When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  "Neither do I, Sergeant Major," Horner replied. "Normally this corps would be backstopped at some point, but this area . . ." He shrugged. "There's also the fact that, apparently in support of this move, the Posleen all up and down the eastern seaboard are pushing at all the passes, gaps and roads, everywhere. There's even a small incursion that has made it into the Shenandoah between Roanoke and Front Royal. I expect other small incursions as things go by. For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if we lost more than one Sub-Urb in this campaign; we've never been under a full court press before."

  "That's . . . not good," Mosovich said. "Among other things, we've got a lot of industry in the Shenandoah, don't we?"

  "No, it's not good," Horner agreed. "The area that they are in actually has three SheVas; unfortunately all of them are under construction and none of them are armed; we're looking at losing them half built, which is four months production down the tubes. Move as you see fit, Sergeant Major. If we need you at a particular point, I'll call."

  "Can I ask what you intend, sir?" the sergeant major asked diffidently. "In this area, I mean."

  "I'll probably try to plug the hole," Horner said. "Eastern Command is moving units to close the roads out of the area; there's a recovering division east of Knoxville that is being spread out and pushed forward. But, realistically, the Gap is like the bottom of a funnel; once you get out of the gap, there are roads in every direction. Closing all of them against that much Posleen pressure is going to be hard; better to close the Gap again and deal with the landers if and when."

  "Plugging the hole will be . . . difficult, sir," Mosovich said, shaking his head. "Whatever unit is in there is going to be hit from four directions at once; there's probably still over five million Posleen down in Georgia trying to force their way up, there's going to be nearly a million at their back, there's landers in the air . . . Just about anybody would evaporate like spit on a hot griddle. With all due respect."

  "You're right, Sergeant Major," Horner said with a very tight smile. "Just about anyone would."

  CHAPTER 26

  Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

  When the storm is ended shall we find

  How softly but swiftly they have sidled back to power

  By the favor and contrivance of their kind?

  —Rudyard Kipling

  "Mesopotamia" (1917)

  Newry Cantonment, PA, United States, Sol III

  1405 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

  Mike touched the next e-mail in the queue, which was from Michelle, his youngest daughter, and the message flashed up on his hologram. Michelle had been evacuated off-planet, along with over four million other Fleet dependents from a variety of countries. The ostensible reason for this was to free up the Fleet personnel from worrying about the security of their children. However, since only one child was taken per Fleet "family," the recognized reality was to create a pool of humans in case Earth was lost. When Mike was feeling really cynical he wondered if they were also hostages to ensure the good behavior of the Fleet. Practically everyone in the service had at least one child being raised by Indowy; it would be easy enough for the Darhel to arrange "accidents" if necessary.

  Michelle sent him a letter once per week, whether he needed it or not. In the last year they had gotten . . . colder and colder. Not upset or angry with him, just . . . leeched of emotion. It was starting to bother him enough to want to mention it, but he'd come to the conclusion there was no way to do a darn thing about it from 84 light-years away.

  Michelle was as brunette as her sister was blonde and, to make things worse, she seemed to have inherited her father's nose. Other than the nose, however, she was starting to be the spitting image of Sharon O'Neal, down to the voice. It was hard, sometimes, for Mike to remember he was dealing with his daughter; Sharon had occasionally taken that same cold, remote tone when things were bad.

  "Good day, Father," she began, giving him a small nod. "There are four items of interest this week. . . ."

  She wore mostly Indowy fashions now and the covering that was standard Indowy dress looked something like a Mao jacket. Between that and the expressionless monotone of her delivery it was like listening to a poorly designed robot; she could have written the thing and built in more emotion. The Indowy were an almost aggressively selfless race, making the individual submission to the whole something of a religion. It was probably that influence that was making her so remote, so . . . alien.

  He realized he had blanked on what she was saying and re-ran the video. Comments on old earth news, report on the final battle for Irmansul—he had an after-action report, a better one than she did, on his AID—discussion of a promotion, of a type he couldn't decipher, for an Indowy he couldn't place at the moment. It occasionally occurred to him that as an honorary Indowy lord, more like a duke or archduke, he really should take more interest in Indowy society. On the other hand, most of his brain cells these days seemed sort of wrapped up in better ways to kill Posleen.

  He realized he'd drifted again and there was something important he'd missed; she'd seemed almost animated for a moment. Ah . . .

  "The fourth and final item this individual has to report is acceptance to level two sohon training. Sohon is, as you should be aware, the Indowy field of technical metaphysics. You are, of course, trained for suit fitting which is a specialized form of level two sohon. However, as far as can be determined, this individual is the first human to be accepted for unlimited level two sohon. It is believed that a level of four or even five sohon may eventually be attained. It is to be hoped that positive acclaim may be accrued to the Clan of O'Neal by this and future accomplishments.

  "Those are the four items of interest for this week. Looking forward to your reply, Michelle O'Neal."

  Mike reran that part of the tape twice shaking his head. He knew, generally, what she was talking about, but the specifics were sort of eluding him. One of the problems with GalTech was that everything had to be produced by Indowy technicians on an individual, custom, basis. Humans, even humans like O'Neal who had had some training in the technique, generally referred to it as "praying," but that wasn't really what was happening. Because the Indowy had been working with atomic level micro-manufacturing for, literally, thousands of years, their method of manufacture involved using swarms of nannites to build products atom by atom in vats. This gave them the capacity to build materials that violated many "known facts" of materials science; the nannites could make atoms do things that occurred only as low probabilities in any other method.

  However, the process defied control by even the most advanced computers. The nannites were best controlled through a sort of direct neural interface. An individual Indowy, or, more commonly, groups, would take seats by the tank and . . . manipulate the nannites. It was not a direct thought process; it involved giving the nannites general directions and then . . . letting them use the individual's brain as a remote processor. For a suit fitting, it mostly involved staying very still and sort of meditating while concentrating on the suit "adjusting" to the person it was being shaped on; the nannites and the suit personality handled the rest.

  However, as he understood it, the problem with most forms of class two and higher was that the person or team had to hold a perfect image of the item to be produced, down to an understanding of the molecular alignments for all of the individual components. A suit, for example, was a six-month process of construction involving one level six, a grand master of sohon, and dozens of lower level Indowy, all meditating in meta-concert on a perfect image, down to the last atom; that was why a suit cost almost as much as a frigate.

  He had to admit that the concept of a human advancing to class two sohon, especially an eleven-year-old, even a prodigy like his daughter, was rather amazing.

  He thought about how to compose a suitable reply. If he was too positive, too emotional, she might see that as a rebuke of her own distance. On the other hand, if he was too wooden, she might see it the same way. Finally
he gave up and gushed.

  Dear Michelle,

  It's really great to hear about your advancement. I have to say that your success is a very good reflection upon the family and that you should be very proud of it, as I am. I hope to someday be able to congratulate you in person and I look forward to the day that we can all be together again as a family.

  Your loving father,

  Dad

  He always sent his replies as text, typing them into an old word processor program and letting the AID convert them to a suitable format and send them on the military network. A laser transmitter would add them to the queue and squirt them at a deep space satellite. From there they would be transferred to Titan Base, then sit in a Jovian communications buoy until a ship was headed out-system. Every ship carried the mail in and out of the system, dropping it at other buoys until eventually, in about six to ten weeks, faster than any but the fastest military courier, it reached Michelle's planet, Daswan. Given that a transport ship would take over a year to make the journey, that wasn't too shabby.

  Mike looked at the message and frowned. There should be more, he should be talking about the battalion and things that they had done. But he knew that Michelle had grown very uninterested in the blindsided slaughter that was Earth; she didn't even seem to want to return. He was losing this daughter, probably had already lost her, and he didn't know what to do about it or even how to do anything about it. She had been dropped into the Indowy, raised by the Indowy and she was becoming Indowy. And he didn't know what to do about that either.

  Finally he gave up and hit Send.

  The next message was from Cally and it, too, was everything he had come to expect. Cally's messages were not nearly as frequent as Michelle's and the two sisters were clearly developing in . . . somewhat different directions. Cally also did not have access to GalTech and, therefore, sent a standard text message.

  Hey Daddyo

  We had visitors this week; some ladies from the nearby Sub-Urb and a couple of snake-eater buddies of Baldy. They had some kids with them who were, like, totally weird. They'd never been outside or shot anything and the weirdest shit freaked 'em out. I mean, don't even mention Posties around these guys or they got, like, spastic.

  No big news other than that. Baldy shot a feral up the hill, but that's no big news. I mean, I got a deer, Baldy shot a feral, Wow!

  Oh, Baldy's made some mention of one of the ladies that was visiting shacking up with him. Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it. She's a nice old biddy and I think it would be good for him to get laid once in a while; maybe he'd lighten up. But I'll believe it when I see it.

  Oh, yeah, DUDE! Way to stack some horse up in Rochester! Can we O'Neals kick ass or what?

  :-)

  Take care and remember: HVMs Smart!

  Cally

  Mike sighed, hit reply and blanked. All things considered, he preferred the Rampage to the Robot, but replying to Cally had its own problems. Should he point out that referring to her grandfather as "Baldy" was probably not the best of all possible actions? Or that at thirteen, worrying whether her grandfather was getting laid often enough was probably not her business? For that matter, it probably wasn't her business at forty.

  For that matter, was she sexually active? I mean, Dad would probably pass that on to him, but there wasn't much Mike could do about it if she was. What was he going to do? Sitting the guy down and having a man to man talk with him was out; he was five hundred miles away.

  And then there was the whole bloodthirsty edge she had developed. He had noted it in Tommy Sunday as well. The generation that was being raised in the war was a generation soaked in blood; they were desensitized to a degree that he found unhealthy.

  Maybe it was a valid reaction to the conditions, but a generation so . . . disinterested in the value of life—it seemed to extend to humans as well as Posleen—was not going to be reconstructing a positive, growing, functional society after the war.

  There was some fundamental spark, some flare of optimism, that really seemed to be missing from them. Maybe Horner was right, maybe he just wasn't cold and hard enough for this world. God knew at times like this he just wanted to lay the burden down, to just say "get somebody else." But there really wasn't anybody else. To lead the battalion or even carry the spark; his was one of the last generations that was raised in the "golden age." If they didn't keep their eye on the prize, which was to recover the world not just to a survival level, but to recapture the beauty and art and science, then nobody would. Humanity was going to sink to the level the Darhel chose for them. And the only ones who could stop that were these feral wild-children of the war. Who had as much connection to the basic concept of positive human growth and human rights as they did to . . .

  Well, frankly, there was nothing they were more disconnected from.

  This really sucked.

  Dear Cally:

  Rochester was . . . difficult. We were successful, but the battalion took more casualties than I would have liked. I'm personally and professionally happy that we were able to push the lines back to Cayuga, but all things considered I would have preferred that the necessity not drive it.

  I'm glad to hear that you had some visitors, especially female visitors. I know that it must be hard growing up with only your grandfather for company. I hope that you will be able to learn . . .

  He backed up and erased the last sentence unfinished. Using the phrase "ladylike" assumed both that the ladies were and that Cally wanted to be. And assumed that "ladylike" was a useful condition, which was a major assumption. Given the choice between a retiring maid and a little war-child, and given the conditions, he'd take war-child any day. Let the world and the future go hang as long as his daughter survived.

  . . . only your grandfather for company.

  By the way, I hope you're not calling him "Baldy" to his face. If you are, I'm going to have to come down and prove that I can still tan your bottom. And before you say "You and what army?" let me point out that I guarantee I can still pin you in about three seconds without armor and if you decide to treat me like the Division Sergeant Major there's always the armor to fall back on.

  :->=

  I've come to the conclusion that I want to resume civilian life after the War. That will give me the opportunity to spend the few years that remain before you flee the nest being "around." I look forward to that and to having Michelle home as well. I think of you often and love you very much.

  Your Dad. Who is not going Bald.

  The last one was from his father.

  Mike:

  Rochester looked like a fucking nitemare. I'm glad you survived. And glad it was you and not me. We had some visetors last week. Jake Mosovich, I knew him in Nma, stopped by with some women from the Franklen Urb. There was some kids and his NCO Mueller. Their both snake-eaters with this corps, but their Fleet. We had a good time and I'm gonna asc one of the women her name is Shari to move in here. I think they were good for Cally she hasn't blown up in to days and I like her. Shes got kids they'll move in to. And Cally will have kids around. Shes doing good to and I think she likes the idea.

  I got your last mail. You sound like your burnt out. I hope you get a rest. You need a R&R in Hong Kong and get laid. But I think the Posleen have eat all the whores. Maybe you should try one of the corpswhores in your area. If you show 'em youre metals you might even get it for free.

  We got your last cair package and I put it away safe. I appresiate the helop in these trying times. And if you ever need anthing, you no where it is.

  Take care and don't forget to duck.

  Dad.

  It took him the usual two reads to interpret his father's missive. His dad was not illiterate or unintelligent, but when Michael O'Neal, Sr. had grown up in Rabun County, going to the eighth grade was for over-educated nerd-boys. Mike's father had been pulled out in the sixth grade to work the fields and had done so until he was seventeen and could escape to the Army.

  And, unlike some of his peers, Papa O'N
eal had never improved his writing. He was well-read, indeed he read military history voraciously, but the reading never seemed to translate to his written vocabulary or grammar.

  That was okay by Major O'Neal, though. In a way, his father was just about the only person he could open up to, even if his advice was sometimes rough and ready.

  He was just beginning to mentally compose a reply to the effect that they were getting a Rest and Recovery and that despite the fact that he was the second person to recommend that he get laid, he had so far failed to do so, when the AID cleared the screen and threw up a hologram.

  "Incoming priority message from General Horner."

  So much for R&R.

  Mike looked at Horner's image and sighed. "Where?"

  Horner opened his mouth as if to start a spiel and then seemed to deflate. "Rabun Gap. It's . . . gone, Mike."

  Major O'Neal set his jaw and tapped the AID. "Schematic, Shelly."

  When he saw the map of the Gap it had red covering all the zones around the Gap including the O'Neal farm. Mike looked at it a moment in disbelief then dropped his face into his hands. "Did the corps last a whole five minutes?"

  "I don't know how well they would have done under normal circumstances," Horner answered, "but these Posleen aren't acting like Posleen at all. They have some sort of armored flying tank that took out the SheVa gun that was forward deployed. It apparently was parked too close to the main force of the Corps and it took out the second and third line of defense. To make things worse, they are using their landers for a straightforward airmobile operation; they used C-Decs to take out the Wall, to literally smash it flat, and look like they're getting ready for a bound forward. Then they have come in and, apparently, rebuilt the road. I'm impressed. And frightened. I don't like the idea of Posleen combat engineers. What next? Artillery?"