Atop the ridge were stalkers moving into position, at least two dozen by my count, readying weapons. They were barely visible behind the rain that was starting to dizzle down. Once we started shifting and they new the game was up, they started firing down onto us, purple flashes blasting against the earth and sparking off armour all around, each impact accompanied by a thunderclap.
A Dora ahead of me was struck in the head and pitched backward instantly, her eyes shattered and a massive hole glowing orange beaten into the plate. Her hands went to her face stiffly, pawing blindly at the burning metal before she managed to detach her face and throw it aside, and friendly hands guided her back as she tumbled into the dig site with a splash.
"Get back to the edge of the pit! Sergeant, get those machines along the rim!" I called, pointing toward the clifftop. "I want full power shots! Sumner, get down there and make sure everyone is pressed against the wall. Kelly, blast it, get your head down!"
As if to illustrate the danger, purple light burst against my screen a moment later, the diffusing heat becoming a patch of steam as the mud around me evaporated. Just beside me, Corporal Rifleman, feeding a new needle into the rifle, suddenly jerked back with a curse and a flash of heat. I glanced over to see him staring at his smoldering shooting hand, only his pinky finger still intact.
"... motherfuckers." he said, totally monotone, pressing his ruined hand to the wet mud to squelch the heat. Without further comment, he passed the rifle back to me sheepishly, and I pulled out my pistol and exchanged it with him.
"Congratulations, you're a baggage train guard." I said, taking the unfamiliar weapon in my hands as he slid down the side of the dig site. "Section, fire!"
Our organized return volley scoured the top of the ridge in high-powered blasts that flashed along the ridge in one great eruption of light and steam. Black smoke began pouring down from burning trees cooked by the heat, and a few bodies tumbled down the edge of the cliff, but only moments later their unorganized fire returned. The soldiers ducked back behind the edge of the pit, though near hits still sent rapidly heated dirt and rocks pinging off us as the ground blew apart.
One of the tumbling foes got unsteadily to its knees not two hundred yards from us, snatching up a weapon despite the smoking stump of its knee and sending more pulses arcing toward our position. I leveled the unfamiliar rifle, tried to line the sights up over its face, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened except a click, and slung the weapon back over and ducked with the rest of the machines under the lip of the dig site as further shots scored it.
We fired two more volleys into the top of the cliff to increasingly dubious effect, doing little more than blasting apart the edge into ragged stone with the revolver cannons. Then, suddenly, the entire fragile side of the cliff collapsed from the abuse our weapons had heaped onto it in a short landslide, mud and stone tumbling down and bringing with it bodies and trees, and I called a halt to fire.
"I think we got 'em." one of the Theos remarked, and there was a few chuckled from the firing line. Glancing back into the pit, I saw there were six new casualties in the hands of our trauma mechanic, two lights out and one having a smoldering battery pulled from his torso and discarded into the muddy water. Already, this was costly.
It was then I noticed the doctor staring at a piece of equipment near the gateway, and noticed me looking. She looked troubled, and the realization that were were camped next to a door, one which seemed to have been built by our enemies, sunk in.
"Doctor, is there any chance the door might open on us?" I called down.
"I mean, there's a chance, but we couldn't figure it out when we tried." she replied, seemingly unbothered by the battle around her. She gestured to the equipment in front of her. "This is what concerns me. This is new."
"What do you mean, new?" I asked.
"I mean it wasn't there when we left the dig site. The stalkers must have brought it here and plugged it in. Looks like controls of some kind, we were actually looking for something like this." she said, regarding it curiously.
"... well, don't touch it! We'll wait until-"
"Lieutenant!"
I turned back to the fallen cliffside to see something emerging from the muck, one of the stalkers pulling itself free. Then a few more, then more emerging from the rim of the cliff and sliding down the remains. The first were starting to sprint towards us, a few armed and firing, others just charging with abandon as more gathered behind. At least thirty of them, making a beeline not just for us, but for the guns still firing behind us.
"Wow, they don't give up." I muttered, "Everyone, forward, get on some even ground!" I called, clamouring over the edge of the dig site. I didn't count on our guns being able to stop them all, and the last thing you wanted was to go into a melee from the low ground. "Activate bayonets!"
To either side of our formation, the revolver cannons started pulsing again, sending stalkers staggering and falling wherever they hit. The ensigns nervously climbed up behind the line as we fired two more volleys into the charging foes. The ones at the front, the breakaway attackers, they collapsed into the mud, some hit by a half a dozen shots and seeming to burst apart. The mass behind them kept going, even with one or two dropping out.
I'll admit I felt daunted, watching these creatures wade through high power laser blasts that would have taken down a Theo or Dora, pressing forth despite missing limbs or great rents in their bodies. Many of them had to already be dying, but they still might take some of us with them before the injuries finished them off. It was absolute madness.
I drew my sword and set it to its highest setting, wished for just a moment I had a bayonet, and then they were on us.
The Theo immediately beside me met a charging stalker with a thrust of his bayonet, the glowing blade punching directly through its torso, and the creature simply pressed forth, throwing the machine off his feet on the slick mud, a claw striking for his face. As a soldier behind us drove her bayonet through the stalker's neck and it simply grabbed the barrel and pulled her off guard, the next one came for me.
I swung down hard and it leaned away at the last minute before swinging what looked like some kind of axe at me, the smoldering blade singing as it passed through my force screens, and remembering the holographic duals I flicked my blade out along where its eyes ought to have been. The lower mandibles of the creature fell loose, and it simply shoulder-checked me, nearly knocking me over. I just managed to get my blade under its grip and I dragged it upward, diagonally through its body, and its legs went limp.
It tried to drag me down with it, but I managed to shove it back. I reached for my pistol to finish it off, found nothing, and instead kicked it as hard as I could across its stupid crab face, causing it to roll over in the mud, then I grabbed the back of its crested head and shoved my sword roughly where I remember its brains ought to be.
As it collapsed, I stepped back to get my grip, taking stock of the fight. In places the line was holding, in others it had become a sort of messy melee, machines and stalkers sprawled out, wrestling over weapons, striking with anything they had in the mud. Ensign Sumner was just standing with her sword out, frozen stock-still, while Kelly darted forward and took the legs off a stalker off at the knees as it tried to drag down old Sergeant Theo, enabling the ancient machine to simply throw the alien off and away.
A moment later, another jumped at me from a run, tackling me around the waist. I slid across the slick ground and plummeted down the edge of the pit into water below, sword falling somewhere. Unable to see much of anything through the brackish water, I simply threw my hands up, feeling myself catch its limbs as pushing against them. There was a sound in the water as the tip of something, a hissing blade, sank closer to my face.
Then the resistance slackened, and I managed to throw the creature aside and pick myself up. The reason became clear from the hole in the side of its neck, its head flopping nearly off its body, and I turned, expecting to see Corporal Rifleman with my pistol.
Instead, it was Miriam, holding a small, smoking electric derringer, her eyes wide with fright.
"Thank you ever so much, Miriam." I said, as casually as I could. "I recommend you step back behind the wagon, though." I spent a moment pawing about for my sword. I found it and relit it, and began climbing back up the edge of the pit. It was frightening, but damn if this fight wasn't invigorating as well.
"Just… lending a hand, miss." she said numbly.
As I crested the top of the pit, it seemed like the fight was over. Melee tended to be very all or nothing when both sides were this hard to kill, and in the end we had the numbers. It was gruesome work, because they just would not stop trying to kill us so long as they had any strength to, but one by one they were put down.
"Right… how bad was it, Sergeant?" I asked. Theo turned, his left arm wretched partially loose at the elbow, eyes concerned. He scanned the unit quickly and shook his head.
"We're down to thirty-two machine ready of forty, ma'am." he said, shouldering his musket. "And I'd say about half of us are in some way damaged."
"The ensigns okay?" I asked, glancing over. Sumner was still standing stunned, eyes fixed on the bodies, and Kelly was busy throwing up his breakfast into the mud.
"Seem to be." he said simply. "What the hell were they trying to pull there?"
"I think they just wanted to disrupt our artillery." I said, looking out toward the battle. The left flank of the enemy seems to have crumbled entirely, but it looked as though our troops were hanging back a bit now, likely trying to get reorganized before making a second push. "I don't think they were expecting the cliff to come down, though the charge afterward… that was a suicide push. It didn't look well thought out at all."
"They just ran in to die." he agreed. You didn't charge when you were outnumbered, it just wasn't done. I couldn't fathom what brought that on, especially in the disorganized and chaotic way they'd done it. It wasn't an organized assault, it was just a mindless wave, and they seemed much too smart for that.
"And I don't get it anyway. The artillery is barely influencing the fight any longer, it's too close in over there." I said, glancing down the field. "The time to do this was an hour ago. Why the hell would they push now if they didn't…"
If they didn't have more troops coming.
I reached for my microphone bead and switched it on.
"Captain Murray, this is Lieutenant Fusilier, we were just engaged by a section-sized element of enemy skirmishers. They threw themselves at us trying to take us down, I think they might have reinforcement coming from behind the line." I said.
"Say again, Dora, the weather is playing havoc." Murray replied.
"... I think we're about to be attacked from the rear. Either coming up the riverbed or down the cliffside." I repeated, staring up along the edge of the riverbed. Down the riverbed made the most sense: we'd be able to see them from a long way off and potentially fire as they moved up, so they'd want us out of the way. Wasn't the only possibility though: a fifteen meter cliff was a lot, but we'd just seen it wasn't impassable when they wanted it to be.
"I'll pass this up. Be ready to move if you're right." Murray said. I acknowledged and yelled down into the pit to get everything ready to move: if they were trying to come up the riverbed, we would need to move fast to get inside the square we'd have to form.
I took out my glass and checked down the riverbed, staring for a good minute. Nothing. I turned and swept the ruined cliffside, seeing nothing there either. And then I looked ahead, between us and our line, and I saw the first sights of movement. Two heads, one of them crested and the other smaller, disappearing just a moment later. From the looks of things, they were high off the ground, peering down over the cliffside. Like one might be if they were mounted on a horse.
Kelly had been right. It was a pincer manoeuvre.
