"EW is picking up gravitic disturbances at the river," said Major Mikoleyev over his headset. "Anyone see anything?"

Emmet quickly zoomed out his periscope and looked around. The valley was clear of any other movement. Even the infantry had now disappeared into the woods and rocky terrain across the river. Of course, with Pierce gone, Lear now had to worry about what was behind the huge outcropping that sheltered him. He'd have to climb on top, or crawl out in the open to get a look on the other side, however, exposing himself to fire. There was no chance he'd do that.

Then his spine tingled as Lear heard a low whine quickly growing in volume around him, freezing his bones. Dropping the periscope, Lear lay flat on his stomach with his hands over his helmet.

The voice that suddenly exploded over command channels was not recognized, but it was obviously young.

"Four gravtanks climbing our slope south of the highway!"

Oh c.r.a.p, Lear thought, and lay perfectly still as a ma.s.sive shadow rose over the outcropping and slowly pa.s.sed over him. His entire body seemed to vibrate in resonance with the overwhelming hum that enveloped him, paralyzing him in fear.

"All units engage!" Mikolayev called out. "All units engage! But do not enter the valley! They could be trying to draw us in."

"Five hundred . . . six hundred tons!" the unknown observer called out. "Plasma cannon of some sort. The column is crossing the bridge!"

The hum was dying off now, but Emmet didn't move until the screams of Raven missiles, launched by his comrades, filled the air. Rising quickly to his knees, he looked both at the rear of the ma.s.sive gravtanks disappearing over the trees, and then at the rapidly advancing armored vehicles driving up the highway.

"Captain Riggins!" Lear called out over the command channel. "You will be hit simultaneously from your front and right flank . . ."

"Incoming!"

Emmet didn't know who called that out, or why, but that never mattered to a soldier in combat. He just dropped everything and tried to become one with the dirt.

THUTHUMP!.

A shockwave and blast of heat pa.s.sed over him with a thunderous roar, followed by a rain of smoldering branches falling onto his back. A moment later, entire trees were crashing down the slopes around him, causing landslides. When he looked up, the trees at the top of the valley had been blasted away. Dense smoke filled the air, but he had an un.o.bstructed view of the four alien gravtanks just as they acquired their targets. Incredibly bright plasma lasers flared from their cannons. Lear couldn't see what damage they might have wreaked among the Templars, but a ma.s.s of return fire began to literally blast the gravtanks apart. Huge chunks of armor flew high into the sky as armor piercing rods slammed into them. Turning his attention back to the highway, Emmet saw five of the alien armored vehicles explode the moment that they topped the crest, but the remainder lashed out with bright blue particle beams and then disappeared from view as they tangled with the Templars.

From Lear's vantage point, all he could watch were the gravtanks as they disintegrated, chunk by chunk. Raven missiles suddenly began streaking up to blast them from all sides as their point defense beams fell silent. One by one, as the gravtank's powerplants were hit, the mammoths dropped from the sky as if their supporting strings were cut. Only a few moments after the last gravtank fell, the alien armored vehicles reappeared, this time in open retreat at high speeds. Only a dozen or so were left.

As the sergeant watched the surviving column recross the bridge, he suddenly remembered his duties. After finding his periscope in all the debris, he scanned what he could of the valley.

"All vehicles in retreat," the sergeant announced. "No other activity."

All during the fight, the command channels were completely silent as Major Mikolayev let the commanders fight their battles. The extended span of silence after Emmet gave his report, however, made him think that his headset was damaged.

But then Mikolayev came back online.

"All units prepare to be relieved in order. Alabaster will be taking point again. All infantry units check your bracelets and report to Decon' as needed."

With a sudden fear gripping him, Lear ripped open his sleeve and took a look at the radiation band that was wrapped around his wrist. Its friendly green had now turned ominously yellow.

c.r.a.p, Emmet thought.

The Kezdai scout was disappointed.

The electrical fence had fooled him into believing that the complex he had infiltrated was an important target. What he was finding was that it was some sort of biological research center. The room that he was hiding in contained shelves and shelves of gla.s.s and plastic tanks containing marine animals of various types. Perhaps they were experimenting with biologic weapons of some types, but he doubted it. There were no hermetically sealed environments anywhere to be seen.

He had been hiding for several minutes now, ever since three Human armored vehicles rolled through the gate. Soldiers dismounted out of the rear of the vehicles, but they did not deploy. If they had, then that would have been a sure sign that this complex was valuable, and that he should direct an artillery barrage down upon it. Although the vile Keertran troops did not appreciate the value of artillery, his Is-kaldai Riffen certainly did. His crashed dropship had a complete battery of guns that were already targeting the Human infantry that were attempting to approach through the rain forest. It had been difficult to pa.s.s through their ranks without being detected, but he had an important mission. His commander wanted to know if the cities had their own point defense systems, or whether only the military units were protected. To find that out, he and several of his comrades were to find an observation point overlooking the nearby city.

Then artillery would be called in.

A Human female with long black hair had appeared out of the large building to his right, obviously a researcher of some sort. Up until that moment, he had thought that the complex was abandoned. The female had been talking to the infantry commander for quite a long time while the scout waited impatiently, sneaking peaks out a window at periodic intervals. Just when his patience was finally running out, he heard the engines start up, and two of the three vehicles moved out. The last troop carrier, however, remained. Its twelve soldiers deployed around the perimeter fence, and he hoped that they'd miss the cut that he had made in it.

The Human female was nowhere to be seen when he looked.

Escape, without being seen, would be difficult now, but he had to try. The building that he was in had few windows, but he was able to locate nine of the twelve soldiers, and had a good idea where the remaining three were. The sea fence was not being protected. The ocean, he decided, would be his best way out.

Getting to it from the building that he was in would be impossible. The seaside doorway could be seen by several of the Human soldiers. The building to his right, however, he noticed had a concrete ca.n.a.l that ran out into the sea from its lowest level. It wasn't being guarded.

Sneaking into the building's front door, although daring, was not difficult. Decorative shrubbery was planted all around the outer wall, concealing his movement. Only the last dash into the doors was risky, and after looking around frantically, he believed that he had gotten away with it. The soldiers were looking outwards through the fence, not inwards.

His scrambling through the other building had given him the basic concepts of Human architecture, and the stairway and elevator were quickly spotted. Because he had no wish to experiment with the elevator, he opened the door to the stairwell.

It was just then that the black haired female made her appearance again, as the elevator doors suddenly opened. A shrill scream echoed inside the scout's helmet as he tried to push back out the door and bring his rifle to bear. The elevator doors were already closing, but he did have a shot at the form that had retreated against the far wall.

He didn't take it.

The scout's aversion to making a loud noise was part of the reason that he didn't fire his rifle, but another was an aversion to killing a noncombatant. Kezdai blood feuds often ended in the complete annihilation of one clan or another, males and females alike, but noncombatants were always spared. Of course, all members of the warring clans themselves were considered combatants.

This scout had made a mistake, however, and he realized it. Allowing this female to live would risk his own life and mission. As a red arrow above the elevator pointed downwards, so did he run. The stairway had small steps, and he stumbled a few times, but he managed to reach the ground floor in decent time.

As he pushed through the stairway door, he saw that the elevator doors to his right were already closing. To his left was a large, tiled room with a pool, open to the outside at the far end. The woman could have been tricky and gone back upstairs, but he had to be sure.

Before running back upstairs, he ran into the poolroom to look for her. The visuals inside his helmet gave him a three-hundred-degree distorted view around him, but even with that he only caught a glimpse of the female as she came up behind him and gave him a shove into the water. He fired his needle rifle wildly as he plunged into the deep, salt.w.a.ter pool.

What happened next he never had time to organize into a coherent understanding.

One moment he was sinking rapidly into the water, and the next a ma.s.sive black and white form was underneath him and pushing him back to the surface. Then, just as he broke the surface of the water, he was hurled, as if from a catapult, directly into the tiled wall of room.

He fell to the floor in a daze.

But Kezdai were immensely hardy creatures whose bones had evolved to absorb great impacts from falling from the high cliffs of their ancient homeworld. Great pains wracked his body, but the scout still managed to sit up, lift his rifle, and unleash a withering fire across the room. His own blood covered his helmet's visuals, making him uncertain of what shapes were around him. All he saw were shadows until the ma.s.sive black and white form seemed to explode out of the pool before him, and crash into him.

His last conscious vision was of nothing but teeth . . .

The bridge was more than two kilometers away, but still no one dared peek over the crest to look into the valley. Even at this range, the alien needle rifles were incredibly accurate. Instead, the periscope on top of Kaethan's Templar was raised, and Kaethan, his father, and Walter all were gathered around a video screen that was mounted at the rear of the three-hundred-fifty-ton tank. With the last light of the day glowing orange in the sky to the west, they surveyed the heavily shadowed terrain.

Bright crimson and blue-white streamers were flapping in the wind over their enemy's fortified positions. The temptation to burn them down with their ion bolts had been on everyone's mind, but was decided to be an ign.o.ble act. They'd make fine trophies, Kaethan had told his men, to bring back to Fort Hilliard after all this was over.

The smell of ozone continued to permeate the air around them, proving the continued readiness of their opponent's point defense dischargers. It even overwhelmed the smoke that rose from the still smoldering devastation of forest that surrounded them. Several battered, alien armored vehicles also continued to pump out a plume of white smoke into the air, and probably would for several days. Three of Tigris' Templars had been burning when Kaethan arrived, but these fires had been put out quickly, and engineers were now working on the Templars. All the other Templars of the Tigris Guard were either driven, or towed, to a depot constructed four kilometers to the rear.

"I don't think they have a single direct-fire weapon targeting this ridgeline," Kaethan commented while their periscope panned over the valley.

"I can't see any sign of one either," his father agreed. "You could probably take the slope and hold it, but they aren't giving you anything to shoot at. You'd just be setting yourself up for more of those missiles that plastered Tigris."

"Didn't hurt the Templars," Kaethan pointed out.

"True, but don't expect me to ride in Walter's Sentinel."

Walter didn't like to admit it, but the presence of his defense laser would not have helped the Tigris Guard against the barrage that hit them. There were only a few missiles of modest size, but they approached at tree-top level from the sides. What they needed was a point-defense tower like the ones that protected their artillery. Of course, towers were easy targets when they were this close to the enemy.

"Too bad you can't fire any high-explosives out of those railguns," Walter said. "We could blast them out of those positions."

The sound of a command vehicle rolling up distracted the crew from their viewing. When it stopped, Colonel Neils jumped out of the pa.s.senger seat. He returned everyone's salute briskly, as he obviously had something important to say.

"At ease, Captain," Neils said, specifically singling out Kaethan to talk to. "I've got bad news. That small pocket of hostiles north of Telville decided to go out with a bang. As Chandoine was moving in on them, they unleashed a long-range bombardment onto the city itself, forty kilometers away."

"Oh, G.o.d," Walter uttered.

"They threw in every ordnance they had, short of nukes. The entire northern suburbs and part of downtown were devastated. We're estimating casualties in excess of thirty-five thousand."

"Sir, my sister . . ."

"I know, Captain. Once I hear something, I'll let you know. But General Calders is furious. He wants this pocket cleared up so we can pull back and solidify the border around Telville. He's ordered us to a.s.sault the bridge at the first light of day."

"Yes, Colonel," Kaethan replied.

"Our strategy session will be at 2600 hours back at our HQ. We may be able to cross the river with some infantry onto their flanks, but our armor has to run up the middle. There are no other roads."

"We'll be ready."

"I have to head over to Tigris HQ now. Riggins' armor was chewed up pretty bad by that column that suddenly made an appearance. I'll try to get their survivors attached directly to you. That will be all, Captain."

"Yes, sir."

They saluted again, and Colonel Neils hopped into this vehicle.

As he sped off, Kaethan and his father exchanged worried glances, but then turned back to their surveillance. For a long time they didn't say anything as they panned their view over the opposing slopes. But soon their concentration returned to what was at hand.

"Look how they've torn up the highway over there," Walter said as they looked over the bridge. "They're not even trying to hide that they've mined it."

"They don't have to," Toman replied. "They've concentrated all of their air defenses around it. Your artillery will never punch through to knock any of it out."

"Have you spotted any of their armor?" Kaethan asked.

"Not a one," Toman answered. "You can be sure, though, that every last one of them will pop up at the worst possible time. I don't think we've seen even a fraction of their total forces, yet. And they've now learned that your railguns are vulnerable."

The brief sortie that hit the Tigris Heavy Armor didn't have the firepower to punch through the Templars' substantial armor. But it did, however, manage to disable many of their railguns by point-blank fire. Some of the alien vehicles just sideswiped the ma.s.sive railguns as they drove by. Only the plasma lasers on the large gravtanks were powerful enough to slice the Templars open, accounting for their only three kills.

"And your railguns don't have the elevation to cover the slope from down there," Toman continued his observations. "Any Templars sent into the valley will be just targets."

"Have you found anything encouraging at all?" Kaethan asked sardonically.

His father grimaced and thought hard for a few moments. Kaethan let out a nervous chuckle at his father's reaction, but a deep pain was forming in the pit of his stomach.

"This is a death trap, son," the Concordiat colonel finally said. "These aliens have stripped and scuttled their transport, their only way off this planet, for a better defensive position. They will fight to their death while throwing everything they have at you."

The three of them were quiet for a while. Walter panned their periscope along the opposite slopes, finding faint heat sources everywhere as he switched to thermal sights, but with the sun setting, this was a bad time to look. Better images could be formed once the ground had released the solar heat that it had absorbed during the day.

"They also have the high energy plasma weapons that they used to knock down your satellites," Toman reminded them. "There was no sign of them at their transport, from what I was told. Who knows what else they might have stripped off that ship before they retreated. If you try to cross this bridge, you'll be ma.s.sacred."

Walter had stopped pretending to care about what was being shown on the monitor. His nervous gaze was dancing back and forth between Kaethan and his father, waiting for one of them to figure out a solution to prevent the certain death awaiting him. Of course, there was a solution, Kaethan knew. And Kaethan knew that his father was debating it with himself even now.

"If you are waiting for me to ask, Father," Kaethan said calmly, "then you will remain waiting."

His father looked up from the screen and looked closely at his son. He grimaced as he took out his fieldcomm, but then he stopped.

"I wasn't waiting for that, son." Toman said before he activated it.

What, exactly, his father was waiting for, Kaethan couldn't fathom. But he wasn't going to ask that, either. He was just thankful.

"Death By Chains," Colonel Ishida said into his fieldcomm.

"So judged," replied Unit DBC from twelve hundred kilometers to the north.

Ad-akradai Khoriss was pleased with his position. Many defilade positions were found on his side of the valley, overlooking the bridge. His concentrated dischargers, combined with the point defense emplacements from their transport, had shrugged off the Humans' heaviest bombardment. His nuclear cannons were in position, to be moved up for firing at just the right time. And his ambush of the Human armored units had proven that Kezdai weapons could indeed be utilized effectively against the large tanks with the railguns, even though he had to waste almost all of his gravtanks to prove it.

Added to that, two smaller transports had arrived during the night from the southeast, both limping in with substantial damage. Their additional armor would greatly reinforce his counterattack, though he ordered Riffen's artillery converted to direct fire and deployed in positions overlooking the bridge.

But he would wait before deploying his armored vehicles. His infantry and nuclear cannons would be enough to finish off the Human armor that advanced on him. Only then would his armored vehicles sweep back over the bridge to drive into their rear and eliminate their precious artillery.

He was worried, however, that more reinforcements were arriving for the Humans. One of his few remaining surveillance probes had been launched at the first hint of daylight in the east. An image taken just before it died showed that the Human forces had moved all of their equipment off the eastbound roadway, as if making room for another unit to pa.s.s through. He continued to weigh the possibility of launching his last probe to hopefully catch a glimpse of what was arriving.

Khoriss now sat in his command vehicle, paging through the images that his forward camera positions were sending back to him. There was still no evidence of Human infiltration along the river, but he carefully studied where they might hide when the time came.

His quiet observations were rudely interrupted by his hatch opening with a loud clank. The panicked face of Inkezdai Kepliss looked in.

"Ad-akradai, ma.s.sed artillery rises from the west-"

"Good! It begins!"

"But Ad-akradai," Kepliss pleaded, "the artillery rises from far behind the Human lines, and the launcher approaches swiftly as it fires! It travels along the roadway at a high rate of speed, sending its sh.e.l.ls high into the stratosphere!"

Something new, Khoriss thought. The approaching weapons platform had to be exceedingly large to be capable of a sustained barrage as this, and still have the stability to wield it accurately while moving rapidly. The Humans had not previously shown any such weapon.

Or perhaps they had, Khoriss remembered. The ground batteries that destroyed their frigates had wielded enormous firepower while showing tremendous speed. Perhaps those same batteries had artillery cl.u.s.ters in addition to their energy weapons. Not only could such a weapon fend off an orbital insertion, but it could support a local ground war at the same time. Such a weapons platform must be ma.s.sive, he thought. Once he had disposed of the Human armored forces, he'd have to give top priority to his own armor to capture this vehicle when they made their drive.

"Ad-akradai, should we launch our last probe to view its approach?"

"No, Inkezdai. It matters not what it looks like. We will deal with it in time. Our first priority is the Human armored forces which should be attacking soon."

"Yes, Ad-akradai. The alarm has already been given."