When the Devil Dances lota-3 Read online

  Mosovich took them wide off of Highway 441, descending from their perch on Black Rock Mountain and down into the wilderness around Stonewall Creek. The pine and oak woods were shrouded in a medieval darkness; the background light of civilization had been extinguished for years. The primeval woods rustled with wildlife and in the hills south of Tiger Creek they startled up a herd of bedding deer that must have numbered in the hundreds.

  Up the hill from Tiger Creek Mueller stopped and raised a hand. From ahead there was a low, constant rustling. He crept forward, cranking up the gain on the light amplification goggles.

  When he saw the first of the beasts climbing laboriously out of a ten foot high mound of dirt, he just nodded and backed up. He looked at Mosovich and gestured to the south, indicating that they needed to go around. At Mosovich’s gesture of inquiry he held out two fingers, formed in a V and curved down, then gestured as if driving them at the ground. The sergeant major nodded and gestured to the south as well; nobody wanted to go through an abat meadow.

  The creatures were one of the pests brought by the Posleen. Like the Posleen they were omnivorous and capable of surviving on Terran vegetation. They were about the size of rabbits, white and looked somewhat like a cross between a rat and a pillbug. They moved like a rabbit, hopping along on a single rear leg that had a broad, flexible pod-foot. Individually they were inoffensive and, unlike Posleen, fully edible to humans; Mueller had eaten them and he had to admit that they tasted better than snake, something like capybara. However, they nested in large colonies dug into the ground like anthills and defended their colonies viciously, swarming out on anything that came near them and attacking with a pair of mandibles that looked like oversized rat-teeth. They also cleared large meadows out of the forests, felling the trees like beaver and chewing them up to create underground fungus gardens. They also ate a variety of vegetation and had been observed to scavenge carcasses.

  They were eaten by everything at this point including wolves, feral dogs and coyotes, but their only natural predator was what the Posleen called “grat.” The grats were much worse than abat, being a flying pest that looked remarkably similar to a wasp. However, grats were limited since the only thing they could eat was abat. With a mature abat nest in the area, Mueller made sure to keep a sharp eye out for grat; they were much more territorial than the abat and the sting from one was deadly.

  The rest of the trip was without incident, however, and by dawn they were bedded down themselves on the hills overlooking Lake Rabun. Their movement had been slow but that was okay. By tomorrow they would be snooping around the Posleen encampment and sending back reports. Clarkesville was within range of the 155mm artillery batteries around the Gap so whatever the Posleen were doing they could expect to receive a warm welcome.

  Sister Mary gave a thumbs up that communications were established. The commo sergeant had been preparing to become a nun when the word came of the pending invasion. She was released from the preliminary vows of a novice and enlisted in the Army. The first days of the war had her repairing field radios in St. Louis but when a Posleen globe surrounded the city, her service in a scratch company earned her a Distinguished Service Cross. The unit of odds and sods from the support units in St. Louis — no more than eight hundred personnel, none of them infantry — had ended up defending the Granite City Steel Works and shattering better than a hundred times their number. Her own exploits were too numerous to list, thus the simple “actions in and around the Granite City Steel Works” in her citation.

  The communications situation Beyond the Wall was complex. The Posleen had become more and more adept at detecting and localizing radio transmissions. After repeated losses, the LRRP teams began using automatic laser retransmitters for commo. Every team went out with large numbers of the bread-loaf sized devices and emplaced them on the ridges in their areas of operations. Since the retransmitters doubled as sensors they also gave the commands a feel for movement in their area.

  Thus the short, stocky commo tech carried a huge load of retransmitters. And had to continually ensure that they were in communication with the rear.

  Mueller rolled out his poncho liner and covered it with the ghillie blanket. Crawling under the combination he held up two fingers indicating he wanted second watch.

  Mosovich nodded, pointed to Nichols and held up one finger then four fingers to Sister Mary. They would sleep most of the day and head down to the river near dusk. By the next morning he intended to be looking at Clarkesville.

  Nichols dragged the ghillie blanket up to cover himself and his rifle then set up on a convenient rock. The march had been a bastard; the hills were pretty steep and the undergrowth was thick as hell. But he had a secret he was not about to share. The secret was that a bad day hiking up and down hills was better than a good day in the Ten Thousand. All in all he would rather be here than Rochester.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III

  0755 EDT Saturday September 12, 2009 ad

  God of our fathers, known of old,

  Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

  Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

  DoGeorgia over palm and pine —

  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

  Lest we forget — lest we forget!

  — Rudyard Kipling

  “Recessional” (1897)

  Mike O’Neal looked down at the smoke shrouded valley where Rochester, New York, used to be. The embattled city was now flatter than any hurricane could have made it; the humans were adept at fighting in rubble whereas the horselike Posleen found it nearly impossible. But that didn’t mean it was a human city anymore. Just that two different species of vermin battled over it.

  The rain was misting, a thick, drizzly fog blown in from Lake Ontario. Mike cradled his helmet in one hand and a grav pistol in the other. Behind him was a distant rumbling like thunder and on the east side of the Genesee River a curtain of white fire erupted with the snapping of a million firecrackers. The heights above the former Rochester University were taking another misdirected barrage.

  “These mist covered mountains, are home now for me,” he sang, twiddling the pistol in one hand and watching the fire of the ICM.

  “But my home is in the lowlands, and always will be.

  Someday you’ll return to your valleys and farms.

  And you’ll no longer burn to be brothers in arms.”

  Dancing in front of him was a hologram. A tall, lithe brunette in the uniform of a Fleet lieutenant commander was talking about how to raise a daughter long distance. The commander was very beautiful, a beauty that had once been an odd contrast to the almost troglodytic appearance of her famous husband. She also was calmer and wiser in the ways of people, an anodyne to the often hot-headed man she had married.

  What she was not was as lucky as her husband. A fact he never could quite forget.

  Another wash of ICM landed and hard on its heels a flight of saucer shapes lifted into the air and charged west across the river. The Posleen were learning, learning that terrain obstacles could be crossed with determination and a well led force. He watched clinically as the hypervelocity missiles and plasma cannons of the God King vehicles silenced strong points and a force of normals crossed on the makeshift bridge. The wooden contraption, simple planks lashed to dozens of boats scavenged from all over, would have been easily destroyed by the artillery fire but, as usual, the artillery concentrated on the “enemy assembly areas” and “strategic terrain.” Not the Posleen force, without which the terrain would no longer be strategic.

  “They learn, honey,” he whispered. “But we never do.”

  They hadn’t learned in the unexpected skirmishes before the war officially started, when they lost Fredericksburg and almost lost Washington. When lightly armed “fast frigates” had been thrown willy-nilly at battleglobes.

  The battleglobes were constructed of layer upon layer of combat ships. A direct hit by an antimatter warhead would strip a layer off a section of
the exterior but the inner ships would simply blow the damage off and reengage. Thus the theory of using a massive punch to break them up and then engaging the scattered ships with “secondaries.” But that required not only fleets of secondary ships, fighters, frigates and destroyers, but a massive central capital ship.

  However, rather than wait until the Fleet was fully prepared the Galactic command had thrown more and more ships, practically right out of the shipyards, into the battle. Pissing them away in dribs and drabs not only in Terran space but over Barwhon and Irmansul. The loss of the ships, the secondaries that were vital to the overall plan, was bad enough, but the loss of trained personnel had been devastating.

  The invasion of Earth had practically cut it off from space and none of the other races of the Galactic Federation could fight. To provide the planned crews for the Fleet, Earth had been stripped of likely candidates and they were put through months and years of simulator training in preparation for when they would venture forth to triumph in space. Instead, they had been thrown away in skirmish after skirmish, none of them doing any noticeable damage to the Posleen. Thus, the limited number of off-planet forces had been bled white before the first capital ship was completed.

  The second invasion wave was fully in swing before the first “superdreadnought” was launched. This massive ship, nearly four kilometers long, was designed to use its spinal hypercannon to break up the globes. And it worked with remarkable facility. Coming in at high velocity from Titan Base the Lexington smashed two of the globes headed for Terra. And then it was swarmed.

  Thousands of smaller ships, the skyscraper shaped Lampreys and C-Dec command ships, surrounded the beleaguered superdreadnought and pounded it to scrap. Despite the heavy anti-ship defenses along the sides and despite the massive armor it was stripped to a hulk by repeated antimatter strikes. Finally, when no further fire was forthcoming, the wreckage was left to drift. So durable was the ship the generators at its core were never touched and it was eventually salvaged and rebuilt. But that took more years, years that the Earth didn’t have.

  Mike wondered how many other wives and husbands, mothers and fathers were pissed away by the goddamned Fleet. By “admirals” who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. By a high command that kowtowed to the damned Darhel. By senior commanders who had never seen a Posleen, much less killed one.

  And he wondered when it was going to be his turn.

  He watched the ghost of his wife’s smile as the cold autumn rains dripped off his shaved head and the artillery hammered the advancing centaurs. And flicked the safety of his pistol on and off.

  * * *

  Jack Horner stood arms akimbo smiling at the blank plasteel helmet in front of him. “Where in the hell is O’Neal?”

  Inside his armor Lieutenant Stewart winced. He knew damned well where the major was. And so did the Continental Army Commander. What neither one of them knew was why O’Neal wasn’t responding to their calls.

  “General Horner, all I can say is where he is not, which is here.” The battalion intelligence officer gave an invisible shrug inside the powered battle armor. “I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as possible.”

  The colloquy of commanders and key staff from the Ten Thousand and the ACS were gathered on the hills above Black Creek. From there, even with the waves of cold, misting rain coming off the lake, the successful Posleen assault across the river was clearly visible. As was the ineffectual artillery fire of the local Corps. Whose headquarters, commander and staff were forty-five miles behind the Continental Army Commander’s current position.

  “We need to get this penetration contained,” said Colonel Cutprice. The colonel looked to be about twenty until you saw his eyes. In fact he had been one of the most decorated veterans of the Korean War. Thanks to the miracles of Galactic rejuvenation, and a push for more “warriors” in the officer corps, the decrepit old warrior had been restored to youth. And almost immediately started gathering medals again.

  The silver eagles on his shoulders were almost an affectation; the “Ten Thousand” force that he commanded was better than a brigade in strength and thanks to its converted Posleen equipment had the combat power of an armored corps. But he refused any rank higher than bird colonel and the one abortive attempt to replace him had resulted in something very close to mutiny. So a colonel commanded a pocket division.

  “My boys and the 72nd Division have ’em contained along Genesee Park Avenue and there’s a company or so of the 14th holding on in The Park; they’re dug in hard on the hill. But more of the fuckin’ horses are pushing over that damned bridge all the time. We need to drive in a counterattack and destroy the crossing. It would be helpful if we could get some combat suit support on that.”

  Stewart winced again at the neutral tone. For conventional forces, or even the unarmored Ten Thousand, assaulting the Posleen was a brutal business. The railguns and plasma cannons of the enemy turned troops in the open into hamburger and the God Kings opened up main battle tanks like tin cans. It was why the ACS, the Galactic supplied Armored Combat Suits, were always used for assaults. But that meant that the ACS had been whittled away in attack after attack, especially on the Great Plains and here in the Ontario Salient. And with Earth interdicted and the only factories for making suits off-planet that had meant “ten little suits, nine little suits.” Until there were none.

  There was a trickle of resupply from the Galactics. Stealth ships slipped onto Pacific Islands and transferred their cargoes to submarines. These, in turn, visited high latitude ports such as Anchorage. The cargoes then would be trucked to where the lines were still holding. But that resupply route was pitifully inadequate for making up losses. Which was why the U.S. had gone from two divisions of ACS to less than two battalions, a ninety percent reduction in total force, in the last four years. And it had used up more than four divisions of suits along the way.

  1st Battalion 555th Mobile Infantry, “The Real Black Panthers,” had lost fewer units than the other battalions and it still maintained a solid core of veterans who had survived every battle. But even they had had a nearly two hundred percent turnover rate. And with the slow rate of resupply that meant eventually even “First Batt” was doomed.

  Whereas the supply of Posleen just seemed to be growing.

  Horner shook his head and turned to the other suit in the conference.

  “If Major O’Neal does not appear soon, I am turning command over to you, Captain Slight.” His blue eyes were as cold as agates. Mike O’Neal had once been his aide and was a hand-picked protégé but if Rochester got turned the next fall-back line was just east of Buffalo. And the front there was twice as long. Holding the Rochester defenses was, therefore, the number one priority in the eastern United States.

  “Yes, sir,” said the Bravo company commander. “Sir, it would help if we could free up the artillery. We need it to hit that bridge, not the, pardon my French, fucking ‘logistical tail,’ sir.”

  Horner smiled even wider, a sure sign of anger, as Cutprice snorted.

  “We’re working that out. As of twenty minutes ago General Gramns was relieved by my order. The Ten Thousand artillery coordinator is up there right now trying to convince them that a pontoon bridge is a better target than ‘assembly areas.’ ”

  “With a platoon of my MPs,” Cutprice added. “And two saucers. I told him the first one of those chateau generaling bastards gives him shit, he’s to blast him right in fucking public. With a plasma cannon.” The lean colonel was so utterly deadpan it was impossible to tell if he was joking.

  “Whatever it takes to get their attention.” Horner sighed. “And it might take a summary execution. I’d put you in charge of the Corps, Robert, but I can’t spare you. And you can’t do both jobs.”

  “I’d end up killing all their rear echelon asses anyway,” the colonel grumped. “And all the goddamned regular Army assholes that can’t get their divisions to fight.”

  “The 24th New York and 18th Illin
ois are reassembling near North Chili,” Horner said. “But I don’t want to just slot them into the hole. Once we get the pocket cleared out I want you to throw up bridges and press a counterattack. I’ve sent for Bailey bridge companies and I want you to use them. Harry those horses. Drive them as far east as you can. I guarantee you that there will be infantry for you to fall back on. On my word.”

  “What is the target?” Stewart asked. “Where do we stop?”

  “The goal is the Atlantic Ocean,” Horner answered. “But don’t outrun your supports. I’d like to see the line pushed back to Clyde. The front would be narrower and the ground is better for us.”

  “Gotcha,” Cutprice said with a death’s head grin. “Our flank’s gonna be as open as a Subic Bay whore, though.”

  “I’ll have the ACS out there,” the general said quietly. “Whether O’Neal shows up or not.”

  * * *

  Ernie Pappas sighed. The hill was a moraine, a leftover of the glacier that had carved out Lake Ontario. On the back side, facing southwest away from the fighting, a former children’s hospital had been converted to tend to the thousands of wounded produced by the month’s long battle. Including at least a dozen ACS troopers too busted up for their suits to fix.

  Even up here in the clean, fresh air the miasma of pain could be sensed. But the hill provided a fine view of the battle that VIII Corps was in the process of losing. A fine view.

  Which was undoubtedly why the Old Man had chosen it for his meditations. The major had gotten more and more morose as the war went on and the casualties just kept mounting. There wasn’t anything that anyone on Earth could do about it, but the Old Man seemed to take it personally. As if saving the world was all on his shoulders.