David Weber - On Basilisk Station

"Falcon Leader to all Falcons. Engage! " a voice snapped, and Kilgore's pulse rifle swung up into position without conscious thought. His thumb snapped the selector to full-auto, not the normal semi-automatic, and his little finger pressed the stud that selected the explosive magazine. He paused for one bare heartbeat, seeing the mob of Medusans through cold, suddenly distant eyes, and then he squeezed the trigger.

It wasn't a slaughter. It was worse than that. The Medusans had never heard of dispersion; they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, crowded into a single, huge target. Anything that missed one of them was bound to hit another.

Kilgore's pulse rifle surged back, its recoil almost imperceptible through his armor as its small, powerful grav coil spat a stream of four-millimeter darts down-range. The explosions of the darts weren't the clean, white flashes of practice on the range; they were red and steaming as Medusan bodies blew apart in geysers of blood. He swept his fire across the shrieking natives, emptying a full hundred-round extended magazine into them in less than twenty seconds, and his was only one of almost three hundred modern rifles flaying that screaming thong.

Darts screamed down over his head from the crest of the valley's sides, and the shattering thunder of his third squad's heavy, multi-barreled pulsers ripped into the Medusans from the south. Searing flares of plasma incinerated Stilties by the score as the heavy weapons section opened up, and some of Isvarian's NPA troopers were armed with rocket and grenade launchers that blasted severed limbs and gobs of Medusan flesh across moss and boulders. The rocky valley was a pocket of Hell, and not even mekoha could fully barricade the natives against the horror. They howled in shock and agony, writhing like ants in a flame, yet even as they screamed and died, others lunged outward, running up the slopes with the impossible agility of their three-legged gait, charging straight into the fire tearing them apart.

It was incredible. Kilgore slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle and emptied it. Slammed in a third and opened up again, ears cringing from the savage discord of shrieks and explosions bellowing over his audio pickups, and he couldn't believe it. The Stilties were charging so fast, their mob formation so thick, that he couldn't kill them fast enough to stop them! Any sane opponent would have broken and run from that murderous fire; the Stilties didn't. They were a living wave, willing to take any losses to reach their foes. They surged over their own dead and dying, frothing ever higher up the sides of the valley, and his scouts were spread far too thin to contain them.

"Falcon-Three, Falcon Leader! Get back, Falcon-Three! Clear the slopes for the Navy!"

"Aye, Falcon Leader." Kilgore's voice sounded strange in his own ears through the thunder and slaughter. It was flat and level, leached of all expression by the horror before his eyes, and he heard it passing orders to his scouts. He abandoned his cover, feeling crude bullets skip and whine off his armor like hail as the Medusans saw him at last, and his people hit their jump gear, vaulting higher up the steep slopes. Marines and NPA troopers above them checked their fire as the armored scouts suddenly went bobbing and weaving through their fire lanes, and the Stilties screamed in triumph as the avalanche of death slackened. They charged after their fleeing enemies even while those on the valley floor continued to wither and die in the hurricane of destruction sweeping up from its southern end, and Kilgore's ears rang as a rifle bullet spanged off his armorplast helmet in a smear of lead.

But then the scouts were clear, and the pinnaces screamed down, lasers and autopulsers raving. They swept along the sides of the valley, cluster bombs and napalm erupting beneath them, lasers and guns plowing a ten-meter wide swath of absolute destruction through the howling Medusans, and then they swept back to do it all over again. And again.

And again and again and again . . . until the dead lay five and six deep and there was no living thing in all the blasted nightmare of that valley of death.

Sergeant O'Brian heard the sudden explosion of combat far behind him, but his attention was on other things. His squad squatted and crouched in firing positions along the shallow, razor-backed ridge, and he peered through his binoculars at the cave mouth across the ravine below him.

The nose of an aircar protruded from it, and his jaw tightened as he saw the pulser muzzles like tusks on either side of the front gear well. The sleek vehicle bore no markings that he could see, and the presence of those heavy weapons made it illegal even if it had once been properly registered. The problem was what he did about it. He was no cop, and with the horror of the NPA skimmer fresh in his mind, he was in no mood to act like one.

He grunted decisively and hit the button that flipped the binoculars up out of his way.

"Hawk-Three, Falcon-Three-Three," he said into his com. "Are you ready to nail them if they bug out?"

"Affirmative, Falcon-Three-Three," the pinnace's commander replied. "But we're not going to leave much in the way of evidence if we do."

"Understood, Hawk-Three. We'll try to keep them on the ground, but stay on your toes."

"Will do, Falcon-Three-Three. Luck."

"Thanks." O'Brian shifted back to the squad net. "You see that overhang above the aircar, Stimson?"

"Yo, Sarge," the plasma rifleman's reply was laconic, almost bored-sounding, but O'Brian wasn't fooled.

"I want that cave plugged with the aircar inside it. It may be evidence, so I don't want it destroyed, either. Think you can drop the overhang on its nose?"

"Might be able to," Stimson said thoughtfully, "but that's mighty thick rock, an' I wouldn't care to bet money on doin' it from up here. This baby of mine don't have all that much penetration, and the angle's bad from here. I prob'ly can if I get a little lower, though, Sarge."

"Can you do that without being spotted?"

"He can work around the north end of the ridge, Sarge," Hillyard suggested. "It tails off in some broken ground and boulders down that way."

"Sounds good to me, Sarge," Stimson agreed.

"Do it, Stimson."

"On my way."

O'Brian grunted in satisfaction, but his armor sensors were already picking up revving turbines, and there were other machinery noises, coming both from that cave and an equally large cave mouth just below it. There might be more aircars in there, or even ground vehicles.

"Hadley, you watch that lower cave," he said. "If anything starts to move out of it, nail it, and the hell with evidence."

"My pleasure, Sarge."

"Sharon, when Stimson takes out the aircar, I want you to take the rest of your people in to cover that smaller cave to the left. Bill, you take Parker and Lovejoy to that one on the extreme right. Turner and Frankowski, you're with me on the one in the middle. Hadley and Stimson will lie back to cover us. Everyone copy?"

A chorus of assents came back, and he made himself wait in patience while Stimson slithered cautiously into position. It seemed to be taking forever, though he knew the delay felt far longer than it was. The thunder of weapons from the south grew even louder, and he bit his lip as its intensity registered. There must be even more of the bastards than they'd thought. He tried not to remember what the Stilties had done to those poor damned NPA types, tried not to think about them doing it to his own people, and concentrated on the task in hand.

"In position, Sarge," Stimson's voice said.

"Then take 'em out," O'Brian grated, and an eye-aching gout of incandescence flashed below him.

The plasma bolt liberated its energy almost instantaneously against the lower edge of the stony outcrop. Vaporized soil and glowing quartz gravel erupted away from the searing impact, but the outcrop held . . . for a second. And then another bolt smashed into the glowing hole. A second scoop of rock and earth vanished, and the massive stone ledge broke loose and crashed downward across the cave mouth. It crunched into the aircar, blocking the cave and smashing through the fuselage just behind the nose like a blunt guillotine, and O'Brian was on his feet.