David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

The high-explosive rounds slammed into belly scales which wouldn't have stopped even the far lighter rounds of the machine guns. They penetrated deep, and then exploded.

Cerlohs Myr and his dragon slammed into the neat houses of the Salbyton at almost three hundred miles an hour.

Mesaion was never really able to sort it all out clearly later. It happened too quickly, too fast to be accurately recorded by the brains of the human beings caught in the chaos.

Machine guns and pedestal guns thundered and hammered insanely. The sky above Fort Salby was filled with stupendous creatures, and the gunners hurled their hate in copper-jacketed bolts and the sledgehammers of high-explosive.

The dragon pilots of Arcana had never experienced anything like it. For the first time, they encountered concentrated fire from a prepared, unshaken position, and the short range of their dragons' breath weapons left them no choice but to enter their enemies' reach.

Lightning bolts lanced downward. Only a handful of the shorter-ranged fireballs were successfully launched, and two of those went wide as defensive fire smashed into the firing reds. Sharonians screamed and died. The fireballs that landed inside the fort's confines exploded with tremendous force, and a tiny corner of Mesaion's mind thanked Prince Janaki fervently for insisting that his howitzer and mortar crews be kept under cover, out of their gun pits, until they were actually needed.

The overhead cover the prince had insisted with equal fanaticism upon providing for the riflemen spread out along the fort's fighting step proved its worth, as well. For all the heat and fury of the fireballs, they lacked the blast effect to penetrate those heaped sandbags.

What they did to Mesaion's exposed gunners, however, was something else entirely.

In less than two screaming minutes of savage action, fifty-three of Lorvam Mesaion's men were killed outright. Another eighteen were wounded so badly death would have been a mercy, and still another seventeen were put out of action. Four of his Yerthaks were destroyed or disabled. He lost five Faraikas, and two of his heavy mortars were thoroughly wrecked as all the ready ammunition in their-thankfully

– unmanned pit went up in a thunderous chain of explosions.

But while all that was happening, his gunners brought down eight more dragons.

One mortally wounded beast crashed directly into the top of the northwestern tower like a forty-ton hammer of scales, blood, and bone, and the impact reduced the pedestal gun crew atop that tower to gruel. The parapet exploded outward in a meteor storm of broken adobe, stones, and dust, and the dragon came to rest, one shattered wing drooping down until its tip trailed on the ground beyond. Its pilot dangled from its broken neck, hanging limp and broken himself from the straps of his flight harness. Another dragon smashed into the southernmost stretch of the western wall. It just missed the corner tower where the wall turned to angle back to the east, and the plunging beast crushed the firing step's improvised overhead protection. At least another thirty men were killed as the dragon exploded through the parapet and slammed to earth between the wall and the nearest gun emplacement.

Smoke billowed up from the fort's interior. The top of the southern tower might have been missed by the plummeting dragon, but it was enveloped in a holocaust all its own where that dragon's fireball had struck yet another of the Yerthaks before it was killed itself. The fireball had ignited the destroyed gun's ready-use ammunition, and two dozen neraby infantry had been killed or wounded. But only four of the attacking dragons managed to pull out of their dives successfully, and two of them staggered off, obviously badly hurt.

Mayrkos Harshu's face was completely expressionless as the imagery from Commander of Fifty Fahrlo's recon crystal played back before him. Klayrman Toralk wished his face could be equally disciplined, but that was more than he could manage.

Graholis! What the hells did Myr run into? And what the fuck did he think he was doing with that second attack?!

The imagery concluded with Deathclaw circling overhead while his two wounded wingmates came in for quick, clumsy landings. Toralk didn't have the dragon-healers' reports yet, but he'd be surprised if the more badly wounded of the two survived. And whether the beast lived or not, both of the injured dragons were going to be out of action for a long time.

Which means I have exactly three battle dragons left-all of them blacks, he thought grimly.

"Thank you," Harshu said almost absently to the Gifted technician. The man had done extraordinarily well to get the imagery transferred so quickly, but he didn't look very happy, despite the two thousand's well deserved thanks.

Probably because he isn't a total idiot, Toralk thought.

The technician departed, and Harshu and Toralk looked at one another across the map table.

"It would appear," Harshu said with a thin, humorless smile, "that it's fortunate I'd already decided to halt the offensive here in Traisum."

Toralk winced.

"Sir," he began, "I'd apologize for this … this debacle, if there were any way to excuse it. I-"

"That's enough, Klayrman," Harshu interrupted. The Air Force officer closed his mouth, and the Expeditionary Force's CO shook his head. "I saw your and Five Hundred Myr's attack plan. I was fully aware of the Intelligence appreciations upon which it was based, and I approved it. Whatever blame there may be, it belongs to me as much as it does to you."

Toralk started to disagree with his superior's assessment, then made himself stop and shook his own head.

"That's very understanding of you, Sir," he said instead. "But whoever's to blame, we've got a major problem here."

My, Klayrman, a corner of his brain mocked, what a massive gift for understatement you do have.

"For all practical purposes," he continued, "my battle dragon strength has just been wiped out. The blacks I have left are the least effective for this sort of attack. And, to be honest, despite all the smoke and explosions our pilots have reported, I doubt very much that they succeeded in neutralizing the fort's defensive fire."

"Probably not," Harshu agreed. The two thousand gazed down at the map of the terrain around Fort Salby, rubbing his chin gently.

"All right," he said finally. "There's no point standing here beating ourselves up over our losses. What matters are our remaining resources for prosecuting the attack."

Toralk looked at him, then cleared his throat respectfully.

"Sir," he said diffidently, "as I understand our basic operational planning, the object was to secure a forward chokepoint we could hold against counterattack. That's what made this portal so attractive. But if we failed to secure that sort of chokepoint, our object became to conduct a mobile defensive withdrawal, slowing the enemy to the greatest possible extent while the Commandery found reinforcements for us."

"And you're thinking that if we take heavy losses-additional heavy losses-against Salby, we won't have anything left to conduct that mobile defense with." Harshu's voice sounded remarkably calm, and Toralk nodded.

"That's exactly what I'm thinking, Sir."

"Well, I'm not certain you're wrong," Harshu said frankly. "On the other hand, now that I've seen Fifty Fahrlo's recon images, I'm more convinced than ever that securing Fort Salby itself would be extremely valuable. The ground-level approach to the portal is even more constricted from the up-chain side than I'd thought it was, and thanks to the portal itself, there's no way-no practical way-they could flank us out of position. It would be a straight up fighting withdrawal to the portal, with our transport dragons giving us the ability to pull our men out at the very last-minute."