Garroway continued to fire his own weapon, alternating now between laser pulses and M-12 RPG rounds. He tried to slow the pace of his fire; the temptation was to blaze away as quickly as possible, but that, he reasoned, was a great way to end up dry and empty by the time those hordes reached the top of the structure.
And they would reach it. He had no doubts whatsoever about that. If anything, there were more Ahannu god-warriors, trolls, and Sag-ura slaves below than there’d been at the beginning of this engagement. Garroway accepted that with a Marine’s stoic inner shrug. Either the Ahannu would break themselves on this rock, or the Marines themselves would be broken.
If there were other alternatives, he couldn’t see them at the moment.
MIEU Command Center
Legation Compound
New Sumer, Ishtar
1635 hours ALT
Ramsey listened to the incoming radio messages from the top of the pyramid. The battle was not going well…not going well at all. Task Force Warhurst was on top of the building, but a major enemy counterattack was developing. The Marine company deployed through the east gate to relieve the Suribachi assault force had met heavy enemy forces and been stopped cold.
This he thought, was the make-or-break moment.
King looked at him, arms folded, his face bleak. “Well, Colonel? What’s your call?”
“Only two ways to play it, General. We reinforce Suribachi or we pull them out. Recommendations?”
King shook his head. “This one is yours, Colonel. Purely tactical. If you’re asking for advice, I’d say we’ve obviously kicked them where it hurts, so keep on kicking.”
Ramsey nodded. “That was my feeling, sir. We—”
“Colonel!” Major Anderson called from one of the communications consoles nearby. “Heavy enemy forces approaching the north wall. It looks like they’re making an attempt to overrun the compound!”
“Acknowledged.” He cocked his head, listening to the radio chatter for a moment.
“Godawmighty, lookit ’em come!”
“Pour it on ’em, people! Burn ’em down!”
“I’ve got Frogs coming in on the northwest corner! There’s too many! We need help!”
“Let ’em come! Let the bastards come!”
“Pick your targets, Marines. Make every shot count!”
“Fox Seven! Fox Seven! We’re being flanked!”
“Tomlin! Get the pig up there on the northeast corner! Move it! Move it!”
“Dragon Nest, Dragon Nest, this is Echo Two! We have Frogs, lots of Frogs, rushing the north gate! We’ve got humans with climbing poles down there! They’re rushing us! They’re…”
The situation was growing increasingly desperate. If he didn’t reinforce Task Force Warhurst atop the Pyramid of the Eye, he could lose all forty-eight men up there. But if he took men out of the compound to reinforce Warhurst, he would weaken the defenses here and open the MIEU to the possibility of being completely overrun.
He realized that King, Anderson, and most of the others in the cramped combat center were watching him.
“Major Anderson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pass the word to Captain Sanders,” Ramsey said, naming the Bravo Company commander. “He’s to reinforce the attack at the east gate.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
He locked gazes with King. “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” he said. “We win this thing here and now.”
“I concur,” King said. “And God help us all.”
Lance Corporal Garroway
Pyramid of the Eye
New Sumer, Ishtar
1645 hours ALT
Odd. Garroway felt as though he were two people…one very present, completely engulfed in the sound and fury of the battle, the other detached…not numb, exactly, but not entirely present, not connected to what was happening. His body went through the movements of aim-and-fire automatically, with mechanical precision and almost completely unconscious control. He responded to orders, hearing the radioed shouts of comrades and officers, and yet he heard them all as if from a tremendous distance. At first he wondered if he were still feeling the effects of the NNTs, but those should have been broken down and reabsorbed by his body long ago. It was…interesting to be engaged in the firefight, yet without the nearly paralyzing fear that had gripped him the day before.
The panorama view from the top of the pyramid, the detached portion of his mind thought, was an eldritch scene from some old-fashioned Christian hell, brooding, a red-lit nightmare sprawling beneath ominous black clouds, rising pillars of smoke, and the swooping drift and stoop of Marine Dragonflies.
The loss of one TAV-S, Garroway was delighted to see, had not deterred the others. Four of the aircraft were in the air, laying down heavy close-support fire despite gauss-gun volleys and rocket fire from the city streets below. Their efforts seemed to be stemming the flood of enemy reinforcements from wherever they were coming from and zeroing in with laser-targeted accuracy on the launch sites of those primitive rockets.