Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (23 page)

“Goloswin?” Tulo asked via his AS. “How's that redoubt coming?”

Goloswin physically pushed a friendly normal into the position he wanted the beast, then made shoveling motions with his claws to show what he wanted done. From his high point near the C-Dec, he could see a few leakers coming in over the parapet he'd thinned out to build the redoubt. So far, they weren't lasting long.

“So far . . . give 'em time,” the tinkerer muttered. “They're slow learners, apparently, but they will learn.” Turning his attention back to the beings in his charge, he shouted, “Dig you brainless refuse from addled eggs! Dig you piles of demon shit. DIG FOR YOUR LIVES!”

He heard from his AS Tulo's preternaturally calm voice, “How's that redoubt coming?”

Despite the circumstances, Golo had to chuckle. That's why we follow you, Tulo. Or one reason anyway. You never lose your composure.

“Two thousand beats, Tulo. Not a beat less.”

“And the moving of the anti-matter drive back into the hull?”

“About four thousand, or maybe five if I lose any of my skilled cosslain.”

“Right. Mustn't let that happen.”

“No, Tulo. We mustn't. But as to what we can do about it . . .”

Goloswin's yellow eyes turned to the expedition's few tenar, moving in formation past the encampment's walls and over the horde.

Well, there's a few thousand less of them, Brasingala thought, as he and his tenar made a sweeping pass in formation, all weapons blazing, over the mass of locals more of less in the center. The weapons were under AS guidance, even though the order to fire and to distribute fire came from the kessentai.

The fire had lanced down, sweeping left to right from each tenar and strewing the field with torn, broken, bleeding, burnt, and—often enough—exploded, bodies.

I'd have felt a lot better about that if those bodies were not just lying on top of more bodies. There are too many. We're so fucked. And I am going to fail my lord. Damn it.

“There is enough ammunition for one more good pass, Lord,” Brasingala's AS said. “After that, we'll have to return and rearm.”

Brasingala said nothing to the AS, but only nodded to show that he understood.

He heard from the AS his leader's words, “Brasingala? Tulo. You've got to be running low on ammunition. Cease fire now. Half of you go and rearm. The other half are my personal reserve. Form them on me.”

And that, too, Lord, makes you peerless, thought the bodyguard. Few of the People would even think about ammunition status. You anticipate problems even before you're informed.

“Tulo, you've got a problem.” That was Binastarion's voice, from far overhead in space.

“What's that?”

“The feeding frenzy's over. Those herds Brasingala shot up are moving again.”

“All of them?”

“Well . . . if you consider that the ones who can't move on their own are being carried in the digestive tracts of the rest, then, yes, you could say, 'All of them.'”

“Humor's good,” Tulo answered. “Humor is great. But I'm not in the mood right now, so let's keep it simple, shall we?”

“Sorry, Tulo.”

“Never mind. What's their estimated time of arrival?”

“I'm downloading them to your AS now,” Binastarion answered.

“Goloswin; Tulo.”

“Yes, Tulo?”

“I'm afraid that your schedule—two thousand beats and four thousand beats—is going to have to be modified.”

Golo could just see the look on Tulo's face. There was a single word for it in High Posleen—“tengrava'al”—which translated into human speech approximately as “contemptuous and laughing indifference to the prospect of painful dismemberment.” In Low Posleen the word had one fewer syllables and translated more simply as, “We're so fucked.”

Goloswin used the shorter version. After all, there wasn't time to waste on the longer.

“Faster you misbegottenadledbraindeadrefugeesfromtherecycling bins,” he shouted aloud. In Posleen, this, too, was a single word. “Faster you foul-breathed, dickless perversions in the form of People. Put some spring into it you traders-of-dick-rubs-for-better-cuts-of-thresh.” (Another Low Posleen word, that.) “MOVE!”

A steady stream of cosslain carried the parts of the anti-matter engine into the C-Dec. They were moving about as fast as they thought they could. Under Goloswin's tongue lashing they managed to move a little faster still, even as the rest, digging the fallback position, dug just a tad more frantically.

Brasingala was frantic. No amount of hustle on the part of the ground crews re-arming his, and about half of his followers', tenar could possibly have been sufficient, not when his lord was likely fighting for his life. Impatiently, the kessentai pushed aside a cosslain who was in the process of pouring flechettes for the rail gun into the ammunition bin. The cosslain was being more careful than the system required, since it oriented the projectiles before feeding them.

“Go get more,” Brasingala ordered as he finished the pour. “And don't dawdle or we'll have you for the post-battle feast.”

If they didn't usually stop to choke down the thresh, Tulo thought, they'd have overrun us by now.

It was true enough. While some leakers through the perimeter did press on—probably an instinctive desire to get the best food first—for the most part the local normals stopped to feed whenever one of them managed to plant a clawhold on the surrounding berm and down one of the defenders.

For the first time since meeting the humans, I wish that my people cooked our food, too. That would give us a lot more time.

“Not a lot more time, Golo,” Tulo'stenaloor announced via his AS. “I hope you're nearly there.”

“'Nearly' is such a loaded word, Tulo,” the tinkerer's voice answered.

“I assume that means no, not yet.”

“See?” said Golo. “I knew there was a reason we follow you—no, not there, you stupid bastard! Over there!—you're just so bloody insightful.”

“Stupid bastard?” Tulo asked.

“One of the cosslain, not you, Tulo.”

“Going to be bloody, most likely,” Tulo answered, imagining the three delayed hordes and their eventual arrival.

As Brasingala took off again, followed by five more tenar, he saw his chief, Tulo'stenaloor, calmly scything down a largish group of leakers with a rail gun.

That's not his job. And it's a measure of my failings that he's had to take it on. If only—

The bodyguard noticed that the group Tulo had just done for had been the only ones still standing on the defensive rampart or inside of it. That seemed odd enough that he raised his tenar higher and higher until he could see over the berm.

“Unholy piles of grat-infested shit,” he muttered. Indeed the locals had ceased their attack for the nonce. This might have been because from three other directions poured endless masses of chittering, clawed, knife-wielding normals.

“Lord . . . Lord . . . there are too many. Let me come down and pick up at least you and the tinkerer to save.”

“Nonsense, puppy,” Tulo answered. “But I want you to hold your fire for a moment . . . break, break . . . Goloswin, how's it coming?”

“The anti-matter engine will be fully loaded—not operational, but fully loaded aboard and able to be assembled—in a few hundred beats, Tulo. The inner rampart is . . . about as good as it's going to get.”

“That's fine,” Tulo said. “I want you to get every cosslain and kessentai you have available on the inside, facing out . . . break, break . . . ALL kessentai, listen up. We can't hold the outer perimeter any longer. When I give the word I want three things to happen all at once. First, Brasingala: I want you to split up your tenar and sweep the outer perimeter, buying our people a little time to get into the inner one and get organized. Second: the landers on the perimeter; I want you to stay where you are and do the same. You'll be safe enough there; it would take the locals eons to cut through the metal of your skins with their knives. Lastly: every kessentai on the outer wall; again, on my command, I want you to race inward and form around the new inner wall. Reorganize your people, have the front ranks lay down, and then the rear ranks start firing like lunatics toward the outer wall as they swarm over. We'll evacuate into the ship from the rear, as our People empty their magazines.”

“Acknowledge,” Tulo ordered. Immediately his AS was inundated with call after call saying, “Wilco,” or its equivalent in Low Posleen.

“Side note. Brasingala, when your current load of munitions is depleted you will not be able to rearm. I want you to lead your tenar to the north, about five marches. I'll come with the C-Dec and pick you up there.”

“Wilco, Lord.”

I sure wish I'd thought to have the tinkerer make us bayonets.

Stomach-Dick-Egg Holder Number One Million, Four Hundred and Nineteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Six (a close relative of Stomach-Dick-Egg Holder Number One Million, Six hundred and Fifty-seven Thousand, Fourteen, so recently deceased), really didn't know why his herd had stopped pressing at the edge of the earthen food pen ahead. Perhaps it was because of the amount of food the beings inside that pen had so conveniently left out for it, or perhaps it was that even a really stupid normal—still more so a mob of them—understands when something is just too dangerous. Whatever the reason, Stomach-Dick-Egg Holder Number One Million, Four Hundred and Nineteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Six (hereinafter “Six”), found itself, in a mass of its cousins and siblings, pawing at the . . . well, not at the ground, since the actual ground was some meters below . . . pawing at the sundered and piled remains of the hundreds of thousands of its fellows, while swinging its upraised muzzle from side to side and keening.

From a distance, from several distances actually, Six heard a similar keening as the missing and delayed herds closed on the camp. These got to a certain distance from the earthen food pen and stopped; so much Six could tell from the relatively steady volume of the keening.

Of course, relatively steady does not mean absolutely steady. As the mass surrounding the food pen grew, the volume slowly went up. Moreover, within each of the herds surrounded the pen, the members themselves raised their volume. Eventually it became . . .

“I believe that's the creepiest thing I've ever heard,” Goloswin muttered to himself, as from his high vantage point his gaze swept across the solid mass of yellow skin and flesh that formed out from the defensive berm at a distance of what the humans might have called “half a mile.” “Worse, even than the sound of human artillery, incoming.”

Of his AS, Golo asked, “Does that cry have any meaning?”

“I think it means not much more than 'hunger,' Lord,” the AS answered. “I think, too, that when it reaches a certain volume they'll charge again.”

“How many are there, do you suppose?”

The AS answered, “More than enough.”

Well . . . what can be done is being done. Inside the C-Dec the parts of the anti-matter engine are being secured. On the perimeter the cosslain are passing out ammunition packs and charges for the plasma cannon. Here we stand . . .

Golo's thought was interrupted. The keening from the local normals outside had reached a crescendo. They began moving forward, jostling and pushing because of the shrinking space with every forward step.

Tulo, voice still calm, ordered, “Perimeter and landers: Open fire.”

There were left approximately three thousand of Tulo's band on the perimeter, plus perhaps another thousand with Golo on the inner rampart. Of the remainder, something under two hundred were inside the C-Dec or the five landers incorporated in the perimeter, plus there were under a score under Brasingala's tiny tenar command. The rest were dead and, for the most part, rendered into thresh and eaten.

Most of Tulo's People had heavy three millimeter rail guns feeding from drums of about a half a foot in diameter. Each drum held approximately two thousand flechettes. At Tulo'stenaloor's command those guns spit out a combined total of six million of those flechettes in a couple of minutes. Many went low, to bury themselves in the ground. Many went high, much to the detriment of distant trees and the local cognates of (very nervous) birds. Many went to targets that were targeted by still others.

Even so, half a million of the local normals went down quickly, with animal screams of intimately perceived but dimly understood pain.

And it hardly slowed them down.

Tulo turned and began to gallop back to the inner defense line, his AS thumping against his chest. “Everybody . . . BACK!” he screamed. “Brasingala, it's up to you and yours to buy us a few minutes.”

“We're doing it, Lord,” the bodyguard answered, over the continuous crack of his own railgun.

Tulo was neither the first nor the last of his people to reach the foot of the rampart. He was pleased to see that his kessentai and the, for the most part, unusually bright cosslain were bringing order to the mass even as he himself turned and steadied his railgun at the top of the outer rampart, where he expected to see the locals emerge momentarily.

He also expected to see, and did see, that several hundred of his people in little knots had elected to stay behind and buy a little more time. That, or they were just too pig-headed and stubborn to retreat.

Well . . . we may be the bravest people this Galaxy has ever seen. That doesn't mean we're always the most obedient; we have all the vices of our virtues. Spirits bless your sacrifice, my People . . . even if it's only stubbornness that keeps you on the wall and even if you would have done more good here.

The tenar, safe above the rampaging mass, poured their fire down even as the knots of his People on the walls fired outward. Tulo could not, from his vantage point, see how much good they were doing.

Not enough, I suspect.

Watching the tenar, Tulo had a sudden vision of a serious mistake he had made. “Brasingala, pull up. You'll be in the line of fire. Up, I say!”

Tulo bent his knees to rest his great trunk on the ground.

Let's hope those stupid bastards in the rear don't shoot low.

And then Tulo caught sight of the great yellow wave of the locals, cresting the wall.

“Rear ranks . . . FIRE!”

Brasingala could only fume, helplessly. He'd heard Tulo'stenaloor's order and transmitted it, even as he guided his own tenar to rise as fast as it was able. Most of his followers did so as well, he saw, as he twisted his head around. Others, a few, did not. These he saw shot out of their saddles.