When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  The good part about this was that the combination took him well out from the ledge. He had chosen his spot carefully and he had actually been standing on an overhang. However, the ground started to slope outward after only a few hundred feet long so it was important to get prepared quickly.

  The static rappel system was one of the first that used the more advanced Galactic sciences in a device of purely human design and manufacture. Humans had implemented "old" Galactic technology, some of which was close to the cutting edge of human tech and theory, in many designs. New gun barrels were the most common devices, but there were also some small railguns designed for humans and "human only" fusion plants, that were only five or six times the size of equivalent Galactic and about a third as efficient.

  This device was the first that used theories that were beyond human ken. The Tchpth considered gravity to be, at best, a toy and, at worst, a minor nuisance. A few of their "simpler" theories were explainable to humans, such as the theory that led to the Galactic bounce tube.

  When Indowy wanted to travel up or down in their megascrapers, they generally travelled by bounce tube. This was a narrow tube that went to a specific floor. You entered it and if you were at the bottom it shot you to the top and if you were at the top it let you drop to a screaming (in initial usage this was literal) stop at the bottom. What it took humans a while to discover was that while bounce tubes were "active" devices on the lift side, they were "passive" on the drop. That is, a device at the bottom detected something coming in at high velocity, generated a very minor field and when the item hit the field it was decelerated using its own positive momentum for energy.

  The Tchpth and Indowy considered this purely efficient. The humans initially considered it magic.

  However, after staying up for several days, smoking a large amount of an illicit substance and taking a very long shower, a research grad at CalTech suddenly realized that if you took some of the things that the Tchpth were saying and turned them on their sides . . . sort of, it was a lot of very good stuff . . . it made a certain amount of sense. Then she wrote them down and slept for three days.

  After deciphering what she wrote, which, as far as anyone but her mother was concerned was apparently Sanskrit, she created a little box that when thrown at a wall "threw back." The energy usage involved was no more than that of a small sensor and it always threw back, even when fired from a low velocity pneumatic cannon. (The cannon was called a "chicken gun" and was usually used to test aircraft windshields. But that is another story.)

  There was a current upper limit on the device, that is, when fired at very high velocity it tended to break the windshield, and it was better at stopping itself than it was at stopping stuff coming at it. So there was no "personal forcefield."

  In other words, it was a very fast way to get to the ground in relative safety.

  The device was modified and adjusted until it didn't just stop itself, but created a "static repulsion zone" which, when there was a situation of sudden kinetic change, damped that change. Then it was turned over to TRW for manufacturing purposes. The device was being installed on every vehicle still on the roads and in other places where sudden stops happened in a bad way. And it was issued to all the LRRP teams.

  Mosovich looked down at the rapidly approaching ground and swore he was never, ever going to do this again. "It's not the fall that kills you," he whispered.

  Generally, if you're going down a cliff or the face of a building, the best way is to rappel. Tie off a rope, hook up any number of devices and lower yourself on the rope. However, there are any number of cases where this is impractical; ropes are not infinitely lengthy. There was another device available that used a very thin wire for the same purpose. And Mosovich really wished he had one with him. But they were much harder to construct than the static repulsion boxes and weren't standard issue. Given the number of times this sort of thing came up, he was definitely getting one for everyone in the team and keeping them.

  The problem was that static repulsion systems didn't slow your fall at all until they came near solid materials. For example, this system was going to completely ignore the trees he was just about to hit.

  * * *

  "Fuscirto uut!" Orostan shouted, jumping over the corpse of the last oolt'os and darting to the edge. His talons scrabbled on the rock as he almost slid over the side then he looked down the cliff face just in time to see the human disappear into the trees below.

  "You cannot escape me that easily!" the oolt'ondai shouted to the winds, knowing that the words were a lie. "I will still eat your heart!"

  Orostan looked out over the valley below and screamed in rage. The sun was sinking to the northwest and before anyone could get to the landing area the human, if it was alive, and he doubted that it had just committed suicide, would be kilometers away. In any of three directions.

  Cholosta'an came up beside him and looked down. After a moment he pointed downwards with a flap of his crest.

  "Yes," Orostan ground out.

  "Alive?" the younger Kessentai asked.

  "Probably," Orostan snarled. "And there was only one."

  Cholosta'an thought about that for a moment. "The last time we had a good count it was over by the town of Seed. There were four."

  "Yes," Orostan said. "Four."

  "And now there was only one," Cholosta'an said. "One. And no bodies."

  "No."

  "Oh. Fuscirto uut."

  "I'll send someone around to look for a corpse," Orostan said after a few moments' contemplation. "But I doubt they'll find anything." He looked at his tenaral and started to wonder who. Finally he turned away and started back down the hill. The human might have escaped today, but it undoubtedly was "based" beyond the Gap. Its time would come. Soon.

  * * *

  As the last Posleen normal faded out of sight, the "rock" that Mosovich had been standing on shifted and rippled, revealing something that looked very much like a four-eyed, blotchy, purple frog. The creature, if it was stretched out, would have been about eight feet from four-fingered foot-hand to foot-hand and was perfectly symetrical; it had two hands and two eyes on either end with a complex something in the area where a nose might be.

  The Himmit scout leaned out from the rock, its rear two foot-hands spreading out over the surface for purchase, and noted the faint heat signature moving away that was probably the human. He then levered himself back and looked towards the retreating Posleen. Such decisions. Human/Posleen, Human/Posleen? Finally, deciding that humans were always more interesting than Posleen—who basically ate, killed and reproduced and who could make a story from that?—it leaned sideways and started flowing from handhold to handhold down the cliff.

  Such exciting times.

  CHAPTER 14

  Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III

  0928 EDT Tuesday September 15, 2009 ad

  Mike looked around the room and then undogged his helmet. The command and staff of the 1st/555th was grouped in a kindergarten schoolroom, sitting on the floor to use the undersized tables. The battlescarred combat suits made an unpleasant contrast to the colored drawings on the walls and the prominent poster of the five food groups.

  "Well, we've had worse meetings." He chuckled as the last of the gel underlayer from his suit streamed off into his helmet. "Much worse."

  "Yep," Duncan agreed as he set his helmet carefully on the desk in front of him. The plasteel was still heavy and hard enough to mar the stick drawing of a little girl with "Ashley" written below it. "At least nobody is shooting at us."

  "We'll get back to that pretty soon," Mike said. He worked the ball of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other and spit into his helmet. The nannites of the semibiotic underlayer gathered up the disgusting glop which, from its perspective, was simply moisture, nutrients and complex carbon molecules, and carried them off to be reprocessed. "There's groups of Posleen holed up all along the bottom of the Plain. We're going to help with the mop-up for the next week or so as reaction
forces. After that, Horner has ordered us to move to our barracks and take some time off. Given that we had to reconsolidate without Alpha company, I think some time in barracks is called for."

  "We've got barracks?" Stewart asked with a chuckle. "I mean, like, real barracks that are ours and everything? Or are we going to a 'rest and recreation' barracks?" he asked with a grimace. The facilities were run by Ground Forces and varied wildly.

  "They're ours," O'Neal said with a grin. "They've been on my books the whole damned time. They're in the mountains in Pennsylvania. A place called Newry, just south of Altoona. We've even got a rear detachment."

  "We do?" Duncan asked, bemusedly. "I would have thought the S-3 would know about that sort of thing."

  "It's not all that big," Mike said. "And they're all seconded from Ground Forces. But there's a supply officer and a personnel section."

  "And barracks?" Captain Slight said with a light chuckle. "With beds and stuff?"

  "The same," O'Neal said with another grin. "I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep in one; the last time I tried I was up all night tossing and turning."

  "I think the troops will adjust," Gunny Pappas said, shaking his head now that he'd doffed his helmet. "They seriously need some down time. And there's gear that needs work, even the GalTech gear."

  "We'll do all of that," Mike said. "My basic plan is this. We should arrive, transportation being available, on Monday or Tuesday. We'll spend a day cleaning up the barracks and our gear and morguing the suits. Then a day or two on short days around the barracks, getting used to wearing silks again and working on our dress stuff. Friday we'll have a real honest to God 'payday activities' with an inspection of the barracks and dress uniform inspection followed by a battalion formation and dismissal by noon. Everybody to be back in formation no earlier than noon the next Tuesday."

  "You know, I don't know how that will go over," Captain Holder said. "Frankly, I think some of the troops will view it as . . . well . . ."

  "Chickenshit, sir?" Gunny Pappas said. "With all due respect, Captain, I disagree. . . ."

  "So do I," Stewart interjected. "And I disagree as a former troop. All of these troops are volunteers. You don't get to the point that we're at without realizing that there's a reason for all the happy horseshit in garrison. Sure, you ignore most of it in combat, but the best, the most elite troops, have always been the snazziest dressers."

  "Waffen SS," Duncan noted. "Now there were some guys who knew how to wear a uniform."

  "The 82nd," Captain Slight noted. "They were chosen for the role of Honor Guard in post-WWII Europe mainly on the basis of how well they dressed out. And nobody can fault their combat record."

  "Rhodesian SAS and the Selous Scouts," O'Neal said in agreement. "Two of the baddest groups ever to come out of the Cold War and they were like peacocks in garrison; Dad still has his uniform and it looks like something from a Hungarian opera."

  "Okay, okay," Captain Holder said, holding up his hands. "But do the troops know that?"

  "We'll give 'em evenings off," Mike said. "Short passes; they'll need to be back to barracks by a curfew. There's a reason for it. Gunny?"

  "You don't just rip soldiers right out of combat and drop them on a town, sir," Gunny Pappas said with a nod. "You have to . . . acclimatize them first."

  "We'll give them a week of 'chickenshit' to acclimatize, and a week for the town to get used to the idea and more or less prepared, and then we'll let them go for a weekend. I don't see us having more than a couple of weeks, maybe a month, in garrison. We'll let them unwind for a bit then train back up and then . . ."

  "Back to killing Posleen," Duncan said with a growl.

  "Back to making Posleen sausage," Mike agreed. "What we do best."

  "We getting any replacements, sir?" Pappas asked. "We're . . . getting a little low on bodies in case nobody had noticed."

  "There are twelve suits in the pipeline," O'Neal said. "They're all supposed to be waiting for us when we get to Newry."

  "And bodies?" Captain Slight asked. "Even with the troops we picked up from Alpha, we're under manning."

  "And bodies," Mike agreed. "Given that we have some mopping up to do, the bodies should be there in time to get the suits fitted and even dialed in. I understand we're even getting a couple from the Ten Thousand."

  * * *

  "Ten shut!" Sunday called as Colonel Cutprice entered the room.

  The conference room was in the offices of a factory, long since abandoned, just west of the Genesee River. The blasts from SheVa rounds, which had levelled practically every prominence east of the Genesee, had blown out the windows of the room and Cutprice strode across crackling glass as he entered. But it was better than being outside; the rains had set in again and it looked to be turning to snow soon.

  "At ease, rest even," Cutprice said, striding over to the group of four troopers. He was trailed by Mansfield, carrying a set of boxes, and the sergeant major, similarly weighed down.

  "Smoke 'em if you got 'em," he continued, suiting action to words as he pulled out a pack of Dunhills. They were getting hard to find so he saved them for special occasions.

  "You might be wondering why I called you here and all that . . ." He smiled and nodded at the boxes. "All of you transferred in from other units, and when you got here we took a rank away from you to make sure that you could cut the mustard, that you weren't just garrison rangers with great counseling statements and no damned heart for war." He looked at Sunday and shook his head.

  "As it turned out, you all were what the Ten Thousand wanted; warriors to the core, psychotic motherfucking Posleen killers, willing to walk into the fire over and over and never flinch." He shook his head again, this time in sorrow. "And now we're losing you to those ACS bastards.

  "Well, those ACS bastards do the same thing," he noted, taking the first box. "They take a stripe away when you get there, just to make sure you're what they need in a warm body. Then they stuff you in a can until you look like a worm that crawled out from under a rock." He glanced at the note attached to the box and nodded.

  "Sunday, get your ass over here," he growled. "I don't know if your old unit did this before you came here, but they should have. Most of you is getting bumped a rank before you leave, that way when you get to the damned clankers you'll end up at the rank you have, by God, earned.

  "The exception," he continued, looking up at Sunday, "is you, Tank. I'd been thinking about doing this for a while and I don't know what took me so long." He glanced at Mansfield then looked away. "Some paperwork problem. Anyway, I'm going to screw you for all time. You ready?"

  "Yes, sir," Sunday said in confusion. "Whatever you think is best."

  "Okay, if you're that trusting," Cutprice said with an evil grin, "you deserve this. Attention to orders!

  "Staff Sergeant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is released from Service of the United States Ground Forces September 17, 2009, for the Purposes of accepting a commission as a Regular Officer of the United States Ground Forces and concurrent reentry to the United States Ground Forces as First Lieutenant. First Lieutenant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is ordered to active duty this September 17, 2009, with date of rank September 17, 2009." Cutprice stopped reading, reached in his bellows pocket, pulled out a battered pair of first lieutenant's bars and replaced Sunday's staff sergeant collar stripes. "You don't owe me anything for these, by the way. I had them rattling around in the back of my desk."

  * * *

  "Very well, Orostan," Tulo'stenaloor said. "I'll send Shartarsker in to make sure they are not coming closer to the base." He looked at the map and considered the report the oolt'ondai had sent in. "Good luck."

  Goloswin looked up from the sensor readout. "It does not go well?"

  "The team apparently has escaped," Tulo'stenaloor said. "After ravaging Orostan's oolt'ondar."

  "Well, they are not in the sensor region," Goloswin said, gesturing at the map. "Or at least not marking themselves as such. I'm not sure if they can at this point. There is
a way to communicate with these boxes without other devices, but this assumes the humans are as clever as I am."

  "So even if they are in the sensor net, we might not know it?" Tulo'stenaloor asked.

  "Yes," Goloswin answered, ruffling his crest. "There is a way to modify their software to make them detect humans. The sensors 'see' the humans, but they also see the thresh of the woods and all the greater thresh of this planet. The 'deer' and 'dogs' and such-like that have survived. The humans have designed the systems, quite efficiently I might add, to sort through the information they collect in several different ways. And it sorts out anything but Posleen and humans that are 'in the net' and telling it they are there and want to be tracked. Thus I would have to tell all the boxes to change their filters to find humans. And even then it would assume the humans are not cloaking themselves in any of several ways. I could do it—I am, after all, clever. But the humans might, probably would, notice. They, too, have clever technicians."

  "And then they would know that we . . . How did you put it?" Tulo'stenaloor asked.

  "They would know that they have been 'hacked,' " Goloswin said. "That we 'own' their system."

  "We don't want to do that," Tulo'stenaloor mused. "Yet."

  "What do you want to do in the meantime?" Goloswin asked. "Or can I go back to tinkering?"

  "Just one last question," the War Leader said. "Can you set the system to 'filter' out the Po'oslena'ar?"

  * * *

  Wendy shook her head as she watched Elgars finish up her workout. The sniper always closed with an exercise that was peculiar to her. She had suspended a weight, in this case fifty pounds of standard metal barbell weights, from a rope. The rope, in turn, was wrapped around a dowel; actually a chopped down mop handle.

  Elgars would then "winch" up the weights by twisting the rope in her hands. Up and slowly back down, fifty times. Wendy was lucky if she could do it five times.