When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  "You sure you can support me, Jake?" Mueller asked. "I could go last."

  "Sorry man, I'd rather trust myself," Mosovich said. "I can handle it. 'He ain't heavy . . .' "

  "Right," said Mueller with a laugh. He dropped over the side of the ledge, but was careful to catch his weight on as many footholds as he could find in the eroded cliff. At the bottom he threw the rope aside and darted across the road.

  Which left only Mosovich. Jake looked at the tree he was supposed to depend upon, the eroded hillside and the woods across the way. "What a screwed up situation," he muttered. Then he coiled up the rope, tucked it in his rucksack, turned around and dropped off the ledge.

  The technique was another picked up in too many years of risking his life. On a cliff like this, with outcroppings, brush and trees sticking out all over, it was barely possible to slow yourself by catching various items on the way down. It was not a matter of stopping, that was going to happen suddenly at the bottom, but just slowing yourself enough that you didn't break anything.

  It was not the sort of technique that anyone but mountain troops used, and then only in extremis, because it was so stupidly dangerous. But, Mosovich thought, that's my life all over. There were two things uppermost in his mind on the short descent. One was that if he dug in too hard, it would leave a path a blind normal would notice. So he couldn't slow himself the way he would have preferred, placing both hands and feet into the slope and "dragging down." The other thing that was uppermost in his mind was that, at the speed he was going, if one of these damned white pine saplings jammed him in the groin there weren't going to be any more little Mosoviches.

  The cliff flattened out a bit at the bottom from runoff and caught one foot sending him into a backwards roll. He tucked into it and fetched up, hard, against a rock fallen at some previous time. But all the pieces were in place and nothing appeared to be broken. So it was clearly time to cross the road.

  He trotted across and grabbed one of the saplings on the edge to swing down on. He was going to drop directly into the streambed and that was damned near as dangerous as going down the slope; the rounded and slimy rocks of the stream would turn an ankle sideways in a heartbeat and with all the gear they were carrying that would mean a broken tibia just as fast.

  He slipped down the slope and looked at the team huddled against the streambank. "Everybody golden?"

  "No," Nichols gasped out.

  "He broke both ankles jumping off the bank, smaj," Sister Mary said, putting a splint in place.

  "Well, Stanley," said Mueller leaning back until his head was in the stream. "Isn't this a fine mess you've gotten us into."

  CHAPTER 12

  Near Seed, GA, United States, Sol III

  0825 EDT Monday September 14, 2009 ad

  Lying in a freezing cold mountain stream was not one of Jake Mosovich's favorite pastimes. And doing it next to a troop with two broken ankles wasn't adding to the experience any a'tall.

  "Jesus, I'm sorry about this smaj," Nichols gasped. Sister Mary had used a neural stunner to deaden the ankles, but it still wasn't going to feel all that good and the cold water obviously wasn't improving the sniper's shock; his face was a pasty gray.

  "I didn't figure you did it on purpose, Nichols," Mosovich whispered. "Shit happens."

  So far there had been no sign of the Posleen on this side of the mountain, but crossing the stream with a busted up sniper and all their gear was not going to go fast and a patrol could be along any time.

  There were basically two choices: take off like jackrabbits, hoping to make it across the stream and the mercifully narrow open area on the other side, or find a hide along the streambed and hope the Posleen eventually gave up and figured that the team had moved on.

  Of course, there was a third option.

  "Okay," Mosovich said. "Change of plan. Again. Mueller, move up the stream. Look for a better hide, someplace we can stash Nichols, you and Sister Mary. Nichols; we're going to put you under with Hiberzine. Moving you is going to tear up your legs something fierce. This way if they're bad enough, Sister Mary can just tie 'em off and forget about them."

  "I can make it, sarge," Nichols said, shivering with cold.

  "Can it, you idiot," Mueller said. He looked at Nichols under lowered brows. "If we don't put you under, your own body is going to put you down before the day is out. This is not a good way to grow old, Jake."

  "What is?" the sergeant major said, starting to strip his combat harness. When he started pulling off Nichols' harness, the sniper grunted.

  "You've got to be joking, right?" the specialist said, rolling over so the sergeant major could yank the harness, with its pouches of .50 caliber magazines, out from under him. Nichols was not as large as Mueller by any stretch of the imagination, but he made Mosovich look like a shrimp.

  "No, I'm not," Mosovich said, folding up the bipod on the sniper rifle and submerging it in the water. "I was humping a Barrett when you weren't even a gleam in your daddy's eye." He looked over at Mueller. "Go to ground while I raise a ruckus. When the Posleen pull their patrols off wait a bit then hump buddy-boy out of here. Head for Unicoi; I'll lead 'em off to the southwest."

  "Okay," Mueller said. "Have fun."

  "Oh, yeah," the sergeant major said, submerging in the icy water until only his mouth and nose were exposed. "Never better."

  * * *

  Mosovich was shivering from the cold, but he hardly noticed. The current was strong as it pushed him downstream over rocks and occasional rapids and he floated backwards on his stomach, hauling the Barrett behind him and moving slowly and carefully from one bit of cover to the next. The river was full of old snags and boulders, fallen limbs and natural dams so there was more than enough concealment to be had and the river actually had passed under the road without his being detected.

  He was lying on his belly behind a long fallen white pine, getting ready to move over a set of falls, when he saw the first Posleen patrol. It was better than two miles downstream from the team's crossing, but moving up the highway in the general direction. Mosovich froze when he realized it was being led by a God King. The indications were that at anything under a hundred yards the God King sensors could detect humans no matter what; they certainly had done so one time to him on Barwhon. But in this case the group of about three hundred passed on oblivious, no more than twenty meters from where his ghillie clad body crouched.

  After that he was a little less circumspect since he had a particular point he wanted to make and not much time. The team was, apparently, not spotted by those Posleen, but it was only a matter of time before they would be detected. Unless, that was, the Posties had something better to worry about.

  Finally Mosovich reached the position he had been looking for, where the stream made a sharp bend to the east and was intersected on the west by an old forestry road. In this case the road had been recently repaired, that is not much prior to the war, and was in fairly good condition. However, it only went "straight" for a short distance before angling south towards Ochamp mountain. It was across the highway, but beggars can't be choosers.

  Mosovich carefully looked both ways, up and down 197, then heaved his dripping form up and began trotting. A trot was the best he could do, weighted down with the Barrett and nearly a hundred pounds of ammunition. But he made it across the road, continuing to trot up the forestry road and leaving as little trail as he could manage.

  The road was grown up with a variety of weeds and scrub, so if he had to he could go to ground. But this time he was careful to move around the worst of the grasses, preferring to drift through the more resilient white pine and beech. The careful movement stood him in good stead because just as he was reaching the bend where he would have been safely out of sight, he heard the unmistakable clatter of Posleen headed up the road.

  It only took a moment's thought for him to swing around, crouch down and swing up the ghillie cloak. He was better than seventy meters up the road, in light scrub and covered in a ghillie cloak.
With humans there would have been no question that he was invisible, but these Posleen were starting to spook him.

  The column of Posleen seemed like it would never end, a contiguous mass of alien centauroids. He automatically started a rough count, but when he went over four thousand he just gave up. This must be the brigade-sized force that had been menacing them at Seed. He wondered if it knew where they were, as it seemed to have on Oakey Mountain Road, but whatever prescience it had seemed to have deserted it and the last of the force passed quickly by.

  He briefly wondered if he should have called for fire on the unit, but he wanted to put a bit more distance between them before he started playing artillery games again.

  As soon as the last straggler had apparently passed he stood up in a half crouch and began backing slowly out of sight. As soon as the road was completely around the bend he turned and started trotting up the winding mountain trail. He clearly had a rendezvous to make.

  Thirty chest-heaving minutes later he had climbed about five hundred feet and was on the top of Ochamp Mountain. The "mountain" wasn't much more than a hill, but it afforded a good view of the Soque valley and, again, had a well wooded backside that he could use to break pursuit.

  As soon as he found an open area—another former homestead from the weedy flowers growing in the torn ground—he pulled out his binoculars and started scanning. Without too much trouble he found the brigade force, or at least a bit of it, continuing up the road towards Batesville. The problem was, they were practically on top of where the team should be, more or less.

  Mueller scanned to the south and found another God King patrol, this time well away from the team's position. In fact, they were a just-possible sniper shot. With a scope they would have been dead easy, but using the ladder sight it was going to be tricky.

  But if he missed the God King that would just make it better.

  * * *

  Lakom'set was beginning to wonder if following Tulo'stenaloor was the best decision he had ever made. So far the "Great War" had consisted of travelling up and down roads doing nothing. Given his preference he would be killing humans. But even being shot at by humans would be better than this endless wandering.

  "This is boring, boring, boring," he said aloud. Naturally, his normals didn't respond. They could follow simple commands, but as conversationalists they left something to be desired.

  Fortunately for him, just about then a .50 caliber round cracked by just over his shoulder and blew out the chest of the cosslain at his side.

  "Maybe boring is good," he said as he whipped his tenar around in the direction of the sniper.

  * * *

  Mosovich ducked as the rocks around him were flailed by fire, then slid backwards on his belly. Clearly these Posleen were no longer taking his little pot-shots with any degree of humor.

  Time to didee-mao.

  * * *

  Mueller didn't move as the shouting Posleen force headed to the south. Despite the fact that they passed less than fifty meters from the team's position in the stream, the God King sensors did not detect them. He suspected there was something to be learned from that, but what he wasn't sure.

  It took nearly a half an hour for the whole to pass by. It was fortunate that the aliens hadn't taken longer. Both of the recon team members were on the verge of succumbing to hypothermia; if they didn't get out of the cold, running water soon they were going to drift off into the long sleep.

  Their plan was simple. While Mosovich played rabbit and led the majority of the Posleen to the west, they were to head almost due north, passing through the human lines somewhere around the thinly held Lake Burton Line. The defenses in that section followed the trace of the Appalachian Trail and if the Posleen attacked or even took a section, they would be easy enough for light human forces to contain and push back. The roads into the sector had been demolished, walls thrown up in the lower sections and other than that the only activity was patrolling by infantry forces.

  He glanced over at Nichols' still body and shook his head. The sniper didn't have to worry about hypothermia. The Galactic Hiberzine medication used a combination of drugs and nannites to slow human internal functions to close to zero and the nannites prevented, to the greatest degree, anything but gross mechanical damage to the body. So as long as they made sure some blood stayed in his system, he was "good," under virtually any conditions, for about three months. When administered the anti-drug, or after the nannites ran out of energy, the patient woke up with no memory of the time in between; to them it was as if no time had passed.

  On the other hand, he wasn't light.

  Mueller jerked his chin at the hills to the west. "We'll move out to a new hide," he whispered over chattering teeth. "Wait for nightfall then move out. Try not to make any tracks getting out of the water."

  "Who gets the first carry?" she asked.

  Mueller grimaced and looked at the river to be crossed. The water was rushing over hundreds of smooth, rounded, slimy rocks.

  "The hell with carrying," the NCO said, grabbing the unconscious sniper by one wrist. "I'm gonna drag his ass."

  * * *

  A big hayfield on Lon Lyons Road had nearly nailed him as he was faced with the choice of crossing it, and probably getting spotted, or going around it and taking an extra ten minutes. He finally took the time and was glad when he spotted the Posleen patrol coming to the edge and looking at the open area askance. The God Kings had developed a healthy respect for human snipers and the open area probably looked like a good way to go to whatever gods the Posleen worshipped.

  The patrol had taken long enough, waiting for another God King to join them, that he made it all the way across the road and into the heavy woods on the far side. In scrubby undergrowth he had no fear of the Posleen keeping up or even coming close. As he trotted through the woods, following deer trails when he could and breaking new trail when he couldn't, he had wondered which way he should go. He could turn to the south, towards Amy's Creek, and continue to "menace" Clarkesville, or he could continue more or less due west towards Unicoi Gap. After a moment's thought he decided on west; why throw away a perfectly good baseline for the Posleen to follow?

  This position though, just to the east of 255 Alternate, was getting untenable so he slid down the hillside and started moving again. Crossing 255 would be a bear, but the map showed woods on both sides and most of the stuff around here was young and, therefore, thick white pine. It should be possible to move completely undetected on either side.

  So it was with this happy thought in mind that he trotted completely out into the open.

  The area on both sides of the road, that was shown as forest, had been cleared long before. Where he stood looked to have been the back area of some sort of small manufacturing facility. The buildings were gone, but there was too much unscavenged metal on the ground for it to have been anything else. On the far side of the road was a still-paved road and an intact farm. The paved road curved around behind the facility, which looked to have been a horse training facility, and the sudden incongruity, given what was baying at his back, caused a momentary snort of half hysterical humor to slip out.

  He glanced quickly at the map the AID had brought up and shrugged. He and the Posleen had been playing a constant game up until this point. He would cut through the woods between these mountain roads, firing them up with artillery and sniper fire whenever he spotted them. A few of the, apparently, junior God Kings would push along on his backtrail while the majority of this brigade force swung around from one direction, or both, on the roads he had to cross. Assuming that the same situation was going on here, trying to bolt in either direction was just as likely to run him into the Posleen.

  After only a moment's pause, he made the only decision he could and started jogging towards the road.

  * * *

  Cholosta'an looked up from his instruments at a warbling cry from one of his scouts. There, silhouetted on the distant ridgeline, was a figure that could only be the human they had
been hunting for so long.

  He swung his railgun towards the silhouette; the automatic tracking system, as usual, ignored the human, but before he could target the scout the figure had trotted across the road and out of sight. He reached down to loft his tenar, but Orostan raised a claw.

  "Softly, Kessentai," the oolt'ondai said. The older Kessentai looked at the three dimensional map on his screen and grunted. "I think we may have him trapped." He began tapping at keys and sending commands to the nearer and farther Posleen forces, sending them out in fans to the west off of the road. For one thing he had noted that this opened them out and made them less vulnerable to artillery fire.

  "How?" the oolt'os leader asked with a frustrated snarl. "They move through these hills like Sky Spirits."

  "But they cannot fly," the oolt'ondai said with a flap of humor and pointed at the map.

  After a moment the younger Posleen hissed in humor as well.

  * * *

  Jake leaned against a relatively ancient hickory and gasped for air. He was sure that some time in his long career he had been this utterly exhausted, but when was a good question.

  He was on a saddle just below the summit of Lynch Mountain and all the hounds of hell were on his path. The wood was open, mostly big old hickory, oak and beech, and showed sign of heavy foraging from deer.

  To either side of the saddle, to the north and the south, the ground fell off in sheer cliffs. The spot would have been a good place for a last stand if Jake Mosovich had any intention of committing suicide. As it was it was just a damned good place to stop and catch his breath before the last push.

  The last four hundred feet of Lynch Mountain loomed above him, looking just about straight up. The only way up was a narrow ridge that led from this knife-edge saddle up around in a curve to the left and then eventually to the summit. The path was, fortunately, covered for most of the way. Fortunately because the Posleen, as far as they were concerned, had him well and truly trapped and the entire brigade force was dead on his trail.