When the Devil Dances Page 5

  He scratched at a scar on the tenar and ruffled his crest. "The People almost took this planet by storm. We have taken most of it, but a few geographic areas remain. The most troublesome is surely this one. And I think that Tulo'stenaloor's plan will work. We have to think like the humans to defeat them and we must copy some of their ways while using our own also. But the most important thing we must do is we must surprise them. The humans have a saying 'to take somebody from behind.' Like many human sayings it has several overtones which don't translate well.

  "You are right, I don't have to be here," the oolt'ondai admitted, looking to the mountains to the north. "I have four estates that are not in orna'adar; I have gathered the treasure of eight worlds and could live wherever I wished if I wanted to settle into death. I am an oolt'ondai, commander of my own oolt'poslenar. I can go anywhere in the galaxy that my drives will carry me and my personal oolt is armed with the finest weapons the People make so once I get there I can take any lands I desire. But for the race, for my genetic line, I am here. And, for the race, for our clans and for our lines, you and I, young eson'sora, we're going to crack this stev. We are going to take their passes, take their valleys and drive to the heart of the grat's nest, 'rolling them up' from behind. We are going to smash these humans flat."

  CHAPTER 4

  Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III

  0547 EDT Sunday September 13, 2009 ad

  "Just as soon as the arty arrives, we are going to smash these Posleen flat."

  Mike didn't bother to look around; the silty water would have prevented a "real" view of the company commanders gathered in a crouch. Besides, his attention was fixed on the symbology being trickled into his eyes.

  The inside of a suit of GalTech armor was filled with a semibiotic shock gel. The silvery gel was the medium that supported the billions of nannites that fed and cared for an ACS trooper, but it also served to prevent high speed impact injuries. Since these affected the head as much as, or more than, any other part of the body, the helmet was cushioned on all sides by the gel, leaving only a small portion open for the eyes, mouth and ears. The exterior of the helmet was opaque; what the "Protoplasmic Intelligence System" inside the armor saw was a fully conformable construction of the external view. This "construction" was, in turn, conveyed to the eye by small optics that were extruded from the helmet. A similar audio system threaded out of the wall of the suit and into the ear canal for hearing while air was pumped to the opening around the mouth.

  This engineering, some said over-engineering, had stood O'Neal in good stead on Diess. There, when it all went to the wall, when a Posleen battlecruiser had come in for direct support of the invaders, he had taken the only road to "victory" he could see and used the last bit of his suit energy to fly up to the ship and hand detonate a cobbled together antimatter limpet mine.

  He knew at the time that he was committing suicide; had sent a note to his wife to the effect. But through a series of low order physics probabilities and the "over-engineering" of the suits he had survived. Since then, many troopers had survived nearly as strenuous situations, although none as strenuous, and these days no one used the term "over-engineered." "Hideously expensive," yes. A command suit cost nearly as much as a small frigate. But not over-engineered.

  The armor also permitted degrees of control that were both a blessing and a nightmare. A superior could control every aspect of the battle down to the smallest action of a subordinate. Which was the nightmare. However, it also permitted a commander to lay out a very detailed and graphic plan, then monitor events and intervene if necessary when, not if, the plan went awry.

  Now, though, it permitted the major to cover last-minute changes with his company commanders and battle staff while standing on the bottom of the Genesee River.

  "Word is we have an additional artillery battalion," he continued, updating the schematic with the icon for on-call artillery. "It's still not what I would prefer for this assault. But I think that it's all that we're going to get in less than five or ten days. And if we wait that long all that we'll really get is more Posleen.

  "That brings us up to close to two brigades but only one of them is fully coherent and effective. That brigade will initiate with a time-on-target over our initial movement area. With luck that will plaster the Posleen in our way and this will be a walk in the park."

  "Riiight," Captain Slight said, to assorted chuckles. The captain had come a long way from the newbie lieutenant who had joined Mike's company before the first landing of the Posleen and she was well respected by her company, what had been Mike's company. She was also trusted by her battalion commander.

  "When we move forward, our right will be aligned on the canal," Mike pointed out "So it will be covered. But our left flank is going to be as open as a gutted whale."

  "I thought we were going to have a curtain barrage covering it," Captain Holder said. The Charlie company commander was responsible for the left.

  "We are," Mike said with an unseen grimace. He worked his dip and spit into the pouch the somewhat prescient gel produced. "But Duncan is defining the battalion responsible for the barrage as 'shaky.' "

  "Who'd he get that from?" Slight asked. The icon for the artillery coordinator was firmly fixed on the hill previously occupied by the battalion commander and for some of the same reasons. Among other things, it gave a lovely view of the battlefield. More importantly, it permitted the suit's sensor suite a lovely view of the battlefield, and what the suits could do with that information continued to astound everyone. Including, from time to time, the artificial intelligence devices that drove the suits.

  However, the artillery that would be supporting the push was miles back, nowhere near the location of the battalion's artillery expert.

  "I understand he is liaisoning with the Artillery Coordinator of the Ten Thousand," Mike answered in a lofty tone.

  There was a grim chuckle from the officers.

  * * *

  "Colonel, I'll ask the question one last time," the captain said with a grim smile. The junior officer was slight, café au lait in complexion and furious. Furthermore, his reputation preceded him.

  "Captain, there's nothing else to do," the older officer said seriously. "The guns are getting in place as fast as possible. I know it's not up to standard, but it's as fast as this unit is capable of. You have to understand, we're not some sort of super unit . . ."

  "No, Colonel, you're not," the captain spat back. For most officers it would have been suicide, but Keren, and every other member of the Six Hundred, already knew what suicide was. Suicide was huddling around the Washington Memorial, damn near out of ammunition and completely out of hope, because you'd rather pile up the mound with your dead than back up one last yard. And the one thing that the Six Hundred never, ever accepted was an excuse. From anyone. "What you are is an artillery battalion of the United States Ground Forces. And you are expected to perform as such.

  "Unless your command is laid in in the next three minutes, prepared to fire, I will ask for your relief. And General Horner will order it. And then I will take command of this battalion. If I have to kill every member in this unit, until I get to the last ten reasonably competent people, I will do so to get fire on target. Am I making myself perfectly clear?"

  "Captain, I don't care who you are," the colonel said harshly. "I do not have to take that sort of tone from any goddamned O-3."

  "Colonel," the officer said coldly, "I have shot superiors that failed to perform to my satisfaction. I don't give a flying fuck how you feel about getting reamed out by a captain; we no longer have time for your incompetence. You have one of three choices, lead, follow or die. Choose."

  The colonel paused as he realized the captain was absolutely serious. And there was a pretty good chance that if a captain of the Six Hundred asked for his relief, it would be granted. That was what the Army was coming to, damnit.

  "Captain, we will not be laid in in three minutes," he said reasonably.

  "Colonel, ha
ve you ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition?" Keren asked tightly.

  "Yes," the officer said and blanched. "I'm . . . sure we can get laid in to your satisfaction, captain."

  "Try," the captain rasped. "Try like the Posleen were about to eat your ass. Because if you're caught between the Posties and the Six Hundred, choose the Posties. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Clear," the colonel answered and checked his salute before turning away.

  Keren watched him leave with cold, dead eyes then stepped around the command Humvee by which they had been carrying on their quiet conversation. He assured himself that no one was watching, then, retaining the identical expression, casually threw up.

  He washed out his mouth with a swig from his canteen and shook his head. It wasn't that he was unprepared to shoot the arrogant, incompetent bastard in command of the artillery. It was that it wouldn't help. The unit had been on support duty in Fort Monmoth for so long they weren't in any way, shape or form prepared to do anything but fire, from exactly the same positions, on the same azimuths and elevations, day after day.

  Unfortunately, they had been pulled out of their comfy positions as the ones "most excess to need" and sent to support the assault in Rochester. What "excess to need" was turning out to mean was "excessively incompetent." It was an old problem, when a unit called and said "we need your best for something hard" the unit that was losing the capability naturally did not want to send their best. Whether it was a levee of individuals or a shift of units, the commander always tended to send whoever they felt the most comfortable with losing.

  And any commander in his right mind would be willing to get rid of this battalion of artillery. Keren had to wonder how many "friendly fire" incidents they had been involved in.

  Keren shook his head again and pulled a cellphone out of his pocket. There were still plenty of the towers and, as long as the Posleen weren't jamming, they were a pretty decent way to communicate. And they weren't monitorable by most military units, which was a real plus at times.

  "Hey Duncan, man, I think it's time for the Spanish Inquisition. . . ."

  * * *

  Mike watched the quality marker of the new artillery battery switch from Quality Two to QualFour and smiled. If things like that didn't happen, he'd wonder what was wrong.

  "And it appears that Keren just downchecked them," he continued as the rumble of the brigade time on target started, right on time.

  "Oh. Joy," Captain Slight said with a slightly hysterical laugh. "We're going out there with our ass in the breeze, sir."

  "And such a nice ass it is," Mike said in an abstracted tone. He was flipping at icons and as they changed back and forth knew that Duncan was doing the same. "The choice is the curtain barrage or on call fire. We can put down the curtain with mortars or shift the mortars to on call. Your call, so to speak. I want to shuffle the companies and put Bravo on the left flank. Your orders will be to spread yourself along the left flank and hold that zone until relieved by the Ten Thousand or other similar units. Since you'll be the most spread out, I'll give you the majority of the supplementary fire. For what it's worth, this number of mortars will make a lousy curtain barrage."

  He knew that if he set the suit systems to simulated vision, the female officer would be tapping her fingers on the front of her helmet. It was a nervous habit that was the best substitute she had for nibbling her fingernails. Which, when she was out of armor, was what the commander did constantly. He could practically hear the plastic on plastic thunking sound from here.

  "On call, sir," the captain said. "I'll want to make the company even more of an 'L' shape. And they'll eventually get in behind us."

  "We'll make that bridge when we come to it," Mike answered. "Captain Holder, d'you have a problem taking the center?"

  "Negative, Major," the commander replied. "We'll hammer them flat."

  "Okay," O'Neal answered, resetting the markers for the three line companies. The three units were already short of bodies and inverting Bravo to cover the flank, necessary as that was, would reduce the density of fire, the "plowing the road" that the ACS depended on to reduce the Posleen swarms. The only reserve was going to be their Grim Reaper heavy weapon suits. Since the suits were configured for indirect fire support, if there was a breach in the line, the only people to take care of it would be the battalion command and staff. Not a pleasant thought, but it had happened before. He reconfigured the companies while the Artificial Intelligence Devices spread the line of attack for each individual trooper in the companies. The lines of attack were only recommendations, though. The ACS troops knew that if things changed they were supposed to think on their feet and get the job done. "Maximum aggression" was the byword. From the saying their commander used all too often, they just called it "Dancing with the Devil." "The artillery's getting ready to wind down support. Let's get reconfigured, fast."

  The commanders handled it without even moving and from the surface the movement would have shown nothing but a series of odd ripples. The suit troopers accepted the change without comment; their systems gave them more than enough individual data to understand the reason and they were all chosen for more than just their aggressiveness. It was apparent that they were going to lose the support of the curtain barrage. Without it, the main threat changed to the left flank. And that meant, naturally, that Bravo company would be reassigned. Much as Mike tried to rotate the companies, everyone agreed that when it was really tough, Bravo got the call.

  The troopers therefore handled the unexpected move with equanimity and dispatch. They had been arrayed on a line, ready to move out. This required shuffling nearly two hundred suits, under ten feet of water, but that, too, was no problem. The AIDs in each suit gave the path and the troopers followed the guidance, "flying" with their suit drivers in and around each other until all of them reached their assigned positions.

  O'Neal didn't even look to see if there was a problem. The Panthers had been hammered until all that was left was bare metal; they could handle the move in their sleep. They could handle the next battle the same way, but the casualties would be steep. And then the battalion would be even shorter, with no significant resupply in sight.

  He glanced at his timer and grimaced. He had hoped to move forward in the last stages of the artillery strike; the barrage wasn't going to hurt the suits. But the time-on-target was lifting already and they were just getting into place. It would have to be good enough.

  "Move out."

  Karen Slight grunted when she saw the actual conditions on the land. Until the suits had crested the water the situation had been a thing of icons and readouts. She could have slaved a view off of Duncan's suit, but it wouldn't have told her anything the sensors didn't. In fact, it would have been far less clear. But what the sensors couldn't give her was the graphic image of the shot-torn hell that was central Rochester.

  The time-on-target had been a mixture of variable time, impact and cluster ammunition that stretched in a one kilometer box with the canal on the south side, Castleman Avenue on the east, the river on the west and Elmwood Avenue on the north, and it had flayed the Posleen in the pocket. There had been thousands, tens of thousands at least, of the centauroids preparing to push across the river and most of them had been killed outright by the fire. The bodies of the Arabian horse sized aliens were strewn across the shattered rubble of the city, three and four deep in spots.

  This left a ruined wasteland of piled rubble, scattered bodies and the wispy miasma of propellant fumes, smoke and dust that lingered over a battlefield. But in that fire-laden mist, shapes were moving.

  Some of the Posleen, many of them even, had survived the initial time-on-target and were now reacting to the walking barrage. Some were running away and others were standing up and waiting for it to come to them. But a few were learning the human trick of finding cover. It was hard with a variable time barrage; to avoid the slashing overhead shrapnel of VT required overhead cover and the damage of the last few weeks of constant battle had destroy
ed most of that. But some few of them dove for remaining cellars and bunkers. And they would surely be back after the barrage moved on.

  The battalion moved to its first phaseline, the high banks of the river, and flopped to its belly as if it were one beast. The suits had activated their cloaking holograms and the only sign of their presence was a brief series of mud splashes. Some of the survivors of the barrage had been God Kings, however, and they used their sensors to track on and fire at the cloaked combat suits.

  The humans responded immediately, the mass fire of the battalion seeking out the better armed God Kings for lethal attention, but the far more numerous "normals" were now aware that there was an enemy on their flank and they turned towards the threat and opened fire more or less at random.

  Most of the fire was high, but some of it was punching into the ground and even into the troopers of the battalion. It was under these conditions that the ACS proved its worth. Hunkered flat to the ground as they were, they made poor targets at best and most of the rounds that hit them, that would have demolished a Bradley fighting vehicle, glanced off harmlessly.

  Not all of them, though, and Slight grunted again when she saw the first data lead go dead from her company. The location and name of the trooper, Garzelli from third platoon, flashed briefly on her heads up then faded. She didn't allow herself to focus on it, she just noted it and marked it for pickup. Her first sergeant would have done the same thing, but no harm in being sure.

  She looked up at the heights overlooking the battlefield. The slope was actually sharp and the battalion was enjoying some cover from the Posleen that were massed above. They had not been under the hammer of fire and were fresh; when they moved to engage things would be hot and Bravo would be in the thick of it.