beast lashing its tail, eager to pounce and kill. The force of it, in a knot of radiating will, hit Marten almost like a physical blow.
The regular men, the FEC lieutenants, grew uneasy and then visibly scared. Kang was a huge man by normal standards but dwarfed by the Highborn. He slid his chair away from Marten until Marten sat alone.
The Colonel worked to control himself. He finally said, “To be frank, Lieutenant, High Command believed that Verdun tactics was all that you hastily-trained premen were capable of.”
“But now, sir?” Marten asked.
The Colonel flushed, his snow-white skin turning crimson. “Can’t you discipline your men?” he snapped at Sigmir.
Sigmir reached out and cuffed Marten across the back of the head.
Marten jerked around as his hand automatically dropped to his holstered pistol.
“I’d make him point man,” the Colonel icily told Sigmir.
Marten released the pistol butt and stared at the table. He’d discovered that the Highborn thrived on premen acts of contrition. It fed their bloated egos and made them feel even more smugly superior.
With the slightest dip of his head, Sigmir acknowledged the Colonel’s suggestion. “Yes, perhaps I shall put him on point.”
“Fighting spirit is one thing,” the Colonel said, “this lack of disciple quite another.”
“He will be taught his place,” Sigmir assured the Colonel. “Lieutenant, you will remain silent until further notice.”
“Yes, sir,” Marten said. “I’m sorry, Colonel.”
The Colonel sniffed loudly, and then ignored Marten as beneath his notice. “As I was saying—”
An alarm cut him off. Com-lines buzzed and the entire granary trembled—caused by enemy artillery shells hammering against it. Concrete pebbles from the ceiling were dislodged and rattled upon the table. Dust drifted.
“To your posts!” roared the Colonel.
9.
Having slipped onto Japan so that he could lead the fighting from the home islands, Field Marshal Kitamura had given the word for the grand frontal assault. If they could clear Tokyo, then reinforcements could be rushed north and south, and then maybe Japan could be held until Operation Togo. But first tasks first. So quick-trained levies boiled up from the depths. Samurai Divisions gathered their strength and Kamikaze squads strapped on their bombs. What was left of the airforce hurled itself at the largest Highborn concentrations. A massive artillery park endlessly shelled enemy territory.
The FEC 4th Army took the brunt of the first day’s attack. It was composed of the broken 9th, the newly arrived 10th and the yet intact 12th, 20th and 22nd FEC Divisions. The remnants of two other divisions, shattered beyond repair, had been taken to the docks and reformed into a garrison brigade. The 23rd and 204thJump-Jet Battalions provided mobile elites to plug any gaps. Lastly, prowling the back lines, shooting stragglers, regrouping others, in effect stiffening the FEC volunteers by their presence, was the Highborn 91st Drop Assault Battalion. The giants in their heavy combat armor were the terror of both sides. The better-off FEC 7th Army held the city to the south, while the 5th Panzer Corps was to the 4th Army’s north. An offshore battery of artillery-bearing submarines provided the armies with gun tubes, while an orbital laser station was dedicated for Highborn Tokyo use.
Roughly, one hundred thousand FEC soldiers with a smattering of Highborn waged street war against three hundred thousand Japanese. A few of the Japanese formations were the dreaded Samurai Divisions, well-trained soldiers that man for man were more than a match versus the best-trained FEC formations. However, the bulk of the three hundred thousand Japanese were hastily trained civilians, stiffened by police units. They’d had even less training-time than the FEC volunteers. Nor had they the benefit of Highborn instructors. To make matters worse, they were more poorly armed and armored than their FEC counterparts.
The Japanese frontal attack lacked grace. Field Marshal Kitamura knew his soldiers: they were brave but barely trained. Boldly led in attacks their morale might last a week, maybe a few days beyond that. Then newer levies still training in the depths could be brought up and thrown into the cauldron. Of course, complex tactics were beyond them. So he hurled them straight at the enemy, or as he told his commanders, “We’ll shove a spear into their guts.” To add to the spear’s effectiveness, he tied on a bomb as it were onto the tip, in this instance, the Kamikaze squads.
To Marten and his men, the sequence seldom varied.
First enemy artillery pounded their positions. Following almost on its heels screamed the demonic suicide squads. They crawled, ran, limped, dropped down with jetpacks, popped out of sewers, anyway they could they tried to close and detonate. Then waves of hypnotically bolstered soldiers or stim-induced berserks rushed in. They were armed with carbines, sometimes with heavier weapons, always hurling grenades and fighting hand- to-hand with vibroknives and swords if they could. A few times the Samurai Divisions clanked forward in their dreaded bio-tanks.
Almost as bad as the constant attacking, Highborn Intelligence learned that an entirely new batch of recruits, another two hundred thousand, trained deep in the city for the next wave. From intercepted communications, it was clear that Tokyo was to remain a sea of bloodshed, that the city would be held at any cost. Intercepted holo- news reports showed that Social Unity lied to the people of Tokyo trapped below. The holo-shows told of incredible victories, that soon the Supremacists would be hurled back into space.
Above ground, the realities of the situation dictated the strategy for each side and that governed tactics. The underwater nuclear attacks had badly hurt the Highborn ability to re-supply the city. Ninety percent of whatever got through to Japan went north and south. Seldom did anything trickle into Tokyo.
A week after the initial attack, Marten lay hidden behind the twisted heap of a battle tank. The metallic corpse had the dimensions of a dinosaur. He rested his new sniper laser on the twisted tank body, tracking through his scope for signs of enemy. Beside him, Stick gasped, having just run from Company HQ with orders from Captain Sigmir. It was near noon, but that was difficult to tell under these conditions. Like ominous thunderclouds, a vast sea of smoke blotted out the sunlight. From various parts of the city flames and more funneling smoke rose. Here and there behind both lines, artillery tubes spat fire. Marten ignored it all as he tracked across a field of rubble and boulder-strewn chunks of plasteel and concrete. Beyond the rubble stood ruined buildings, their walls immodestly torn away to reveal the various floors.
“Do you believe them?” Stick whispered.
Marten pressed the firing stud. A flash of laser-light stabbed a man crawling toward them—he was forty meters away. The bomb strapped to his chest exploded. Stones flew up and rattled against the dead tank. Marten rolled and slithered through the dust and dirt to a broken sign for Tempko Sake. Stick tagged along. Two Japanese on the third floor of the nearest building stepped forward. Each aimed his electromag grenade launcher at the useless bio-tank—where Marten had just been. Marten lasered them. Then he moved again.
“Well?” asked Stick a little later.
“Well what?” whispered Marten from a foxhole he’d dug earlier. He tracked across the rubble, watching carefully.
“Do you believe the reports?”
“Which ones?”
“That High Command is finally hunting down the last of the nuke-launching subs?”
“Sure, I believe that.”
“Do you think
“Who?”
“The enemy generals!” said Stick.
Marten’s eyes widened as the hairs on the back of his neck rose. He jumped out of the foxhole, pulling Stick with him. Hunched over, they sprinted to a trench where several men of their platoon manned a tripod flamer. “Down,” hissed Marten.
Everyone flattened himself against the bottom of the trench.
