When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  She was now on a one-way trip to the bottom of the cable and there didn't seem to be much she could do about it.

  She clamped her hands around the upper ropes for dear life. If she clamped down very hard she could slow her progress, but already she could smell the ropes beginning to melt and fray. She worked one of the foot ropes up by bending herself into a U, but that rope was smoking as well and the bottom of the cable was coming up fast.

  She managed to slow herself to what felt like a hurtling speed just as first one of the foot ropes and then the other gave way. Her glove-covered hands were now for all practical purposes the only things on the cable and she slammed onto the end of the cable at nearly twenty miles per hour.

  What saved her from a broken back were several variables. The first was that she was near the end of the cable, and the weight of the metal above her had put some "stretch" into the line. Thus it gave a bit when she hit the end. The second was that the security line was designed with a give of one third of its length so a bit more of the energy was absorbed by that design. Last, her harness was well designed and transferred most of the energy up along her spine rather than across it.

  That didn't mean it was a good experience, simply survivable. She slammed into the wall, hard, and the only thing that kept her from cracking her head was that her shoulder caught the blow. Of course, her left arm now seemed to be out of commission. It didn't seem like anything was broken, it just wouldn't flex worth a damn.

  She dangled on the end of the cable for moment and just moaned.

  "Are you okay?" Shari asked from ten feet above her.

  "No, I'm not okay," Wendy croaked. "I'm alive and . . ." she moved her arms and legs, "everything seems to be working. But 'okay' is not how I'd phrase it."

  "I saw a Posleen up there," Shari whispered.

  "That damned Postie is about a thousand feet above us, Shari," Wendy said. "And two hundred feet across. If my scream on the way down didn't attract his attention, talking in normal tones isn't going to do it."

  "You didn't scream," Shari said.

  "I didn't?" Wendy asked. "I could have sworn I screamed."

  "Nope, just fell past mostly in silence," Shari said. "I was really impressed. You might have been cursing, I couldn't tell."

  "Shari?" Wendy asked, pulling herself up with her functional arm and wincing at the strap bruises.

  "Yes?"

  "Start winching me up or I'll climb up there and so help me God I'll eat your heart."

  * * *

  Elgars checked both ways on the main corridor and stepped out carefully. The flickering blue sprite leading her bobbed up and down in the air, maintaining a strict ten-foot separation as it led the way to Hydroponics.

  The corridor was wide and high with a tram-track running down the center and oversized doors on both sides stretching off into the distance. It also was deserted. She had always noted that there were fewer people in the lower areas of the Urb, but with the Posleen intrusion this sector seemed to have emptied out completely.

  She shifted her burden and took a deep breath. The trip to this point had been relatively uneventful, but nerve-wracking nonetheless. And the weight of all the weapons and ammunition was beginning to wear her down; it was at least her body weight of gear if not more.

  She trotted clumsily across the corridor, carefully using the crossing points on the tram-track, and over to the twenty foot high door marked "Hydroponics." To the right was a personnel-sized door with a palm pad identifier. She shifted her massive load to get a free hand and slapped the pad.

  "Name?" the security system intoned.

  "Sandra Ells . . ." She stopped and shook her head for a moment, her eyes widening and a shiver going down her back. "Anne Elgars. Captain, Ground Forces," she said, panting slightly from startlement as much as the exertion.

  The door opened smoothly and she bent down and shoved a combat knife into the juncture; it was a blast door—the entire wall was heavy duty blasplas—but with six inches of Gerber steel in the crack it wasn't going anywhere.

  She heaved herself to her feet and stumbled into the interior.

  This was clearly an entrance for hydroponics personnel. The room was large, sixty feet or so deep and forty across, with lockers down both walls and a deserted security stand against the far wall. The room was filled with benches and tables and there were open wall-lockers and a scattering of personal items on the tables as if the place had been hurriedly evacuated.

  She dumped her gear on the nearest table and straightened out her combat harness. She knew that she had to hold the fort until Wendy and Shari got there, but other than that she was at loose ends. Since wasting time in this situation didn't make any sense to her, she started laying out the guns and ammunition, readying the combat harnesses and making small packs for the older kids to wear.

  That only took five minutes or so and when she was done Wendy and Shari still hadn't turned up. She wasn't worried, the situation was a simple binary solution set. If Shari and Wendy turned up before she got overrun holding the door, they would all leave together. If not she'd die here. She didn't like the children very much and she could take or leave Shari. But Wendy was the only friend she had; if she left her she would be all alone, without memories and without a purpose. There wouldn't be much point in leaving. Besides, she knew Wendy would do the same for her.

  She watched the door calmly for a few minutes, considering her options, then decided that it was not a good use of her time. Keeping one eye on the door she started going through the open lockers, looking for anything useful.

  She found a few candy bars and snacks, a few small tools that might or might not come in handy and, most importantly, a physical map of the hydroponics section. She wasn't sure that sprites would work in the area; they tended to stay to the main routes rather than the back ways the group was going to prefer.

  At the end of the lockers along the right hand wall was a box of hazardous material suits and three cases of general respirators. She took one of the suits and filled it with the smallest respirators she could find and a selection of the hazardous waste suits; if they were available to personnel, there was probably a reason. Then she plucked out three of the masks for the adults. The respirators were an emergency type that could filter just about any toxin for fifteen minutes; she suspected that they would come in handy.

  Elgars walked back to the front, dropped her acquisitions, peeked back out the door and frowned. There still wasn't anyone around. She wasn't impatient, exactly, just well aware of the need for speed. As she started to duck back into the room she heard a racket of railgun fire down the cross-corridor; the Posleen had arrived first.

  She knelt in the doorway and trained the AIW towards the opening of the cross-corridor. As the first Posleen came into sight, she heard a splintering sound to her right. Sparing a brief glance in that direction she saw a portion of the wall shatter and Wendy step into the main corridor.

  * * *

  Wendy spotted Elgars just as the grenade launcher of the AIW chugged. She cursed and pulled Billy through the hole in the wall.

  "Go!" she said, pointing at the entrance where Elgars kneeled.

  The boy nodded his head and sprinted across the corridor, carefully keeping to the crossing points of the tram-track, but not slowing or stopping at all.

  "What's going on?" Shari asked, pushing children through the opening.

  "What do you think?" the younger woman snapped. "Elgars took care of the first scouts, but we have to move."

  "Get over there," Shari said. "I'll push them through. You go get a gun or something."

  * * *

  Elgars nodded to the boy as he skidded through the doorway. "Left wall," she said, with a gesture of her chin. "Grab the smallest pistol and the three boxes of ammunition by it then line up against the wall. Make sure the other kids line up with you."

  Billy picked himself up off the floor and darted to the table, grabbing the Glock and the boxes of .45 ammunition.

&nbs
p; Elgars directed the next three children to the side of the room then ducked out of the way as Wendy ran through the door. "About time."

  "Sorry," Wendy said. "I was hanging around."

  She had been carefully planning the quip so she was mildly annoyed when Elgars just grimaced in anger at the inconsequential.

  "Grab the MP-5," the captain said as another child came through the door. "They're going to be back here in a second."

  "Nobody has a sense of humor around here," Wendy said with a shrug, picking up the submachine gun and racking in a round. "It's worse than dealing with Danes."

  "What are you talking about?" Elgars snarled.

  "Never mind," Wendy answered, kneeling on the opposite side of the door as the first Posleen came around the corner. "It's a human thing," she added, hitting the shotgun-toting normal in the chest with a three-round burst.

  Behind that one, however, there were four more. The first stumbled over one of the bodies in the corridor and was easy meat for Elgars, but two of the others simply jumped the blockage, landing in the middle of the intersection.

  Wendy fired at one of them in the air, spreading the fire like shooting at skeet, and hit it on the flank. The damage from the relatively small rounds was not fatal, however, and the normal spun in place and fired its railgun down the main corridor.

  The last child, Kelly, was crossing as the normal fired. Most of the rounds flew wide, but one slashed through the back of the child's calf in a bloody mess.

  The girl slid to a stop on the hydroponics side of the tram-track, lying on her stomach and screaming.

  Wendy emptied the rest of her magazine into the centauroid with a shriek of primordial anger as Elgars neatly dispatched the last survivor.

  "Motherfuckers!" Wendy shouted, her nostrils flaring. "I hate the fucking Posties!"

  "Give me a hand," Shari gasped, dragging her daughter through the opening.

  Elgars ripped the knife out of the juncture of the door and sealed it, coding the lock to indicate a biochem emergency on the inside; it wasn't going to open without heavy explosives or a supervisor's codes.

  Wendy pulled out her first aid kit and first numbed the wound then wrapped it tight, cutting the flow of blood down to a trickle.

  "It missed the artery," she said, tightening the bandage. "It hit the veins, but they'll keep. It's going to be hard to walk on, though."

  Shari rocked her daughter, who was still wailing like a lost soul. "It's okay, Kelly. Shhh."

  Elgars suddenly leaned forward and struck the child across the face with an open hand slap. "Quiet."

  "God damn you!" Shari shouted leaning towards the captain. She suddenly found a pistol socketed in between her nose and her cheekbone.

  "We don't have time," Elgars said coldly. "We have zero time. She has to get up and move. And she has to do it without shrieking. Or we all die." She pulled the pistol back and holstered it. "Now go pick up your rifle and harness; we need to go. Now."

  Shari nodded after a moment and stood the now quietly weeping Kelly on her feet. "Can you walk on it?"

  "It doesn't hurt," Kelly said quietly. "I think so."

  "Then let's get out of here," Wendy said, putting the MP-5 on safe with a distinctive "click."

  Elgars suddenly realized the younger woman had been standing directly behind her. She turned around and looked at her, but Wendy just returned her appraisal coldly.

  Wendy walked over to the table and looked at the remaining weapons and ammo. "Shari, come over here."

  Shari took the combat harness from the younger woman and threw it over her shoulders and accepted the Steyr bullpup assault rifle.

  "You arm it by pulling back on the charging handle," Wendy said, pointing to the device. "And here's the safety."

  "Got it," Shari said nervously. "I've fired before, but not much."

  "That's why I want you to take the nitrogen," Wendy added, pulling off the pack. "You've seen how I do it. You open the doors, we'll cover and do the entry on them. I'm also going to pile you with anything that the kids can't carry; that means I can move faster."

  "Okay," Shari said.

  "Billy," Elgars said. "You're going to have to carry more ammo."

  "He's just a boy," Shari protested quietly. "He's carrying enough."

  "He can carry more," Elgars pointed out. "Can't you?"

  The boy nodded and took the additional boxes of ammunition and a harness.

  "You know the different kind of magazines?" Elgars asked. "If you do, when we're running out, come up and give us more ammo. And reload them when you have time. Clear?"

  Billy nodded and smiled then pulled out a magazine for the AIW and gestured at the rifle.

  Elgars smiled back and dropped her partially expended magazine, replacing it with the one he had offered.

  "Okay," Wendy said. "Let's roll."

  * * *

  Wendy looked at the PDA and at the doors; according to the schematic she had picked up there should only be one door at this point, but there were two.

  They had passed through a processing area for the fruit and vegetables produced by the section; much of it piled high and already beginning to wilt. Billy had sniffed out a bin full of boxes of strawberries and the children stuffed their mouths full of the tart-sweet fruits. Wendy realized at that point how long it had been since the attack. It must have been at least three hours with the humans staying just ahead of the front ranks of the Posleen.

  Now, though, they were in an actual "green" room; the sixty foot high, several hundred meter long room was packed, floor to ceiling, with trays upon trays of legumes growing in nutrient solution. The ones closest to their position were just sprouts, but in the distance she could see full-sized plants and harvester bots passing back and forth across them.

  None of which helped her determine which of these two doors was right. The area that they were headed for was the seed and grain loading zone. There were eight supply elevators, most of which the Posleen would have already taken. But there was also a grain elevator that went two ways. It was possible that they could activate it and ride to the surface. Barring that, she was willing to gather some more climbing gear and climb them out. It would take some time, but if they sabotaged the elevator they would have all the time in the world; as long as they were in the tube, the Posleen weren't going to be catching them.

  The problem was getting there without using any of the main corridors; the two times they had intersected corridors there had been Posleen in the area. To do that they needed to go into the nutrient pumping section next, then into the seed storage which connected. From there it was a hop, skip and jump to the main receiving area. There might be, probably would be, Posleen there. But they'd deal with that when they came to it.

  "What's wrong?" Shari asked, nodding at the door. "Left or right?"

  "I dunno," Wendy said. "There's only supposed to be one door." She palmed the controls for the right-hand door, but it wouldn't open even after she punched in the override code. Neither would the left-hand door. But they'd dealt with that before.

  "Blast the right door," she said.

  Shari stepped forward and carefully pointed the nitrogen wand at the center of the door; she had been splashed lightly once, painfully, and had, thereafter, donned one of the hazardous materials suits. The light ramex suits were no proof against Posleen railgun rounds, but they were dandy for keeping off the occasional splashes of hyper-cold liquid.

  Normally the door would harden and turn brittle; the memory plastic was not proof against the cold of the liquid nitrogen. In this case it simply cascaded to the floor and ran off to the side, rapidly boiling off.

  "Step back," Wendy warned. "That stuff could make you anoxic in a heartbeat. Interesting, the door looks like memory plastic, but it's blasplas."

  "What's that mean?" Shari asked, exhaustedly. The trek had drained her to the floor.

  "It means somebody wants it looking absolutely normal, but impenetrable," Wendy said. "Try the left door; we don't hav
e time for mysteries."

  The second door immediately turned to gray and then white, the memory plastic hardening from the cryogenic bath. When the fog began to clear she stepped forward and placed the punch gun against the door, firing it and shattering the brittle plastic.

  The Posleen normal on the other side looked down at the suddenly disappeared door then up at the human blocking the doorway and started to raise his boma blade.

  Shari let out a yell and pointed the wand at the Posleen, firing a stream of the liquid into his face.

  The normal let out a shrill garbled cry that only served to open his mouth to the stream. Shrilling in pain it tumbled backwards into the room as Wendy leaned over Shari and fired two bursts into his chest. The first burst bounced off of and shattered the flattened breast bone that armored the Posleen's chest and, but the second burst pierced through to the heart and the normal slumped to the ground as if genuflecting.

  Wendy swept the rest of the room but, as far as she could tell, it was all clear.

  The vast chamber was obviously a mixing room of some sort, nutrients from the smell of it. There was a rich stench of ammonia and phosphate in the air and the floor was lined with massive tanks, ten or twelve feet high and thirty or forty feet across. The room was gigantic; the ceiling was high with large fans at the top and it was at least a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards across.

  The doorway had opened onto a small metal-grate platform. A catwalk led from it, between rows of tanks, to a door on the wall in the distance. In the middle it was bisected by another catwalk that crossed the room side to side and there was a large control station at the intersection.

  Wendy waved the others in and trotted towards the center. It had been decided that since the greatest threat was the Posleen coming up behind them, Elgars would cover the rear. She was backed up by Billy, who had his pistol and reloads for her. Shari had the nitrogen tank and the bag full of uniforms and respirators while Shannon carried Amber. Wendy led the way, both as the second best fighter and the one who knew the route.