When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  Elgars set down the disassembled trigger mechanism and picked up a corroded spring. "What's a boyfriend?"

  Cally laughed. "Good question. There aren't any families left in the Gap; they all moved out because of the Posleen being right over the ridge. So there aren't any boys around to have as boyfriends. And . . . well, given who my daddy and granddaddy are, I'm not impressed with the quality of the soldiers. And they're all too old for me. And only interested in one thing."

  "Yeah, let me write the book about that one," Wendy said with a laugh. "Fortunately I have a magic charm to use on them. All I do is show them a picture of my boyfriend and they tend to leave me alone. And I can deal with the ones that don't."

  "Oh, they're not so much trouble these days," Cally said with a shrug. "Not since I shot the 103rd Division sergeant major."

  "You're joking," Wendy coughed, trying to suppress a laugh.

  "Nope," the thirteen-year-old said with a grin. "That's when I switched from a Walther to the H&K. We were in town and this fat old soldier followed me around until he cornered me in the hardware store. He wouldn't take no for an answer so I pulled out the Walther and put a round through his kneecap. That got his attention.

  "They initially tried to charge me as a juvenile with intended murder. Then I got the grand jury to go out to the range with me. They dropped the charges—the foreman noted that if I was attempting murder the sergeant major would be . . . how did he put it? 'pushing up privet hedge'—and charged him with attempted rape instead. I understand he's limping around a prison to this day. Since then, and since Pappy quit letting most people come over to the farm, there haven't been any problems."

  "Why'd you switch?" Elgars asked. "Guns I mean."

  "Ah, they were holding the Walther as evidence," Cally answered with a shrug. "And my hands had finally gotten big enough for the H&K. Besides, that bitty little 7.62 just made a neat little hole in his knee. If I'd had the H&K it would have blown the back right out of the sucker. I really regretted that when I was in juvie hall; anybody tried to cop a feel on me I want to see bits of bone on the floor. I swore I'd never use a damned little 7.62 to shoot somebody again."

  Elgars chuckled and then shook her head as the spring in her hands snapped. "I don't think we can fix this, Wendy."

  "I think you're right," Wendy said with a sigh, putting aside the barrel. "This really pisses me off; it was a present from my boyfriend."

  "Well, I can't fix your present," Cally said with a shrug, holding the separated grenade breech up to the light and turning it back and forth. "Not quickly anyway. I think I could remachine all the action parts, even the ones for the grenade launcher which are a stone bitch. But the electronics are shot and I'm doubtful about this breech. I could probably make one of those with a few days work, but really, Wendy, I think it needs to be cannibalized for parts rather than used. Whatever you ended up with probably wouldn't be safe or reliable.

  "However, I think we can find a suitable replacement." She walked over to the back wall, keyed in a code on the safe and opened it up. "We have a few choices in here."

  "Good God." Wendy laughed, looking at the row on row of racked rifles that were dimly visible in the gloom. The "safe" was really a door to a large room, apparently set back into the hillside. She walked over to the door as Cally stepped through and flipped on the light switch.

  "I think we probably can," Wendy continued with another chuckle.

  There were four rifle racks in the room with just about enough weapons to equip a rifle platoon. If it was a very eclectic rifle platoon.

  The left-hand side was the "heavy" weapons, including at least three crewed machine guns, Barrett sniper rifles and a couple of other heavy rifles that were similar. The center double rack was devoted to rifles, both military style and hunting, while the right-hand rack was mostly submachine guns.

  The back wall was pistols—Wendy was pretty sure there were over a hundred—and a large variety of knives.

  Stacked on the floor, on both sides, under the racks, and in every corner all the way to the ceiling was case on case of ammunition.

  "Good God," Wendy said again. "This is . . ."

  "Kind of over the top?" Cally said with a grin. "I haven't even shot most of these. I still don't know what some of them are. And you don't even want to ask about the ammo. There's stuff in that pile I don't think the Feds realize they let into the country. I'll have to check with Granpa, but most of these," she continued, gesturing at the center and right racks, "are pretty standard weapons. You can pretty much take your pick."

  "It would just get fucked up again," Wendy noted darkly. "I'd have to leave it at security on the way in."

  "We can drop this one with Dave," Elgars pointed out. "I can carry it to him and he'll hold onto it. That way you can work with it and keep it in shape."

  "If you're sure," Wendy said, pulling a bullpup configured rifle from halfway down one rack. "I think you have two of these."

  "A Steyr," Cally said. "Good choice. That used to be mine as a matter of fact and I can let you have it on one condition."

  "What's that?" Wendy asked.

  Cally looked around as if anyone but the girls might hear, then shrugged. "I've got a few . . . girl questions I need answered."

  "Ah," Wendy said with a grimace. "Well, men and women are designed to be sexually complementary . . ." she said in a rote voice.

  "Not that kind of question," Cally said with a laugh. "You only have to listen a couple of times to Papa O'Neal when he's drunk and reminiscing about R&Rs in Bangkok to find out all about that you need to know. No, it's . . . something else."

  "What?" Wendy asked doubtfully.

  "Well . . ." Cally looked around again as if seeking inspiration from the weapons on the walls. "Well . . . how do you put on eyeshadow?" she asked plaintively.

  * * *

  "You're kidding," Shari said with a laugh. She was up to her elbows in corn on the cob and she couldn't have been happier; she couldn't remember the last time she had fresh corn and this was from the O'Neals' garden, a delicate hybrid that positively reeked of sugar.

  "No, I'm serious as a heart attack," Papa O'Neal countered as he sliced steaks off a beef portion. "She has no female influences at all. No female friends, hell, no friends near her age at all. For all practical purposes it has been me and the occasional screwball I let up here like this shrimp."

  "Just because I don't look like a gorilla, he calls me a shrimp," Mosovich said washing the potatoes. Given the suddenly descending hordes, Papa O'Neal fell back on easy and tried foods. But considering the rations that were standard among the combat troops, much less the Sub-Urbs, the meal would be ambrosia.

  "He doesn't look like a gorilla," Shari said in an off-hand manner. "So you want me, us, to talk to Cally about 'girl things' while we're here?"

  "Well, I don't want to be offensive," Papa O'Neal said. "But . . . the only thing I know about makeup is how to tell when somebody has been KGB trained to apply it. And I got her a book on . . . well . . . the whole feminine hygiene 'thing.' I . . . kind of need somebody to make sure she's doing it right."

  "Has she had her first period?" Shari asked calmly. She took a sniff of one of the ears and picked off a worm. There had been several in the corn, but she suspected that was the nature of having it fresh.

  "Yes," Papa O'Neal said uncomfortably. "I'd . . . laid in stocks. Fortunately."

  "Has she had to go to the doctor for 'female problems'?" Shari asked with a smile.

  "No."

  "Then she's doing it right," Shari said. "Why don't you have her discuss this with her OB-GYN?"

  "Uh, she doesn't have one," O'Neal admitted. "There's not one short of Franklin, and that one has a several month waiting list. And the local general practitioner has talked with her about . . . that sort of thing. But . . ."

  "Is it a 'he'?" Shari asked with a grimace.

  "Yeah."

  "I'll talk to her," she said.

  "And she's got some . . . contro
l problems," Papa O'Neal continued carefully.

  "She's going through puberty," Shari said with a laugh. "Who doesn't?"

  "Would you marry me?" Papa O'Neal said plaintively. "Never mind. I didn't ask that."

  "I understand," Shari said with a smile. "This has got to be tough. I think I've got some of the same problems with Billy, but they're not so obvious. Or they're overwhelmed by the other problems."

  "That's the . . . little boy?" Mosovich asked. "The one that never says anything?"

  "Yes," Shari said, stacking up the cleaned corn. "He's been that way since Fredericksburg. He's listening; he learns. He's not unintelligent and he'll even communicate through sign language, occasionally. But he never, ever, talks." She sighed. "I don't know what to do about it."

  "Make him a monk," Papa O'Neal said with a grim chuckle. "There's groups of them that are sworn to a vow of silence. Then he'll be right at home."

  "I suppose that is one choice," Shari said tartly.

  "Sorry," O'Neal said, stacking the beef. "Me and my big mouth. But if you decide to take that route, I know a few of them. They're good people." He frowned and looked at the pile of meat. "How much do you think the little kids will eat? I've got a steak for all the adults, Cally and Billy. You think one steak for all the others?"

  "That should work," Shari said. "Where do you get all this food?"

  "It's a farm," O'Neal said with a grin. "What, you don't think we give it all up, do you? Besides, it's harvest time. We just slaughtered some cows and the pigs were going to be tomorrow. I'll probably harvest one for a pig roast in the morning then roast it all day. That's if you guys are willing to spend another night."

  "We'll see," Shari said with a grin. "Ask me in the morning."

  CHAPTER 17

  We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,

  But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

  An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,

  Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints . . .

  —Rudyard Kipling

  "Tommy"

  Newry Cantonment, Newry, PA, United States, Sol III

  1928 EDT Thursday September 24, 2009 ad

  "It's a real cantonment," Gunny Pappas said, staring out the windows of the converted bus.

  Moving ACS had been a problem from the beginning. Packaging their suits and moving them separately effectively disarmed them; most ACS troopers were fairly incompetent without a suit wrapped around them. And moving the suits with people in them was a horrendous operation; even with their pseudo muscles turned "down," suits tended to destroy normal structures when the two came into contact.

  Finally, standard forty-five passenger school buses had been converted to carry the units. The seats, basically bars of raw steel welded into benches, were intensely uncomfortable for anyone not in a suit. But they had the benefit of being able to survive even a long bus trip with ACS enlisted infantry onboard.

  The sole concession to comfort in the buses was an adjustable headrest. The first thing ACS troopers tended to do once they were out of combat was remove their helmets and that habit had been recognized in the design. It was a well understood action; ACS sometimes spent weeks in continuous contact with the Posleen; after that long in a virtual environment the need to breathe uncanned air and feel wind on their face became overwhelming.

  Stewart picked his head up from the rest and looked at the approaching gates. "Well, with any luck we won't have to E&E our way across this one."

  "Long time," Pappas answered with a sigh. The sergeant major had brought a platoon of new recruits with him to their former base at Fort Indiantown Gap, back when he was Gunnery Sergeant Pappas. At the time the Ground Forces were in a state of only slightly controlled anarchy and the platoon had found it necessary to sneak in and fight their way across the base to their barracks. Once there they found the acting first sergeant engaged in black-marketeering and, possibly, murder. With the help of the acting company commander they had settled that idiot's hash and managed to maintain a semblance of order in their company until O'Neal and the new battalion commander arrived almost simultaneously.

  "Roanoke?" Pappas asked.

  "Harrisburg," Stewart corrected. "I was the second platoon leader."

  "Harrisburg," Pappas agreed after a moment. He remembered the shattered armor of Lieutenant Arnold well, but while his recollection of battles was often too clear, inessential details like where they occurred had started to fall by the wayside. "HVM."

  "Yep," Stewart agreed.

  "Quit weirding each other out," Duncan said from the next row. He leaned forward and pointed at the barracks and the neatly trimmed parade grounds. "Garrison time. Time to get drunk and laid, not necessarily in that order."

  "If everything's ship-shape, sir," Pappas pointed out. "I'll believe it when I see it. I mean, these are garrison troopers forwarded from Ground Forces. How good are they going to be? There's probably a foot of dirt on the barracks floor."

  * * *

  Mike heard the challenge of the MP at the gate distantly and the response of the driver sounded like it was at the bottom of a well. But he swiveled his vision sideways to watch the exchange.

  The MP could not have known he was being watched by the battalion commander; the suit did not move and the helmet remained facing forward. But he was punctiliously correct anyway, checking the driver's orders and receiving a confirmation download from Mike's AID. When he was sure everything was correct he stepped back and saluted, undoubtedly waiting for the vehicle to move on before dropping it.

  Mike touched the driver on the arm to keep him from pulling out and inspected the MP's turnout minutely. Most of his gear was clearly designed to look good and stay that way. The holster for his service pistol was patent leather as was his brassard and his battle dress uniform, a pattern still called Mar-Cam, was tailored and pressed.

  But he was also well shaven with a fresh haircut and in good physical condition. The fact that they were coming was well known, but up until today Mike had not been sure of their ETA. So the soldier had either cleaned up quickly or maintained good grooming even when "the cat was away." On reflection Mike decided that it was probably the latter. After a moment, during which it must have been like looking at a statue, he returned the salute and waved for his Humvee to move on.

  The MP must have called ahead because by the time the convoy reached the battalion area there was a small group of officers and NCOs gathered on the front lawn.

  Mike clambered carefully out of the seat and walked over to the group, casually returning the salute of the slightly overweight captain who appeared to be in charge.

  "Major O'Neal," the captain said with a nod. "I'm Captain Gray, your adjutant; we've never met, but we have exchanged e-mails."

  "Captain," O'Neal said, taking off his helmet and looking around. Besides the captain there was a single second lieutenant. Other than that there were no officers. And the few senior NCOs did not seem to have been rejuved. However, the personnel were in good looking uniforms, Mar-Cam again rather than silks since they were only seconded to Fleet, and the junior personnel were in good physical condition. All in all, it was a decent looking body of REMFs. "Do I have a part in this little ceremony?"

  "Not a ceremony, sir," the captain said. "But I thought you might want to get familiar with a few of the faces." He gestured at a sergeant first class in the first rank. "Sergeant McConnell is the battalion S-4 NCOIC. He's actually the regimental S-4 NCOIC . . ."

  "But since there's not a regiment to be NCOIC of . . ." Mike continued. "Good afternoon, Sergeant. And do you have a boss?"

  "I think you're it, sir," the sergeant said. He was short and also overweight, but he gave the impression of being an india rubber leprechaun: hard, mischievous and very elastic. He had bright eyes that regarded O'Neal warily.

  "We don't have an S-4 at the moment, sir," Captain Gray said. "We've been promised one a time or two but . . ."


  "But there are places that they'd rather be," O'Neal filled in. He looked at the group and cleared his throat. "I'm sure we'll get to know each other very well over the next couple of weeks. For the time being, continue as you have been. I'd like you to get with the battalion command sergeant major and the company first sergeants as to billeting. The troops will need to do an issue draw," he continued, looking at the S-4 sergeant. "We're basically here in the suits we stand in and not much else."

  "I took the liberty of looking up everyone's sizes, sir," Sergeant McConnell answered. "And everyone is assigned a room and a wall-locker. The wall-lockers all have a complete issue in them. They'll have to sign for them of course . . ."

  "We have a team on standby to examine deficiencies," Captain Gray said, anticipating O'Neal's question. "I hope that your commanders find the barracks to be acceptable; I had a full unit GI of the Bravo and Charlie barracks last week and the inspection showed that they were in pretty good shape. They're brand new so there's some indications of that that we haven't been able to work out; paint around the edge of the windows and stuff like that. But otherwise I think you'll be pleased."

  "Hmm," Mike said, not knowing quite how to respond. "Very well, get with the sergeant major, as I said." He paused and thought for a moment. "Do officers have an issue?"

  "Officers have to buy their uniforms, of course," Sergeant McConnell said. "But there is a temporary issue in their quarters and they can choose what they want and buy it with a comment to their AID. We also have uniforms standing by in your lockers in the Morgue."

  Mike looked around again and shook his head with a frown. "Tell me that this isn't as rikky-tik as it seems. I mean . . ."

  "You mean 'what the hell are REMFs doing getting something right,' sir?" Sergeant McConnell asked with a puckish grin.

  "I probably would have put it more politely," O'Neal noted as Pappas walked up behind him.

  "I've been a REMF ever since I got out of Delta Force, sir," the sergeant answered. "Where I was a . . . not a REMF. I got recalled as my final MOS, which was supply. I decided that, all things considered, I'd stay there. I had my salad days. But, if I do say so myself, I'm a pretty damned good supply sergeant."