Knowing nothing about weapons, all the people around him once again opened fire even though their target was far beyond their range. Falling seventy five meters short, the hail of lead tore up the pavement, throwing shards of cobblestones everywhere.
Well, even if it didn't hit them he had to admit it had a powerful psychological effect. The entire charging mass of troops wavered and then slowed slightly. Perhaps a dozen troops turned around and tried to flee in fear; every one of them were shot by the pistol wielding officers following their platoons.
In response, a salvo of blaster bolts tore away from the soldiers, dissipating in the humid air before reaching the line. To his left, the precious E-web began opening fire, it's more powerful blasts managing to strike home even at this range.
Finally coming into range, another wave of blaster bolts tore towards them, this time reaching them and dropping six peasants. Many of the others pulled back behind the dirt fortifications they had built.
"Fire, fire!" he shouted, the cry being taken up by some of the other men around him.
Fire. Pull the bolt back. Stick a new cartridge in. Push the bolt back. Fire. His mind was already following the steps automatically without any sort of conscious input at all.
Pulling back to the cover of doorways and storefronts and porches for protection from he hail of bullets, the government troops began leapfrogging forwards towards their enemy.
Woosh! A could of smoke appeared on one side of the street, and seconds later a portion of the line blew up, scattering body parts everywhere.
"Get that Rocket Launcher!" he shouted to the E-webs crew beside him. But the sound of the battle was too loud, the didn't hear him. They continued ripping up a pocket of infantrymen hiding in a doorway.
The enemy were only one hundred and twelve meters away.
Falling back into his pattern of firing, he tried to shoot the man with the rocket launcher. The man fell, clutching his chest, but it was too late. A second rocket shot out with a cloud of smoke.
But at the last second a stray bullet hit it, knocking it into a building behind the peasants.
He squeezed the trigger, hitting an officer rallying his men. A man beside Ando was hit, his face burnt to a cinder. He was pulled back from the wall by a slim woman, who picked up the mans old rifle and continued firing where he had left off.
She was hit six seconds later.
Down the street, three blue speeders began approaching the infantry from behind. For a brief second he hoped they might be reinforcements from another ghetto, but his hopes were quickly shot down as the blaster cannon mounted on the back of it began to open fire.
"Get the speeders," he shouted to the men behind him manning the E-web, but he didn't hear them respond. In fact, he hadn't heard anything from them in quite a few moments...
He turned around to see its crew both slumped over the weapon, blood pouring out of their bellys.
"Shit," he shouted, abandoning his rifle and jumping up behind the weapons controls. Just before he kicked the gunners body away he stopped himself and pulled a blaster pistol out of the dead mans belt and stuck it in his own.
Fiddling with the weapons guiding joystick, he aimed the barrel at the speeder mounting the blaster cannon-or was it a light turbo laser? It wasn't firing very fast- and he pulled the trigger, unleashing a salvo of blood red energy at his target that dissipated harmlessly on it's jury rigged shields.
"Damn it," he screamed, puring another burst of fire into it, bringing the weapon and generator dangerously close to overheating.
At the last second the shields gave and the speeder exploded in a magnificent fireball, pelting its two shield less companions with flack.
The government troops were just beginning to enter the effective range of the peasants mafia made rifles, there most important weapon. Beyond eighty five meters away they weren't very accurate due to their cost saving minimum rifling.
For the next endless twenty seconds he cowered behind the weapons metal guard waiting for it to cool off. Using the pistol he had appropriated he occasionally took pot shots over the flak guard.
It was only now that he realized just how badly they were taking it. They had begun with sixty eight men and women, 48 of them armed. They were now down to less than half that, with bloody, half dead peasants screaming their half blown away brains out all over the place.
The enemies, on the other hand, weren't doing so bad. They had taken about twice the number of casualties, but it didn't hurt them so badly because of their far greater numbers.
Sticking his head above the flak-guard, he was amazed to see the remaining troopers charging the last fifty meters to their position. The E-web hadn't cooled off all the way yet, but it was now ar never. Twisting the joystick and pulling the trigger, he blasted three or four men into oblivion.
They kept on coming.
The enemys finally in range. The teen soldiers dropped their smack ball bats once more and began lobbing grenades at them, carefully checking to make sure the fuse was lit before throwing them. Shatter-booming in front of the line, they threw up so much dust that it became hard to see. Enemies fell, dozens of them. The grenades, while primitive, were effective.
During these final desperate moments of the battle each man and woman was possessed by their long buried animal instincts. Ando pulled the trigger, firing dozens of red lances of death into the enemy body. People picked up the guns of fallen comrades, only to be gunned down themselves a few seconds later. Suicidal soldiers climbed the ramparts as grenades fell down onto them and blaster bolts and slugs blew their head apart. A grenade thrown by the enemy exploded, damaging the E-web and dropping four peasants. Slugthrowers continued to fire into the enemy body, piercing even body armor at this close range.
Carnage. The gray Imperial Army Surplus uniforms the Government troops were clad in were now smeared with blood, either each mans own or some fallen comrades.
But finally the massed troopers began to make headway. Pushing forwards, they selflessly climbed the ramparts, many of them getting impaled on the pikes placed at the top or scalded by boiling oil poured down onto them, but still they continued.
Finally able to reach each other, the hand to hand fighting was short but bitter. Picking up the clubs and bats that had been dropped earlier, peasants briefly gave everything they had to fight them off. Loaded rifles were emptied into enemys bellys. Blasters or the rare automatic slugthrowers they had took down whole lines of enemys.
But eventually they fled, though not before someone set the E-webs generator to overload and explode. That little gambit killed another squad of enemys and injured nearly a platoon of them.
Dashing madly for other friendly positions, many fell to stun blasts in the back (They were on a slave drive after all). Ando was one of the lucky ones, successfully reaching a position a hundred meters to their right.
The battle was almost over here as well, the last dozen peasants decapatating troopers that stuck their heads over the wall with shovels and throwing grenades onto the men behind them.
To the left of the position the troops that had assaulted the mini fortress he had been at began moving this way, far more of them than the men here could possibly handle. Unfortuantely, they didn't have an E-web here, just a heavy machine gun with barely a hundred rounds left for it, but he manned it anyway, turning it towards the charging men.
With the first burst of fire he must have taken down a full squad of them, each man he hit being ripped in half by the heavy slugs the weapon fired. Now sure of this weapons power, he let completely loose, raking the front of the charging mass. The fifty caliber bullets penetrated even the plasteel body armor the men wore.
There couldn't be more than fifty or fifty five left.
Pulling the trigger once again after giving the barrel a second to cool off, the weapon ripped a hole straight through the line. But his gory success at nearly stopping them was shortened when the weapon ran out of ammo.
"Shit," he cried out, grabbing a rifle that was laying beside the weapon. He fired three shots into the body with it and then it was empty.
Jumping down, he looked for any ammo that might be left for the machine gun. When he had been firing it he had started to like it more than the E-web he had been using because it fired faster and didn't over heat quite so quickly. But now that he needed ammo he wasn't so sure he liked it that much. With an E-web you could just wait for a second for it to recharge, but with this when you were out you were out.
Grabbing a club, he began to smash the heads of any troops that climbed the wall he was guarding. A few impaled themselves on the razor sharp pikes positioned down the side of the wall. He didn't bother with them.
He smashed the head of one man a little too har; the smashball bat he had been using cracked and split in half. He pulled a pike out of the wall, shanking a man in the face immediately after doing so. Three more times and that broke as well. Grabbing a shovel off the ground, now becoming saturated with blood in some areas, he began decapatating or attempting to decapitate anyone who stuck their head over the wall. During a short lull he grabbed a rifle with a bayonet on the end instead.
Big mistake. It broke off the first time he stabbed a man with it.
Swearing, he shot the next two men in the head with it and threw the now empty weapon away. Yanking the pistol off his belt, he shot another one who tried to climb over and waited for another.
None did.
For twenty seconds all of the remaining seven men in the mini-fortress just stood poised for them to continue the attack.
It didn't come.
Finally, one of the men dared to stick his head over the wass, and his sharp intake of breath sent Ando and the other three men left scurrying up the wall to see what was going on.
It was breathtaking. Around the little fort were hundreds of body's, plus an equal number of wounded. They had died in many grotesque and horrifying ways. Many were impaled on pikes in there haste to get over the ramparts. Others were ripped in half by bullets from the now ammo less machine gun. Some were riddled to pieces by grenades, and others merely shot by slugthrowers and blasters.
There was not an uninjured soul among them.
The survivors of the two combined attack forces were running down the street, trying to get as far away from this living hell as fast as possible. There were probably thirty or thirty five left.
Jumping down, he lifted a rifle and several magazines off a dead man and then climbed back up, cutting arm on a pike made up of a durasteel shard on a pole in his haste.
"Shit!" he shouted, snapping a fresh magazine into the rifle. Blood trickled out of the gash in his arm. He wasn't much of a bleeder. Around him, another man was doing the same. The others just stood in place, frozen by the gory spectacle.
Surgically he began squeezing off shots, taking a man down with almost every pull of the trigger.
It was over before they'd even got halfway out of range.
From the East a convoy of speeders and wheeled ground cars drove up, packed to the brim with peasant soldiers. They stopped at the sight of the carnage, then looked at the five survivors with disbelief.
For a few eternal moments everyone was silent.
"Beff Pike":
Every time a nub grows up an icon dies.
So thanks, Kach - you killed David Carradine!
"Omnae":
"What? What? Where are the nipples?" enters Seth Vinda.
"NIF. But I will find them! I am god like that." Kach Thorton speaks up.
