half ton of muscle and bone standing on four
clawed feet, with two powerful arms projecting from the top of his upright
torso, he was a fearsome sight even unarmored.  In his two tons of battle armor
he was terrifying.  The strength of his suit and his body orientation allowed
him to carry weapons, this time a pair of vehicle mount particle beams and a
hypervelocity grenade launcher, on his back.  Now he turned his great head
toward the vehicle that had just killed two of his warriors, his suit vision
systems looking through the smoke as if it was the clarity of vacuum, his
targeting pip centering over the turret of the armored car.  The particle beams
fired, ripping through that turret and anyone inside like they were made of wet
paper.

A missile came
out from his flank, heading straight into the huge Marine.  What was in that
missile might have penetrated even his tough armor, but the defensive lasers
built into his suit tracked and fired, and the warhead exploded a good ten
meters from him.  Shrapnel bounced from his suit with a clang, and he
reflexively ducked down, flexing his legs, proving that his form could not do
at least one thing as good as his smaller human Marines.  Hug the ground.

“Sir,” came a
call over his com, the HUD identifying it as his Gunnery Sergeant.  “We’ve got
them on the run.”

“Keep contact
with them, Gunny,” ordered the Lieutenant.  “But don’t crowd them.”  He walked
up and looked down at the suit of one of his killed in action.  There were two
small holes through the faceplate, and smoke drifted from the holes.  “Just
keep close enough to keep them running into the blocking force.”

The blocking
force was not there, yet, and would not be until J’rrantar moved there with his
third squad, which was now short three suits, two dead and one damaged to the
point where it couldn’t fly.

The Lt. lifted
his own suit into the air on its grabbers, rising to a thousand meters, full
stealth engaged.  His HUD showed him a map of the battlefield, and the icons of
the guerillas moving from out of the city and into the surrounding forest.  The
sensors of his Marines, the supporting aircraft and the ships above gave him a
clear picture of the land below.  There was no way the enemy could hide, unless
they went deep into the ground.

There
, he
thought, looking down on a hill that rose above the forest, bounded on one side
by a river, on the other rocks.  Unless the enemy wanted to go far out of their
way, they would have to go over that hill, which had been cleared for the
buildings on the top.  “Sergeant Wang.  Send your Marines to that hill and meet
me there.  Set up these fields of fire.”  The officer sent his deployments over
the circuit, marking where he wanted the people to set up, including their
firing arcs.

J’rranta flew
over the forest, looking down on the trees that hid the guerillas, his own
night vision equipment showing him the lay of the land in full color, as if it
were broad daylight, unlike the light intensification googles the enemy would
be using.  Occasionally he saw the flash of an explosion, or the red tint of a
particle beam reflected off the trees.  At one point a couple of trees shook
while the sound of a blast reverberated through the woods, and the tops swayed
and fell into the forest. 
Particle beams
, he thought, his HUD showing
the dots of his own troops moving through the woods.

The Lt. took in
the take of the one of the Marines, looking at the woods which that man’s night
vision gear was converting to daytime clarity.  The flitting forms of guerillas
moving through what they thought was covering darkness appeared in the view,
with figures underneath giving their relative speed and heading.  He zoomed
back to his own view, superimposed over the map of the area, and nodded in
satisfaction as the more than four hundred guerillas continued on the path he
had chosen for them.  One full squad pushed from the rear, keeping them going,
while a fire team on each side kept them from diverging from the path.

The Phlistaran
flew ahead and landed on the top of the hill.  The eight remaining men of the
squad, as well as the six men of his heavy weapons section, were busy setting
up defensive positions, moving rocks, logs, anything that might intercept
fire.  The suits were tough, but as proven earlier they weren’t invulnerable,
and anything that could either stop or slow a projectile was welcome.

As the officer
landed, he saw one of the Marines throw some fabric over a barrier of logs. 
The fabric shimmered for a moment, then faded to nothing, the logs behind them
disappearing with them.  Other Marines were getting behind natural cover, their
suits going into full stealth as soon as they were set.

“Over here,
sir,” called out the Squad Leader over the com, waving.  J’rranta ran to the
man, his eyes taking in the high rock wall that had served more of a decorative
function, but now would give cover and concealment.

“This place
looks like it was once a country manor of some sort,” said the Sergeant,
pointing to the large house with its huge windows that sat at the very summit. 
The other buildings appeared to be guest houses, and one a stable.

“Any signs of
residents?”

“No, sir.  I
sent a team through the buildings as soon as we landed, and they’re abandoned
right enough.”

The Lt. checked
his HUD and estimated that they had about five minutes before the guerillas
reached here.  “Back off a bit, Gunny,” he ordered over the com, not at all
worried that the enemy might intercept their communications and locate his
Marines.  His suit was communicating through laser with a couple of small UAVs
that were orbiting overhead.  They in turn were linked in the same manner with
all of the other suits of his platoon.  There was no signal that the enemy
could intercept to locate.  “I want them to chance running across the open
area.”

The Gunnery
Sergeant acknowledged, and the HUD showed the trailing squad dropping back,
using a swarm of nanoprobes to keep sight of the enemy.

I almost feel
sorry for them
, thought the Lt., then considered what these people were
trying to do.  Keep their fellow beings from being rescued. 
Almost.

J’rranta lowered
himself to his knees behind the wall, crouching over with his torso as well
until he was totally covered, only the snouts of his back mounted weapons
poking over.  Again he set his suit to full stealth and the weapons
disappeared.  He was still putting out heat through his suit, even more than
the rest of his people, since his suit was larger and his body temperature
higher.  But his weapons were not putting out any more heat than the rocks and
air around them.

All of the rest
of the Marines also moved to concealment.  It was known that the guerillas had
infrared night vision, and the suits would show up like bright lights on those
devices, despite the stealth.  The suits could be set to send out infrared in a
direction away from those devices, mostly.  But the efficiency wasn’t one hundred
percent.

Here they
come
, thought the officer as the flying nanoprobes gave him the images of
the approaching guerillas.  At first a few, the scouts, who ran up the hill,
their eyes darting every which way.  They moved quickly, with their sliding gate
that moved them faster than the fastest normal human runner.  They were halfway
up the hill when the main body exited the woods, not having the time to waste,
fearing the Marines who were on their trail.  When his HUD showed that only a
few of the enemy were still in the woods, the officer made his move.

“Open fire,” he
yelled over the com, and seven particle beam rifles, two autogrenade launchers,
eight heavy particle beams and five short range mortars locked onto targets and
took their first shots.

Half the
guerillas were down in the first three seconds as beam weapons ripped through
them.  Or, better said, they were blasted to a fine mist of bodily fluids and
bits of flesh.  Grenades popped across their groups, while mortars flared with
the energy of tiny bits of antimatter as they came down from above.

The guerillas
tried to escape, those close enough to the woods.  And ran into the trailing
squad, who put their fire into fleeing enemy.  In fifteen seconds it was over. 
Over three hundred were dead, most of the rest wounded, and every Klassekian
who could still move dropped his weapons to the ground.

Even fanatics
can get enough of the shit kicked out of them to give up
, thought J’rranta,
getting up from his position and trotting out into the open, the rest of his
Marines following.  It took moments to make sure that all the surviving enemy
were truly disarmed, then separated into those who could leave under their own
power, and those who would require medical evacuation.

“Stand down the
boys and girls,” ordered J’rranta as Tsarzorian helicopters started landing on
the hilltop to take away the prisoners.  “Check ammo, proton packs and power
packs, and give me a rundown of what we need.”

I wonder if
we’ll be called on again tonight
, thought the officer, hoping that wasn’t
the case. 
I lost two Marines, and they over a thousand.  It was more
slaughter than battle.
  And to one of his people, with their warrior
heritage, a one way slaughter was nothing to be proud of.

*     *     *

One second the
plaza in front of the Tsarzorian Embassy in the Honish capital was filled with
protesters, waving signs, shouting slogans, calling for the death of the
infidels.  The next the signs were on the ground, hundreds were running off the
plaza, while hundreds of others pulled out bottles of flammable liquids and
other explosive devices, as well as bullpup style auto rifles and submachine
guns.  More hundreds came running into the plaza, and the mass charged with the
sliding speed of their species toward the walls around the embassy.

Behind those
walls, or manning strong points on them, were a mere company of Tsarzorian
embassy guards, soldiers chosen more for their ceremonial skills than combat
abilities.  Still, they braced themselves and manned their weapons, ready to
sell their lives dearly.  And some looked at their allies, who had come into
the compound during the night, their suits stealthed, to lie in wait for just
such an attack.

The enemy came
running at the wall, putting flame to the wicks of flammable cocktails, pulling
the pins on grenades, their automatic weapons chattering away.  They yelled
their rage, sure that this symbol of all they hated about the unbelievers would
soon be in their hands, that they might slake their bloodlust in the deaths of
office workers and diplomats.

The heavy
weapons the humans had brought opened up, and the entire equation changed.  The
Marines had brought three heavy pulse lasers with them, weapons normally
mounted on armored vehicles, now set on tripods behind embrasures that had been
knocked in the wall, then shielded by stealth fields.  Each weapon was attached
to a large power pack/generator that would give each gun almost unlimited
power.  Each was manned by two battle suited Marines, the gunner linked into
the targeting system of his weapon.  Each possessed six barrels, each a gamma
ray laser, each firing a twentieth of a second burst with the same power as a
ten second blast from a standard vehicular laser.  Each of the barrels fired
once every second, using the down time to cool before the next shot.  Not
cooled enough, and after some minutes of firing the weapon would become
overheated and in need of a cool down period.

Two of the
weapons were set at the corners of the compound, aimed across the plaza at an
angle that crossed their beams in the middle.  Known as final protective fire,
it was an arrangement that forced an oncoming enemy to come through the beams
to get to their objective.  The third weapon was set in the center of the wall,
its gunner sweeping the gun back and forth across the plaza.

The gamma ray
lasers lashed out.  Each Klassekian touched by the beam was superheated to the
point where his body exploded with the steam that had once been blood and other
fluids.  Each beam punched through that alien, into the next, and so on, until
there was nothing left to stop them but the stone and steel of buildings, which
they ate into like so much foam.  The crossing beams slaughtered every alien
than ran through them, while the center beam swept back and forth.

At first the
Klassekians didn’t realize what was happening.  Those in back heard the
explosions of those in front as they moved forward, but weren’t sure what they
were.  As they got closer they were splashed with superheated fluids that
burned into their flesh.  They then tried to back up, but were pushed from
behind until it was their turn to be burned by coherent light at a frequency
most couldn’t imagine.  Shouts of rage turned into screams of panic, then of
pain and terror.