The vast majority, at a ratio of about four hundred to one, were semi-sentient normals. They were mildly functional morons which could be pointed in a general direction and told to kill anything non-Posleen in view. They also had implanted skills that could be used to build a civilization. And they worshipped, literally, their bosses the relatively rare God-Kings. A subset of the normals were the cosslain, physically pretty much indistinguishable but considerably brighter. Cosslain were almost sentient in fact.

God-Kings ran things. In open-field battle they generally rode anti-grav platforms called tenar which mounted heavier weapons and sensors. Occasionally they used Posleen landing craft to give ground forces air support or air-land methods such as rear area assaults. But Mike had never run into a situation where the primary shooters were God-Kings. Undoubtedly the lead God-King, the one that Julio had just killed with his own gun — neat trick — was the commander of the defenders of the pit. But having this many God-Kings forward meant that somewhere there were a couple of thousand normals without anybody to tell them what to do.

Make that a few hundred thousand normals. All the tunnels were defended by God-Kings. His division commanders hadn’t sent the intel on but he was picking it up on a tertiary feed. Everybody was running into the same thing.

This was going to be a blood-bath. And not in the skin-soothing, like-extending, “send me a hundred virgins” way.

And nobody was any further than Julio. Initial penetrations were held all along the line and too many troops were still out in the open.

Mike composed the intel and fed it down then paused, very briefly, to think.

“Rubble-dubble all openings, Shelly. Multi-entry, heavy. Boot on them, don’t piss,” he muttered to his AID. “Julio.”

“Señor?” the private said, shakily.

“Hold what you got,” Mike said. “Keep tossing subars. Rawls, rubble dubble, now!”