had let him know that I had slept most of the last twenty-four hours, he would probably think I was avoiding him.
“Just entering the mez now,” I said as I spilled out of the stairwell and onto the second floor. “What is the situation?”
“From what I hear, the Army’s taking point on this one. Major Burton says we’re on deck. Base Command wants us suited up in case the Mudders break through.”
I entered the hallway that passed the various ballrooms-turned-barracks. Walking past the Odin Ballroom, I peered in and saw hundreds of men in white armor standing at attention. I had gotten off to a late start.
Klaxons still blaring, officers ran from barracks to barracks checking on troop readiness. I entered the Valkyrie Ballroom and saw the Marines standing at attention.
“Nice of you to join us, Harris,” Moffat said, as I came through the door. “I hear you’ve been goldbricking.” He might not have been allowed in the barracks during off hours, but as we prepared for an attack, he took his place at the head of the company. Without replying, I walked around the ranks and stood beside Moffat. Moments later we received an order from Major Burton calling for the entire battalion to fall in.
General Morris Newcastle, commander of the combined armed forces stationed on New Copenhagen, left few things to chance.
For this battle, he selected the two hundred fifty thousand oldest soldiers under his command and stationed them in the woods six miles west of town. He assigned fifty thousand younger troops to man the Vista Street bunker. Granted, I could have made a fortune selling canes and dentures to the old fellows in the forest, but Newcastle sent enough men into battle to give himself a five-to-one numerical advantage.
At 0412, with the sky as bright as noonday, the spheres dilated and fifty thousand Avatari troops entered the forest. They moved east, following the same route they had taken on their previous assaults. Cameras stationed along the way—by this time the Army, Marines, civilian militia, and Science Lab had all placed cameras—were broadcasting images of their march back to town.
More than an hour passed before the Avatari stepped into the Army’s trap. Their path took them into a brilliantly prepared gauntlet that gave Newcastle’s soldiers the high-ground advantage and better cover.
Over the last three days, the Corps of Engineers had given the forest a practical makeover. They dug tight channels that led scores of Avatari into narrow trenches. Standing above those trenches our soldiers could safely lob grenades. The engineers built up earth-and-concrete palisades so steep and high that the Avatari could not possibly see soldiers hiding behind them. They built blinds in which entire brigades could hide, and they designated rallying points where men from broken platoons could gather and regroup. In war, redundancy is the mother of victory, and General Morris Newcastle had covered all his bases.
The breakdown was not tactical but strategic. The brass had decided to win this one with men, grenades, and bullets so that they could reserve the more valuable munitions for later. But even after all the preparation, Newcastle’s old men were not up to the task. The first problem was the weapons. Particle-beam weapons were effective enough against Avatari, but our general-issue particle-beam pistols were designed for close-range combat. M27s were accurate at over a hundred yards, but against the Avatari, they had proven ineffective at any range.
At 0723, the Avatari marched into the kill zone. Instead of staying to the low ground as expected, they fanned out, forming a thousand-man picket line. They spread out along the high ground, the low ground, and on the steep slopes in between.
It was a crazy formation that left them wide open to a frontal attack, but it screwed the hell out of the Army’s FOCPIG preparations. Moving forward with that wide a front line, the Avatari wrapped around our blinds and palisades, trapping Newcastle’s old men’s brigades inside. Then the Avatari opened fire with their light-bolt weapons, boring through earthworks, sandbags, and trenches. The Avatari rifles had twice the range of our particle-beam pistols. Avatari light bolts cut through trees, slammed through embankments, exploded boulders.
Forced out of their cover, our antique soldiers tried to execute a staged retreat—falling back, taking cover, wearing down the enemy; but they were too old to run and gun. They lacked the mobility needed for an ordered retreat.
The front line of eighty thousand men Newcastle sent to stall the aliens did not last the hour. The troops he sent to flank and attack from the rear were massacred. And then …
Certain that a force of two hundred fifty thousand men would hold off the enemy, somebody at the top had issued an order to service the rocket launchers along the Vista Street bunker. For this reason, the missile defenses sat partially assembled when nearly forty thousand Avatari entered the no-man’s-land on the outskirts of the city.
Without the missiles protecting their position, the men in the bunker had no more protection against the Avatari advance than the men in the forest.
“In the trucks, now! Move it! Move it! Double time!” I growled. I had my helmet on, and my voice came ringing back into my ears so loud it made them numb.
Some of the men clambered into the trucks even as they slowly pulled away from the sidewalks. Thomer stood at the back of the truck helping the stragglers make it up. As they jumped onto the bumper, he grabbed their arms and hoisted them in.
Around the U-shaped hotel driveway, I saw Marines in full battle armor sprinting to keep up with trucks that had already left them behind. There was no need to rush, once the trucks left the hotel drive, they entered streets clogged by gridlock. The Valhalla was one of dozens of hotel/barracks in this part of town. Hundreds of transport trucks now streamed out of every hotel driveway. Without police managing the flash flood of traffic, the congestion was inevitable
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Major Burton said over a network that every officer in his battalion could hear. With the Army’s inability to stop the Avatari outside the city, the situation had turned from routine to dire.
Attempting to find a way around the traffic jam, transport drivers tried side streets and alleys. A row of trucks pulled onto the sidewalk, plowing over mailboxes, signs, and benches. In the streets, the traffic crawled at no more than five miles per hour.
“Everybody out!” I shouted.
“Harris, what are you doing?” Moffat asked over the interLink.
“Out! Move it. Move it!” Men leaped from the truck.
“It’s only a mile or two from here to Vista Street,” I said. “We can run it faster than this.”
Moffat did not respond. Behind us I saw other companies doing the same, off-loading Marines and ordering them to run. With the trucks moving at such a slow crawl, we easily out-paced them.
I heard mortar fire as we got closer. I expected to enter the shielded bunkers along Vista Street; but we never reached Vista, the retreat had already begun. We reached the front end of the traffic jam and ran into the tide of men in green fatigues filling the streets.
Up ahead, the Vista Street bunker looked as jagged as a saw blade. Entire sections of the bunker had collapsed, other sections stood in ruins, shot through with so many holes that I could see right through the walls to other side.
“Hold the street.” Burton gave the potentially fatal command over a frequency that would reach every man in the battalion; and I repeated it to my company.
“Dig in. Find cover,” I shouted. Cars, corners, Dumpsters, signs, mailboxes, anything was better than standing out in the open. The Avatari could shoot through any barrier, but at least a car or a bush would offer someplace to hide. There was not enough cover to go around; and behind us, Marines were arriving by the tens of thousands.
I had a brief moment in which I wondered if the Avatari would actually breach the bunker. Then came the explosion—a powerful, jarring force that ran the entire length of the street. Suddenly, all that remained of the Vista Street bunker were a few of its ribs—massive arching girders that stood as separate from each other as the goalposts on either end of a football field. Everything else turned to rubble so loose you could drive a jeep over it.
Beyond the bunker, the Avatari horde came slowly across the charred landscape that had once been the outskirts of Valhalla. I took a step back and thudded into something. When I turned to look, I saw that I had backed into an unarmed rocket launcher, its panels still hanging open for maintenance.
