When the Devil Dances lota-3 Read online

  “You guys coming or what?”

  It was exactly two minutes and thirty-five seconds from when he had kicked off of the ledge.

  The rest of the team descended more circumspectly, but with Mosovich in place he had a view that would give advanced warning if a Posleen patrol was approaching. As long as the team could freeze in place their camouflage and the darkness would probably prevent their being spotted. As it turned out, there were no patrols in the time it took them to descend the hill and join him on the flat. A small patrol, no more than twenty, came by while they were making their way through the grove of white pine along the river. But they just crouched in the close packed trees — the area looked almost like a Christmas tree farm — until the Posleen passed, then the human patrol closed on the bridge.

  The bridge was a simple, flat, concrete structure that just spanned the rushing waters. Checking both ways as if for traffic, Mosovich hopped over the near guardrail and started across the span with the rest of the team not far behind. On the far side, to the left, was another small field, the intersection of the main road and a washed-out side road that paralleled the river on the west side. The field was covered in brambles and small white pines, none of them more than knee-high, but it looked like some concealment to Brer Mosovich and he jumped the far guardrail and went to ground again.

  As soon as the rest of the team was in place, and making sure again that there was no sign of Posleen, he trotted through the brambles to the side road. The nearest woodline was up a chest-high embankment and across another small, sloping, weed-covered field. Once they crossed that, no more than another seventy meters, they would be in the woods and out of sight; the woods on this side were much more “bushy” than on the far slope.

  Jake jumped up the embankment and waited for Mueller and Nichols. After helping the sweating sniper haul the rifle up the embankment the team leader headed for the woodline.

  Daffodils, some roses run wild and a shallow crater showed that this had once been a homestead. There was also a low, stone terrace to be negotiated. As Jake scrambled up that — reaching the deeper shadows under an enormous pinetree — he looked to the east and went flat on his stomach; a Posleen patrol had just come around the bend on the far side of the river.

  The rest of the patrol saw him go down and followed suit, hoping for the darkness and their camouflage to conceal them. Sister Mary took a calculated risk and reached back to flip down her own ghillie net, which was kept in a bag at the top of the rucksack. It only took a few twitches to cover herself and a human could have walked within a few feet and never realized she was there.

  The Land Warrior suits they all wore had a nice suite of “sensors,” one of which was a fiber-optic periscope. Mosovich, and everyone else, used theirs now as they slowly extended them above grass height and looked back towards the bridge. The small diameter of the optics, even with the best processing in the world, did not give much detail in the extreme darkness, but some gross outlines were possible to make out. The Posleen patrol had come from the northeast, from the general direction of Tiger, and now they broke rhythm and ranks to cross the small structure.

  As the patrol watched, the Posleen force, about two hundred in number, formed up on the near side of the bridge, no more than fifty meters away, turned up the far hill and trotted away.

  Mosovich waited a moment for them to get out of sight then stood up carefully. “Now why the hell didn’t they see our trail?” he wondered.

  “I dunno,” Mueller responded, picking up the barrel of the sniper rifle. The four trails were clear in the vision systems, with bent down grass and weeds pointing directly to their position. “I dunno,” he repeated. “But let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Concur,” Mosovich said, heading towards the trees again at a moderate but steady pace. “No reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  * * *

  The Posleen normal had very few desires in life. Eat. Sleep. Reproduce. Satisfy the desires of its God. Kill anything that threatened it or its God.

  Currently it was satisfying its God that had it bugged. The orders it had been given were right at the edge of its competence. Most of its limited intelligence was bent on keeping to the complicated patrol path that had been laid out for it. The rest was burdened with determining what “signs of the threshkreen” meant. It knew threshkreen; it had survived all three of the fights its God had been involved in. They mostly wore green and brown. They carried weapons not dissimilar to the People. They were generally tough and stringy.

  But, by all reason, threshkreen either should be or should not be. This… being in potential, having been, but are not now, but might be again, this was rocket science to the poor normal.

  However, as it passed over the bridge, ready to make its programmed turn, it paused. Around it the part oolt formed, looking for the threat that had prevented their temporary master from continuing on. No threat. No thresh, no threshkreen. Just the dark silence of the moonless night.

  For the superior normal, however, there was a problem. The last time the God had spoken to him — he recalled it with a thrill of pleasure — the God had asked if he had seen anything not-normal. This, then, these… trails through the high grass and thorn bushes, this was not normal. By extension, it was possible that he should call for help if something was not normal. However, those were not his orders. His orders were to fire off one magazine if he saw “sign of threshkreen.”

  But… this could be the mysterious “sign.” Running thresh made such trails; it was a good way to find the thresh for gathering. Threshkreen, though, tended to leave things on the trails themselves, so walking on them when gathering threshkreen was contraindicated.

  But even the four-legged thresh of these hills made trails like that from time to time. Another patrol could have scattered them, driving them away from the road by their presence. It could even have been wild oolt’os; there were some of those in these death haunted hills.

  Rocket science indeed. Finally, cautiously, the normal moved towards the trails, searching and scenting for any clue. The trails came off of the road, crossed the field with some evidence of scattering or bedding, then went up into the hill beyond. He cautiously paralleled one of the trails. There was a scent of oil, a bite of gun-smell, that combination of propellants, metal and cleaners. But that could have come from anything. It could be in his nose from their own weapons. Finally he paused.

  The field was covered in thorn and grass, a simple triangle between the trees along the river, a road that paralleled it and the main road they were patrolling. The parallel road, a washed-out track now after the first onslaught cleared these hills, was also torn in the passage of whatever had made the trails. And in the mud on the far side, under the short cliff that terminated the field beyond, was a clear and unmistakable boot print.

  The normal didn’t know it was a bootprint. But he now knew what his God had meant by “sign of threshkreen” for he had seen this before as well. And when he saw it, he lifted his railgun in the air and fired.

  * * *

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Nichols said quietly.

  “Somebody spotted the path,” Mueller added unnecessarily. “Jake?”

  “Sister, call for fire on that field, call for scatterable mines on our trail, too. Let’s didee-mao, people.”

  * * *

  Cholosta’an scratched up behind the head of the superior normal as he drew his blade. It bothered him to gather this one. The normal was, without a doubt, the best of his oolt’os, but he was wounded sore and the path of duty was obvious. Cholosta’an scratched the chosslain and told him how good he had been to find the trail of the threshkreen as he laid the monomolecular blade against the normal’s throat.

  “Wait,” Orostan said quietly. “Is that the one that found the trail?”

  “Yes, Oolt’ondai,” the younger Kessentai answered. “It… bothers me to gather him. I have none better. But the way is clear.”

  “Leave him. We will provide him w
ith food. With enough food and rest he may grow well.”

  “Even if he survives he will be crippled,” Cholosta’an protested feebly. The idea was attractive, but the oolt’os would be nothing but a weight on his balance sheet.

  “If you will not support him, I will,” Orostan said. “Keep the genes. Keep the material. Put him to the work of a Kenstain, that which he can do. We need such as he. And you have other things to do.”

  “As you bid, Oolt’ondai,” Cholosta’an said, sheathing the blade. He gave the oolt’os some of his own rations, a singular honor, and stood up. “Well, you suggested I give up half my oolt and that is, more or less, what has occurred.”

  “Not exactly as I had intended,” Orostan said. “But not without some good. We now have these damned threshkreen, this Lurp team, localized. We can put all our patrols on a few roads and narrow the area down even more. Once we have them in a tiny box we will find and destroy them if it takes the entire host to do it.”

  “Good,” Cholosta’an said savagely. “When we do I want to eat their hearts.”

  Orostan hissed in humor. “I am no human lover, but they do have some good expressions. They refer to that as ‘payback.’ ”

  CHAPTER 10

  Near Seed, GA, United States, Sol III

  0623 EDT Sunday September 14, 2009 ad

  Mosovich cursed bitterly. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  “Yeah,” Mueller whispered. “Tell me about it.”

  Oakey Mountain Road was a tiny thread paralleling the Rabun/Habersham county line. The line itself followed the ridges that the team was using to avoid detection, but the road, not all that far away at most points, was generally obscured by the thick forests of the hills. This was their first clear glimpse, paused on the mountains above Lake Seed, and it was horrifying; the narrow trail was crawling with Posleen.

  “That’s a couple of brigades’ worth, Jake,” Mueller whispered.

  “Yeah, and if they’re there, they’re going to be on Low Gap Road… They’re boxing us.”

  “Jake, Posleen don’t do that,” Mueller protested, ignoring the evidence of his own eyes.

  “Yeah, well, these Posleen do,” Mosovich answered. “Sister Mary, are we secure?”

  “Yep,” she answered. “There’s a box over on the other side of Lake Rabun and I’ve put in a couple of new ones. We’re solid laser back to corps.”

  “Wake somebody up. I want a human being, not a machine. I think this mission is a bust and we’re going to have to cut our way out.”

  * * *

  The officer rubbed his eyes sleepily and took the proffered headset from the communications tech. “Major Ryan, FSDO. Who is this?”

  Ryan sometimes wondered if he wouldn’t have made a greater contribution to the war effort in the Ten Thousand, a posting that came automatically with the tiny “Six Hundred” embroidered on the right chest of his BDU uniform. However, a brief but memorable “counseling session” with the Chief of Staff of the Army Corps of Engineers had convinced him that there were better places for him, and for the Army.

  The Ten Thousand generally depended on other units for their engineering support and their senior engineer was basically a liaison. Sergeant Leo, now suitably promoted to warrant rank, fulfilled the position perfectly. And it would be a dead end for a junior engineer who had realized he liked being an officer.

  Thus had started a series of usually high profile, and always critical, assignments. The first had been as junior aide to the Commander of the Corps of Engineers and almost all the others had involved positions equally challenging and career advancing. Even this last, a redesign of the Rabun Gap defenses, was a high profile job. He was, technically, just the Assistant Corps Engineer, but in reality he was directing not only the brigade of engineers but all the divisional engineers in a complete rebuild of the valley’s defenses.

  The defenses for Rabun Gap were extremely heavy, make no mistake. The gap was a relative low point in the eastern ranges with a major road passing through it, so the United States had spared no expense in preparing for the Posleen onslaught. The primary physical defense was a curtain wall that stretched across a narrow point south of the former Mountain City like a slightly smaller Hoover Dam. The wall stretched, on an only slightly less massive scale, up both of the steep slopes on either side running along a line of ridges up to to the east and west. The “long wall” was being worked on constantly and would soon exceed the Great Wall of China as the single most massive human construction on Earth.

  However, beyond The Wall, and behind it for that matter, was a different story. Originally The Wall was intended to be the centerpiece of a defense structure that stretched down past Clayton and filled the entire Rabun Gap, which, technically, began behind the primary structure about two miles.

  Early landings and different priorities had meant that much of the preparations had not been carried through. None of the defenses in front of the wall remained; succeeding waves of attempted assaults had swept them all away and there had been no replacement. Furthermore, the defenses behind The Wall that were supposed to extend in depth for miles, had either never been completed or, in many cases, had been obliterated by the corps units as they jostled for space.

  On a tour that had finally included the relatively low-priority Rabun Gap region, the current commander of the Corps of Engineers had gotten one look at the defenses and nearly died of shock. Defenses three or four times this quality had been repeatedly gained and lost around Harrisburg and Roanoke so she knew damned well that these could be taken by a sufficiently determined Posleen assault.

  She first considered calling in John Keene. The civilian engineer was another special trouble-shooter that the COE kept in reserve. But not only was he deeply and inventively involved in rebuilding the Roanoke defenses, the local corps commander was General Bernard of 29th Infantry infamy.

  It was by the order of General Bernard that the Posleen who had settled in to feast on the corpse of Fredericksburg in the first landing were induced, instead, to come swarming out and attack the forces gathering to their north and south. General Bernard, ignoring orders to the contrary, had ordered his division artillery to fire on a concentration of Posleen that had no apparent interest in continuing in a hostile manner. This had the effect, metaphorically, of poking a stick into a wasp nest, with similar results.

  John Keene had successfully designed and implemented an engineering defense plan for Richmond to the south, literally at the last minute. The plan was implemented in opposition to the one suggested by General Bernard and had to be rushed through due to the poor tactical judgement of the general.

  The corps to the north of Fredericksburg, however, through a combination of bad political decisions, poor training and an apparent computer hacking by renegade forces, was overrun almost to a man. This left only Engineer Officer Basic Course student Second Lieutenant William Ryan, fellow classmates and other engineer trainees pulled from Advanced Individual Training to harass and delay the Posleen. With a little help from the USS Missouri they had fought their way back to the Lincoln Memorial, where they basically got tired of running and held the basement until the ACS arrived to dig them out.

  Which brought to the COE Commander’s mind Lieutenant Ryan, now Major Ryan, who would be the perfect party to put in an operational position. Especially if the major was put in place with a very quiet word to the prickly Bernard that if he didn’t give the major all the support he needed then get the hell out of the way, a certain court-martial board could be reconvened to “discuss” his failures in Virginia.

  Thus Major Ryan found himself explaining to administrative units that they could either move their facilites back from the wall or to the other side of it and he really didn’t care which.

  And pulling Field Grade Staff Duty Officer.

  * * *

  Jake winced. He didn’t know who this turkey was, but given that he was pulling staff duty in a nice dry headquarters it was pretty unlikely that he knew which
end of a rifle a bullet came out of much less how vitally important getting fire to a cut off patrol was.

  “Major, this is Sergeant Major Jake Mosovich, Fleet Strike Recon. And we’ve got us a situation here.”

  Ryan tugged at the lock of hair that always seemed to dangle on his forehead and tried to remember why the name sounded familiar. “Go ahead, Sergeant Major, you have my full and undivided attention.”

  * * *

  Jake dialed up the magnification on the night vision system and sighed. “Sir, we are surrounded by Posleen. Our position is southeast of Lake Seed and the Posleen have apparently figured this out and are patrolling all the surrounding roads. Our objective was an overlook of Clarkesville, but at this point that is impossible. If we can cut our way out alive we’ll be lucky. Are you with me, sir?”

  * * *

  Ryan shivered and remembered the mingled shame and relief when his own platoon was permitted to leave the Occoquan defense. He knew, only too well, how Mosovich was feeling at the moment. Or maybe not: in Ryan’s case he had always had the option of retreating.

  He glanced at the artillery availability board and blanched. The sergeant major was not going to like what he was about to tell him; it was likely that he wouldn’t believe it either.

  “Sergeant Major, I’ve got some really shitty news. The fighting up north has had CONARC calling for available artillery from all over. We’ve lost both additional heavy artillery regiments in the area, the additional special arty we were supposed to get was diverted to Chattanooga and Asheville and half our corps arty is gone. We don’t have any of the heavy, special guns at all, except one SheVa and they don’t have any useful ammunition. And you’re out of range for anything else except one five-five. And half the one five-five is tasked to emergency protective fire. I can’t get that released without the corps commander’s permission.”