The upgraded version of the FAE were Dispersed Nano-munitions, in the form of DNM-85 thermal microbomblets. Each bomblet, accreted from supplies of thermite, aluminum, magnesium, and trace elements, was smaller than a grain of sand, and individually, each carried less explosive force than an igniting match.
Disperse millions of DNM bomblets from delivery canisters set to explode two meters above the ground, and the air itself burns, briefly, at a temperature of well over a thousand degrees.
A pair of Marine Dragonflies howled low across the top of the pyramid, racing west to east scant meters above the corpse-littered pavement, scattering DNM-85s into the Ahannu swirling hordes. For an instant the top of the pyramid blazed in unholy flame. Dozens of Ahannu caught fire or exploded in that deadly incendiary storm.
“Stay down, Marines!” Warhurst yelled over the tactical channel. “Friendly fire incoming!”
A second pair of Dragonflies shrieked in from north to south, scattering more bomblets in a deadly, burning footprint, setting fire to stacked heaps of bodies, causing broken pavement stone to crack and explode. Garroway pressed himself to the pavement as hot gravel rattled off his armor, as his suit’s internal temperature briefly soared in the inferno. Designed to withstand high temperatures, even Mark VII armor could not shed that kind of heat for more than seconds without melting.
Most of the firestorm burned itself out a meter or more above the pavement, though, and as the fireball rose, temperatures on the surface of the pyramid fell. Garroway heard the laboring of his suit’s refrigeration and drew a hot breath of relief as his HDO’s temp gauge dropped from the unbearable to the merely uncomfortable.
Looking up, he saw Garvey lying on his back a meter away; he crawled that meter and threw himself over the unmoving Marine as the first pair of Dragonflies swung around for another pass.
“Corpsman!” he yelled. “Corpsman!” But there were no medical corpsmen in Task Force Warhurst, and Gerrold Garvey was already dead.
Garroway lay there, stretched across his friend’s body, waiting for the world to end….
25
27 JUNE 2148
Lance Corporal Garroway
Pyramid of the Eye
New Sumer, Ishtar
1705 hours ALT
But it didn’t end.
The thunder, scorching heat, and whirlwind of death, however, faded. Garroway looked up, astonished, in a numb and distant way, at being still alive. Somehow, the airstrike had burned over the upper reaches of the pyramid, and yet he and a scattered handful of other Marines were still moving, standing slowly and looking about, all with the same dazed and lost demeanor.
The Ahannu were dead…their bodies stacked and scattered and strewn in grotesque and interlocked tangles across the upper surface of the pyramid, most of them charred into unrecognizable abstracts of ash and cinder, many still burning.
No…not all were dead. As Garroway turned, he saw several Ahannu at the bottom of the crater, wiggling into the darkness of a small, open tunnel. They must have been coming up inside the Marine perimeter at the same time they were breaking the line. He looked around for a rifle but saw only the twisted fragments of his own lying on a black-scorched chunk of paving stone. An Ahannu lance, three meters long and tipped by a curving blade, lay nearby. He picked that up in lieu of any more modern weapon.
But it didn’t look as though he would need it. The Ahannu in the crater had vanished down their hole, and the only ones atop the pyramid now were dead. He walked unsteadily across to the western edge of the pyramid roof and looked down. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Ahannu and Sag-ura bodies were strewn up and down the broad steps, but that fiery rain of airborne death had left none alive. In the streets below, Ahannu were fleeing as the Marine relief force out of the compound rushed the base of the Pyramid of the Eye.
The enemy attack had been broken, decisively broken.
Another Dragonfly was angling in out of the west, but this time coming in nose high on a landing approach instead of in attack attitude, with twenty-four more armored Marines slung from the harness on its spinal strut. Reinforcements…a little late, perhaps, but unexpected and very welcome. He looked about, wondering. Forty-eight Marines had landed atop the pyramid a little over an hour ago. He saw only eight others standing now in the swirling gray smoke, all looking as isolated and as lost as he felt.
He saw an LR-2120 on the pavement and walked over to pick it up. His left arm, he realized, wasn’t working…a dead weight. Exploring the surface of the armor with his right hand, he found a hole punched through the thickly layered body glove fabric at the shoulder, but he couldn’t feel a thing.
Training told him he should seek medical assistance, perhaps lie down to avoid the effects of shock…but in his current state of mind, that level of coherent thought simply wasn’t possible. Instead he stood at the edge of the pyramid roof, leaning on his captured spear and watching as the incoming Dragonfly drifted lower on whining belly thrusters. The double line of Marines harnessed to its spinal boom dropped free in a ragged spill. The armored forms hit the ground, rose to their feet, and began spreading out across the pyramid.