by John Ringo
As soon as he found an open area — another former homestead from the weedy flowers growing in the torn ground — he pulled out his binoculars and started scanning. Without too much trouble he found the brigade force, or at least a bit of it, continuing up the road towards Batesville. The problem was, they were practically on top of where the team should be, more or less.
Mueller scanned to the south and found another God King patrol, this time well away from the team’s position. In fact, they were a just-possible sniper shot. With a scope they would have been dead easy, but using the ladder sight it was going to be tricky.
But if he missed the God King that would just make it better.
* * *
Lakom’set was beginning to wonder if following Tulo’stenaloor was the best decision he had ever made. So far the “Great War” had consisted of travelling up and down roads doing nothing. Given his preference he would be killing humans. But even being shot at by humans would be better than this endless wandering.
“This is boring, boring, boring,” he said aloud. Naturally, his normals didn’t respond. They could follow simple commands, but as conversationalists they left something to be desired.
Fortunately for him, just about then a .50 caliber round cracked by just over his shoulder and blew out the chest of the cosslain at his side.
“Maybe boring is good,” he said as he whipped his tenar around in the direction of the sniper.
* * *
Mosovich ducked as the rocks around him were flailed by fire, then slid backwards on his belly. Clearly these Posleen were no longer taking his little pot-shots with any degree of humor.
Time to didee-mao.
* * *
Mueller didn’t move as the shouting Posleen force headed to the south. Despite the fact that they passed less than fifty meters from the team’s position in the stream, the God King sensors did not detect them. He suspected there was something to be learned from that, but what he wasn’t sure.
It took nearly a half an hour for the whole to pass by. It was fortunate that the aliens hadn’t taken longer. Both of the recon team members were on the verge of succumbing to hypothermia; if they didn’t get out of the cold, running water soon they were going to drift off into the long sleep.
Their plan was simple. While Mosovich played rabbit and led the majority of the Posleen to the west, they were to head almost due north, passing through the human lines somewhere around the thinly held Lake Burton Line. The defenses in that section followed the trace of the Appalachian Trail and if the Posleen attacked or even took a section, they would be easy enough for light human forces to contain and push back. The roads into the sector had been demolished, walls thrown up in the lower sections and other than that the only activity was patrolling by infantry forces.
He glanced over at Nichols’ still body and shook his head. The sniper didn’t have to worry about hypothermia. The Galactic Hiberzine medication used a combination of drugs and nannites to slow human internal functions to close to zero and the nannites prevented, to the greatest degree, anything but gross mechanical damage to the body. So as long as they made sure some blood stayed in his system, he was “good,” under virtually any conditions, for about three months. When administered the anti-drug, or after the nannites ran out of energy, the patient woke up with no memory of the time in between; to them it was as if no time had passed.
On the other hand, he wasn’t light.
Mueller jerked his chin at the hills to the west. “We’ll move out to a new hide,” he whispered over chattering teeth. “Wait for nightfall then move out. Try not to make any tracks getting out of the water.”
“Who gets the first carry?” she asked.
Mueller grimaced and looked at the river to be crossed. The water was rushing over hundreds of smooth, rounded, slimy rocks.
“The hell with carrying,” the NCO said, grabbing the unconscious sniper by one wrist. “I’m gonna drag his ass.”
* * *
A big hayfield on Lon Lyons Road had nearly nailed him as he was faced with the choice of crossing it, and probably getting spotted, or going around it and taking an extra ten minutes. He finally took the time and was glad when he spotted the Posleen patrol coming to the edge and looking at the open area askance. The God Kings had developed a healthy respect for human snipers and the open area probably looked like a good way to go to whatever gods the Posleen worshipped.
The patrol had taken long enough, waiting for another God King to join them, that he made it all the way across the road and into the heavy woods on the far side. In scrubby undergrowth he had no fear of the Posleen keeping up or even coming close. As he trotted through the woods, following deer trails when he could and breaking new trail when he couldn’t, he had wondered which way he should go. He could turn to the south, towards Amy’s Creek, and continue to “menace” Clarkesville, or he could continue more or less due west towards Unicoi Gap. After a moment’s thought he decided on west; why throw away a perfectly good baseline for the Posleen to follow?
This position though, just to the east of 255 Alternate, was getting untenable so he slid down the hillside and started moving again. Crossing 255 would be a bear, but the map showed woods on both sides and most of the stuff around here was young and, therefore, thick white pine. It should be possible to move completely undetected on either side.
So it was with this happy thought in mind that he trotted completely out into the open.
The area on both sides of the road, that was shown as forest, had been cleared long before. Where he stood looked to have been the back area of some sort of small manufacturing facility. The buildings were gone, but there was too much unscavenged metal on the ground for it to have been anything else. On the far side of the road was a still-paved road and an intact farm. The paved road curved around behind the facility, which looked to have been a horse training facility, and the sudden incongruity, given what was baying at his back, caused a momentary snort of half hysterical humor to slip out.
He glanced quickly at the map the AID had brought up and shrugged. He and the Posleen had been playing a constant game up until this point. He would cut through the woods between these mountain roads, firing them up with artillery and sniper fire whenever he spotted them. A few of the, apparently, junior God Kings would push along on his backtrail while the majority of this brigade force swung around from one direction, or both, on the roads he had to cross. Assuming that the same situation was going on here, trying to bolt in either direction was just as likely to run him into the Posleen.
After only a moment’s pause, he made the only decision he could and started jogging towards the road.
* * *
Cholosta’an looked up from his instruments at a warbling cry from one of his scouts. There, silhouetted on the distant ridgeline, was a figure that could only be the human they had been hunting for so long.
He swung his railgun towards the silhouette; the automatic tracking system, as usual, ignored the human, but before he could target the scout the figure had trotted across the road and out of sight. He reached down to loft his tenar, but Orostan raised a claw.
“Softly, Kessentai,” the oolt’ondai said. The older Kessentai looked at the three dimensional map on his screen and grunted. “I think we may have him trapped.” He began tapping at keys and sending commands to the nearer and farther Posleen forces, sending them out in fans to the west off of the road. For one thing he had noted that this opened them out and made them less vulnerable to artillery fire.
“How?” the oolt’os leader asked with a frustrated snarl. “They move through these hills like Sky Spirits.”
“But they cannot fly,” the oolt’ondai said with a flap of humor and pointed at the map.
After a moment the younger Posleen hissed in humor as well.
* * *
Jake leaned against a relatively ancient hickory and gasped for air. He was sure that some time in his long career he had been this utterly exhausted, but when was a g
ood question.
He was on a saddle just below the summit of Lynch Mountain and all the hounds of hell were on his path. The wood was open, mostly big old hickory, oak and beech, and showed sign of heavy foraging from deer.
To either side of the saddle, to the north and the south, the ground fell off in sheer cliffs. The spot would have been a good place for a last stand if Jake Mosovich had any intention of committing suicide. As it was it was just a damned good place to stop and catch his breath before the last push.
The last four hundred feet of Lynch Mountain loomed above him, looking just about straight up. The only way up was a narrow ridge that led from this knife-edge saddle up around in a curve to the left and then eventually to the summit. The path was, fortunately, covered for most of the way. Fortunately because the Posleen, as far as they were concerned, had him well and truly trapped and the entire brigade force was dead on his trail.
He glanced down the hill and shook his head. Give the bastards credit for tenacity. He had called for fire on his backtrail again and he was fairly sure that the lead, at least, of the brigade force was getting shredded by the artillery. There had been a number of unreduced houses on the hill and, but by the time the artillery was done they might as well have been destroyed by the Posleen.
Now, though, it was time to go. He pulled a small device out of the side of Nichols’ rucksack, pulled a pin, set a dial and tossed it on the ground. He was both lightening his load and putting a “sensor” in place; the effect of the device would be practically nothing compared to the artillery. Then he threw the Barrett over his shoulder and started out along the saddle. The path was actually about ten feet wide, but it fell off a couple of hundred feet to the east and west so in a way it felt narrow as a string. On the far side an old path continued up the ridge and there were occasional very old trail blazes, the faded orange paint pale against the grey of the tree-bark.
He scrambled up through the mountain laurel and rhododendron, grabbing at the granite and schist that were jutting up now through the thin soil, and climbed as fast as his quivering legs could carry him. The alternative didn’t bear thinking on.
About forty five seconds after he dropped it, the plastic oblong quivered, turned over and — with a slight “huff” of expelled air — threw out three fishing lines, complete with treble hooks. Then, with an almost unnoticeable clicking noise, it slowly pulled the lines in until the treble hooks caught on the surrounding vegetation. At that point the device was apparently satisfied and settled back into quiescence.
* * *
Orostan flapped his crest in agitation and glanced at the portable tenaral again. The humans had not cut back to either side, so they could only be continuing up the hill. The oolt’ondai had split his force around the artillery fire — it was clear that it was not being observed — and thus had avoided significant casualties there. But it would be necessary to cross a narrow lip of land to reach the crest of this hill and that would entail tremendous loss.
“This is not going to be pretty,” Cholosta’an said.
“Tell me to eat, nestling, why don’t you,” the oolt’ondai snapped back. “Sorry, but that is obvious. Nonetheless, if we are going to run this abat lurp to ground, we must close with it.”
“Well,” the younger Kessentai said, with a slight flap of his crest, “we could just sit here and starve them out.” He looked over at the oolt’ondai and hissed at the expression on his crocodilian face. “But I guess not.”
The oolt’ondai appeared not to hear as he took a series of breaths. “Fuscirto uut!” he cried. “Forward!”
* * *
Jake dropped into a small “cave” between two large granite boulders and breathed deep. The position was just about perfect and, coincidentally, about as far as his legs were going to take him. The two “boulders” — both the size of a large truck — were actually outcrops that had been worn away until one dropped onto the other. In between was a small, rather dry gap about head height on the west side that narrowed to barely knee height on the east. Located slightly below the true military crest of the mountain and to the west of the mountain’s summit, it looked over the last nearly vertical climb, which was on the east side of the mountain, and down to the saddle the Posleen would have to cross. Not only would the Posleen have to cross the saddle, struggle up the trail and then cross the actual summit, in full view most of the time, the position was darn near impregnable to anything but their heavy weapons — a concrete bunker might be a slight improvement, but not much — and had a back way out. Of course, the “back way” led to a four hundred foot high vertical cliff, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The wind-swept mountain had once, clearly, been a popular hangout. There was still a vague outline of some old lean-tos and two fire pits. It was well covered in gnarled trees, white pine and oak with a scattering of maple, their twisted trunks and branches leaning primarily to the south. The reason for their twisting was clear; what had been a light breeze down on the flats was a blowing gale on the heights and the wind whipped the leaves around him in a fury.
There were several large boulders and outcrops, but most of the moutain was covered in loam and brush. The exception was by the cliff, where the loam came to an abrupt end about four meters from the edge. The first few meters of the cliff were broken, with a fair-sized cave on one side, a fair number of wind-twisted white pine and several ledges. However, beyond the ledges the cliff fell away sheer for over four hundred feet to the tree-covered base of the mountain. The trees swept out for almost a kilometer from there before hitting the beginnings of “civilization” and another open field.
Jake flipped down the bipod on the Barrett, flipped up the ladder sight and pushed an old Jack Daniel’s bottle out of the way. The range to the saddle, actually to the upper edge of it where the trail was clear of obstructions, was just at eight hundred meters. Judging distance like that, downhill in the mountains, was usually tough. But Jake’s AID just laid a hologram on the hill and marked various points with range markers.
What the AID could not judge quite so well was the wind. At that distance the bullet would tend to drift rather strongly, perhaps as much as six inches given the wind and its direction.
Fortunately, Posleen were big targets.
The sergeant major rolled Nichols’ rucksack off his back and rummaged around in it. He’d lightened it up on the way up the hill by some judicious disposal of devices, but it was the first “down-time” he’d had all day and all he’d had to eat since the previous night was a handful of hickory nuts he’d picked up on Ochamp Mountain.
Mosovich pulled out four one-hundred-round boxes of .50 caliber BMG, a bag of peanut hard candy, two packs of Red Man, three packs of some sort of apparently homemade jerky, and three MREs. Apparently Nichols wasn’t big on “pogie-bait.” No Fritos, no Pringles, no soynuts, trailmix or cornnuts, not even a damned Ramen package. What the hell were they teaching these kids? The MREs were spaghetti and meatballs, tortellini and lasagna. Either Nicols had eaten everything else before these or he had packed out mostly Italian. Mosovich dove back in and rummaged for a while, but came up empty. Nothing else, but socks.
“Damn, no hot sauce. What kind of a soldier goes out on a mission without hot sauce?” He could stomach the Army’s version of “Italian food” if it had enough hot sauce in it. Otherwise it was just south of fried salamander — which wasn’t half bad really — in his personal view of military food. Somewhere way down from fried grasshopper and just above kimchee. After a few moments’ thought he pulled out one of the pieces of jerky and sniffed at it. His brow rose and he took a bite.
“Where in the hell did Nichols get venison jerky?” he asked no one. “And how come he was holding out?” After a moment’s thought and another bite he answered the second question for himself. “I’m gonna have to speak to that troop about his choice of rations.”
The sergeant major leaned on the pack and listened to the artillery in the distance. As he did he realized that the pos
ition also gave the first clear view he’d had of Clarkesville. The town was darn near fourteen klicks off, but it was as close as the team had gotten and the day was clear.
Mosovich pulled out his binoculars as he masticated the jerky. The stuff had the consistency of shoe leather, but it tasted heavenly. Bit light on the spicing, but perfection exists only in the mind of Allah.
“Lessee,” he murmured around the jerky. “There’s 441… And there’s Demorest. Probably.” The town was noticeable mostly for the cleared areas; there weren’t many buildings standing.
The day was as clear as a bell, one of those beautiful fall days when it seemed that from a high hill you could see creation. In this case the NCO could easily see all the way to where Interstate 85 used to be and Clarkesville was more than a tad easier.
The Posleen had covered the area with a smoke curtain, but the smoke pots, hundreds of them, were located on hilltops and left a “side” view of the area only lightly obscured. There were thousands of figures moving in the area, but that was only to be expected. What he hadn’t expected to see was a gaping hole in the side of one of the hills just to the north of Demorest.
“Damn, they’re digging in.”
The humans had observed that behavior before, but only on Earth. Although the God Kings invariably lived above ground, usually in large stone or metal pyramids — although there didn’t seem to be any evidence of those here — most of their manufacturing facilities seemed to be underground.
Apparently this was a “late conquest” activity. After an area had been fully reduced and all the human evidence cleaned up the Posleen generally put in farms. They primarily grew local crops having, apparently, none of their own. While this was going on the local God King’s pyramid was constructed and the multitude of items necessary for that and day-to-day existence was created from the “factories,” mostly nannite “vat” production, on the ships. But as soon as an area reached a certain level of production, underground facilities started being built. And when they were complete, the ships were passed on to the next generation and took off for either another planet or another part of the same planet. And the local settlement started working on the next ship out of their surplus.