At quick commands into his mike Datis and Lycurgus’s men who had cast their spears, loaded and began firing their slings, hurling three pound iron shot and impact grenades, specially prepared for use by the slingers.  As these began to cost lives in battle the group molds, breaks and Datis advances on the remnant of the Panor’s army.  The median slingers and casters shout with triumph as one of the grenades relieves the Panor of his left arm and head, its impact on his shoulder detonating the fuse.  Several Panuits, close to their leader, were thrown to the side by this piled confusion.  Lycurgus’s casters drew out their swords and met the Panuits one on one, the anocks were too ponderous to block all the attacks and succumbed to the Spartan blades completely.  A single Panuit nearer to one of the portals, evaded the short heavy Spartan swords and ran back into the smoky interior of the Sphere.  The ultra-violet and infrared optic systems aboard Avenger kept watch on the Sphere and its seven openings.  (The hole cut by Russell’s beams had not fused shut).  From this central well now came a loud chanting sound as ADAM floated upward into the smoky air over the Sphere and fifteen of his troops emerged turned toward the closest crater wall and marched straight toward it over dead bodies of Panuits and Deneb slaves.  Before ADAM’s force could reach the wall however, a new scene was taking shape in Russell’s scopes, every portal and hole at the top of the Sphere was pouring Panuits out into the crater.  The axes of several Panor were visible among them as well.  Knowing by this mass attack that ADAM’s raid had achieved its purpose, Russ ordered his RACE troops to stand fast on the outside of the crater wall and kill anything coming out.  As soon as Russell saw Datis’ and Lycurgus’ troops out of the basin, and ADAM’s climbing down the outside of the crater rim, he focused all four beams onto the Sphere and fired his four mass cannons continuously, opening the rent in the Sphere wider and wider yet.


    He heard through his monitors the short, blunt commands of the American Indian Chiefs guarding the south and west walls of the crater.  As the Panuits topped the wall the Indian leaders met their charge blow for blow and man for man.  Of the Panuit and Panor force of thirty five hundred only nineteen hundred remained pushing at every side of the crater but not breaking the lines of the races of men.  The ACE’s were called back to augment their human counterparts at the rim walls.  Hannibal, Hamilcar, Kebbi and Gongo Musa’s elephants and rhino charged over and over, splitting the Panuits ranks into fragments.  Russell’s barrage on the Sphere continued.  The mass of metal was smoking, of itself now the center of the big iron nickle ball was a dull dark cherry red beginning to brighten and melt.  As the metals reached yellow they lost form and fell into themselves faster and faster as Russell’s beams alone now focused wide for heating, and continued to bear down on the huge mass.  Panuits and Panor alike thronged the crater wall trying desperately to escape the hell-heat behind them, being mangled by the men and beasts in front.  When Russell judged the puddle of alloy large enough he shut off his beams.  With the entire exposed side of the Sphere gone, the rest was now like a hollow bowl of metal lava, pocking Mars’s crust like a festering boil.  Russell’s mass cannoneers changed their racks from impact bombs to hydrogen-oxygen ice bombs.  Lacking detonators this time the bombs would detonate as they plunged into the thousands of metric tons of metal ‘soup’ below them.  Russell gave his RACE warriors and their feral assistants the order to fall back from the crater and continue moving away until he ordered the halt.  The lines of human troops and their totems disengaged and pulled back almost half a mile before Russell ordered ‘halt’ into his hypno-mike, and fire to his gunners.  To the twelve hundred remaining Shapers the world must have seemed engulfed in fire and blast waves as the ice bombs entered the ‘broth’ of nickle-iron and exploded great gouts of liquid metal were flung in all directions out of the ‘pot’ behind them.  Hundreds standing atop the wall as the humans pulled back had been shouting for more to come up and leave the crater edge now were burned, burning, and blasted into seared goblets of flesh and metal as the tide of death enveloped them.  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.