Dancing with the Wild Geese
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: By now you should know I don't own any of this. Rating: Maybe K Time: Long, long ago in a galaxy…Er, no. I mean a couple of centuries from now in an alternate universe.
They attacked the next day in the morning.
Fa'an had placed markers out eight hundred meters, six hundred meters, four hundred meters and two hundred meters from the house. The back of the markers were camouflaged with earth and grass so that only the front part showed and to only someone in front of them.
Fa'an got on the radio.
"We'll start shooting when they get within two hundred meters. The two-hundred-meter mark is painted red. I'll shoot first. Understand. No one so much as twitches until I shoot. If you shoot before I do, you'd damned well better put your next round into your head. Central out."
Fa'an had put Rifleman Prebo with Trip and T'Pol. He had also put an experienced rifleman with Greg Hill and his two wives. Fa'an wasn't sure how any of them would react to combat. An experienced soldier would be a help.
Prebo took a quick peek at the people forming up about a kilometer away.
"They don't seem to be too worried about us. They'll learn." He said, sliding back down below the firing slit of their bunker. He opened a can of pineapple and speared a chunk with his knife and popped it into his mouth.
"Care for one? At times like this your mouth can get dry. Anxiety."
Trip pulled out his knife and speared a chunk.
"Vulcans do not experience anxiety." T'Pol said but took a piece of pineapple for herself.
Fa'an watched the oncoming enemy through his telescopic sight. He was trying to determine who the leaders were. He saw a flash of color and saw it was a flag. The breeze took it, and he could see the whole flag. There was writing on it.
"In hoc signo vinces." He read.
"In this sign conquer." Kathy Beckett translated for him. "It's an old Christian motto. It means conquer under the sign of the Christian cross."
Fa'an nodded. The leader should be near the flag then. Just to the right of the flag carrier was a tall, bearded man with a determined look on his face. On the man's other side was a man carrying a large box.
A bomb, I'll bet. To blow in the door to the house. He thought.
He watched until the enemy was two hundred meters away and gently squeezed the trigger. He saw the leader drop and quickly aimed at the man with the bomb. He hit the bomb, and it vanished in a blast. He had managed to set the bomb off. Even better. He searched for the flag carrier but couldn't find him or the flag. Fa'an only got off one more shot before there were no more targets.
"Cease firing! Cease firing!" He bellowed. "Don't waste ammo!"
Fa'an used his binoculars to check the enemy. He could see some movement, but no one was still headed for them.
"Sergeant Whaan." He yelled to his medic. "They won't appreciate it but go out and see if you can help any of them. A nice prisoner to interrogate could be helpful."
"We'll go too." Called one of the Hill women. "We can help."
As Whaan reached the top of his bunker there was a shot. Whaan figured it went over him by a good twenty feet, but he jumped back down.
"Did anyone see where that came from?" Fa'an roared.
"I saw the muzzle flash." Rifleman Prebo yelled back. "See the man with the long white beard, kinda sitting up? The shot came from about six feet to your left."
Fa'an founded the bearded corpse and looked to the left. He could see a rifle barrel just barely moving, but no more. He moved to the top of the bunker and looked down. He could see a man with most of his left arm gone at the shoulder. Blood was pumping from a severed artery, then it stopped. The heart was no longer pumping. Fa'an put a round in him just to be sure.
"Try now, Whaan."
Whaan stuck his head up and there were two loud pops. He got his head down quickly.
"Sounded like pistol shots." Fa'an roared. "Did anyone see anything?"
No one did.
"Whaan, stay where you are. I'm not going to risk my people."
"We have company." Kathy said.
Fa'an scanned the horizon but saw nothing.
"Look up." Kathy said.
Fa'an saw two large birds coming in for a landing right in the middle of the enemy corpses.
"Those are the local analogs to vultures." Kathy said. "There'll be dozens here soon enough. And we already have greenhoppers."
She pointed to a small bipedal lizard hopping towards the dead. It was perhaps a foot tall but had razor sharp teeth and claws.
"There'll be dozens of them, too."
That was when they heard the first scream from the pile of dead and wounded.
"Can we kill them?" Fa'an asked. "The carrion eaters?"
"Dead carrion eaters will just bring more carrion eaters. Look, there's a pack of prairie wolves approaching. Looks like ten or twelve of them."
The screaming didn't last much longer, but more and more animals arrived to gorge on the dead.
"Nothing we can do." Fa'an said. "Everyone stand down."
When they awoke the next morning, the predators were still eating.
"Damn it." Fa'an said. "We need to destroy their weapons and ammo. I don't want all that military hardware out there where anyone can take it." He got on his radio. "Grenadiers, load with tear gas and chase those damned beasts away."
A dozen rounds of tear gas later, the animals had fled but remained in the distance.
"Alpha fire team, get out there and gather the weapons and ammo. Mr. Hill, will you and your ladies get some firewood and prepare a bonfire?"
"Sergeant Fa'an, "called Lee Wells. "Can me and Jimmy go too? They might have ammo we can use. Mebbe a weapon or two?"
Fa'an nodded and the brothers headed after Alpha fire team.
Rifleman Prebo knelt by the remains of the nearest Second Comer. He had a 12-gauge shotgun and a cloth bag of shells. Prebo made sure the weapon was fully loaded, with a round in the chamber and then poured dirt and small pebbles down the barrel.
"Hey, Jimmy." He called. "I have some 12-gauge shells for you."
The next two corpses had some kind of a bolt action carbine. Prebo made sure both were loaded and filled the barrels with dirt. The next weapon was a cheaply made submachine gun. It rattled when Prebo picked it up, but he got it ready for the bonfire.
The weapons weren't heavy, but they were awkward to carry. He was about to carry them to where the Hills were setting up the fire when he saw something in a corpses hand. It was a heavy automatic pistol. Prebo looked at it. It had ivory grips and the bluing on weapon was perfect. There were words on the slide.
"Jovian Moons Metals & Mfg, LLC. Model 1911A1 Colt Automatic pistol."
He knew Jovian Moons made first class material. He removed the magazine. It held seven cartridges that appeared to be about 11mm. There was a leather belt around the corpse's waist. He removed it. On the back was a pouch with four more magazines.
He shook his head sadly. It was a fine weapon, but neither its ammo nor spare parts were in the company's supply chain. Then he looked at the belt, noticed something and smiled. He'd keep the pistol.
The weapons had all been collected and readied for the fire.
"What kind of wood is that?" Prebo asked.
"They call it sooboo." Said Greg Hill. "Short for pseudo bamboo. It looks like a wood from back on Earth, but this is a hardwood. Burns real good. There's a stand of it maybe twelve clicks from here. Jim gets a bunch for his fireplace."
The weapons were stacked on the firewood and some flammable material Jim had was poured onto the wood. Hill tossed a burning brand and the fire erupted.
"Now, everyone run like hell." Prebo yelled.
Prebo made it back to the bunker and jumped in.
"Keep your heads down." He told Trip and T'Pol. "The fire will set off the cartridges in the guns and the blocked barrels will make sure they blow up. There won't be enough of those weapons left to damage anyone, but gun parts will be flying all over."
As he said that they heard the first gun explode.
Prebo held out the pistol and the pistol belt he'd found.
"Mrs. Tucker, I got his for you. It's a real first-class weapon and I'm pretty sure it was carried by a woman before the Second Comer got his hands on it."
"How do you know it was carried by a woman?"
"Look at the holes in the belt. One's really worn. Whoever wore it had a waist of maybe twenty-two or twenty-three inches. That's about the size of your waist, I'll bet."
T'Pol took the gunbelt and put it on. It settled around her waist very nicely. She didn't know if Rifleman Prebo would be insulted if she declined his gift, so she accepted it.
"Thank you. It's very nice."
After three days the carrion eaters left, leaving nothing behind but bones. A day after that the Second Comers arrived.
"Looks like all of them." Jim said.
"There's at least a thousand, but that's counting woman and children." Fa'an replied.
"Women can sure as hell shoot."
"As can children."
They heard the sound of a hymn in the distance.
"I'll bet they won't come at us until tomorrow."
"They can take all the time they want."
The Second Comers stopped on the far side of the rise where the first group had stopped. For the rest of the day, they could hear the sound of chanting and the sound of hymns. By nightfall, they could the glow of fires against the night sky. Fa'an made sure that there were sentries all along the perimeter in case the enemies attacked at night and from an unexpected direction. The night passed quietly.
At dawn they could hear chanting and yelling coming from their enemies.
"They'll be coming soon." Rifleman Prebo said to Trip and T'Pol.
"How do you know?" Trip asked.
"All that noise. They're psyching themselves up to come at us. I'm not worried."
"You're not?" Trip asked.
"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley." He replied and then laughed.
T'Pol decided that as hard as humans were to understand, alien mercenary soldiers were worse.
Prebo looked through the firing slit.
"It's about to begin. I can see people sticking their heads up to get a look at us."
Suddenly a long line of people came over the rise and headed for the house.
"Shit." Fa'an said and grabbed his radio. "This is Central. They're coming in a long line. They're going to try to sweep around our flanks and hit us from the front and the sides. SAW gunners and grenadiers, hit their flanks. Try to drive them back to their center. Everybody else, shoot at their center. Time to dance everyone."
Prebo had an assault rifle and concentrated on the enemy headed straight for him. He saw a second line of Second Comers follow the first, then a third and then a fourth. After that he was too busy shooting to count.
The enemy may have been fanatics, but they weren't trained soldiers. The hail of fire and grenades on their flanks drove them back towards the center.
Trip was shooting on autopilot. He aimed and fired as targets came into his telescopic sight. Then he saw that his target was a young girl, probably not yet a teenager. She had a rifle in her hands and was shooting. He moved his sight slightly. A woman was in his sights. The girl's mother? He wondered. He fired.
TBC