John Ringo: Unto the Breach

Oh, that was easy . The guy was barely fifty meters in front of the trenches.

Shota didn’t even bother to use the sights.

Adams ducked as a massive explosion went off to the front of his position then picked up the M-60, cradling the remaining links in his arm.

“Oleg, see you in a bit,” he said, frowning.

“I’ll give you cover, yes?” Oleg said, hopping up one-legged onto a firing stoop so that he could see over the palisades of the position. He began firing, sweeping the M-60 back and forth, still going continuously. The position was filling up with brass and links. They both must have fired over a thousand rounds each and the weapons still weren’t giving a hiccup. “Take some of my ammo.”

“Okay,” Adams said, clambering out of the position he had occupied for so many hours. The Chechens were still trying to move forward but they were looking… weak. They were hardly firing; apparently most of them had expended their ammo and weren’t in any mental condition to reload or scrounge if necessary. The explosion had shaken them and another to the left that almost knocked Adams into the trench again was worse.

Eamon Ferani, loaded down with ammo boxes, clambered up beside him and grinned.

“The Kildar wishes us to advance, Master Chief,” the boy said. He drew an axe and waved it. “I will cover your sides, yes?”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Adams said, lifting the belt up a bit more and raising the machine-gun to his shoulders. He clamped down on the trigger and started striding forward, sweeping the weapon from side to side. It was like shooting a God-damned fire hose. “OH, FUCK YEAH! I GOT ME ONE OF THESE YOU ISLAMIC BASTARDS!”

Over his screaming, and the continuous clatter of the gun, he thought he heard wings beating. It sounded like a giant bird, bigger than any bird, ever…

“THE DRAGON IS ON YOU, YOU BASTARDS!”

As she swept around to the east, Kacey triggered the speakers. A sound like satanic chanting filled the valley, resounding from mountainside to mountainside. Then she dipped down to come in right at ground level.

There wasn’t any need for special flying and there wasn’t much chance of missing the target. The Chechens were all over the ridge. Kacey targeted one group towards the rear and just let fly with everything.

57mm rockets dropped into the Chechen command group as thousands of 7.62 rounds scowered the ground. The whole group fell, blown to bits by rockets, churned to red mush by the fire of the gatlings.

She swept around to point up the hill, flying through the dust and smoke of her barrage, and fired everything again, ripping a ten meter wide hole through the middle of the Chechen formation as she swept up the ridge, engine at overload, drums, guitars and voices screaming into the void.

Mike had lost it. At some level he knew that and didn’t care.

He leapt the trench, running ahead of the Keldara, SPR tracking right and left and automatically engaging targets of opportunity, round after round cracking straight through a screaming mouth, behind fierce-slitted eyes, rounds cracking past him, ducking and weaving as some part of his mind anticipated shots.

Combat psychologists had determined that there were four broad states to humans in relation to combat, mostly definable by heartbeat and bloodpressure. The lowest, white, was a steady state. This was a person unstressed by combat and the hormones and endorphins released by it. Heartbeat was steady and low, blood-pressure the same. Above that was yellow, generally found in persons who were aware that combat might occure at any time but were still more or less steady state. Heartbeat was slightly elevated as was blood-pressure. Above that were the ascending orange and red, red being Shakespeare’s famous quote regarding summoning up “the actions of a tiger.” Heartbeat was generally in the high hundreds, blood-pressure well over two hundred and while fine motor control was reduced the fighter was acting at what most warriors considered maximum capability. Time was distorted, hearing was distorted, the world was an unreal state. The tiger was on the back of the deer and rending.

But above red was black. Most combatants, entering the black range, lost effect. At the black range the heart was pumping so fast oxygen to the brain was reduced due to poor pumping action, blood pressure was so high that the fighter was seeeing either a red cloud or the true tunnel vision of the brain slowly blacking out.

But some warriors, the most highly trained, could enter into black and function. By definition, they were some of the most deadly persons on earth. In black, the fighter’s reactions were superhuman, their automatic training processes working at a level beyond gestalt, their shots so fast that even on single shot they sounded like a machine gun and every one was going to hit a target. A fighter who could ride the wave of the black could, would, never miss.

Mike was in the black. Time was slowed for him to such an extent he could see the bullets flying from the Chechens AKs, seeming to glide through the air towards him. He could see his own and know before they hit that they were on target. He felt as if he was moving in molasses and yet the Chechens, screaming towards him, were moving slower. The ejected cartridges from the SPR were as big as beer barrels, flying past him as slowly as snails would could they but fly.

The empty magazine, dropped, unnoticed and another was seated before the first living Chechen in view could target him and still Mike ran on, brow lowered like the gall’ed rock…

“Mike!” Adams bellowed, turning the M-60, still on continuous fire, to the side so that his stupid boss wouldn’t run right into his cone of fire. “God damnit ! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“ARISE KELDARA!” Oleg bellowed. “YOUR KILDAR LEADS!” He targeted a group of Chechens to the side of the Kildar who was pushing into a wedge of dead bodies, firing rounds so fast it sounded as if he was on full auto, but one Chechen after another was flying back with single holes, right through the fucking X ring. Oleg cursed the mortar that had taken his leg. He should be at his Kildar’s side! “FORWARD THE AXE AND FLAME! ARISE TIGERS!”

Mike had reached the Chechen line but the fighters in front of him were having a hard time even lifting their weapons with dead bodies falling around and on them.

Some detached portion of him watched as the butt of the SPR shattered on a Chechen face, the head of the Chechen slumping sideways as the hard driven steel crumpled not only his face bones but his skull.

The barrel bent across the side of another’s head, wrapping into a half U at the impact and brains splashed, slow as dropping feathers, out of the shattered skull.

The axe came up. The axe of the Kildar and Mike struck down and across, shattering a skull, up to slash through a neck, down to take off an arm.

The air was filled with a mist of blood, the sacrifices falling slowly, so slowly.

Vil was up and on the Chechens, screaming as he dropped to a knee and fired. Two Chechens, older ones, were maneuvering in to fire on the Kildar and he dropped both with two aimed bursts. But the Kildar wasn’t slowing down and moving forward by fire and maneuver obviously wasn’t going to let him catch up.

“Damn him!” Vil shouted. “What’s the point of training us if he’s going to forget it?”

Lasko was so in his element he thought he might just have to kill himself. Never could he have another day like this.