When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  "DRT?" Alejandro yelled.

  "Yep," Wright answered, crawling forward. "I think 143's gone too."

  "Okay," Alejandro yelled back. "Where in the hell are Lewis and Schockley?" he continued. "There's nobody on the left side!"

  "I dunno," Wright yelled. He got to 145 and noted that it was out of ammo. "Hey, Alejandro! Gemme a battle-box!"

  The specialist shook his head and opened up the ammo port, rolling the box out with difficulty—it was a two-man job—and then hitting the ground as the entire massive structure shuddered. The aftershocks continued for a few moments as he tried to keep the four-hundred-pound box from rolling back on him. "Okay," he muttered. "This day officially sucks."

  * * *

  Major Jason Porter, commander of SheVa Fourteen, swore bitterly. With some difficulty his driver had hoisted this behemoth to the top of the hill just south of the waste treatment plant and now he could see the Wall, or a portion of it. And the top of the Wall was smoking.

  The Posleen were clearly hammering the defenses, but so far there was no sign, from this side, of Lampreys or C-Decs. He considered backing back down the hill; that way they would be out of sight when, if, Posleen ships did come into view. However, as he was getting ready to give the word, the radar pinged with a detection.

  One or more ships was moving up the valley towards the Wall. They were staying low, which was unusual enough, but every now and again they popped up for a second. The gun was having a hard time locking on.

  "Edwards," he called to the gunner. "Put the gun on a fixed azimuth and elevation that approximates their estimated position and let's see if it can get a lock."

  "Roger, sir," the gunner called.

  "Come on," Porter whispered. "Get up where we can see you you sons of mares."

  * * *

  "All ships," Orostan called. "Engage the human defenses."

  Despite desperate winnowing on Tulo'stenaloor's part, there were only forty Kessentai who were capable of "fighting" their ships without automatics. Since this required a real "crew," including intelligent and trained persons to man weapons consoles, instead of just hitting the odd flashing button, it was not too surprising. All told, the forty ships were crewed by over four hundred Kessentai. Normally there would have been a bare sixty at most.

  But these Kessentai arguably had the second most important job in the entire "mission"; removing the Wall. And that meant real weapons.

  The viewscreen went dark as the first anti-ship missile impacted on the Wall.

  * * *

  "Oh, shit," Porter whispered. A section of the Wall the size of a house had just been blasted into the air.

  "Solution!" Edwards called.

  Porter dropped his eye to the firing sight and hit the confirm key. "Fire!"

  "On the Way!"

  * * *

  "Fuscirto uut!" Orostan snarled. "All ships! Stay low! Tulo'stenaloor, where are those tenaral!"

  "Coming up any time," Tulo'stenaloor said over the circuit. "You do want it to be a surprise, don't you?"

  "Yes," the oolt'ondai said. "But I have vital missions for every single ship; I need that gun removed. Now."

  "Almost there," Tulo'stenaloor said, shifting the data to Orostan's screens. "Almost there."

  * * *

  Pacalostal screamed in pride as the human valley came into view. The sixty tenaral had taken a winding path up and down the valleys of the area the humans called "Warwoman" and now their surprise was complete. The human valley was open to them and they could see both of their primary targets clearly. The hated "SheVa" gun was on a knoll just to the south of them and the majority of the human artillery was to the west, grouped around "John Beck Road" and "Fork Road."

  He sent a command to the second division, which swept down to near ground level and increased speed as it entered the corps rear area. Then he took the first division and dropped onto the SheVa gun to the south.

  * * *

  The first warning Major Porter had was a garbled call over the corps command frequency. The second warning was when the first plasma blast hammered into his back deck.

  SheVas were not, strictly speaking, armored vehicles. They had a lot of really heavy metal pieces on them, some of them quite hard, but they were necessary to support the energies released with each firing of the massive gun. They were not designed to withstand close range heavy plasma fire and that became clear on the second hit, when the right rear track separated.

  "Son of a bitch!" he shouted as one of the craft flew past a camera. "What in the hell is that?"

  The craft looked like something straight out of a 1950s science fiction novel. It was more or less saucer shaped with a small turret on the top. Most of the turrets seemed to have . . . Posleen plasma guns mounted in them. As he panned the camera to follow the craft's flight it fired another bolt into the front quadrant.

  "We've lost the right track and drivers fourteen and fifteen," Warrant Officer Tapes called. "I've hit the track release, but we'll have to drive off of it. And that drops our max speed way down."

  "Get us out of here," Porter said. "Back us up."

  "Solution!"

  "Belay that order," he called, dropping his eye to the sight. Without really looking he hit the confirm button. "Fire!"

  "On the Way!"

  * * *

  "DOWN, DOWN, stay DOWN!" Orostan called. He flapped his crest happily, though, at the sight of the crumbling wall. The massive concrete structure was completely shattered across the center from repeated antimatter and plasma strikes and the way would soon be open. Rocky—the front ranks would have some clearing to do—but open. "And the artillery is dropping off," he added.

  "Yes, it is," Cholosta'an said. "Soon we will be through. A real breakthrough. This is amazing."

  "It has been years in planning," Orostan pointed out. "We will sweep up the mountains, opening pass after pass . . ."

  "And at each point, establishing 'toll booths,' " Cholosta'an said with a flap of humor. "That was brilliant. Anyone who passes through must agree to submit ten percent of their earnings."

  "Brilliant indeed," Orostan said. "Tulo'stenaloor feels that these humans owe him much. If he cannot take it from them directly, then indirectly will do as well."

  "We should not be too happy yet," Cholosta'an said. "These humans . . . tend to be tricky. And they don't give up easily."

  "When we are finished here, we and the tenaral will fly up the valley and take all of the key terrain positions on the initial route. The humans may try to block us, but we shall be there first. As soon as the Wall is down."

  "And the SheVa gun taken care of," Cholosta'an said.

  "Of course."

  * * *

  Another ripple of plasma fire slammed into the gun and one of the rounds penetrated through multiple layers of machinery into the command center.

  The damage control panel came apart like a bomb as the last burst of plasma buried itself in the console. Control runs fused together sending power arcing through the panel and into the primary gun controls.

  Sergeant Edwards flew back from his controls with a yell, hitting the chair release and backing away as sparks flew out of the targeting system. The fire control computer sparked on for a moment and then died with a rasp.

  Major Porter coughed on the smoke and shook his head. "Is it just me or is this like a bad TV sci-fi show?" He hit his own chair release and pulled the warrant officer's back. In the red emergency lights he could see that the warrant had massive burns across his face and chest, but the engineer was still breathing. "Will the gun fire at all?"

  "Negative!" Edwards shouted nervously. "I can't even clear the round in the breech!"

  "Oh, this is so very good," Porter muttered, laying the warrant's chair flat and gently unstrapping him.

  "Uh, sir," Edwards said, supporting half the weight of the warrant as they lifted him out of his chair. "I think we're mostly getting hit on our back deck . . ."

  "I noticed," Porter said, looking around. "
Tamby! Abandon ship!"

  There was no reply from the driver's position so he slid across the smoking deck and looked down.

  The driver's position was surrounded by multiple monitors so that the drivers had an almost 360-degree view at all times. Unfortunately, that meant that when a power surge hit there were thousands of volts all of a sudden going nowhere.

  Porter slid down into the position, trying not to put his feet into the carbonized figure strapped into the driver's chair, and checked the drive controls. They, remarkably, seemed to be working so he set them on auto, driving forward, and climbed back out. Then he slid back across the floor and hit the escape hatch. The red painted panel opened with a susurrant hiss and lights came on below.

  "Where's Tamby?" Edwards asked, dragging the limp warrant officer towards the hatch.

  "Tamby won't be joining us today," Porter said, taking the warrant's feet. "You drive. And drive like a bat out of hell."

  "Who's going to gun?" Edwards asked.

  "Who the hell cares?" Porter said. "If we're not at least five miles away before they pound through the magazine nobody's going to be driving!"

  * * *

  Atrenalasal flapped his crest and keyed his communicator. "Pacalostal! The gun has stopped firing! We should join the attack on the artillery."

  "No," the tenaral commander replied. "The orders are to continue firing until it is stopped and burning. Follow the orders."

  "Very well," the Kessentai replied. For some reason, pounding plasma round after plasma round into the burning hulk seemed . . . wrong. But orders were orders.

  * * *

  Major Porter hit the lowering circuit before Edwards was even in his seat, but the gunner had the escape vehicle starting before they had dropped more than a meter. Porter sighed as the scream of the jet turbine engine caused the vehicle to purr like a tiger. Functional power was a good thing.

  "Thank God for General Motors," he said. He glanced at the height reading then hit the release as another wash of plasma hit the massive SheVa above them. Fuck it. The torsion bars would handle the drop.

  At forty miles per hour and accelerating the still bouncing M-1 Abrams burst from under its larger brethren and headed for the shadow of the nearest ridge.

  Behind it, plasma rounds continued to dig into the more recalcitrant armor on the back deck of the SheVa gun, right over its nearly full magazines.

  Chapter 24

  Far-called, our navies melt away;

  On dune and headland sinks the fire:

  Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

  Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

  Lest we forget—lest we forget!

  —Rudyard Kipling

  "Recessional" (1897)

  Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III

  1249 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

  When Major Ryan saw the Abrams burst from under the SheVa he very calmly lowered his binoculars, turned around, spotted the nearest bunker and ran for it.

  He was surprised when he dropped through the back door that there were not any other inhabitants. The main headquarters didn't have any structural stability; the main "war room" wasn't even on a ground floor. He considered for a moment going back to the headquarters and trying to convince the commander that maybe, just maybe, being on the second floor of a building in the way of a nuclear blast might not be the best spot to be.

  He'd seen SheVas go up before; he was at Roanoke when SheVa Twenty-Five lost containment. But at Roanoke the SheVa had been on top of a mountain and fairly separated from the main force. Not parked practically on top of the tertiary defenses and right opposite the corps headquarters.

  He glanced at his watch and wondered how long it would take. It was possible, possible, that the Posleen would break off their attack before the containment failed. Actually, if they were smart they would break off their attack before the containment failed.

  Posleen. Smart.

  Not.

  As he was looking at his watch and calculating his odds of surviving a run to the motorpool he was joined by a female specialist. She tripped on the entry and tumbled into the far corner.

  "Well," she muttered, sitting up, but not getting to her feet. "That was a hell of an entry." She looked over at the officer and shook her head. "You might want to get down, sir. I think a nuke is about to go off."

  "Yes," Ryan said, looking at his watch again. He had just noticed that he could faintly hear the "swish-crack!" of the plasma rounds hitting the distant SheVa gun. At least he could between the sounds of secondary explosions from the artillery and the heavy ship's weapons tearing the Wall apart. "But we should have about three seconds to bend over and kiss our ass goodbye after the 'big flashbulb' goes off." He smiled at her grimly. "Don't look towards the light; the light is not your friend."

  * * *

  "We're gonna make it," Edwards said, gunning the tank down the streambed of the Little Tennessee River, the water flying up on either side. "I guess that armor is tougher than they thought."

  "Maybe," said Major Porter, "if . . ."

  What the conditions were Edwards wasn't going to find out because as the major spoke the world went white.

  The magazine for the SheVa guns was the heaviest armored container ever designed. The inner layer was simple steel, four layers of hardened case steel coated with "supersteel," a recent development that increased the surface hardness of steel almost fourfold. Outside that were two layers of "honeycomb" armor made of tungsten and synthetic sapphire. The outermost section was multiple layers of ablative explosive plates. These had been found to disrupt Posleen plasma guns, to an extent.

  In addition there were four sections that were designed to "control" the explosion and "blow out" if a round went off. And there were internal baffles designed to direct the majority of the explosion away from surrounding rounds. In that way it was felt that the explosion could be reduced to at most one or two rounds. Better a minor cataclysm than a major one.

  The Posleen had determined that most tanks placed their engines at the front and rear. And since their orders were to keep pounding until the gun stopped and was burning, they had pounded over four hundred plasma blasts into the rear compartment. There was only so much that even the strongest armor could take.

  The round that actually penetrated had one last defense to make it through. But at the end it cut through the thin shell of depleted uranium surrounding the antimatter core with relative ease. The antimatter then did what antimatter does when it comes into contact with regular matter. Explode. Spectacularly.

  The accidentally targeted round was only equivalent to 10 kilotons and the engineers were relatively sure that a single round exploding would be controlled by the container. At the most, if it was on the outer rack it would blow out and only be a nuisance to any unit within, say, a mile of the gun. A major nuisance to them, but if you weren't too close or, say, directly behind the gun, you might survive.

  In this case, however, the round was on the inner rack, where there were no available blow-out panels. In addition the plasma rounds worming their way into the gun's vitals had shattered most of the internal compartmentalization, for whatever good it might have done. So when the round went off it set off all the remaining rounds racked in the magazine.

  The gun had fired twice and had one round loaded. So there were only five rounds to blow. But they went in a ripple sequence that was effectively instantaneous. And both the nature of the containment vessel and the damage that it had sustained combined to cause a near optimum explosion.

  The fireball was noticeable from as far away as Asheville and the overpressure wave from it reached out to swallow the corps, huddled as it was in a valley.

  Damage from nuclear weapons comes from three primary sources: overpressure, heat and radiation. Overpressure is generally referred to as the "shockwave" and is analogous to the effects of a tornado; when the high pressure of the "event" hits a structure, it collapses from th
e difference in pressure inside and outside its walls. Windows shatter inward, doors collapse and so do walls and ceilings. Combine this with hurricane force winds and close to the center of the blast, everything in its path is destroyed.

  The second major cause of damage is from thermal effects. The intense heat of a nuclear, or in this case antimatter, explosion releases an enormous amount of infrared radiation. Any human, or Posleen, in direct view of the fireball, and within a limited distance, could be expected to sustain first-, second- or even third-degree burns. Due to the nature of the fireball, and the momentary containment by the walls of the magazine, thermal damage was minimized.

  The third major category of injury was radiation. With antimatter explosions, there was a hard wave of gamma rays, but they were effective only at a limited distance. Like a neutron bomb, hydrogen-antihydrogen conversions gave lots of heat and "power," but very little lingering radiation. This gamma pulse, however, was quite extraordinary.

  It was the gamma pulse, as much as anything, which doomed Major Porter and his driver. They were dead before they even knew it, their bodies ravaged by high energy particles that caused massive systems failure as their nerve cells suddenly discovered nothing worked and the proteins in their musculature changed into a non-functional form. But it wouldn't have mattered all that much because they were well within the ten psi overpressure zone. The blast wave picked up the seventy-two-ton tank like a sheet of paper and tumbled it into the air.

  However, Major Porter was not the only being in the immediate area of effect. Even closer to the explosion were the tenaral of Pacalostal. The explosion tore apart the lightly armored tenar, sending all forty of them into instantaneous oblivion as it washed out over them and the embattled corps.

  The shockwave swept over the tertiary defenses and the barracks of the human corps in less than a second, shattering buildings, collapsing bunkers and filling in the few redug trenches. The overpressure wave was still well above five psi when it hit the former school and collapsed the charming brick buildings in less than a second, scattering the bricks and wood of its structure down the hill and into the valley beyond.