The pyramid steps, he noticed with detached interest, were each a half meter high…higher than most of the diminutive Ahannu could manage comfortably. Those precipitous steps were wearing even on the trolls and humans in the attack…though they were quickly outdistancing the Ahannu god-warriors in their mad race up the sides of the pyramid. More and more of the front-rank attackers glimpsed through the magnified HDO scope projection were screaming, grimacing, tattooed human faces, mingled with Ahannu troll faces, blunt, thick, and heavy, or the visages of a few of the hardier or more determined of the Frog god-warriors. For a time, Garroway tried to spot the ones with god-weapons—gauss rifles or other modern weaponry, some of it obviously of recent human manufacture—and kill the ones carrying them. Before long, though, all he could do was point and fire, point and fire…until the red light on his helmet display winked red, warning of power drain and overheating. He switched to smart RPGs to let the weapon cool.
With a shrieking roar of high-pitched thunder, one of the Dragonflies howled low overhead, arrowing toward the Legation compound. Garroway glanced up and noted that it was the TAV-S bearing Ahannu and Sag-ura prisoners from the initial fight atop the Pyramid of the Eye. The other Dragonfly orbited slowly over the alien city north of the pyramid, turning its Gatling laser on the hordes at the pyramid’s base, burning down the attackers in broad, scything sweeps of destruction.
As he watched, oily black smoke began spilling from the forward fuselage of the second Dragonfly. Ahannu gauss gunners must have been concentrating their fire on it from across half of the city. The TAV-S started to turn back toward the compound, then appeared to stagger in mid-flight, its bank turning into an ungainly roll. It crashed half a kilometer north of the pyramid, throwing up a tremendous pillar of smoke and cascading debris.
There was no time to think about that, however, beyond a numb acceptance of the fact. Ahannu and Sag-ura were more than halfway up the north side of the pyramid now. As quickly as the Marine defenders could burn them down, more appeared to take their place. Where were they all coming from?
Radio chatter crackled over his helmet earphones. “Hey, it’s another great day on the firing range! Let’s have some more targets!”
“Can that, Lassiter.”
“Yeah, these targets are shooting back!”
“This is Nakamura, on the west side! We need more people over here, ASAP!”
“Nakamura, Warhurst. Roger that. Hold your line.”
“We’re not stopping them! We’re not stopping them!”
“Lower your fire, people. Aim for the front ranks!”
A cascade of rockets sprayed into the sky on twisting white contrails, arcing over, descending. Several exploded inside the compound to the west. Others detonated on the sides of the pyramid, hurling chunks of broken stone into the crowds below. One exploded squarely atop the pyramid, and Garroway heard a Marine scream with pain.
“Hell, I think we went and made the bastards mad at us,” Sergeant Dunne said at Garroway’s left.
“What makes you think that, Sarge?” Garroway asked. His helmet warning display shifted from red to amber, and he thought-clicked back to his laser to save his fast-dwindling supply of RPGs.
“I dunno. Something about the hate mail they’re sending us.”
The screaming over the radio net abruptly stopped. Either someone had killed the wounded man’s open mike or the wound had been fatal.
“Whose bright idea was this, anyway?” Lance Corporal Jennings asked. He was kneeling at Garroway’s right, calmly pumping laser pulses into the oncoming warriors.
“Beats me,” Garroway replied. “If you find him, let me know so I can thank him personally!”
The idea had been to land on the roof of the Pyramid of the Eye and fight down, a vertical envelopment, in classic Marine tactical doctrine, while Marines from the Legation compound emerged from the east gate and fought their way up, trapping the Ahannu defenders between the two groups. Somehow, though, things were going badly awry. There were way too many of the Ahannu god-warriors, hordes threatening to overwhelm the human defenders in a black, rolling tide.
A volley of gauss-gun fire from the north ripped through the line of Marines. Three fell. Lance Corporal Jennings tottered a moment, fist-sized holes in his faceplate and the back curve of his helmet spilling smoke and a splatter of blood. He started to fall over the edge, but Garroway snagged him by his power pack harness and yanked him back. Fighting down the urge to retch, he pulled the RPG magazine pouch from the right side of Jennings’s armor. He also checked the backpack power indicator on Jennings’s 2120. Hell, Jennings wasn’t much better off than Garroway in the power department.