Jack Chalker - The Sea is Full of Stars

But for every one they hit, three or four landed, their soldiers and cargo containers coming off with amazing speed and forming up into larger units as more and more landed.

Now, from the Grand Hall’s entryway and the castle battlements, soldiers from both units took off, low, letting the cannon try for the creatures above the crater walls while they concentrated on the ones unloading. The Baron could see they had underestimated the efficiency of these troops and that ground time was amazingly short, but it was ground time, and that allowed the waves of Ochoans to swoop down with great speed and accuracy and each fire two small rockets down into the landing areas. Most missed, and the first troops to organize down there were already providing a withering covering fire for the others landing and disembarking, but the rockets blew up with a lot of fire and smoke, and whenever they hit one of the monstrous triangular bugs the resulting explosion was worth five direct hits by the rockets themselves. Whatever was inside those things was under tremendous pressure!

“What’s our range?” the Baron shouted to anybody listening over the now ferocious din.

“They are still too far!” his wife screamed back at him. “Why not try shooting a single pass in each direction and seeing if we can’t make our own target?”

He saw what she meant and cursed that neither he nor any of these military “experts” had thought about simply painting the range in.

The pattern kicked up a lot of dust at about fifteen hundred meters. Not a bad range, but then he realized that when they got within his range, he was probably within range of at least their best marksmen.

“They’re bombing the palace!” somebody shouted! “Oh, and the Great Hall, too!”

They were surprised and more wounded than they had anticipated by the coordinated fire and the rocket bearers. Somebody had gotten back up and given a signal to bring some of their own flying rocket platforms in.

The attacking force was far more ungainly and not nearly as accurate as the Ochoans, who were intelligent, small, native fliers, not domesticated bugs being steered by drivers, but it was like the machine gun versus the rifle. You could hit something far better with a rifle, but if you could fire enough bullets in the right general direction, you could do more damage. This wave of rocket-launching bugs let go with twenty, thirty rockets almost at once, then veered off and up. Again, several were knocked down, but it was daunting to see some explosions strike on or very near the things, who nevertheless kept coming.

The two buildings were engulfed in smoke and flames, and outer walls shook and crumbled. The columns of the Grand Hall began to give way, and with them the flag deck above them as well.

There was now so much noise and smoke that it was impossible to tell what was happening. There was a brief break in the smoke just off the now smoking and battered palace, and a series of quick coded lights. “Still functioning,” it said. “Most guns out, but they will have to dig us out.”

The Baron and his unit felt some strength and confidence from that, but it didn’t mean a thing in the end. A large number of the great black carriers were landing just over the wall, and on any ledges and smoothed-out areas they could. The smaller intelligent bugs, the Jerminians, were almost certainly forming into formidable units there and having no problems marching right up the sheer sides of the thing. They knew, however, that unlike those damned transport bugs, Jerminians were as susceptible to bullets and blasts as Ochoans were.

So far it was still playing out, but the Baron began to doubt the result. The sight of so many Ochoans dropping from the skies, and of his two national symbols being blown up and burned, gave him no comfort at all.

Were they all that confident still? They moved like it. Did they think they had large forces pinned down in the castles and the rest sealed up here, or had they suspected or seen what they should not, or had their spies tipped them? Their allies in Zone certainly had it all figured out by now, probably earlier, but how could they get the message here? Did they have the way to do it?

“In range!” somebody shouted. “Fire!”

The Baron didn’t even look. He galvanized into action, put the sights on maximum range and began a back and forth 180 sweep out there in the crater. The other portable emplacements did the same, overlapping their fire, creating a deadly curtain.

In what seemed seconds he was empty, and felt panic and confusion. His wife was on it in a minute, throwing the old canister out and inserting a new one. “Closed! Fire!” she screamed, ducking down.

They were not only firing now, they were getting return fire. It sounded like a child playing with some musical toy as the bullets went ping ! ping ! PING ! all around and ricocheted all over. The Baron felt a slight sting in his left side but ignored it; he kept firing, firing, and finally, through the smoke and haze, he saw the enemy advancing and the bright flashes of his and the other’s fire against their shell shields. He saw many of them crumple in place and seem to collapse like a balloon with the air rushing out of them, to be walked over by others in disciplined ranks. The hard rock was creating deadly ricochets for them as well, and there were far more of them to hit.

His blood was up. He would never have suspected this feeling, this enormous rush that for the moment put fear aside because there simply wasn’t time for it. “Gia! What’s keeping the ammo?” he shouted, then saw her, slumped, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, her pretty body bleeding from a dozen wounds.

“Gia!” he shouted in anguish. You didn’t die at that age, that pretty, with that much position and wealth. You didn’t die save perhaps from accident, or you died ancient with your hundreds of descendants around you. People didn’t die like this ! People he knew and loved didn’t die like this!

Two of the runners reached up and pulled her body unceremoniously out of the cage, and one of them leaped in and fed the next canister into the gun. “Highness! You must fire!” she screamed at him, but he just stood there, watching Gia’s crumpled body below, like some horrible rag doll.

There were sudden explosions all around him, and one was so close it shook the gun and almost toppled him. He started swinging around, unable to stop or catch his balance. They were all above him, all around him! These—These things !

One of the runners managed to catch the lower ammo feeder and they stopped the merry-go-round, but more and more explosions were shaking them. At the far end, a bomb from one of the dark shapes above struck a gun just like his and he saw it rise into the air, as if in slow motion, and pieces of it and pieces of Ochoans flying all over, all over…

The runner reached up and used a wing to shake him. “Highness! We cannot stand! You must retreat! There is no purpose to your death at this point!” she shouted. Almost immediately something shot from the advancing troops struck her and he saw her chest almost explode as the projectile continued through her and opened a horrible, fatal wound. Her blood splattered all over him, and he screamed and was out of there.

As soon as the few surviving others saw the Baron leap out and glide down almost automatically to the ground, unable to fly well, and literally run right into the Well Gate, they abandoned their positions and followed suit.

An eerie, terrible clicking sound now began all around the Gate, echoing back and magnifying itself as it hit the walls and bounced back again and again. There were still some explosions, and some fire, but it was slowly coming to a halt.