The heat smothered them like a blanket, making the already thick atmosphere blur any long range visuals. The shimmering of the air, combined with the black and white markings of the aliens' fur, worked like a natural camouflage, letting them blend with the shadows at the edge of the jungle. Acting Militia Commander Jerry Donning let go of the binocs with disgust, letting them drop back into place on his vest. He could do better without them. He knew the aliens were out there. They had attacked twice already since the fall of the Odinberg Colony. There was no doubt they were coming again.
He stood on the top of a slight rise just to the south of the northern colony, staring into the scattered jungle below them. He felt lost, outmanned, outgunned and underqualified. It had only been a month since the first shipments of pulse rifles, body armor, and light weaponry had come in, along with orders from company headquarters, "able-bodied adults, especially those with military experience, are urged to form a militia for emergency defense."
"Urged" was just the company's way of saying "must," and so processing foreman Jerry Donning, who had once done a tour with the New Brazil Marines suddenly found himself prime officer material, in fact, found himself in charge of the colony's defenses. Never mind that in his three terrestrial years in the service he'd never gotten within a parsec of combat, never fired a shot outside a range or a training simulation. But there he was, in charge.
He'd figured it would be easy. Round up some volunteers, go shoot some daybats at the jungle's edge, lob off some practice mortar rounds at rock formations. Hell, it would be fun. It wasn't like they'd ever have to fire a shot in anger.
Then it happened. A hundred and eighty clicks to the south, the remains of the southern colony probably still smoldered, every man, woman, and child dead, or so it seemed. They'd sent out a flyer when the distress call had come in, and it had reported no sign of life, just before it too was taken down by a missile.
The Concordiat promised that help was on the way, but he had no idea when it was getting here. Not soon enough, that was for sure. He swatted away a hovering blood-bee that was going for his nose, and growled at nothing in particular.
Hell, if he was the best they had, then he'd have to do. He wasn't going to let what happened to the Odinberg Colony happen here. He had plasma cannons in fortifications, turret-mounted antimissile auto-batteries, over a hundred handheld missile launchers and mortars in ready positions, and the entire hillside in front of him had been mined. Sure, his men were undertrained, but they were learning fast. God knows, the aliens were giving them plenty of targets to practice on. If they were going to try to attack this front again, and all sensors showed they were massing to do just that, they were going to pay a very heavy price.
"Sir," Lieutenant Sinkler shouted from a hundred paces behind him. Sinkler, before the destruction of the southern colony, had been a communications clerk.
Donning glanced around. The main colony compound had been built on a hillside leading down into what had been a beautiful meadow bordering a wide river. The main area of mining was down a shallow valley to the west of the colony. The colony had not been built with the idea that it would be need to be defended. After the first alien attacks, he had had the jungle cleared back away from all sides of the main colony, and fortifications prepared, including massive amounts of land moving to build bunkers. Days of mining equipment time had been used, and the colony executive had given him all kinds of flack over it, but after the destruction of the Odinberg Colony no one was objecting at all.
Donning waved to Lieutenant Sinkler that he had heard the call and was coming. Suddenly the edge of the jungle below seemed to come alive. Thousands of aliens were flowing from the trees and brush, appearing where there hadn't seemed to be anything before.
He could see along their line that dozens of them carried plasma cannons and rifles that didn't seem to fit in their hands, but there was little doubt they could use them. Most of the rest carried swords or large knifes of some sort. The cannons and rifles held back while the mass of the force charged ahead.
The first shot from below exploded the mound to his right, sending dirt and dust into the air.
Some of his men were already shooting when he shouted, "Return fire!" He dropped back into a duracrete bunker just as a plasma blast slammed into the wall with a force that rattled his teeth.
"Sir!" Sinkler shouted again, coming up beside him. He pointed to the communications unit he was carrying, then at the sky over the jungle. "Help is coming!"
Donning could feel a flash of hope, but he didn't dare let it cloud anything they were doing. He'd known all along that help was coming, but it could be here in five minutes, or five weeks. They could all be dead by the time their would-be rescuers showed up.
"Great!" he shouted back at Sinkler, trying to sound encouraging. "Keep it to yourself for now. Understand? We're on our own here."
Sinkler nodded. Poor guy looked like he was going to cry, like he would happily gnaw off his own arm to go back to a nice, quiet desk job.
I know how you feel, buddy. Donning turned away and brought his plasma rifle up to a slot, using the telescopic scope to check out the horde of massive aliens rushing upslope at them. His troops were cutting most of them down almost as fast as they came, but not completely. It seemed these creatures had no fear of death at all. What the hell did we ever do to them? All this for knocking over a few trees?
The first line of mines took out at least fifty of the aliens right below him, but it barely slowed them down. Again, the aliens mounting high-tech weapons held back, as wave after wave of aliens threw themselves down across the minefield, till their bleeding, blasted bodies formed an organic bridge that the rest could cross.
Around the colony the mines were going off now in a continuous roar, filling the air with smoke and dust and the blood of the aliens. Mortars and plasma blasts cleared momentary circles in their ranks, but it was like trying to dig a hole in the water. Still they came.
This was impossible.
This was madness.
Inch by inch, the aliens were advancing against their defenses. It was at this moment that he knew this wasn't just another skirmish. This time the aliens were fighting to win, and they were going to crush the colony if they didn't run out of warm bodies first.
Once, when he was a boy back on New Brazil, he'd gone hiking on a bluff overlooking the ocean. He'd stood too near the edge of a cliff, and the crumbly clay had collapsed under his feet. He'd slid down the slope on his face, his bloody fingers clawing at every crack and pebble that might have given him some kind of purchase, knowing that the slope turned into a sheer drop-off just a few meters down. Yet despite anything he could do, he'd just kept sliding. That was how he felt now, and he knew from bitter experience that the rocks were sharp, hard, and a long, long way down.
He felt it first in the soles of his feet. The ground itself seemed to be shaking, not from explosions, but from something that rumbled like a building earthquake. What now? He scanned the killing field in front of him as best he could. All he could see were aliens. Screaming, bloodthirsty aliens.
Sinkler scampered over in a half squat, his head down. "What's that sound?" he shouted over the plasma shots and exploding mines.
Donning could now hear a roar, a gaseous bubbling thunder unlike anything he'd ever heard, filling the air above everything. It grew louder in matchstep with the ground's rumbling.
Below him even the relentless aliens seemed to pause, look around, then up at the sky, searching for the source of the rumbling and shaking.
The defenders did the same and there was a noticeable downturn in the sounds of the battle.
"Keep firing!" Donning shouted into his wristcom, cutting down three massive aliens with his own rifle as he shouted. This was their only chance to turn the battle, or at least delay the inevitable.
Around him the pace of the barrage picked back up. The aliens renewed their attack, still seemingly distracted by the sounds behind them. Donning looked up from the battle for just a moment and blinked in disbelief. The normally placid river that crossed the meadows was boiling!
Or at least it looked like it was boiling. Great domes of muddy water were churning man-high above the surface, waves slopped a dozen meters up either bank, slicks of foam forming just in time to be swept slowly downstream with the current. Then something long and glistening, like the horn of some submerged monster poked out of the water close to the near bank, then another, and another, followed by a mounded shape that towered out of the water, shedding cascading sheets of mud, sediment, and muck.
It reared itself up onto the bank and Donning somehow expected it to stop, beached like a whale, but it did not. It advanced across the meadows, churning a path of destruction through the grass and wildflowers, and its horn began to spit fire. Plasma fire.
Even as Donning dived for cover the shock waves began to slam into them, and he knew what had crawled out of the river. He'd never seen a Bolo in person before, but there was no mistaking it for any other fighting machine in the galaxy.
Help had finally come.
I signal my commander, Colonel Houchen, as soon as I emerge from the river and break communications silence. As I had hoped, my fortuitous landing in the river not only cushioned my landing, but provided cover for my approach to the northern colony. Even as I identify targets and open fire with my secondary batteries, I am puzzled by the situation. I am witnessing what could be, in many respects, a siege from pre-atomic Earth's medieval period. The colony's fortifications are surrounded not by armor, not assailed by aircraft, but rather by a vast army equipped primarily with hand weapons, mounting not so much as a draft animal. This defies any rational analysis, through it is consistent with my inability to identify enemy convoys or installations.
I slowly move closer to the colony, pinning the enemy between my own weapons and those of the fortifications. The toll on them is terrible, yet they are slow to disperse. I take sporadic return fire from low to medium power plasma weapons and assorted missiles, but all of it is stopped by my battle screens. I am perhaps growing overconfident when my deep scanners pick up the signature of a nuclear device moving slowly through the enemy throngs in front of me. I take point oh two seconds to analyze the device. It is a tactical fusion device with an antimatter trigger, small but highly sophisticated, more a puzzlement than a threat. I detect it visually, a cylinder half a meter long, carried by a lone alien who wades through his fellows like a swimmer going upstream. The image lingers in my memory as I destroy the device with a controlled secondary pulse.
There is a small explosion and a gamma pulse from the trigger. Perhaps fifty of the aliens are immediately killed. Hundreds more will doubtless die later from radiation exposure, but the colony, for which the weapon was doubtless intended, will be spared.
My destruction of the fusion device seems finally to have taken the fight from the attackers. I continue to bombard them as they scatter in all directions, disappearing into the jungle, diving into the river. I signal my commander that the landing zone is nearly secure, but that he make a rapid combat descent, and should be prepared for missile attacks.
I am hailed by the defending forces, a Commander Donning of the local militia. I relay the message to my commander, and he patches his own voice through my short-range transmitters.
Donning had the transmission patched through his wristcom.
"Commander, this is Colonel Houchen of the Dinochrome Brigade."
"Thank you for the timely assist, Colonel. You got here just in time."
"Actually, Commander, I'm not there yet, but I hope to be shortly. Until then, I believe you've already met Bolo KNN. Khan, say hello to Commander Donning. You two probably have things to talk about until I get there."
"Hello, Commander," said a second voice, one that sounded as human as any of his men.
It took Donning a moment to find his voice. "Hello back," he finally said.