When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  "Captain," he said over the shrilling of the children in the background. "I don't think we can get a good read on how you really feel about your abilities in this environment."

  Elgars looked at him for second, looked at Wendy then looked back. "So, what would you suggest?"

  "Mueller suggests that the four of us go take a turn up on the surface. Maybe go to dinner, go to a range, see how you feel about being in an environment other than . . ." at which point Shakeela started with one of her patented howls " . . . a daycare center."

  "Sergeant Major Mosovich," Wendy asked with a raised eyebrow, "are you suggesting a double date?"

  "No," Mosovich said. "Just a chance to talk somewhere other than in here."

  "Uh, huh," Wendy said, glancing at Mueller, who returned a look that said butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "Well, Shari can't take care of the children alone. I think that Captain Elgars is capable of taking care of herself, however, so why don't the three of you go?"

  "Okay," Mosovich said with a shrug. "Works for me."

  "Hold it," Elgars said. "Wendy, how long has it been since you've been to the surface?"

  "November?" Wendy asked with a frown.

  "Uh, huh," Elgars said. "What year?"

  "Uh . . ." Wendy shook her head. "2007?"

  "And how long has it been since Shari had anything resembling a break?" Elgars asked.

  "Taking the kids to the surface wouldn't be a break," Wendy noted. "But . . . I don't think she's been out of the Urb since we came here from Fredericksburg. And the last time I was up there was . . . was to give testimony," she continued with a stony face.

  "Well, I think we should all take a trip up to the surface," Elgars said.

  "With the kids?" Mosovich asked incredulously.

  "Sure," Mueller said. "With the kids. Stress testing for the captain."

  "Christ, okay, whatever," Mosovich said, raising his hands. "Stress testing for me. We'll all go up top and have dinner someplace in Franklin. See how Elgars handles being out and about. I'll include that in my report and we'll see what Colonel Cutprice says."

  "I could use some help," Shari said, walking over.

  "Well, that clarifies that," Wendy said with a laugh.

  "Clarifies what?"

  "The sergeant major needs to spend some time around Captain Elgars," Mueller noted. "I recommended going to the surface, along with Wendy so that the captain wouldn't be completely alone. Wendy pointed out that you needed too much help with the kids for her to leave. So it came down to inviting all of you to the surface."

  "Where, on the surface?" Shari asked nervously.

  "There's at least one decent place in Franklin, I think," Mosovich noted. "It's an R&R area for the corps. There's got to be someplace."

  "I dunno," said Shari, reluctantly. "Franklin? It . . ."

  "It doesn't have a very good reputation down here," Wendy noted with a grim chuckle.

  "We don't go there much either," Mueller said. "But, trust me, the food's better than down here."

  "I'm not sure . . ." Shari said.

  "Well, I am," Wendy argued. "How long have we been down here? Five years? How long since you've seen the sun?"

  "Long time," Shari whispered with a nod. "Except for Billy, I don't think any of the kids remember what it looks like."

  "There will be three trained soldiers with us," Wendy noted. "It will be safe. It will be a chance for the kids to look at the surface. How bad can it be?"

  "There's basically no Posleen activity at the moment," Mosovich pointed out. "There's a globe around Clarkesville acting funny, but they haven't done anything either. Except chase us around the hills."

  "Okay," Shari said after a moment's thought. "Let's do it. Like you said, Wendy, how bad can it be?"

  * * *

  "You've completely outgrown this, Billy," Shari said, adjusting Billy's windbreaker as Wendy negotiated for her personal weapon.

  "This is . . . unbelievable," she said looking at the weapon. It was an Advanced Infantry Weapon, the standard issue weapon for the Ground Forces, a 7.62 semi-automatic rifle with a 20mm grenade launcher on the underside. This one had been personalized with a laser sight on the top.

  Had.

  "Where's my laser sight?" she asked angrily, turning the rusted weapon over and over. "I turned this in with a Leupold four power scope that was laser mounted. There does not appear to be a Leupold scope on this weapon. There also were three more magazines. And you made me turn in my two hundred rounds of ammo that weren't in the mags. So where is all that?"

  "The inventory just lists the weapon," the guard said, looking at his screen. "No ammo, no scope, no magazines."

  "Well, bugger that," Wendy said, leaning forward to shove a faded receipt against the greenish glass. "You want to read this motherfucking receipt, asshole? What the fuck am I supposed to do with a weapon and no goddamned rounds?"

  "Wendy," Mosovich said, pulling at her arm. "Give it up. There's no scope. There's no rounds. These assholes shot them off long ago. And the scope is probably on this dickhead's personal weapon. That he hasn't shot in a year."

  "You want to get out of here at all you better jack up that attitude, Lurp-Boy," the guard snarled from behind the glass.

  Mueller leaned forward until his nose was within inches of the armored glass and smiled. "HEY!" he shouted, then laughed as the guard jumped. He reached into the billow pockets of his blouse and pulled out a charge of C-4. Pulling off an adhesive cover he applied it to the glass then began patting his pockets, muttering "Detonators, detonators . . ."

  Mosovich smiled. "You wanna open the doors or you want I should come in and press the button?"

  He smiled and nodded as the armored doors behind him slid back. "Thanks so very much. And if you're thinking about dicking around with the elevators, let me just point out that that means we'll have to come back."

  "And . . . have a nice day," Mueller said, taking Kelly's hand and heading for the door.

  "I can't believe this," Wendy snarled as she turned the rifle over and over in her hands. "I dropped this thing off immaculate. Like the day it came from the factory."

  "I doubt it would even work now," Mueller said with a sigh. "Those things are a bastard when they rust. It's the firing mechanism; it's fragile as hell."

  "Don't worry about it," Mosovich said. "It's not like we're going to get jumped by the Posleen in Franklin."

  "We heard they were all over the place," Shari asked nervously, as they reached the elevators to the surface. "That people are killed every day."

  "Oh, they are," Mueller said walking over to hit the elevator button. The elevator was huge, easily large enough to carry a semi-trailer, separated into lines by a chain and post arrangement. Several of the chains dangled free and one of the posts rolled on the ground as it lurched sideways. "There must be three or four civilians killed every day by ferals. You know how many people were killed every day in car wrecks before the war?"

  "Yeah," Mosovich agreed. "Death rates, excepting combat casualties, have dropped in the States."

  "Why are we going sideways?" Elgars interjected.

  "Oh, sorry, I forgot you've never been in one," Mosovich said. "There are multiple elevators for each shaft, so that incoming refugees could be shuttled down really fast. There's an 'up' shaft and a 'down' shaft and they slide between the two." He nodded as the structure shuddered and began to rise. "I've been on one that got stuck; wasn't pleasant. Anyway, where were we?"

  "Reduced death rate," Shari said.

  "Not reduced overall, mind you," Mueller said. "Combat casualty rates have made up for it."

  "How many?" Elgars asked. "I mean, combat casualties?"

  "Sixty-two million," Mosovich said. "In the U.S. and of American military forces. And that's just the military losses. Pales compared to China and India, mind you, but still pretty bad."

  "Six . . ." Shari gasped. "Could you say that again?"

  "Sixty-two million," Mueller said quietly. "At the height of t
he war there were nearly that many under arms in the Contiguous U.S., what they call CONUS, and in the Expeditionary Forces. But in the last five years, most combat units, most infantry battalions, have had three casualties for every position in them. That is, they have had three hundred percent casualties. At its height, the American portion of the EFs had nearly forty million personnel. But the total casualties have topped that and the AEF is below twelve million, and only half of that is actual 'shooting at the Posleen' fighters."

  "And there's a steady attrition in the interior," Mosovich added. "There's still landings from time to time; there was a globe that made it down, mostly intact, near Salt Lake just last year."

  "We heard about that," Wendy said. "But . . . nothing like those casualty figures."

  "They're not very open with them," Mosovich agreed. "Add in the forty million or so civilian casualties and the fact that we're fighting this war in the middle of a 'drop' in males of prime military age and we're . . . well, we're getting bled white. Even with rejuving older guys, taking a person that has never held a weapon in their hands and teaching when they are eighteen is one thing, doing it when they're fifty is . . . different. They, generally, aren't stupid enough to be good soldiers. Not cannon fodder soldiers. Young guys want to be heroes so the women will love them and have their babies. Old guys just want to live to see the next sunrise."

  "Which just makes keeping women out of combat units stupid," Wendy said, shaking her head at the condition of her rifle. "This is . . ." She shook her head again. "I know that I can depend on you big strong men to protect me. But I don't want to have to!"

  "Don't sweat it," Mosovich said with a chuckle. "We'll find you a weapon. And women generally aren't stupid enough either; they can have babies any time they want. That being said; I don't agree with the policy either, but nobody can seem to get it changed."

  He stepped through the door into a concrete room. It was about fifty meters wide and a hundred deep with black lines painted on the floor. The walls were covered in condensation and a steady breeze blew out of the elevator towards the glass doors at the end. Halfway down the room there was a series of small bunkers. As they approached them it was clear that most of them were half filled with dirt and garbage, some of it blown in, but much of it dropped into them by passersby. Many of the lines on the floor had peeled up and there was trash all over the room, although clearly little of it was new.

  "I think I know the real reason that it's nearly impossible for females to get in Ground Force these days," Mosovich noted. "But it's a nasty reason and you won't like it."

  "I've dealt with a lot of stuff I don't like," Wendy said. "My life seems to consist of dealing with stuff I don't like."

  "In that case I think the casualties are the answer, two answers really," Mosovich said.

  "The first reason is that we're being bled white. We've lost about eighty percent of our productive-age male population. But even with combat casualties, we've only lost about thirty of our productive-age females . . ."

  "We're breeders," Wendy said.

  "Yep," Mosovich agreed. "The powers that be are obviously thinking that when the Posleen are kicked off planet, it won't do much good to have nobody left but a bunch of old women and a few children to 'carry on.' So they're conserving the breeding population."

  "It takes two to tango," Shari pointed out, adjusting Shakeela's coat. The bunker was quite cool compared to the underground city they had left and it was clear that the fall had settled in up here. "Where are the 'breeders' going to find . . ."

  "Guys?" Mueller asked. "It's not a nice answer, but it doesn't take many guys to make lots of babies, but it's a one for one ratio with women."

  "He's right," Mosovich said. "It's not nice, but it is true. That's only half the story, though.

  "In the first wave there were massive conventional casualties. There was a real question whether we were going to hold everywhere and we didn't hold a couple of places. Losses among combat formations were huge. And there was a . . . a disparity in female losses versus male. Losses among women in combat units were nearly equal to males, but they only comprised a third of the force at the maximum.

  "I read your whole packet, Captain," he continued doggedly. "And I'd already read a classified after-action report in which you were a minor bit player. You did a good job at the Monument, no question, but if it hadn't been for Keren, you'd be dead right now. And your . . . experiences in the retreat from Dale City are one of the classic egregious examples."

  "Who's Keren?" Elgars asked. "And what do you mean by that?"

  "Keren is a captain with the Ten Thousand," Mueller said as they reached the doors. There were two sets with a chamber in between and they acted as partial airlocks, reducing the blast of wind that was trying to escape the bunker. "He was in a mortar platoon near the rear of the retreat. He apparently picked you up during the retreat and you rode with him all the way to the Monument."

  "You'd been dumped by another unit," Mosovich said tightly. He turned left and headed up the wide stairs on the exterior. There were two sets of those as well, one on each side of the entrance. There was a walkway on the wall opposite the doors that joined them near the top. Running along the surface on that side were small concrete combat positions, which were accessible from the walkway. On the far side was an open area nearly two hundred meters across and then a large parking lot filled with dirt covered cars and trucks and one Humvee, parked on the grass on the verge.

  "That was what happened to a good many females in that retreat and others. Some units returned with nearly one hundred percent female casualties versus fifty to sixty percent casualties among the males."

  "Well, the actual incidence of why she was dumped wasn't that high," Mueller pointed out.

  "Why was I 'dumped'?" the captain said carefully.

  "You'd been raped," Mosovich said tightly. "Then they took away your sniper rifle and dumped you with an AIW and a single magazine."

  "Oh," Elgars said. "That's . . . annoying in a distant way."

  "So, you're saying that they don't want me in the Ground Forces because I might get raped in a retreat?" Wendy said angrily. "Then they shouldn't ought to let their damned soldiers in the Sub-Urbs!"

  "Am I to take it that's why you were so uncomfortable coming to the surface with us?" Mueller said. "In that case, I'm sorry I asked. And if you'll give me a name and unit I'll take care of it."

  "I was just giving testimony," Wendy said. She stopped at the top of the stairs blinking her eyes against the light and looked down at the town.

  Franklin had been a small, somewhat picturesque city nestled in lightly inhabited hills before the war. Its main industry was supporting the local farmers and retirees who had moved up from Florida to get away from the crime.

  With the change to a war footing, it became a vital linchpin in the southern Appalachian defenses. Units from just south of Asheville to Ellijay depended upon it for supply and administration.

  The city was now overrun by soldiers and their encampments stretched up the hills on either side of it. The small strip mall that the entrance overlooked had been taken over by pawnbrokers and T-shirt shops with the only sign of "normal" presence being a dry cleaner.

  She looked down over the bustle and shrugged. "When . . . when the Urb was first set up anyone could come and go at any time. That was . . . good at first. The corps did a lot of good in the Urb. And . . . there was a lot of dating. Most of the corps was male and most of the Urb is female so . . . things naturally happened. Then . . . the . . . the attitude sort of changed."

  "A lot of the girls in the Urb were . . . lonely," Shari said. "They would take up with the soldiers and some of the soldiers practically moved into the Urb. A lot of what you could call 'black market' transfers went on; you used to be able to find coffee even. But then things started getting out of hand. The security force wasn't large enough, or effective enough, to keep the soldiers under control and they had an authority dispute with the corps MPs, who were
numerous enough and quite ready to crack heads."

  "We ended up having a . . ." Wendy shrugged her shoulders and shuddered. "Well, one of the officers that was involved in the investigation referred to it as a 'sack' during a long weekend. Something like a riot with a lot of rapes. I made it to the range and Dave and I sort of stood off the couple of groups that came around us."

  "I had a . . . well, a group of . . . boys really that were like kids I was taking care of," Shari noted. "A couple of them were there when the riots started. I was okay."

  "Others weren't," Wendy said darkly. "So we don't like the corps in the Urb. Anyway, the Urb was put off-limits to military personnel . . ."

  "Unless they had orders," Mueller pointed out.

  "Unless they had orders to go there," Wendy agreed. "And now they stay up here and we stay down there and any girls who want to go . . ."

  "Ply a trade?" Mosovich asked. "I get the point. But you don't have to worry about human threats either."

  "Oh, I'm not worried," Wendy said, stroking her rusted rifle. "It might be a bit screwed up, but it will do for a club if it comes to that . . ."

  CHAPTER 16

  Ground Force Headquarters, Ft. Knox, KY, United States, Sol III

  1453 EDT Thursday September 24, 2009 ad

  General Horner read the debrief of the recon team with a blank expression. His intelligence section was of two minds about it; Mosovich had an excellent reputation, but nobody had ever seen flying tanks before.

  Horner didn't have a problem in the world with the information. It was bad. That was normal.

  He sighed and pulled up a graph that he knew he looked at too much. It was his own AID's estimate, based upon all available information, of . . . relative combat strength in the United States. It took into account that the casualty ratio of humans to Posleen tended to be about one thousand to one, but it also took into account the dwindling supplies of soldiers and Posleen birthrates. What it said was that sometime in the next twelve months, when the current crop of Posleen nestlings reached maturity and were given their weapons, there would be enough Posleen to swamp every major pass in the Appalachians. And it wouldn't even take smart Posleen.