When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  He glanced down the hill and shook his head. Give the bastards credit for tenacity. He had called for fire on his backtrail again and he was fairly sure that the lead, at least, of the brigade force was getting shredded by the artillery. There had been a number of unreduced houses on the hill and, but by the time the artillery was done they might as well have been destroyed by the Posleen.

  Now, though, it was time to go. He pulled a small device out of the side of Nichols' rucksack, pulled a pin, set a dial and tossed it on the ground. He was both lightening his load and putting a "sensor" in place; the effect of the device would be practically nothing compared to the artillery. Then he threw the Barrett over his shoulder and started out along the saddle. The path was actually about ten feet wide, but it fell off a couple of hundred feet to the east and west so in a way it felt narrow as a string. On the far side an old path continued up the ridge and there were occasional very old trail blazes, the faded orange paint pale against the grey of the tree-bark.

  He scrambled up through the mountain laurel and rhododendron, grabbing at the granite and schist that were jutting up now through the thin soil, and climbed as fast as his quivering legs could carry him. The alternative didn't bear thinking on.

  About forty five seconds after he dropped it, the plastic oblong quivered, turned over and—with a slight "huff" of expelled air—threw out three fishing lines, complete with treble hooks. Then, with an almost unnoticeable clicking noise, it slowly pulled the lines in until the treble hooks caught on the surrounding vegetation. At that point the device was apparently satisfied and settled back into quiescence.

  * * *

  Orostan flapped his crest in agitation and glanced at the portable tenaral again. The humans had not cut back to either side, so they could only be continuing up the hill. The oolt'ondai had split his force around the artillery fire—it was clear that it was not being observed—and thus had avoided significant casualties there. But it would be necessary to cross a narrow lip of land to reach the crest of this hill and that would entail tremendous loss.

  "This is not going to be pretty," Cholosta'an said.

  "Tell me to eat, nestling, why don't you," the oolt'ondai snapped back. "Sorry, but that is obvious. Nonetheless, if we are going to run this abat lurp to ground, we must close with it."

  "Well," the younger Kessentai said, with a slight flap of his crest, "we could just sit here and starve them out." He looked over at the oolt'ondai and hissed at the expression on his crocodilian face. "But I guess not."

  The oolt'ondai appeared not to hear as he took a series of breaths. "Fuscirto uut!" he cried. "Forward!"

  * * *

  Jake dropped into a small "cave" between two large granite boulders and breathed deep. The position was just about perfect and, coincidentally, about as far as his legs were going to take him. The two "boulders"—both the size of a large truck—were actually outcrops that had been worn away until one dropped onto the other. In between was a small, rather dry gap about head height on the west side that narrowed to barely knee height on the east. Located slightly below the true military crest of the mountain and to the west of the mountain's summit, it looked over the last nearly vertical climb, which was on the east side of the mountain, and down to the saddle the Posleen would have to cross. Not only would the Posleen have to cross the saddle, struggle up the trail and then cross the actual summit, in full view most of the time, the position was darn near impregnable to anything but their heavy weapons—a concrete bunker might be a slight improvement, but not much—and had a back way out. Of course, the "back way" led to a four hundred foot high vertical cliff, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

  The wind-swept mountain had once, clearly, been a popular hangout. There was still a vague outline of some old lean-tos and two fire pits. It was well covered in gnarled trees, white pine and oak with a scattering of maple, their twisted trunks and branches leaning primarily to the south. The reason for their twisting was clear; what had been a light breeze down on the flats was a blowing gale on the heights and the wind whipped the leaves around him in a fury.

  There were several large boulders and outcrops, but most of the moutain was covered in loam and brush. The exception was by the cliff, where the loam came to an abrupt end about four meters from the edge. The first few meters of the cliff were broken, with a fair-sized cave on one side, a fair number of wind-twisted white pine and several ledges. However, beyond the ledges the cliff fell away sheer for over four hundred feet to the tree-covered base of the mountain. The trees swept out for almost a kilometer from there before hitting the beginnings of "civilization" and another open field.

  Jake flipped down the bipod on the Barrett, flipped up the ladder sight and pushed an old Jack Daniel's bottle out of the way. The range to the saddle, actually to the upper edge of it where the trail was clear of obstructions, was just at eight hundred meters. Judging distance like that, downhill in the mountains, was usually tough. But Jake's AID just laid a hologram on the hill and marked various points with range markers.

  What the AID could not judge quite so well was the wind. At that distance the bullet would tend to drift rather strongly, perhaps as much as six inches given the wind and its direction.

  Fortunately, Posleen were big targets.

  The sergeant major rolled Nichols' rucksack off his back and rummaged around in it. He'd lightened it up on the way up the hill by some judicious disposal of devices, but it was the first "down-time" he'd had all day and all he'd had to eat since the previous night was a handful of hickory nuts he'd picked up on Ochamp Mountain.

  Mosovich pulled out four one-hundred-round boxes of .50 caliber BMG, a bag of peanut hard candy, two packs of Red Man, three packs of some sort of apparently homemade jerky, and three MREs. Apparently Nichols wasn't big on "pogie-bait." No Fritos, no Pringles, no soynuts, trailmix or cornnuts, not even a damned Ramen package. What the hell were they teaching these kids? The MREs were spaghetti and meatballs, tortellini and lasagna. Either Nicols had eaten everything else before these or he had packed out mostly Italian. Mosovich dove back in and rummaged for a while, but came up empty. Nothing else, but socks.

  "Damn, no hot sauce. What kind of a soldier goes out on a mission without hot sauce?" He could stomach the Army's version of "Italian food" if it had enough hot sauce in it. Otherwise it was just south of fried salamander—which wasn't half bad really—in his personal view of military food. Somewhere way down from fried grasshopper and just above kimchee. After a few moments' thought he pulled out one of the pieces of jerky and sniffed at it. His brow rose and he took a bite.

  "Where in the hell did Nichols get venison jerky?" he asked no one. "And how come he was holding out?" After a moment's thought and another bite he answered the second question for himself. "I'm gonna have to speak to that troop about his choice of rations."

  The sergeant major leaned on the pack and listened to the artillery in the distance. As he did he realized that the position also gave the first clear view he'd had of Clarkesville. The town was darn near fourteen klicks off, but it was as close as the team had gotten and the day was clear.

  Mosovich pulled out his binoculars as he masticated the jerky. The stuff had the consistency of shoe leather, but it tasted heavenly. Bit light on the spicing, but perfection exists only in the mind of Allah.

  "Lessee," he murmured around the jerky. "There's 441 . . . And there's Demorest. Probably." The town was noticeable mostly for the cleared areas; there weren't many buildings standing.

  The day was as clear as a bell, one of those beautiful fall days when it seemed that from a high hill you could see creation. In this case the NCO could easily see all the way to where Interstate 85 used to be and Clarkesville was more than a tad easier.

  The Posleen had covered the area with a smoke curtain, but the smoke pots, hundreds of them, were located on hilltops and left a "side" view of the area only lightly obscured. There were thousands of figures moving in the area, but that was only to be expected. What h
e hadn't expected to see was a gaping hole in the side of one of the hills just to the north of Demorest.

  "Damn, they're digging in."

  The humans had observed that behavior before, but only on Earth. Although the God Kings invariably lived above ground, usually in large stone or metal pyramids—although there didn't seem to be any evidence of those here—most of their manufacturing facilities seemed to be underground.

  Apparently this was a "late conquest" activity. After an area had been fully reduced and all the human evidence cleaned up the Posleen generally put in farms. They primarily grew local crops having, apparently, none of their own. While this was going on the local God King's pyramid was constructed and the multitude of items necessary for that and day-to-day existence was created from the "factories," mostly nannite "vat" production, on the ships. But as soon as an area reached a certain level of production, underground facilities started being built. And when they were complete, the ships were passed on to the next generation and took off for either another planet or another part of the same planet. And the local settlement started working on the next ship out of their surplus.

  The evidence for this process was gleaned mostly from overhead imagery observing the digging process and what went into and out of the caverns. The process was probably going on on Barwhon as well, although there was no way to get overhead on that planet. On Diess, which the humans had mostly retaken, the Posleen had not dug in their facilities. But the entire arable area of the planet was covered in megalopoli so they had just occupied the Indowy megascrapers. Digging them out of them had been interesting.

  Most of the Earth though was in Posleen hands and thousands, millions, of the manufacturing facilities were scattered across the planet at this point. When it came time to reclaim the world, digging the centaurs out of the holes would be tough. On the other hand, it was expected that most of the factories could be put back in commission so Earth was looking at a whole new world of productivity. Usually, though, such facilities were in well-settled areas outside the war zone and Clarkesville was inside the artillery envelope. So seeing them digging in like that was unusual.

  And so was the column of Posleen pouring into the dugout.

  "That's not a factory, then," he muttered, working a big wad of jerky into his cheek. He wondered just what those sneaky yellow bastards thought they were doing. The Posleen under certain conditions dug like gophers; they apparently had very good mining technology, along the lines of the Galactics' ionic miners. But they generally left their normals on the surface farming, strip mining and gathering.

  Then he saw what was following the column into the cavern and nearly choked to death.

  * * *

  Ryan looked over at the fire control officer and tapped his monitor. "Send a sensor round in the next volley."

  As the day had progressed more and more people had gotten in on the act but, by and large, that had been good. Controlling this many artillery batteries, and their care and feeding or at least resupply of rounds, was no job for a single engineer major. Among other things, dozens of intelligence specialists had gotten into the act, massaging every bit of data collected for hard evidence of the Posleen's intentions.

  So far the information was ambiguous. There was no question that the Posleen seemed to be acting in a more "logical" fashion than they usually did. But that didn't mean they were a greater threat. With the exception of the EMP grenade, there had been no new weapons. And while there were some improved tactics, they had not notably improved as shown by their chase of Mosovich.

  It had been quite a while since the sergeant major's last call for fire and they had been desultorily pounding the hilltop, with only one battery now, for the last two hours. But there had been lulls like it throughout the day and it was, judging from past experience, just about time for another call.

  "Sensor round inbound, sir," the lieutenant said, shunting the data to his monitor.

  The round was based on a standard 155 millimeter round. But instead of explosive it carried more dangerous weapons: a camera and a radio.

  As the round left the distant artillery gun, a shroud fell away and the camera was uncased. Using an internal gyroscope it compensated the sensor mount against the spin of the round and kept the camera pointed at the indicated target, which in this case was the ground.

  The camera was only a sophisticated visual light system; transmitting systems such as millimeter wave radar were engaged by every God King and lander in sight. But the visual light system was able to pick out the shapes of Posleen and Posleen devices from the background clutter, sending the data back to the intelligence center in narrowly directed, short, encrypted bursts.

  Despite the short, directed transmissions, the Posleen were able to detect and destroy the rounds most of the time in flight and they did so in this case, catching the round as it passed over Lake Burton, but leaving all its non-transmitting brethren, who only carried high explosives and lethal shrapnel, alive.

  Ryan shook his head in bafflement. None of the humans could understand why the Posleen were so damned effective at destroying anything that maneuvered or transmitted, but left "ordinary" artillery alone. He checked the FireFinder radar, which actively worked with the gun targeting systems to ensure accuracy, and, sure enough, the rest of the rounds went on their way to the target.

  The picture that had come back from the round was interesting enough. The artillery had reached over fourteen thousand feet in its parabolic arc, and the "visual footprint" had stretched from Dahlonega to Lake Hartwell. There were red traces of Posleen throughout the area, but the majority of them were concentrated around Clarkesville and Lynch Mountain. In other areas the centaurs were scattered. Clarkesville was still obscured because of the angle of flight of the round and the resolution on the Posleen around Lynch Moutain wasn't all that great.

  "Get the intel guys to massage this as much as they can," Ryan said, scrolling his view around the snapshot of the battle and zooming in on the area around Mosovich. "In the next volleys I want you to have them set the sensor rounds so that they don't go active until they are a few seconds out. That way we may not have as wide a field of view, but we'll at least be able to see what we're hitting. Or not hitting. It's pretty clear that the Posleen are beyond our current fire point."

  "Should I adjust fire, sir?" the lieutenant at the artillery control station asked.

  "No," Ryan answered. "When Mosovich wants it, he'll call for it." Ryan pulled up a topographic map of the area, zoomed the resolution and then laid on recent overhead. After scratching his chin for a second he grunted. "But take everything that's not tasked and put it right . . . there," he continued, pointing to the saddle with a feral grin. "It's the only place there's a path the Posleen could use."

  "Do you think that the sergeant major is up on the mountain?" the lieutenant asked, scanning his own system for a trace of the NCO. "I don't see him anywhere."

  "Oh, he's there, somewhere," Ryan answered. "What I don't know, is where in the hell he thinks he's going."

  CHAPTER 13

  Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III

  1925 EDT Monday September 14, 2009 ad

  Major John Mansfield crouched low, hiding in the shadows of the roof of the trailer. He could hear the crunch of gravel as his target approached and this time there would be no way to escape. He'd been tracking him for the last four days and tonight would be the time of reckoning. Preparing to spring he pulled his legs under him and clutched the sheaf of paperwork attached to a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other; being adjutant for the Ten Thousand was no picnic.

  As the official personnel officer for eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-three soldiers, officer and enlisted, all of whom were about as safe as Bengal Tigers, his was not always the funnest job. But the worst part was trying to pin the colonel down long enough to do his paperwork.

  It had become something of a game. Cutprice would set up an obstacle course, human and often physical, between himself and hi
s adjutant. Mansfield would try to pass it to get the colonel to take his paperwork in hand. Once a human being put something, anything, in the colonel's hand, he was very concientious about completing it. But forget putting it in an "In" box.

  But this time Mansfield had him dead to rights. The colonel had become a little too complacent, a little too regular in his schedule. And Mansfield had used all the tricks. A dummy was occupying his bed so no one would know he was stalking the night. No one had seen him crossing the compound so none of the troops would give him away this time. And a female trooper who really needed the colonel to sign a waiver so she could be promoted out of zone, a waiver that had been approved by her company commander, the sergeant major and the adjutant, had spent the evening plying the colonel with Bushmills. With any luck his defenses would be low enough that Mansfield would surprise him for once.

  He crouched lower and leaned to the side, peering around the sign announcing that this simple single-wide trailer was the residence of the commander of the Ten Thousand. He glimpsed a shadow and consulted his watch. Yes, it was precisely the time the colonel should be showing up. He readied the pen and prepared to spring as a voice spoke over his shoulder.

  "You lookin' for me, Mansfield?"

  Major Mansfield stood up and looked at the figure that was now standing on the stoop of the porch. Now that it was in the light it was clear that the figure was both shorter and darker than the colonel. And wore the wrong rank.

  "Sergeant Major Wacleva, I am, frankly, shocked that you would stoop so low as to assist this juvenile delinquent over my shoulder in his avoidance of duty!"

  "Ah, don't take it personal, Major," the young looking sergeant major responded in a gravelly voice. "It is the age-old dichotomy of the warrior and the beancounter!"