baldricks assaulting Petraeus’s left, over 100 Paladin self-propelled 155s and 60 MLRS launchers. The sheer volume of fire they were pouring into the advancing baldricks was enough to stop even an Army from hell. Or so Petraeus hoped.
“Gee Sir, will you look at that!”
The Marine’s voice had lost its dispassionate inflexion. In the middle of one surging mass of baldrick infantry, pinned up against the wire, was a single jet black figure that towered above the rest, mounted on a rhinolobster that dwarfed the others.
“I guess he must be important.” Petraeus raised his voice slightly and addressed the fire direction center. “Put an MLRS battery on to that location soonest.”
Front Line, Army of Abigor, Western Iraq.
Abigor saw his infantry surging against the river of silver threads that strung across the battlefield. Some of his demons had tried to grab the threads with their hands, only to scream in anguish as the razor edges bit through their flesh to the bones. Others had tried to force their way in through the coils, only to become entangled and slowly sliced apart. The momentum of the attack was broken and all the time the shrieking howls of the enemy magic drowned out any attempt at thought. The infantry had to get through the threads, there was no other choice.
He saw the answer over his shoulder, on their way through to the threads, they had crossed a field covered with bars that exploded when a demon stepped on them. Many of them had been killed and their mutilated corpses littered the ground. Others writhed in pain from the traumatic amputations the bars had caused. Yet, Abigor thought, even the dead and the half-dead could still serve him. “Get those bodies. Throw them on the threads and use them as a bridge.”
The noise was too great for his words to carry far but some heard and started to collect bodies and throw them on top of the coils of threads. Others saw what was happening, understood and copied them. Soon the wire was sagging under the weight and the first of the demon infantry was running across, clear of the wire and into the open ground beyond.
“Sire, there are problems on our left!” One of the lesser demons, a legion commander by the look of him, carried the message but could barely make himself heard.
The left, Abigor thought, ten minutes fast ride away. He had better get there and find out what was happening. “Take over here, keep driving them forward.” Then, he turned his Great Beast’s head and started the ride up to his left flank. This was a problem he hadn’t thought of, in the traditional formation he could see all of his forces, in this new style of attack, he could see only a small portion of the battle at any one time. He was spending all his time running from one crisis to the next, trying to solve each one before it became a major problem. Time he should have been spending in finding the enemy commander so Abigor could have the pleasure of killing him.
There was another shrieking howl and the terrifying ripple of explosions that were the trade-mark of the fire- lances. Abigor felt the blast and the sting as stray fragments at the end of their trajectory flicked at him. Behind him, the area where he had just been had vanished under a rolling cloud of dust and smoke. Abigor had already seen enough fire-lance breaths to know that nothing was left alive in the area he had been in just a few minutes before. Then it struck him, he might not have time to find the enemy commander, but the enemy commander had found him.
Headquarters, Multi-National Force Iraq, Green Zone, Baghdad.
“Missed him.” The Marine sounded disappointed.
“Don’t sweat it son, it was only a chance. He’s heading north, guess on his way to Hit. Sitrep?”
“Mango-Four is in Hit sir, they’ve dug in. They’re all west of the river and there’s only one bridge out.”
Petraeus knew what that meant. If Mango-Four tried to evacuate the city, there would be a massacre as they piled up before the bridge.
“Sir, Mango Four requests permission to blow the bridge. They say it won’t do them any good and taking it intact might help the Baldricks.”
“Tell them to do it. We can throw an assault bridge over easy enough. The baldricks don’t seem to have heard about combat engineering.”
“Sir, with the bridge gone, Mango Four won’t be able to….”
“I know, so did they when they suggested it. Order Cherry-One up on Hit. Tell them to form up to the east of Al-Ramadi.”
Outskirts of Hit, Western Iraq.
“We’d just got this place quieted down as well.” Corporal Tucker McElroy looked out at the advancing baldricks with certain level of disgust. A year earlier, Hit had been torn to pieces by gangs of terrorists and insurgents whose attacks and murders spared no one. Then, the Marines had moved into the city as part of Task Force 17 and cleaned the city up. It had come back to life and its economy had been improving everyday, so much so that a week before The Message had changed everything, the City had been handed over to Iraqi security forces. Now the baldricks were coming.
Not as many as there had been, that was for sure. At first their long ranks had been a terrifying sight but Mango-Four’s artillery had got to work as the baldricks had stalled in the minefields and on the razor wire. By the time the baldricks had swarmed through the artillery over the wire, their neat ranks and serried formation had gone. In its place was a stream of baldricks in groups of varying size making their way towards the outskirts of the city. McElroy heard the 120mm mortars coughing as they lobbed their first rounds at the larger of the groups, the brigade 155s were still pounding the baldricks hung up on the wire. By now, the leading groups of demons had reached the great divided highway that swung around the outskirts of Hit. It was time to do some real soldiering.
A few yards away Charles Foss was scanning the nearest group of baldricks through the powerful scope on his M82A3 sniper’s rifle, well, it wasn’t actually a sniper’s rifle, officially it was an anti-material rifle. There was even an urban legend that it was illegal to use it against humans but that wasn’t true. Anyway, the targets this time weren’t human. Foss checked his ammunition, the tips of the. 50 caliber bullets were green on white. That meant they were Raufoss SLAP rounds, multi-role armor-piercing explosive incendiaries. They’d been pouring in to Iraq for days now, the joke was that they had still been warm from the production line in Norway when they’d been stuffed into a transport and flown here. The infantry formations had been given priority for their issue, they needed the firepower.
Magazine in place, Foss squinted through the scope again. The baldricks cleared ground fast, at least twice as quickly as a human. One figure in the nearest group seemed to be the driving force, urging the others forward. Foss put the cross hairs on his forehead, just between the horns and gently squeezed the trigger, just the way he’d taught his six-year old son to shoot. Never pull the trigger, squeeze it. The heavy Barrett rifle kicked and the baldrick went down.
“Damn.” Foss swore to himself. The baldrick was down, his head mangled, but he was still moving. What did it take to kill these monsters?. A second shot was the answer, it fixed the leader for once and for all. Foss swung his scope to the second in the group and fired again. This one went down hard and finally with the first shot. The rest of the baldricks went to ground, confused by the inexplicable outbreak of sudden death that had struck them. That was a fatal mistake. The mortar teams saw the group stop moving and a pattern of 82mm mortar bombs blanketed their position. By that time, Foss and his fellow snipers were seeking fresh targets.
Inside the fortified house, McElroy looked over the sandbags that blocked the doors and windows to see the baldricks rapidly closing in on the forward defense line. They were over the inner ring road, less than 200 yards away, running into an area of ploughed sand where a new city block had been planned. Those plans had been abandoned and would probably never be revived now that half the city’s population had laid down and died as demanded by The Message and the rest were refugees being sheltered further east. But the blocks either side of the cleared area had been built and then they’d been fortified.
Human infantry would have seen the deadly danger of that open ground and avoided it. To the baldricks, it was an alley into the city and forty or more piled into it. They’d been the first group through the wire and minefields, the first to cross the open ground and get close to the city, the city that was defenseless. To their astonishment, they could see the buildings in front of them, the humans hadn’t built walls or moats to keep attackers out. Just the threads, the exploding bars and their horrible magic fire-lances.
McElroy gave a last check, the baldricks were in a three-cornered ambush with infantry squads on both flanks and another in front of them. Worse, from the enemy’s point of view, McElroy had dismounted the Browning. 50
