“Sarge, er, sir,” squeaked Jarvis, “I don’t think this is a good idea!”
Then the first volley of grenades detonated among the enemy horde, “CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!” with massive concussions hurling Guldur, Goblan and Orak into the air with magical ease.
“Don’t try ta think, son, ye’ll hurt yerself,” said Broadax, patting as far up Jarvis’ back as she could reach.
With that, the second volley went, “CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!”
“Come, on, ye bastards!” roared Broadax, “ye wanna live forever? Yeeeeee-Haaaaw!” This was accompanied by the screeching howl of her monkey, standing on top of her helmet and beating its chest with four little fists. Her ax hit the enemy like a machete through soft bamboo, just as the third volley of fragmentation grenades exploded, several ranks back in the enemy lines.
“CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!”
The six guns of the Stolsh light howitzer battery on the other side of the bridge opened fire, ripping canister rounds into the wings of the advancing enemy mass in a rolling volley. “CRUM!CRUM! CRUM!CRUM!CRUM!CRUMPP!”
The enemy was now confronted with a variety of new experiences, all of them bad. Thirty grenades were exploding in their midst. A battery of artillery was shredding them. A firing line full of semi-automatic pistoleros, supported by two automatic rifles, was advancing toward them. And now cold steel was penetrating into their ranks. All without warning, after a series of successful attacks. The only thing most of the attackers had to respond with was a muzzle-loader that they’d previously fired and hadn’t yet gotten around to reloading . . . what with the mad rush and all.
Intelligent members of most species could adapt to almost anything . . . given enough time. Indeed, that might be considered one of the major definitions of intelligent life. Adapting fast enough though, that’s the trick. It’s the unexpected, the unanticipated, that usually gets you in life. Or death.
A fountain of red follows Broadax’s path into the enemy as her marines struggle to keep up. The marines quickly fire both barrels of their muskets and are now slashing and thrusting with bayonets, their monkeys working madly to block incoming bullets and blades.
An enemy blade is barely deflected up from Broadax’s face to her helmet by the sadly overworked monkey on her shoulder (“urkk!”) where it’s further deflected up with a resounding “Clonggg!” Her small heavy skull might be confused and over-taxed by the complexities of “ossifer” duties, but it was designed by ages of selective breeding to be remarkably resistant to falling rocks and ax blows. She shrugs off the hit with little more than a brief instant of cross-eyed distraction, and then she eviscerates her opponent with a quick, upward, backhand slash of her ax.
The stunned enemy formation is rocked backward by this combination of unexpected blows. The ones in the front are retreating. The ones in the rear will eventually start pushing back. There is always a potential for compression in most substances, and compression is exactly what is happening to the attacking enemy forces. Many of them are packed together too tightly to fight effectively, almost none of them have room to reload. Can’t fight, can’t reload, can’t run. The remaining option is to . . . die.
“Dear God I do love the Marines!” Broadax cries up to the rain- filled skies, or perhaps to her monkey, as her ax continues to cut great swaths through the enemy amidst a shower of blood and viscera. Emphasizing every sentence with a sweep of her ax, punctuated in gore and cigar smoke, her monkey working overtime to protect her from bullets and blows, in her deep, gravelly voice she continues her battle chant (with her monkey adding its terrified soprano counterpoint). “Every day’s a holiday! (Eeek!) Every meal’s a feast! (Eeek!) Every paycheck’s a fortune. (Oook!) Every formation’s a parade! (Aaak!) An’ every battle’s an adventure! (Urk?) IN THE MARINES!!”
Now she is standing over Marshall DuuYaan. She clears a space with a horizontal, knee-high sweep of her ax. Curs and piggies, pruned at the knees, are pushed back to flop on the ground by a hedge of marine bayonets. Amazingly, the huge Stolsh marshall is still alive, amidst a pile of his dead soldiers. Broadax heaves him to his feet. (The lead cymbalist, who had climbed up the ravine, fell back onto the toiling percussion section.) A broken sword is dangling from his hand. Now they begin to pull back, the stunned, dazed “lizard in a tin can” staggering and stumbling back with them. ( . . . causing the brass section to lose their grip, just when they’d climbed halfway up.)
Broadax chuckles grimly as she looks at the bedraggled, reeling marshall, “Did anyone git the license number of that truck?”
* * *
Not the be-medalled Commander,
beloved of the throne,
Riding cock-horse to parade when
the bugles are blown,
But the lads who carried the battle and
cannot be known.
* * *
Melville began the battle with an ammo bag slung hanging on his left side, chock full of loaded .45 magazines, all carefully set in, upside-down, bullets pointed forward, ready for rapid reload. Now the bag was almost empty.
With Broadax and her marines safely behind the firing line, and a few precious minutes having been bought, they began pulling back to the bridge. Broadax had her boys chuck three more volleys of frag grenades into the enemy mass, “CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!, CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!, CHOOM-OOM-OOM!!”
A huge Orak plows through the enemy mass, hurling his own troops left and right to get to the front. His drug-hazed eyes focus on Melville, and he charges.
Oh no, thinks Melville, why do the big ones always have to home in on the leaders?
His foe is charging with a big cleaver in one hand, and a shield in the other. Just the enemy’s bloodshot eyes and yellow, bristle-covered forehead are visible, peering out over the top of the shield.
The front sight is covering the forehead and . . . _____! A blue hole appears amidst the bristles in the yellow forehead. Again the front sight comes up, this time he covers the hole (aim small miss small!), and . . . _____! A second bluish hole appears right next to the first. Vivid red blood begins to trickle out of the two holes and the huge Orak’s eyes cross as though trying to look up at the wound. But he keeps lurching forward, cleaver still raised.
Melville has a moment of panic and despair. If ventilating his skull didn’t work, what would? He’d heard rumors about an Orak battle drug that gave their elite fighters great strength and endurance, and the ability to sustain horrific wounds. Now here it was, literally staring him in the face with bloodshot eyes. Indeed, the dribbling wounds in his forehead gave new meaning to the term “bloodshot eyes.” Such drugs have often been used in warfare. Fielder had actually addressed this possibility in his class, quoting the semi-mythical Saint Clint the Thunderer, “People ask, What do you do if the bad guy’s on drugs? Shoot ’em! But what if it doesn’t work? Shoot ’em some more! More lead, more dead!”
Now the enemy was barely six feet away, staggering forward with a host of other foes following him like the tail on a comet. In a split second Melville would be in range of that huge cleaver. The Orak drops his shield just a little and roars in defiance, exposing his two yellow, upward thrusting tusks. Mouth shot. Front sight. Don’t jerk the trigger . . . we will fire no projectile before its time . . . prresss trigger and . . . _____!
Brains explode out the back of the foe’s head. He has one last, confused, distracted look on his piggish face, then he falls forward. Melville has to skip sideways to avoid having the cleaver chop into his leg.
Melville stops and takes stock for just a split second as he changes magazines. The other members of the firing line are picking off the remaining close-in enemy. Another volley of grenades explodes in the enemy’s midst. The BARs roar. The artillery to their rear thunders.
Keith Kreitman, a veteran of Old Earth’s World War II, was once asked to describe pitched close combat in words. “Impossible!” he replied. “Because it is all encompassing, six dimensional, from the front, the left, the right, ricochets from the back, exploding shells from above and shaking ground from below. One actually ‘feels’ the combat in the body.
“It involves blurred vision from sweaty eyes, the acrid choking smell of layers of gunpowder smoke, ear bursting horrific noises, the kinetic nerve vibrations from exploding mortars, hand grenades and shells, the screams of humans, the cries of the wounded, the piercing whine of ricochets of bullets and shrapnel, hiding behind or stepping over bodies of perhaps someone you know. All at one time.
“No media can ever duplicate it.
“No mere words can ever convey it . . .