Straits of Hell by Taylor Anderson

Author:Taylor Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

////// Fort Defiance

Blas tagged along with Colonel Blair to meet with General Shinya after dark. She was exhausted but unhurt and actually somewhat amazed by that. The Doms hit on or near her section of the line five times that day, actually breaking through the entanglements and meeting her Marines’ shields and bayonets at the top of the parapet the final time, near dark. (Blas remained a firm believer in the shield wall at close quarters. Shields had been discarded and returned to several times throughout this war, but against spears, swords, and even muskets they’d proved helpful time and again—and particularly in defensive situations. The time for carrying them on the march was probably past, but she was glad they still had them in Fort Defiance.) They’d been forced to practically exterminate the attackers, and the extreme sloping ground before her works, and for half a thousand tails beyond the entanglements, were choked with enemy dead. The last rays of the setting sun had lain on a dreadful sight, bloodred all its own on the red-splattered yellow and white of countless corpses. And beyond it all, in the final glimmer of the day, she could see the even greater mass of the Dominion host assembling in the distance.

The 2nd of the 2nd had been very lucky, its casualties amazingly light, but she knew that would never last. Tomorrow—maybe tonight?—the Doms would finish emplacing their artillery, the chief target for the Nancys that day, she’d learned, and more people inside the fort would start to die. There’d be a response, of course, and no Dom artilleryman’s life would be worth much once their positions were revealed, but it would increasingly be a slugging match of guns. They hadn’t seen many Grikbirds, comparatively, but they’d been there, employing new ambush tactics that cost them several planes. Unable to replace them or even properly service those seriously damaged with Maaka-Kakja away, they’d have to grow more judicious in their use; primarily scouting the enemy and attacking irresistible targets. Blas suspected things would get even bumpier tomorrow.

And, to her surprise, as bloody as the fighting had been in front of her, it had been worse around the northern lunette. The Doms had even briefly managed to occupy the position before the reserves erupted from the inner wall and pushed them out. But they’d spiked a couple of the big guns that had been used there, spraying massive loads of canister in a last-ditch effort to keep them out. They hadn’t held the position long and their efforts to damage the big naval guns had been rushed and shoddy, but that was what had Blas’s attention now, the lamp-lit effort to clear the vents and check for other damage.

“Tough day here,” she observed quietly to an exhausted, soot-smudged Impie artillery lieutenant who sat on a crate, staring past the breastworks at the rapidly growing number of enemy campfires in the distance. He just gaped at her in confusion, and she figured her comment had been such a gross understatement, in his mind, that it didn’t even register as language.

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