“Oh, God,” Walter uttered.
“They threw in every ordnance they had, short of nukes. The entire northern suburbs and part of downtown were devastated. We’re estimating casualties in excess of thirty-five thousand.”
“Sir, my sister . . .”
“I know, Captain. Once I hear something, I’ll let you know. But General Calders is furious. He wants this pocket cleared up so we can pull back and solidify the border around Telville. He’s ordered us to assault the bridge at the first light of day.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Kaethan replied.
“Our strategy session will be at 2600 hours back at our HQ. We may be able to cross the river with some infantry onto their flanks, but our armor has to run up the middle. There are no other roads.”
“We’ll be ready.”
“I have to head over to Tigris HQ now. Riggins’ armor was chewed up pretty bad by that column that suddenly made an appearance. I’ll try to get their survivors attached directly to you. That will be all, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
They saluted again, and Colonel Neils hopped into this vehicle.
As he sped off, Kaethan and his father exchanged worried glances, but then turned back to their surveillance. For a long time they didn’t say anything as they panned their view over the opposing slopes. But soon their concentration returned to what was at hand.
“Look how they’ve torn up the highway over there,” Walter said as they looked over the bridge. “They’re not even trying to hide that they’ve mined it.”
“They don’t have to,” Toman replied. “They’ve concentrated all of their air defenses around it. Your artillery will never punch through to knock any of it out.”
“Have you spotted any of their armor?” Kaethan asked.
“Not a one,” Toman answered. “You can be sure, though, that every last one of them will pop up at the worst possible time. I don’t think we’ve seen even a fraction of their total forces, yet. And they’ve now learned that your railguns are vulnerable.”
The brief sortie that hit the Tigris Heavy Armor didn’t have the firepower to punch through the Templars’ substantial armor. But it did, however, manage to disable many of their railguns by point-blank fire. Some of the alien vehicles just sideswiped the massive railguns as they drove by. Only the plasma lasers on the large gravtanks were powerful enough to slice the Templars open, accounting for their only three kills.
“And your railguns don’t have the elevation to cover the slope from down there,” Toman continued his observations. “Any Templars sent into the valley will be just targets.”
“Have you found anything encouraging at all?” Kaethan asked sardonically.
His father grimaced and thought hard for a few moments. Kaethan let out a nervous chuckle at his father’s reaction, but a deep pain was forming in the pit of his stomach.
“This is a death trap, son,” the Concordiat colonel finally said. “These aliens have stripped and scuttled their transport, their only way off this planet, for a better defensive position. They will fight to their death while throwing everything they have at you.”
The three of them were quiet for a while. Walter panned their periscope along the opposite slopes, finding faint heat sources everywhere as he switched to thermal sights, but with the sun setting, this was a bad time to look. Better images could be formed once the ground had released the solar heat that it had absorbed during the day.
“They also have the high energy plasma weapons that they used to knock down your satellites,” Toman reminded them. “There was no sign of them at their transport, from what I was told. Who knows what else they might have stripped off that ship before they retreated. If you try to cross this bridge, you’ll be massacred.”
Walter had stopped pretending to care about what was being shown on the monitor. His nervous gaze was dancing back and forth between Kaethan and his father, waiting for one of them to figure out a solution to prevent the certain death awaiting him. Of course, there was a solution, Kaethan knew. And Kaethan knew that his father was debating it with himself even now.
“If you are waiting for me to ask, Father,” Kaethan said calmly, “then you will remain waiting.”
His father looked up from the screen and looked closely at his son. He grimaced as he took out his fieldcomm, but then he stopped.
“I wasn’t waiting for that, son.” Toman said before he activated it.
What, exactly, his father was waiting for, Kaethan couldn’t fathom. But he wasn’t going to ask that, either. He was just thankful.
“Death By Chains,” Colonel Ishida said into his fieldcomm.
“So judged,” replied Unit DBC from twelve hundred kilometers to the north.
* * *
Ad-akradai Khoriss was pleased with his position. Many defilade positions were found on his side of the valley, overlooking the bridge. His concentrated dischargers, combined with the point defense emplacements from their transport, had shrugged off the Humans’ heaviest bombardment. His nuclear cannons were in position, to be moved up for firing at just the right time. And his ambush of the Human armored units had proven that Kezdai weapons could indeed be utilized effectively against the large tanks with the railguns, even though he had to waste almost all of his gravtanks to prove it.
Added to that, two smaller transports had arrived during the night from the southeast, both limping in with substantial damage. Their additional armor would greatly reinforce his counterattack, though he ordered Riffen’s artillery converted to direct fire and deployed in positions overlooking the bridge.
But he would wait before deploying his armored vehicles. His infantry and nuclear cannons would be enough to finish off the Human armor that advanced on him. Only then would his armored vehicles sweep back over the bridge to drive into their rear and eliminate their precious artillery.
He was worried, however, that more reinforcements were arriving for the Humans. One of his few remaining surveillance probes had been launched at the first hint of daylight in the east. An image taken just before it died showed that the Human forces had moved all of their equipment off the eastbound roadway, as if making room for another unit to pass through. He continued to weigh the possibility of launching his last probe to hopefully catch a glimpse of what was arriving.
Khoriss now sat in his command vehicle, paging through the images that his forward camera positions were sending back to him. There was still no evidence of Human infiltration along the river, but he carefully studied where they might hide when the time came.
His quiet observations were rudely interrupted by his hatch opening with a loud clank. The panicked face of Inkezdai Kepliss looked in.
“Ad-akradai, massed artillery rises from the west—”
“Good! It begins!”
“But Ad-akradai,” Kepliss pleaded, “the artillery rises from far behind the Human lines, and the launcher approaches swiftly as it fires! It travels along the roadway at a high rate of speed, sending its shells high into the stratosphere!”
Something new, Khoriss thought. The approaching weapons platform had to be exceedingly large to be capable of a sustained barrage as this, and still have the stability to wield it accurately while moving rapidly. The Humans had not previously shown any such weapon.
Or perhaps they had, Khoriss remembered. The ground batteries that destroyed their frigates had wielded enormous firepower while showing tremendous speed. Perhaps those same batteries had artillery clusters in addition to their energy weapons. Not only could such a weapon fend off an orbital insertion, but it could support a local ground war at the same time. Such a weapons platform must be massive, he thought. Once he had disposed of the Human armored forces, he’d have to give top priority to his own armor to capture this vehicle when they made their drive.
“Ad-akradai, should we launch our last probe to view its approach?”
“No, Inkezdai. It matters not what it looks like. We will deal with it in time. Our first priority is the Human armored forces which should be attacking soon.”
“Yes, Ad-akradai. The alarm has already been given.”
“Good. Then we must then be patient as we let these Humans enter our trap.”
“Yes, Ad-akradai. I must tend my dischargers.”
His only concern, Khoriss considered, was why the eastbound lane of the highway was left open the entire distance to the front. Certainly the Humans would not lead their attack with something so valuable as these mobile ground batteries. Could this weapon be heavily armored, he wondered? An idle thought, he immediately determined. Nothing could stand up against his nuclear cannons. . . .
* * *
I am ten kilometers from the bridge and my tracks slip across the highway pavement as I follow a curve at one hundred fifty kilometers per hour. Soon I must slow my approach or else my inertia entering the valley depression will cause me to take flight, carrying me past my optimal fording location at the lead edge of the bridge. I cannot utilize the bridge itself since my large frame would not fit through its steel girder superstructure.