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  With Posleen at both doors, and more coming knocking through the undefended back, the corps commander had no choice but to deploy the 147th to try to stop the Posleen coming up from Rabun. The Rabun Corps had been well and truly trashed by the unexpected nature of the assault and several nuclear detonations from a trashed SheVa gun and some landers its mate had potted on the retreat. The simple fact was that the entire unit would have to be either replaced or rebuilt.

  In the meantime the Asheville Corps was, “in addition to its other duties” to start pushing the Posleen back out of the bottle. Pushing them back through narrow mountain valleys and passes. Pushing nearly a million of them out of the valley and away from the narrow lifeline of I-40 that was the only thing keeping Asheville alive.

  A tall order for any force. And the 147th got the job.

  It was a job for the Ten Thousand, for the Armored Combat suits. It was a job for an elite mechanized infantry unit with heavy artillery backing.

  And the 147th got the job.

  The division had been incredibly slow to get off the stick. So slow that a Posleen mobile force had taken the critical Balsam Pass and cut off not only the vast majority of the Rabun Corps, but the only SheVa left that could support the counterattack.

  Eventually the 147th had tried to assault the pass. And tried. And tried. It wasn’t taking many casualties in trying and yet it was still taking too many for the results.

  Since, with the withdrawal of the last refit unit, Arkady didn’t have much to do, the corps commander sent him up to figure out what was going on. And it was pretty much what he expected. Highway 74 up to Balsam Pass was a long line of vehicles, just stopped, with troops marching up the side of the road in a double line. None of the vehicles were in defensive perimeters. None of the soldiers seemed to know what they were doing, where they were going, or much to care. They were all sullen and unhappy at having been pulled out of their comfortable barracks. And none of them seemed to have a clue how to do their job in a mobile combat situation.

  The division headquarters was worse. He remembered reading a description of the British Expeditionary Force in the first battle of France. Something about “generals wandering around the headquarters tent looking for string.” He’d thought it was a joke until he saw the division commander of the 147th wandering around asking everyone if they had a sharpened pencil. The man had a pen sticking out of his pocket.

  The “front” wasn’t much better. A battalion had been tasked with retaking the pass but they were stymied by Posleen roadblocks. The Posleen force had sent some of its “normals” down the road and placed them in cover to stop the humans.

  The initial assault hadn’t even had a scouting element and the first few trucks full of troops had run straight into what was effectively an ambush. Even if the alien on the other end of a gun was a semi-moron. It had killed no more than a platoon or so of troops, but suddenly to all the units the Posleen could be anywhere!

  The battalion commander was dithering, the S-3 was blithering and the XO was having a nervous breakdown. They had been stopped by what appeared to be a single Posleen. Orders to the companies in the advance to move forward were ignored; the company commanders couldn’t get their troops up off their bellies. Calls for fire to the artillery section led to fire everywhere but on the target, everywhere including some of the front-rank soldiers. Finally, the lone Posleen was taken out by a mortar section and some of the troops were induced to crawl forward. But it was nearly four thousand meters to the pass, and crawling wasn’t going to get them there any time soon.

  Arkady had returned to the corps headquarters and given a short and somewhat profane description of the situation at the pass. After a moment the corps commander dictated a short note.

  “Major General (brevet) Arkady Simosin appointed commander of the 147th Infantry Division vice General Wilson Moser. General Wilson Moser relieved.”

  “Arkady, you’ve got twenty-four hours to make it to Rabun Gap,” the commander said.

  “It’s going to be ugly.”

  “I don’t care. Make it to Rabun, or even close, and those won’t be brevet stars.”

  He had his second chance. What he was learning was that no matter how hard the first chance might have been, the second chance was harder.

  At the division headquarters he had handed the note to General Moser then read himself in. After that he gave the chief of staff a few orders.

  “Get this clusterfuck under control. When I return if I hear one hysterical voice, I will shoot it. If I see one officer running I will shoot him. If the maps are not updated I will shoot you. You’re all on probation. We are going to Rabun Gap. If I get there with a platoon left it will at least be a platoon that knows what in the hell it is doing.”

  He’d then gone up to the front. The lead company was stalled, again, by another Posleen outpost.

  The company commander was belly down off the side of the road when he walked up.

  “Get down, General!” the captain had shouted. From up the road there was a crackle of railgun fire and Arkady could hear it going by overhead.

  “Captain, are any of your men dying around you?”

  “No, sir?”

  “That is when you get down on your belly, Captain.”

  The company was hunkered down to either side of the road, still in a tactical roadmarch position. As far as he could determine there was no attempt being made to move forward.

  He spotted the company sniper by the side of the road, clutching his Barrett .50 caliber rifle to his chest.

  “Son, do you know how to fire that thing?”

  “Sort of…”

  “Give.” He took the rifle, and the sniper’s ghillie blanket, then slid down the embankment.

  The company was huddled behind a curve in the road. There was a sharp road cut and a ditch on the left-hand side and a nearly vertical cliff leading down to a stream on the right. At the turn itself there was a small hillock through which the road was cut. He slid down the embankment, nearly breaking an ankle, then puffed up the hill on the right. At the top he realized how out of shape eighteen-hour days and no PT can make you. But he flipped the ghillie blanket up and slithered forward anyway.

  The Posleen was in a similar position about five hundred meters up the road and Simosin was damned if he could spot it. He looked but since everyone was out of sight the damned thing wasn’t firing. The Posleen were not supposed to use snipers; in a way it wasn’t fair.

  “Commander!” he yelled down the hill. “Have one of your men stand up!”

  “What?!”

  “I need to see where the Posleen is. Have one of your men stand up in view of it.”

  “I… ” There was a pause. “I don’t think they will!”

  “Okay,” the general replied and put a round into the wall by the head of the point. “You! Walk out into the road. As soon as the Posleen fires, you can go hide again.”

  He could see the point’s face clearly. The kid was probably about seventeen and terrified. He looked over towards the hill the general was on and shook his head. “No!”

  Arkady took a breath and put a round through his body. The fifty caliber bullet caromed off the wall behind the private and blew back out through his gut in a welter of gore.

  “You! Behind him! Step out into the road. Now!”

  And he did. And Arkady finally spotted the Posleen. One round was all it took.

  When he got back to the company CP, he could see his sergeant major standing behind the company commander with a leveled rifle.

  “If you had been doing your job, that kid would still be alive,” the general said coldly. “If your men don’t move, you have to make them move. If they don’t obey orders, you have to make them obey orders. I’m giving you a second chance. I want you up that road. If you can’t do it, I’ll get someone who will. And if I have to relieve you, it might just be in a bodybag.”

  He turned to the sniper and hurled the thirty-five pound rifle at him. “Learn to use
this. If you think you can use it on me, give it your best shot.”

  The word got around quick.

  After a nuke round took out most of the Posleen, and an attack had hit the survivors from the Rabun side, they had made it to the pass. And on the other side, things started to move. He’d ended up relieving quite a few people, and the people he put in place relieved a few others, but the division had finally started to click. And he’d heard there’d been a couple of other “friendly fire” incidents, at least one of them from the front to the rear rather than vice versa. But he didn’t care. As soon as they had the pass cleared he had sent a battalion of Abrams and Bradleys, with scouts out, barreling down the road past the smoking SheVa. They had taken Dillsboro after light resistance and then barreled up the road to Green’s Creek under increasing fire. The replacement for his artillery officer had finally found people who could hit the broad side of a barn and the replacement for his logistics officer had figured out how to move trucks. All it had taken was explaining that they had better remember old lessons or they would get new ones.

  He didn’t like being a son of a bitch. And he really hadn’t liked killing that poor, lonely private. But that one round had gotten the division off the stick better than two months of training or even killing every tenth man.

  But at Green’s Creek they were stopped again and it was a fair stop. The lead elements had been so into the chase, or so afraid of what was behind them, that they had gotten chopped to hamburger trying to push the Posleen out of position in the Savannah Valley. And the next brigade had taken more casualties grabbing the high-ground. But they had it. The only problem was, instead of scattered Posleen shell-shocked from the nuke rounds they were faced with apparently unlimited fresh forces pouring down from Rocky Knob pass. He was bleeding troops like water and there seemed no end to the Posleen when the SheVa finally showed up.

  He’d worked around them a couple of times but he’d never seen one tricked up like this. It had what looked like MetalStorm 105s on top of its turret and the front was some sort of add-on armor. And the water fountain had been spectacularly visible for miles around. Obviously they’d been doing more than a hasty battlefield repair up Scott’s Creek.

  If the thing could take direct fire, and it looked as if it could, and if it could fire into the valley, together with an assault from their present positions he might be able to push the Posleen all the way to the end of the Savannah Valley. The terrain there was even better for stopping the Posleen and together with the nuke rounds the SheVa had fired up towards the gap they might be able to push through.

  If, but, might.

  Time was awastin’.

  “Son, drive up to second battalion,” he said. He had taken to driving around the battle in a Humvee and the word had already gotten out that no matter where you were, The General, two capitals, might show up at any time. “Let’s see if we can find the battalion TOC.”

  “Yes, sir.” The battalion commanders had taken to getting right up on the front lines. It was the only way to be sure that most of what you ordered was getting done. And since you were likely to see the general there, too, hiding back in a rear-area CP was just not done.

  Which meant that he was going to have to go drive a friggin’ Humvee into the teeth of Posleen fire. Again.

  But he wasn’t about to tell this cold, angry officer “no.”

  Better to take on the Posleen with a pocket knife.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Green’s Creek, NC, United States of America, Sol III

  1725 EDT Monday September 28, 2009 AD

  “We got a crunchy walking around right by the left track,” Reeves snarled. The terrain he had to cross was bad enough, worrying about a crunchy was not what he wanted on his mind.

  The direct route from their current position to where Colonel Roberts wanted the SheVa was not much farther than the SheVa was long. But it might as well have been on the moon for all he could just drive there. If he went straight he was going to end up nose down in what anyone else would call a valley and a SheVa considered a ditch.

  So first he had to slowly go down the easier slope to the west then make a hard turn to the left, hoping that the tracks would dig through one of the cliffs rather than get stuck, and then drive up the slope. Simple. Sure. It was like parallel parking a Suburban with two inches to spare in either direction.

  And if the crunchy stayed where he was when Reeves reached the bottom, he was going to get turned into stew.

  Colonel Mitchell glanced at the monitor and frowned. “I think he’s headed for the personnel door.” He looked around and spotted the civilian. “Mr. Kilzer, can you find…”

  “I designed it, Colonel,” Paul said, getting to his feet with a grin.

  * * *

  It was a general, all right, dragging an oversized briefcase, what used to be called a sample case, and accompanied by a female captain. The general seemed below normal height, but Mitchell realized when he stood up that that was due to his broad bulk. He was probably about five-ten, but seemed damned near as broad across; his BDUs were filled out enough to strain the seams. Some of it was fat, but most of it just looked like muscle.

  The captain was fairly short, maybe five foot max, with brown hair and green eyes. What was most notable, however, was that the front of her BDUs were swelled out to an incredible degree. Either she had a sleeping bag tied to her chest or she was stacked like a brick shit house. After a moment Mitchell tore his eyes away and met hers only to realize that plain as she looked, other than her chest, her eyes were even more arresting than her figure. After another moment he tore his eyes away from the entire encounter and saluted the general.

  “That’s a long damned walk for an old man,” the general commented, returning the salutes of the crew. “Arkady Simosin. For the time being, I’m the commander of the 147th.”

  “General, you didn’t have to come up here! If I’d known it was you down there I would have come down myself.”

  “Not a problem, Colonel, you’ve got a better briefing area in your hold than we could have gotten anywhere else.” He gestured at the officer with him. “Captain LeBlanc is the local battalion commander.”

  “Captain?” he said. “The battalion commander? She’s MI!”

  “There has been a rash of reliefs lately,” she said coldly. Her voice was quiet so that he had to strain to hear it, which for some reason added emphasis.

  “And a few deaths,” the general added. “Captain LeBlanc ended up in temporary command and it turned out she was the best choice for the job.”

  “Repeat that if we pull this off,” the captain said. “So, I understand you want to run over some of my men, Colonel?”

  “Not if we can help it,” Mitchell said, calling the local area map up on the main viewscreen. “We need to get up on this ridge,” he continued, highlighting the point. “We’re going down off this hill to the southwest then up the ridge.” He used a light pen to draw in the projected movement.

  “Nice gear,” she commented. “I’m glad you got with me; you would have run right over my forward TOC.” She thought about it for a moment then shook her head. “All my companies along that ridge are in heavy contact. I can’t pull them out; they’ll get shot to shit. Even if I bring up their APCs.”

  Mitchell removed his helmet and scratched his head for a moment then shrugged. “We can lay down denial fire just ahead of their retreat. We… might tag a few of your troops. But at that point you’ll be out of contact. Once we get up on the ridge we’ll be in control of the situation.”

  “If they don’t flank you,” General Simosin pointed out. “And if they don’t eat through your armor. You’re not invulnerable, you know.”

  “Darn near, frontally,” Kilzer pointed out. “Sides though?” He shrugged then looked at the captain. “Has anyone ever told you you have magnificent breasts?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Just before I dragged their testicles out through their nose.” She turned back to Mitchell and shrugg
ed. “You really think you can stop the Posties before they eat my guys?”

  “General, what sort of artillery can we call?” Mitchell temporized.

  “Everything,” the general said. “I’ll redirect it. If you can push up that ridge then lay down heavy fire on the far valley, we can push forward again.”

  He turned to the captain and shrugged. “You’ve got all the tracks. Can you pull out and then counterattack. I mean, just like that?”

  “I’ll try,” LeBlanc said with a shrug. “I’ve got the tank platoon in reserve anyway. They’ll take the gap while the rest are reassembling. I need to get a good op-order out, though; this won’t work with a frag. How long do I have?”

  “Thirty minutes,” Simosin said. “No more.”

  “Thirty minutes to get the order out, sir?” she snapped. “Or thirty minutes to effect the movement?”

  “No more than thirty minutes for each,” Simosin replied.

  “It’ll have to be a frag order!” she argued. “And a short one at that! Half my company commanders are lieutenants! I’ve got one company ‘commanded’ by a staff sergeant! I don’t think it’s possible. Seriously.”

  “It has to be,” Simosin ground out. “Do it.”

  “Shit,” she snarled. “Yes, sir!” She turned around and dropped into the exit hatch then stopped. “And, Kilzer, my face is up here,” she snapped, pointing towards it. Then she was gone.

  “I suppose saying ‘va-va-va-voom!’ would be out of line?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, it would,” the general snapped. “Okay, one hour. Be ready to move.”

  “Sir, it’s going to take more time than that…” Mitchell said, quietly. “She’s got to move her TOC among other things.”

  “It’s four Humvees parked in a yard,” the general said, equanimously. “I’ll give her a bit more than an hour. What I really should do is turn over the tracks to another battalion and let them perform the assault.”