Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(72)
Koratin’s eyes widened. “Because they’re the only ones who’ll staand that long. And perhaps because they’re the only ones there! They do not sacrifice their lives for our bullets, but for time!”
Blas’s mind whirled. “This isn’t a major attaack! It’s a rearguard made to look like one. They can’t charge because they’ll spend themselves up, an’ we’ll see there’s nothin’ behind ’em!” She barked a laugh, barely audible over another blast of canister, but there was no humor in it. “They’ve done the same thing to us we’ve done to them—slowing us with a small force—the Maker knows how long. Now they try to stop us in our traacks just one more day. . . .”
Sister Audry’s benign expression finally faded. “What must we do?”
Blas stood, oblivious to enemy fire, blinking determination. “We kill ’em until our ammunition’s almost gone, then attaack. It’ll be bloody,” she cautioned. “Blood Drinkers fight up close with the same resolve that keeps ’em staandin’ there, takin’ all we’ve thrown at ’em for two daamn hours. But we’re in a hurry now, an’ have to know how long we been sloggin’ along behind a reflection of ourselves.” She looked at Pacal, then Ixtli. “An’ that means prisoners. When we have ’em, we’ll leave it to you to find out what we need to know.”
“Major Blas . . .” Sister Audry began, her voice stern.
Blas blinked at her emphatically. “We leave it to them, Col-nol! I know your ways work on people”—she glanced at Pacal—“but these’re Blood Drinkers. You might convert a few over months, but we got no time—an’ lives’re at stake! Maybe the whole daamn war!”
? ? ?
When Blas predicted it would be bloody, she hadn’t really known how grimly inadequate her description was for the true horror to come. She’d fought Blood Drinkers before, but always with an advantage, from defensive positions. Never on the open ground, bayonet to bayonet. And despite Sister Audry’s objections, she didn’t stay behind when her Marines, the Ocelomeh, and the Vengadores followed their last loads of canister over the breastworks. She couldn’t abandon them for that, and if Koratin was right and the bulk of the Dom army was long gone, this last fight and what they discovered would be the task force’s final purpose. Charging and yelling with bayonets fixed, her Lemurian Marines yipping and howling in that terrifying way that unnerved even the Grik, they slammed into the brutalized Dominion line. The sheer magnitude of the slaughter they’d already wreaked hindered them then, as they had to climb or wade through bodies before they could even come to grips with Dom soldiers more lethal than any Grik. And they were at least a match, in terms of training, for Marines and veteran Vengadores. For the rest—the new members of Garcia’s force and the Ocelomeh in particular, despite their courage and rage after generations of abuse—it was a slaughter.
The Jaguar Warriors might be the finest rough-terrain, woodland guerrillas in the world—Blas knew nothing of the Khonashi—but they were hopelessly outclassed in this kind of fight. It was if they were fighting her own Marines, and the Dom’s bayonet work was professional, and just different enough that even her Marines had trouble adjusting. Many died in that first, frantic embrace, amid flashing bayonets; jetting muzzle flashes; the clash of steel; defiant roars; and shrill, unearthly shrieks. And despite the slaughter the Doms had endured, there were still plenty of them. Blas lost her rifle, knocked away by a finger-numbing blow, and immediately drew her pistol and cutlass. She’d become an artist with both, under the tutelage of such as Chack, Silva, and Gray, and inside the reach of Dom bayonets, she hacked, slashed, and shot her way through the line and started cutting men down from the sides. Others did the same. Finally, ultimately, it was technology and determination that turned the tide.
These Doms were still encumbered with plug bayonets, making it impossible to fire their muskets once they resorted to their blades. On its face, on some procurement bureaucrat’s ledger, it might seem a minor thing, but in practice, the tactical disadvantage was devastating. Blas suspected the next Dom army they met would be better equipped, but in the meantime, her people, with their offset, socket bayonets, could still fire when they got a chance to load, and that didn’t take but a few seconds for her Marines with their breech-loaders. And then there were the pistols, like her Baalkpan Armory copy of a 1911 Colt. At bayonet range, they were overwhelming. All her Marine officers and NCOs had them, and their sharp pop! pop! pop! joined the other sounds of battle. She’d hack a man with the cutlass in her right hand and shoot another with the pistol in her left. When it was empty, she’d push the magazine release with her trigger finger, thrust her cutlass in the ground when a moment came, and insert another magazine from the pouches on her belt. It took only seconds. Then she was back to hacking and shooting. Soon, all her Marines had broken through the center of the Dom line and begun sweeping to the left, killing as they went, joining the Ocelomeh.
And that was where the determination came in. Outmatched as they were, the Jaguar Warriors didn’t fall back. They kept up the pressure—and the enemy’s attention—even as they died in droves, and the 2nd of the 2nd rolled the Doms up in an irresistible sweep of lead and steel. By the time the last cluster of exhausted, broken, mostly wounded Blood Drinkers were surrounded on the far western side of the artificial clearing, triumphant shouts came from the Vengadores on the right, having achieved the same result on their own.