Iron Gray Sea by Taylor Anderson

Author:Taylor Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Colonel Flynn stared at the withdrawing Grik a moment longer. They’d mauled them badly and they didn’t seem as numberless as they had, but he knew his guys were done. They’d never hold off another assault half as big as this one. They just didn’t have the numbers, ammunition, or strength left to do it. They should have had us, he thought. Hell, even the common Grik warriors probably knew it. I wonder why they pulled back. Suddenly, over the throbbing of his wounds, he felt a chill, and there wasn’t enough of a breeze to blame it on his sweat-soaked shirt. “How in the hell did they pull them back?” he muttered. He’d been amazed to see the growing discipline the Grik displayed ever since Ceylon, but pulling the Grik off the shattered remnant of his division must have been like pulling a pack of dogs off a tree full of raccoons. Wearily, he shook his head and turned back to the trench to check on Bekiaa—and what was left of his troops. He was perplexed and uneasy, but he wouldn’t complain.

“Col-nol!” cried a filthy, blood-spattered Marine corporal.

“Yeah?”

“My cap-i-taan send me. Make sure you see!”

“See what?”

The corporal blinked agitation. “Pease come, sur! You see better on right.”

Almost reluctantly, Flynn followed the corporal around and over the tangled heaps of dead. The hill was a little higher on the west side, the slope a little steeper, and that was probably another reason the Grik had concentrated where they had. That didn’t mean the Rangers and the company of Marines emplaced there had gotten off without a scratch, but the enemy dead did extend considerably farther away from the breastworks, slain by the more accurate.50-80s. As Flynn drew near, he saw that his troops were moving forward to reoccupy their forward defenses. Then he saw something else.

“Oh, good God,” he muttered. A few miles to the west-southwest, an army marched in long, dense, serpentine columns with the precision of a machine. The corporal’s captain joined them and handed Flynn his telescope without a word. Flynn raised it with shaky hands and managed to adjust the focus. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whispered without even realizing he’d spoken. Leedom had told him, but he just hadn’t grasped it, hadn’t understood. Marching under the midday sun with a grandeur and geometric inflexibility Napoleon would have envied, an honest-to-God army of Grik churned rapidly, relentlessly, through the tall, green grass, as yet unspoiled by the battle that had raged around the hill.

“Are . . . are they coming for us?” The captain asked hesitantly but almost formally.

Flynn slammed the telescope shut.

“No,” he said. “They’re angling for the Rocky Gap. And look”—he pointed—“the Grik reserves that didn’t come at us are already moving that way.” He shook his head and snorted an ugly laugh. “Now I know why we’re still alive. That General Halik’s got bigger fish to fry, that’s all. There’s not enough of us left up here to worry about, and he knows it.

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