doing?”
“We’re going to run back there and double up with the Ninth, facing north. Then, if I can get Grisa to agree, we’ll try to ease back and form an arrowhead-shaped front with the First B’mbaado deploying from what will then be our right, and the third Sular extending Grisa’s left flank to the mountains. Eventually, as we suck the devils down, we’ll fall back into a continuous line and the other regiments behind us can reinforce as necessary! We’ll get ’em into a stand-up fight on our terms instead of givin’ them the ambush they wanted!”
Bekiaa glanced at the timber-cloaked mountains, wondering how far down the slopes the hidden enemy had advanced. “If we have the time,” she said, her tail swishing nervously behind her.
About then, more huge billows of smoke shrouded the opposing mountains as maybe a hundred guns commenced an erratic fire.
“That’s right, Captain. If we have the time.” Flynn raised his voice once more. “Artillery will return fire at the enemy smoke, then retire behind the infantry. Spike your guns if you can’t move ’em. Rangers! At the double time… march!” He saw Saaran begin to whirl and follow his company. “Saaran!” he shouted, and the brown and white ’Cat turned.
“Sir?”
Heavy roundshot began falling in the valley, followed by the heaviest rumble yet. Most fell short, but some was unnervingly close for a first attempt. Shards of rock and clouds of brown-black dust exploded from the iron spheres when they struck and bounded visibly on.
“Get your blotchy Navy ass out of here!”
Saaran blinked with fury.
“Don’t even start,” Flynn warned, “you’re the bravest ’Cat on the island! But in case that plane didn’t make it, or transmit, I need you to take the word, personally, to Queen Maraan that we’re about to have a hell of a fight on our hands!” The first trickle of sprinting, howling Grik finally appeared at the edge of the woods about four hundred yards to the south. The artillery that hadn’t already limbered up, nearly half, fired into them and the forest beyond, the guns jumping against their springy trail shafts and rolling backward-where impatient hands waited to hitch them to palkas. “Tell her I think we’ve set the hook pretty hard, and a little help would be appreciated. Also, unless the flyboys have been making up fairy tales, the fact this bunch is here probably means there ain’t really doodly in front of General Alden, no matter what it looks like! Got that?”
“Ay, ay, sir! If you… insist it must be I who goes!”
More roundshot struck, some among the artillery palkas, and the huge beasts screamed shrilly in agony and terror as swas unnewere sprayed with rock or iron fragments and others were simply shattered. A red mist flecked Saaran’s white fur.
“I do! Now git!”
With a lingering glance at Bekiaa, Saaran raced off.
“If they send any more planes up this way, tell ’em to watch their ass!” Flynn yelled after him, then looked at Bekiaa. She and several of her company, all sailors or Marines from TF Garrett, remained with him as the rest of the company trotted away. Flynn looked at the “Gun ’Cats,” still wrestling with maybe a dozen guns and their wounded or balky animals.
“Leave ’em, fellas!” he shouted. “Spike ’em and go!” A solid mass of Grik was now descending as if being poured from the tops of the mountains. Crossbow bolts flew thick.
“If you don’t want to be a ‘dead idiot,’ Colonel, I recommend we do the same,” Bekiaa said sharply.
“Oh, all right. Just tryin’ to be the last, like in the movies, you know? We’re all gonna be heroes outta this one!”
“I for one cannot ‘live with being a dead hero,’ and the ‘last’ ones here are not going to survive.”
Flynn looked at the few remaining Gun ’Cats, utterly fixated on saving their weapons, oblivious to orders or danger. “Say, I bet you’re right. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Just what the hell’s going on up there?” General Pete Alden demanded angrily.
“It’s… confusing still, General,” Lord General Rolak replied. The overall commander and some of his personal staff (he’d temporarily swiped Alan Letts to lead it), as well as the division commanders of Task Force West (TFW), were under the protection of a field tent as a coastal squall lashed the plain around them. Those leaders included Rolak, General Rin-Taaka-Ar of the 1st Marine Division, (1st and 3rd Marines, and the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, with the 4th, 6th, and 7th Aryaal attached) and General Taa-leen of the 5th “Galla” Division, composed of the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th Baalkpan, as well as the 5th and 6th B’mbaado. Rolak was in charge of this oddly shaped I Corps. Outside, other staff, as well as some of the regimental commanders and a security company from the 1st Marines, stood stoically watching in the rain.
“Well, get it unconfused, fast!” Pete demanded.
“We’re trying, sir,” Alan said. Pete’s borrowed “chief of staff” looked pretty rough. He hadn’t slept much over the last few weeks, and it was beginning to show. He had his “combat experience” now, and he’d learned an awful lot about logistics in the field. When this campaign was over, he’d decided to return to his old job in Baalkpan. Not because he couldn’t take it; he’d finally proven to his own satisfaction that he could-despite the daily assaults on life, limb, fair skin, and sanity. But he’d seen just how important it was for him to start a real, live, staff college. This war was growing beyond what a meager handful of talented “logistics types” could handle, and they needed more support personnel even worse than they needed more troops.
“Something big popped in front of Second Corps; something recon didn’t detect. Only one of our air patrol ships made it back, and it was shot to pieces. No radio, spotter dead. The pilot said it was as if the whole mountain ‘shot at them’ all at once.”
“Artillery?” Rolak asked.
Alan shrugged. “My guess is something more like mortar tubes stuffed with junk, by what the pilot said. Anyway, he also saw ‘swarms of Grik’ jumping right up out of the ground and running to the attack.”
“They must have been camouflaged, so the recon flights and scouts didn’t see ’em. Damn, I never would’ve thought it!”
“Hij Geerki has hinted that, after the Battle of Baalkpan, some in their leadership developed… radical views,” Rolak reminded him.
“Sure, but he didn’t know what they’d do, or even if they’d get to live,” Pete growled. “I guess they did. That damn ‘General Esshk,’ at least.”
“So it would seem.”
“What else do we know? I mean, now that some Grik have conjured up an imagination, what’s it going to cost us? What kind of crack have Second Corps and Safir-Maraan got their tails stuck in?”
“Reports are just now coming in from her HQ,” Alan said, reading a dripping message form passed to him by an aide. “Oh crap. They nearly got sucked into an ambush… here,” he said, stepping to a damp map laid out on a table under the dripping canvas above. “In this pass, or valley-whatever it is. Pretty high. Anyway, somebody must’ve smelled a rat, because the first two regiments, the Amalgamated and the Ninth Aryaal, deployed about the time the recon flight got hammered. The combination of those two things must’ve tripped the trap the Grik must’ve hoped would catch the whole division, maybe the whole corps.” His brows arched. “Lucky. Anyway, those two regiments pulled back and formed with others behind them to create a division-size front across the valley, with fairly secure flanks. General-Queen-Maraan’s moving up now to support what’s shaping into a knock-down drag- out.”
“Enemy numbers?”
“Best guess is twenty-five to thirty thousand. You know how it is-it’s not as if you can count ’em when they’re all gaggled up.” Alan watched Pete’s expression morph from shock and horror to concern, and finally, tentative confidence. They’d faced worse odds before; II Corps apparently had a good position, and nearly all its eight thousand troops carried muskets with bayonets. Some had rifles. It would be a hell of a fight, one for the books, but the Corps should survive.
Pete swore and stared hard at the map. “Okay, I can see that… but why? And where’d the bastards come from? I mean, recon this morning showed about as many Grik in front of us as would be there if those attacking Second Corps had come down. Hell, our spotters saw them come down!”
“ ‘Why’ is obvious, General,” Lord Rolak grumbled, his old eyes also exploring the map. “To strike a decisive blow. Their attacks on us have delayed our advance but have nearly bled out the forces opposing us… and still we
