When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  To the southeast there was a small valley that was surmounted by another saddle slightly higher than the one they had just crossed. It was out of sight of the one the humans had used and the road ran through it, bent to the left to pass down the valley then up through "their" saddle.

  Another Posleen force was coming over the far hill, but this was no patrol. At its head was a God King saucer and although it was clear the humans hadn't been spotted yet, the saucer was headed straight for "their" hill.

  They had left a laser retransmitter on the far hill, but there was no time for Sister Mary to hunt for it with an antenna. "Fire Control," Mosovich snapped into his UWB transmitter. "Fire concentration Juliet Four. Say again, Juliet Four. Now. Now. Now." The ultra-wide band system was difficult to detect, difficult to find and difficult to jam. That didn't mean the Posleen couldn't do all three, just that short transmissions were, generally, safe. However, if they had to depend on it the Posleen would eventually localize and destroy them.

  But the operative word was "eventually." Right here and right now it was the only way to call for fire. And if they didn't get some metal on target, and jack quick, that was all they would have wrote for Mama Mosovich's son.

  The God King was a good four hundred meters away and there was only one. The sensors of the saucers had been shown to be able to "see" humans at that range, but could not "discriminate" them if they were not firing. If the Posleen company had been headed down the hill the team would simply have dropped and hoped they weren't spotted. But it was clear from the movement of the force that it knew where the humans were and was headed over there to wipe them out.

  Given that fact, there was only one thing to do; get the God King and hope they survived. The problem was that once they opened fire, despite their flash-suppressed weapons, if the God King was still up the sensors would point right to their position. So the God King had to be taken out, first, and the God King had to be taken out with the first shot.

  Nichols flipped out the bipod of the Barrett and dropped to his stomach. He was heaving from the exertions of the last few hours, but he figured he could catch his breath for one decent shot. That was why they taught the technique at sniper school and he was starting to hyperventilate even as he was dropping. His heart was racing so it was a good thing the shot was only a few measly hundred yards; if it was over a thousand, and he had made shots like that, the shot had to be taken between heartbeats.

  He took four more deep breaths, let the last one out in a long blow and leaned into the rifle.

  * * *

  Orostan shook his head as the data-link from Oldoman's tenar went dead. "Not even maneuvering; what a stupid abat."

  The majority of his force was headed down Oakey Mountain road towards the last reported position of the human team. A few oolt had been left behind in case the humans slipped by, but the better part of six thousand Posleen were on the road with Orostan and his picked Kessentai near the front. At the front, however, were a few more of the more "expendable" oolt.

  Who were trying to run through a rain of steel. The majority of the artillery available to Mosovich had not been pointed at the Rabun Lake area. The fire down there was from one battery of 155, trying to draw the attention of the Posleen off of the real moves of the team. The rest of the artillery, nearly two brigades, had been prelaid for support along their actual line of march. Some of it was set on the actual target that he had called for fire on, while the other tubes were set to fire on additional possible target points.

  At his brief call for fire, the guns that were already set up simply pressed the firing button and went into reload. The other guns, those set on other Target Reference Points, were required to swing from their initial azimuth and elevation to reengage. But the system was fully automated for such a tiny adjustment and within fifteen seconds they had fired.

  The time of flight was nearly forty seconds, so the Posleen force was given time to flay their surroundings for upwards of a minute before the first rounds began to impact. And then, forty seconds later, fifteen more batteries rained down.

  After that it got bad.

  "Their artillery is killing us," Cholosta'an muttered. "As usual." The God King swept his tenar back and forth as they went down the road towards the distant thunder of artillery. The habit had stood him in good stead in the face of human snipers and, because he never assumed that there were none around, he had survived when many of his age-mates did not.

  "Hmmm," Orostan said noncomittally. "It is killing some of us. But we have them definitely localized," he added, tapping at the hologram in front of him. "They are transmitting now. Two bursts of communication have come from this hill. As soon as we crest the ridge they will be in view."

  "Yes," Cholosta'an noted. "But so will we, Oolt'ondai. And I note that you are not maneuvering."

  "So I'm not," Orostan said, flapping his crest in agitation at his own stupidity as the symbol for another Kessentai dropped off the hologram. "But they are quickly retreating up the hill. They should soon be out of sight and the artillery will abate. And we will soon be in position to pursue them closely; they will not be able to adjust their artillery then."

  "Are we going to try to cut them off?" Cholosta'an wondered. "Where do you think they are going?"

  "I think we can directly pursue them," Orostan commented. "The hill on this side is not heavily wooded. Once we get through this artillery we can charge the slope. Humans are slower than we are; we should be able to run them to ground."

  "That sounds . . . easy, Oolt'ondai," the younger Kessentai noted, suddenly remembering that Orostan had never actually faced humans. "But are you only going to send those who are expendable into the artillery? Or are you going to run through it?"

  Orostan paused momentarily in thought. "That's not a bad question," he admitted, looking at the three dimensional schematic. "I think, all things considered, that we'll send the majority of the force through the notch, because that is the only route that will accept it. But you and I will swing to the east of the road, out of the main artillery fire." He tapped the map, which gave a good view of the immediate area. "There is a hilltop here to the east. It's still across the valley from the humans, but it will give us a view of their approximate position without going through the main fire." He paused again as the next oolt entered the hammering artillery. The data-link of the Kessentai stayed up, but the condition marker of the unit indicated that it was, more or less, shattered with better than forty percent casualties. "And I'll probably send a few more units around as well."

  * * *

  "Sergeant Major, this is Major Ryan."

  Mosovich didn't reply; he knew the UWB was detectable, but he could listen just fine. As long as the Posties didn't start jamming.

  "You're leaving the edge of the sensor zone, so we won't know where you are. But we've got a good read on the Posleen and there's damn near five thousand of them on your tail. I've called for some obscurement and I'll adjust fire to follow you up the hill, but you'd better scram. Good luck."

  Mosovich glanced at the far saddle and nodded to himself. A salvo of variable time rounds was coming in at the moment and the air was filled with black puffballs. The beauty of the scene belied the shrapnel that he knew was flying downward from the red-cored explosions. A rank of Posleen was shattered under the line of fire even as he watched.

  But even as the line of Posleen went down another God King stumbled out of the fire and then another. It was definitely time to leave.

  Nichols peered through the scope and hammered out another round. The big rifle pushed his stocky body back at least four inches, but he quickly brought the weapon back into battery and started searching for another target. It had long been determined that the artillery messed with the sensors the God Kings used to find snipers so the shots were not as supercritical as the first had been. But every round helped and the team was laying down fire right alongside.

  Mosovich swore softly as he picked out another target in the gathering light. Th
eir position was not as concealed as he would have liked. And, despite the artillery, some of the normals were surviving the gauntlet in the gap to spray the hillside with fire. None of it was aimed—they couldn't see where the team was firing from—but as soon as the sun came up that happy circumstance would surely change.

  Mosovich, however, could see the normals fairly clearly. The Land Warrior system was proving its worth again, giving him the capability to easily direct and redirect fire on the targets in the gap, enhancing the team's vision and permitting them to communicate clearly. Shoot, move and communicate was what war at all levels was about. But it was especially critical at the level of the small team and the suits were a real boon.

  They weren't perfect though. Advanced research on them had more or less been halted at the start of the war and even with the Galactic power systems they were fairly heavy. They also did not have GalTech clarity levels in low light; there was a particular problem with depth perception that seemed insoluble without the Galactic ability to make continuous micro-sensors.

  But what they did, they did very well. Mosovich picked out another target, bringing the aiming bead onto the target and squeezing the trigger of the Advanced Infantry Weapon. The system used a series of sensors in the suit and the weapon to determine the accuracy of the shot and whether any inaccuracy was the fault of the weapon or the operator. If any inaccuracy was an environmental input, whether a temperature change in the barrel or a shift in the wind, the system automatically compensated on the next shot. If it was the fault of the operator it simply sulked in electronic silence. In this case it determined that the 7.62 round would miss its target point by less than three centimeters in the four hundred meters of flight. Since this was well within its margin of error, it made no adjustments.

  Mosovich knew, intellectually, what was going on, but he wasn't really worried. The system had proven to be better "straight out of the box" than he had had any inkling would be possible and he had come to depend upon the accuracy of the system. It occasionally "threw" shots, but it enhanced his own already expert marksmanship to stellar levels. Especially in this half-light, half-dark.

  Nonetheless, there were already several hundred Posleen forming up out of the artillery box and the system revealed a seemingly unending stream coming up the road from Seed. There was also a smaller group trying to probe around to their right. As soon as it came into view, he'd have to split his artillery and some of the God Kings were bound to get through.

  All in all, it was an unpalatable situation.

  "We're going to have to move out," he yelled. "Nichols, I need you to stay in place until we move up the slope. Then we'll take over potting the God Kings and you can move. I'll call for fire on that group coming around the hilltop from there. Clear?"

  "Gotcha, smaj," the sniper said. In a different unit the person being left behind might consider that they were being sacrificed. But Nichols knew that if that was really Mosovich's intent, he would say "Nichols, I'm going to use you like a cheap pawn."

  "Mueller, Sister, move it," Mosovich snapped, throwing himself to his feet and turning to scramble up the slope. "Time to didee."

  CHAPTER 11

  Near Seed, GA, United States, Sol III

  0715 EDT Monday September 14, 2009 ad

  Orostan snarled as artillery started to land on the hill. The thick deciduous and white pine secondary growth should have concealed their movements, but the fire had followed closely on another call from the human reconnaissance team. Now it seemed to be closing in on his more elite forces and that was not to be tolerated.

  "I am getting tired of these insufferable humans," the oolt'ondai snapped. The team was also slipping out of their sensor range, clearly escaping over the hilltop beyond even as the pincer movement appeared to be closing on them.

  Cholosta'an flapped his crest with a great deal more resignation. "Artillery happens. I don't like it, but I have yet to find a battle where the humans don't use it."

  "Well, these will not for much longer," the oolt'ondai replied, yanking a weapon up from around his feet.

  The gun looked not dissimilar to the shotguns of Cholosta'an's oolt'os. However, when the oolt'ondai fired it was clearly different. For one thing, since the humans had dropped over the back side of the hill and were under cover from direct fire, he would not have been able to hit them. But the senior Kessentai did not seem to be trying to, rather firing into their general vicinity. Another change was that the round was clearly visible, travelling at relatively low speed to drop into the distant white pine and hardwood forest. The last difference was that there was no apparent effect except a slight flicker in the tenar's sensors.

  "What was that?" Cholosta'an asked warily.

  "A little present Tulo'stenaloor cooked up," Orostan said. "Now to see if it worked."

  * * *

  Nichols peered through the mountain laurels, trying to get a clear shot at the new Posleen force coming around the shoulder of the far ridge. The good news was that his position, hunkered down under two granite outcroppings and surrounded by mountain laurel, was both well concealed and protected from most fire. But the problem was that he would be firing through heavy vegetation. Although the .50 caliber rounds were unusually massive, they nonetheless tended to tumble and stray off course if they hit a branch. So it was critical to get a clear shot. And that didn't seem likely. But when he saw the distant God King lift a weapon and fire something at the hill, he thought he could almost take the shot.

  Then his sniper scope went black.

  "Sarge," he whispered into his radio. "What the hell just happened? My scope just went blank." There was no immediate reply and he noticed that there was no sound from his earbuds, not even the usual background hiss of the frequency carrier. "What the fuck?"

  He turned around and slid down the hill towards where the team had assembled. He was taking rear-end Charlie again, but the position had been good so it was no big deal. But now, with his scope down, he was going to need some help. He hit the diagnostic button on the side as he slid but nothing lit up. It was as dead as a doornail.

  The area under the white pines was still fairly dark here on the west side of the ridge and this early in the morning so he flipped down his helmet visor and nearly slammed into a tree in the utter darkness.

  "Sergeant Major?!" he yelled.

  Mosovich slapped the diagnostic box on his Land Warrior suit and looked up. "Sister Mary?"

  "I got nothin', sergeant major," she whispered. None of the communications gear was functioning and even some of the medical devices were not responding.

  "Dump anything that doesn't work," he said, slamming his helmet into a tree. "Shit!"

  "We're golden, Jake," Mueller said easily. "We can do this."

  "We can't call for fire!" the team leader snapped back as Nichols slid to a stop. The team was gathered on a reasonably flat spot that was probably another one of the ubiquitous logging roads from the 1920s and '30s. "Nichols, you down?"

  "Everything, Sergeant Major," the sniper said, furiously starting to change out the batteries on the sniper scope.

  "That probably won't help," Sister Mary said. "I already tried on the commo gear."

  "Did you see anything unusual?" Mosovich asked.

  "Yeah," Nichols said, looking at the scope and shaking his head. "That group that was coming around the side of the ridge. One of the God Kings fired something, it looked like a grenade. I thought I was done, but there wasn't an explosion, just my scope going dead."

  "EMP," Sister Mary said. "Unbelievable."

  "Yep," Mosovich replied. "Just fucking duckey."

  "EM-what?" Nichols asked.

  "EMP," Mueller answered, beginning to strip his Land Warrior suit. "Electo-fucking-Magnetic-motherfucking-Pulse."

  "Yep," Mosovich said again. "Nichols, might as well shitcan that scope. And your helmet systems; keep the helmet, and all the other electronic gear. None of it's going to work now."

  "How in the hell did they do that?"
he asked, starting to dismount the scope. "And what is electro-magnetic Mfing pulse?"

  "It's kind of like a big electro-magnet," Sister Mary answered, starting to dig all the commo out of her rucksack. "It scrambles electronics, completely shuts down anything with a microchip in it. Most military stuff used to be partially hardened, but I guess since the Posleen weren't using anything that generated EMPs they backed off on that."

  "The suits were supposed to be," Mosovich said. "Same with the scopes. My guess is that it was just a mother of an EMP burst." He looked over at Nichols, who had nearly finished unbolting the scope. It was not designed to be removed in the field and acted like it. "Can you shoot that mother without a scope?"

  "I have," Nichols said, yanking off the last recalcitrant bolt and, just for the fun of it, wacking the $50,000 anchor into a tree. "There's a ladder sight and a ghost ring. I shot with both of them in sniper school." He paused. "But sniper school was a long damned time ago."

  "Okay, gather up whatever you're going to carry," Mosovich said, flipping the last piece of nonfunctioning electronics away into the brush and hefting his rucksack. "Just because we got hit doesn't mean the Posties slowed down. So we need to get a move on." Mosovich moved to flip up the map on his visor and frowned when he realized he didn't have a paper backup.

  "AID," the sergeant major said, wondering if the Galactic technology had survived. "Do you have maps for this area?"

  "Yes, Sergeant Major," the light soprano of the system answered, bringing up a local map as a hologram. The map was three dimensional, which the Land Warrior suit could only do with difficulty, and Mosovich wondered for a moment if the AID was jealous of how much more he used the human systems.

  "Okay," he said, pointing to the faintly glowing dot on the hillside that was the team. "We're about a klick and a half from the Soque, if the ground was flat. But it's practically vertical instead. So we get down this hill fast. Unless the Posleen react really fast we should be able to make it across 197 before they get there."