John Ringo: Unto the Breach

“You are so lieing,” Father Devlich said. He didn’t even have anything to fire at. Fuck .

“Nope,” Father Ferani said. “Sorry, Gregor. I really did bed Martya. It was in a bed of tigerberry bushes on a night with a crescent moon. And, Gregor, do the sums.” A large group was forming up in the ravine to the side of the ridge and he fired at them, working the gatling gun across the group. Tracers came drifting up through the air towards the Hind, the first fire they’d taken. “You’re… ” He grunted and stopped firing.

“You have to be lieing,” Father Devlich said, furiously. Now there were some running Chechens in view. He fired, missed, fired again. “I am not … ” Something made him look behind him.

Father Ferani was hanging from the harness the black mechanic had had them wear. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and back. There were three large, red, holes in his back and Father Devlich could see right into the mess inside his body.

Father Devlich turned back to look out the window of the helicopter. A group of screaming fedayeen was running towards the north and he clamped down on the trigger of the gun, tumbling them to the ground. He continued to fire into the bodies, churning them to red mush, until they were out of sight.

“Oh double dog fuck me,” Adams said, running forward. Mike was on his back with about a million screaming Chechens still around him. Adams just fired up the whole area as a round from Shota dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of fedayeen all over the battlefield.

But the fedayeen didn’t seem to care about the fallen Keldara. Mike’s berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing M-60s had them wavering, the rounds from Shota were terrifying them and the tunnel of dead, not to mention the windrows to either side from the door guns, broke them.

They were turning and running back down the hill. And the Keldara, their Kildar apparently dead on the field, weren’t about to let one of them survive. They gave a cry like a hundred hungry tigers and charged forward, guns firing into unprotected backs, axes sweeping down on necks and over it all the hammer of the drums…

Mike shook his head and rolled to his feet, groaning. There was no moment of “where am I?” He knew exactly where he was, still on that damned hill. The last few moments were pretty much a blur, but he knew right where he was, even if he couldn’t remember how he got there. And there was still firing going on around him; the battle wasn’t over.

No, he thought to himself, it’s pretty much done.

He could see where Shota’s rounds had landed, the sprawled near circles of dead Chechens. He could see the windrows were the machine gun teams had pushed forward, laying down that incredible barrage the new 60s were capable of. But the part that really got him was the fucking hole churned right up the middle, stopping… well, more or less where he was standing. He could remember that, the sight of those rounds marching towards him. He hadn’t realized that Nielson had scrounged that much firepower for the Hind. And where in the fuck had those speakers come from? The valley was still ringing with the song even as the Keldara pressed forward, harrying the Chechens from defeat into rout.

The Hind was helping in that, sweeping back and forth, breaking up any pockets of resistance and now segueing into another song, something about dragons. The combination of the firepower at the trenches, the Hind and Shota had not just broken the Chechens, it has slaughtered them. If there weren’t three thousand dead on this battlefield, he’d be very surprised.

The other Hind was coming in for dust-off as the sky turned pink washed with violet. They held this battlefield, but Mike was well aware that there was one more battle to be done on this day.

He tried to push himself up and realized his right hand really hurt. Really really hurt. Holding it up he saw that the skin of the palm had been stripped off and it looked as if a couple of the fingers and the thumb were dislocated. So much for using that hand for a while. Hell, he hurt all over, pains starting to pop up across his whole body. The the chest decided to report. Pain. Big pain. Chest. That was bad.

He looked down at the hole in his body armor. It was smoking. Using his left hand, he undid his battle harness and armor then reached under it and pulled out the still smouldering tracer, wincing a little at the heat. Hmmph. 7.62x51. Same kind the Hind had in its gatling guns. It was horribly distorted from something.

Looking around he spotted his axe. The head, anyway, which was bent in half and had a hole in it.

“Adams, call in the dogs,” Mike said, keying his throat mike while still lying on his back. He stopped to get some wind. His chest really hurt. He was pretty sure the sternum was cracked. And he could tell he was bleeding from a couple of spots. But he’d bled before and nothing seemed super-critical except his hand. He’d live. “Vanner, get ahold of that armed Hind and tell them to conserve some ammunition. We’ve still got to get through the pass… ” He reached over with his left hand and grabbed his thumb, pulling it out and popping it back into position. Then he did the same with his forefinger, middle finger and pinkie. Right hand… call it fifty percent functional. Needed to get a bandage on it. Plug a couple of holes. Good enough.

He rolled to his left and got up on one knee, picked up a blood-covered AK, then straightened up, swaying on his feet.

Now to go kill the fuckers in the pass…

Above him, the ravens soared…

“AER KELDAR!”

Haza had fought just about everyone on earth at one point or another. He had mostly fought Americans but there were other Pashtun tribes, the Uzbeks and Turks of the Northern Alliance. He had fought beside and against Somalis and animalist Christians in Sudan. He had fought the Israelis and the Ghurkas. The British SAS commandoes and American Delta force. He had fought Spetznaz, Rangers and SEALs.

But if he survived this he was going to quit fighting anyone . For the trench had suddenly filled with women, big women, big blonde and brunette and red-headed women, screaming a terrible battlecry and swinging AXES for Allah’s sake!

They had come in on top of the damned mortars. He had glimpsed one blown backwards in a spray of blood and guts, hit by one of her own rounds. More were spouting wounds from shrapnel. They didn’t seem to care. They didn’t seem to feel. They were wide-eyed and screaming in skirts and bright blouses, shooting AKs from their left hand and swinging those axes in their right.

They had dropped on the fedayeen before most of them had realized the mortars stopped, dropped into the trench hacking and screaming in a berzerker rage that made the most Allah enraptured fedayeen look like a child having a tantrum.

They had dropped in like eagles from the sky and began hacking and shooting. Some of them had shot each other but even that did not seem to stop them.

The fedayeen had not had a chance. They were still trying to recover from being effectively and relentlessly mortared when these screaming harpies dropped on them and began slashing and hacking until the trench was a river of blood.

The axes made terrible wounds, cutting off limbs, slashing necks, crushing heads.

Haza had shot one, point blank, blocked one of the axes then felt another sink into his shoulder. The AK dropped from his nerveless hands and suddenly he was on his back with an old woman, red dripping axe in hand, looking down at him.

“You are the commander, yes?” the woman said in badly accented Arabic. “Feel glad. You are being honored.”