When the Devil Dances Read online

  Currently, though, Attenrenalslar was one of the very few God Kings that had determined that the best way to turn the tide of this battle was to take his lander across the river and attack the humans from behind. He might be the only one; the percentages on "air-mobile" had gotten worse and worse for the Posleen of late.

  Early in the war it was a nearly guaranteed tactic. The humans had very few weapons that could engage the landers and as long as they stayed below the horizon from one of the few remaining Planetary Defense centers, the humans almost had to wait for them to land before having any real chance to attack the Posleen within. Since the landers also mounted anti-personnel weaponry, not to mention space-to-space weaponry that was good for taking out most of a battalion, they could attack ground units with impunity. The wonder was that the Posleen didn't use them all the time.

  However, that weakness had been noted even before the enemy made their first landing; Mike O'Neal's first Medal of Honor accrued from almost single-handedly taking out a command ship. But the method was not considered survivable.

  In the first major Earth landing it appeared that a battleship had managed, through a fluke more than anything, to take out a Lamprey. From that was born the concept of the SheVa Gun, the sort of weird bastard weapon that is only created in the midst of really terrible wars.

  The gun was named after the Shenandoah Valley Industrial Planning Commission, the group that had first solved all the various design problems inherent in the new system, and the majority of the first parts and pieces of the massive construction were made in the Roanoke Iron Works.

  The basic parameters for the weapon were simplicity in themselves. The gun was an extended barrel, smoothbore, 16" battleship cannon. Because of the occasional necessity of rapid fire, the standard 16" "bag and round" method of loading, which involved sliding a 1200-pound round followed by fifty-pound bags of powder, had been replaced with a single shell the size of a small ICBM. The SheVa gun carried eight rounds as a "standard load" and a tractor-trailer could haul two "four-packs" that permitted reloading in under ten minutes. Each gun was loaded with standard rounds, but there were at least two tractor trailers "on-call" carrying special munitions, including both sensor and antimatter area effect weapons, at all times.

  The other parameters were that it be able to fire from two degrees below horizontal to ninety seven degrees above with a swiveling turret and that the system be fully mobile. It was this combination that had caused all the design teams to almost give up in despair. That was, until the good old boys (and girls) from the Shenandoah went ahead and admitted that the parameters just meant it needed to be bigger than anyone was willing to admit, even privately.

  The monstrosity that was finally constructed defied belief. The transporter base was nearly a hundred meters long with two fifty-meter-wide treads on either side supported by four-story-high road wheels. The "gun" was mounted on shock absorbers the size of small submarines and constructed using some of the same techniques. The swivel turret was two stories thick, constructed of multiple pieces "welded" together by an explosive welding technique, and nearly fifty meters across. The upper deck was six-inch steel plate, not for any armoring purpose, but because when the gun fired anything else would buckle.

  When the design was mostly done the power source was obvious; there wasn't enough diesel in the entire United States to support the projected requirements for the guns. On the other hand, Canada's supplies of pitchblende were plentiful and above the weather-line that the Posleen preferred. Therefore, nuclear was the only way to go. However, putting a large "reactor control crew" onboard seemed silly. Finally, they "borrowed" a South African design for a simple, practically foolproof nuclear vessel called a "pebble-bed helium" reactor. The system used layered "pebbles" that automatically mitigated the reaction and helium—which could not pick up, and thus release, radiation—as the temperature transfer medium. Even if the coolant system became totally open, that is if it started venting helium to the air, no radiation would be released and the reactor would not "melt-down." Of course, if the reactor took a direct hit there would be "hot" uranium scattered all over the ground but other than that, no problem; the system was absolute proof against "China Syndrome."

  The control center and living quarters were actually located underneath the behemoth and were the size of a small trailer. It wasn't that it took a large crew; the system could actually be run by one person. It just made more sense that way. The designers looked at the physical requirements for the three-man crew and finally settled on a small, highly armored command center. But the monstrosity had so much power and space to spare that they added to the design until they had a small living quarters that would permit the crew to live independent of the surroundings.

  The designers also included a rather interesting evac vehicle.

  So when the crews of SheVas Forty-Two and Twenty-Three got the word that a lander was on the way, they dropped their cards, dropped their Gameboys and slid smoothly into action.

  "This is Forty-Two, General," said Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wagoner. Forty-Two was a brand new SheVa, the newest until there was a "Forty-Three." And Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wagoner was a brand new SheVa commander. He had just been transferred, over his howling objections, from command of an armored battalion and was having trouble adjusting to being a tank commander, by any other word, again. But he was pretty sure he could remember how to crank a track, by God. "We're on it."

  "Okay, boys, blow the camouflage; it's time to lay some tube."

  * * *

  Duncan felt a rumbling in the seat of his pants and configured his view to "swing" westward. The remains of West Rochester were shuddering as if the town had been hit by a minor but persistent earthquake and he could see boulders being kicked loose from the hill he was sitting on. When the viewpoint finally swung to the west it became obvious what had caused the effect.

  Behind him, about four miles to the rear on the south side of the canal, an oddly shaped hill was shuddering apart. As the greenish foam fell away the enormous shape of a SheVa gun was revealed.

  The thing was just ugly. There was no other word to describe it. The bastardized cannon required something like a crane cantilever to keep it from bending and the massive construction of the whole system didn't permit anything on the order of beauty. Like a steam shovel for a giant open-pit mine or a deep ocean drilling platform, the only things prior to the SheVa to be built on its scale, it was pure function.

  The scale of the guns was hard to grasp until you realized that the tiny ants running alongside weren't even people, they were trucks.

  He shook his head as the thing first waggled from side to side to warn all the little "crunchies" that it was preparing to maneuver and then accelerated up the side of a small moraine, smashing a factory to bits on the way.

  "Fucking show-off," Duncan muttered, turning back to the east.

  * * *

  "Forty-two," called the commander of SheVa Twenty-Three, "be aware that we have two more lift emanations including a C-Dec."

  "Got that," said Colonel Wagoner. His intent was to use the moraine as cover until they could get a good hull-down shot at the Lamprey. The problem with SheVa guns was that "hull-down" generally required something like a small river valley; the moraine was as good as he was going to get.

  But when the other two lifted, they would be in a position to rake Forty-Two's position from the north. The question was whether to engage them as they came in view or after the leading Lamprey.

  "Sergeant Darden," he called to the driver. "Swing us around to the south side of the moraine with the gun about forty degrees to the angle of the slope. We'll take the current Lamprey as it bears then continue around the slope to engage the others." He switched to the SheVa frequency and glanced at the battlefield schematic. "Twenty-Three, prepare to move out. As we engage the first Lamprey, engage the first of the trailers. The we'll gang up on number three."

  "Got it, sir," called the other gun. "Time to show these ACS
pussies what 'heavy metal' really means."

  * * *

  Duncan just sighed as the ground really started to shake. The secondary screen showed another hill—this one much less artistic; it had buildings sticking out of it—coming apart as the second SheVa went into action, its cantilevered gun pointing to the east.

  It suddenly occurred to Duncan that the gun was not pointing particularly high in the sky. He looked at the gun, looked towards the probable target and had just enough time to say: "Oh, shit," before the weapon fired.

  * * *

  The rounds for the SheVa guns used the equivalent of a battleship 16" gun "max charge." The bullet, however, was a sabot round, a depleted uranium "arrow" surrounded by a thermoplastic "shoe." The bullet, therefore, was very light compared to the standard 16" gun "round." And instead of a rifled barrel, which permitted a round to stabilize in flight by spin, but also retarded the speed of the round, it was a smoothbore. The barrel was also extended to nearly three times the length of a standard sixteen-inch barrel, thus permitting more of the energy from the charge to be imparted to the bullet.

  Since round speed is a function of energy imparted versus round weight and barrel drag, the round left the barrel at speeds normally obtainable only by spacecraft.

  The plastic "shoe" fell off within half a mile and what was left was an eight-inch-thick, six-foot-long, pointed uranium bar with tungsten "fins" on the back. The fins stabilized its flight. And fly it did crossing the twenty kilometers to the target, trailing a line of silver fire, in just under two seconds. However, such speed and power do not come without some minor secondary effects.

  Duncan dug plasteel fingers in the bedrock as the hurricane of wind hit. The sonic boom, which shattered windows and even walls in the hospital down the hill, was almost an afterthought to the wind. It was the wind, driven to tornado speed, which tore at buildings and people throughout Rochester, ripping off roofs, toppling walls, turning trucks on their sides and pitching troops around like bowling pins.

  Whatever secondary effects the round might have had, its primary effect was even more spectacular. Simple kinetic impact would usually destroy a Lamprey or even a C-Dec—when the rounds did not explode they tended to punch all the way through the ships. But the designers of the SheVa guns weren't satisfied with "usually." So at the core of the SheVa round was a small charge of antimatter. Only the equivalent of a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon.

  The effect of the round punching into the ship was obliterated by the rush of silver fire that gouted from every seam and port. For a moment the ship seemed like it would hang together, but then it just came apart in a blossom of fire that consumed the Posleen for a quarter of a mile around. Large pieces, the size of cars and trucks, flew out as far as the human battle lines and bits the size of a human head reached even to Duncan's location.

  "Show-offs," Duncan muttered, dusting off some dirt. He picked up a piece of Lamprey that had impacted on the hilltop and tossed it in the air. "Sure, it's easy to do with the right equipment. Try doing it with just a suit sometime."

  * * *

  "Target," said Twenty-Three. "Your turn, Colonel."

  "Right," Wagoner said. "Try to get some elevation next time; the secondaries on that one shook up the whole corps."

  "Crunchies," Twenty-Three, called. "What can you say?"

  "You can say 'Yes, sir,' " said Wagoner. "And get some cover."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Forty-Two out." He tapped a control and nodded as the line of travel dropped into place. The target line was plotted and potential secondary damage noted. They would be firing over the edge of the corps, but not near any of the hospital like that idiot in Twenty-Three. And they would be higher off the ground by at least a thousand feet. The damage should be minimal.

  "Forty-Two, prepare to engage," he said over the intercom. "Target in three, two, one . . ."

  * * *

  Attenrenalslar cursed as the trailing command ship exploded and began moving his Lamprey from side to side, hoping to throw off the aim of those demon-cursed weapons.

  The vehicle that had engaged the command ship had already disappeared behind one of the small mountains that dotted this plain and he was sure the instruments had detected another for a moment. But deciphering the cursed technology of the Alldenata was a task for those who had studied it; most of the icons were unfamiliar to him.

  "Come out, though," he whispered, caressing a weapons control that was targeted on the distant hillock. "Come out little abat and see what Attenrenalslar has in store for you. . . ."

  * * *

  "Fucker's maneuvering, Colonel," Sergeant Pritchett called. The gunner turned the SheVa gun to full auto as the Lamprey came in sight and clamped down on the firing circuit. "Solution coming up."

  Millimeter wave radar on the side of the gun "painted" the target, comparing it to the electronic pictures it stored of various Posleen equipment. The onboard computer determined that, yes, this was a lander and the lack of return from an "Identify, Friend or Foe" query indicated that, yes, this was a valid target. It then ran a laser down the barrel, determining that it was in good condition to fire and another on the outside determining that all the support structures that were supposed to be supporting were in fact functioning. Last it computed barrel distortion, number of rounds fired through the barrel, temperature of the air and a myriad of other variables to arrive at an adequate firing solution.

  It also noted in passing that the target was slowly maneuvering. But when the distance to target is less than ten kilometers and the round is traveling at twenty-five hundred meters per second, that is less than four seconds of movement on the part of the target. And it was a biiiig target.

  * * *

  "Fuscirto uut," Attenrenalslar snarled. "There are two." It was unlikely that the secondary weapons would scratch that thing; it was the size of a oolt'pos. But he tried to slew the ship to get a plasma cannon to bear.

  * * *

  "On the way!" Pritchett called as the entire world went red.

  The gun used more energy in one shot than a brigade of armor and although the gun was heavily reinforced and the platform was the size of an oil rig, it still shook the entire beast like a terrier shaking a rat.

  But before the last rumble had faded away, Darden had thrown the monster in reverse and Pritchett was ensuring the automatic loading sequence was progressing properly.

  "Target!" Colonel Wagoner said with a note of satisfaction. "Now that is what I call laying tube." Maybe he could get used to being a tank commander again after all.

  * * *

  Mike grinned inside his armor as a wash of over-pressure blasted Posleen off the ridgeline. "Cool. Now if we could just get a little of that over by Slight."

  The battalion had covered the thousand meters to the heights in just under sixty seconds, long enough for the Posleen landers to react and be neutralized in turn by the SheVa guns Horner had called up. There had been several thousand Posleen in the pocket. Most of them were still dazed from the artillery fire, but quite a few had put up a struggle. None had survived.

  Now the Posleen were just below the ridgeline, at the point called the "military crest." The wash of nuclear fire had probably opened up a fair sized hole in the Posleen on the height, so it was undoubtedly time for the ACS to earn their pay. Mike tapped a control and the entire battalion took one leap to the edge of the natural parapet. They probably weren't going any farther and with the way the ridge was shaped it wouldn't even be necessary to dig in. After ensuring that that was the case, he elevated his main gun and took a peek through the sensor system.

  "Oh, shit," Mike whispered. At the first view of the conditions in the valley beyond, his readouts had gone blood red and he just had to clear the visor to see what was really there as the entire battalion opened fire.

  * * *

  From his perch Horner had been able to see some of the forces beyond the ridge, but the view from the ACS made his belly clench; as far as the eye could see the ground w
as a seething mass of Posleen. Earlier estimates had been something on the order of four million; assuming the density that they saw there and continuing only four miles out of sight Little Nag was calculating it at over for-ty million.

  * * *

  "We can't do this, we can't do this . . ." Mike heard. The circuit was open to the entire battalion and he was picking up bits and snatches of conversation. The suits were protected by the cover of the top of the hill, with only their guns elevated above the crest. But a plasma cannon or hypervelocity missile fired from the far side of the other valley could tear through the ground and take them out with just a couple of hits. For that matter, the number of Posleen meant that some of them were bound to make it through the fire, if for no other reason than that others were masking them. And once the Posleen got to hand-to-hand range, their boma blades could get through the armor. Not to mention point-blank cannon and railgun fire.

  "Steady down," Mike said. He'd turned off the unpleasant view and had pulled up the schematics again. They were saying the same thing, but the view wasn't so visceral. "Steady down, keep your barrels low and maintain fire dispersion." He glanced at his readouts and chuckled. "The good news is that even we can't miss." Because of the automation of the systems and the fact that the ACS was designed to "spew" fire, it was an article of faith among the conventional forces that they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

  "Major," said Captain Holder. "We're getting heavily flanked to the north. It's not like they're meaning to do it, but that's where they're being pushed."

  "I'm aware of that, Captain," O'Neal said calmly. The numbers on Bravo did not look good. They had twice the separation, which meant half the fire pressure, that the rest of the battalion did. And in the face of forty million Posleen the main battalion's fire lanes seemed woefully inadequate. For that matter, Bravo had already expended forty percent of their onboard ammo. "Duncan, get all available fire in front of Bravo Company."

  "What about us, sir?" asked Captain Holder.