When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  "Maybe she is," the sergeant major said with a shrug. "But this is an old and honorable tradition. What sort of unit would we be if we didn't send the new L-T out on a quest for something that doesn't exist?"

  "I dunno," Mike said with a smile. "One that doesn't have a piper?"

  * * *

  Sunday stood outside the battalion headquarters, one hand on his hip and the other slowly rubbing his chin, a thoughtful expression on his face. He looked around the small cantonment area, searching for a gleam of inspiration until his eye was caught by a poster advertising the new Ground Forces Exchange. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and then grinned.

  Whistling, he strode down the road towards main post, saluting the occasional passing troop. Any of them that looked at his face, looked away almost immediately; that was not the sort of expression you wanted to see on a person approximately the size of a bulldozer.

  * * *

  Maggie Findley was a short, petite brunette, seventeen years old and in another year, if she was still alive, would graduate from Central High School ("Home of the Dragons!"). She had applied for the job at the Ground Forces Exchange for two reasons; it was a job and jobs were scarce these days and, all things being equal it might be a good way to meet a nice guy.

  This was her first shift all alone on the register and, so far, it had been a quiet Saturday morning. A rather large soldier had entered not too long before and headed to the back but, really, they were generally nice guys.

  When she saw him headed back to the front she was momentarily a little nervous; he was not just large he was enormous. But after a moment she noticed the silver bars of a first lieutenant and stopped worrying; officers were gentlemen after all. So it was in this pleasant state of mind that she blushed bright red when the lieutenant set down the small box he had been carrying.

  * * *

  Tommy smiled at the young lady behind the counter, whose nametag read "Findley." "Would you happen to have any more of this in the back? There were only a few boxes stocked on the shelf."

  "Uh," she looked from the box to the officer and blushed again. "You . . . need more?" she squeaked.

  "Actually, if you have an unopened case that would be perfect," he said with an unintentionally feral grin. "My company commander and I are . . ." he made some vague hand gestures, " . . . having some difficulty."

  "I'll-go-right-now," Maggie said quickly and darted around the counter towards the back.

  Tommy stood at the counter, aimlessly whistling through his teeth for a moment, then picked up a copy of Guns and Ammo, one of the few magazines to survive the collapse in publishing. He flipped through a couple of pages looking at the new Desert Eagle .65 design. He, personally, thought that anyone smaller than him would be as likely to knock themselves out as be able to fire the damned thing. But some people just had to have the biggest gun on the block.

  The clerk came back from the bag carrying, as surreptitiously as possible, a small blue-and-white box. "We . . . only have it in the brand name. . . ."

  "That's fine," Tommy said, putting the magazine away and pulling out his wallet. "Perfect, actually."

  "Will that be paper or plastic?" Maggie asked breathlessly, trying not to meet his eye.

  "Oh, paper, by all means," Tommy said with a feral grin. "Please."

  * * *

  "Sergeant Bogdanovich?" Lieutenant Sunday said hesitantly, stepping through the first sergeant's door. "Could you join me for a moment?"

  "Certainly, sir," Boggle said, getting up. She nodded at the package. "Is that the undergel?"

  "I had to go to battalion looking for it," Tommy said obliquely, opening the door to the company commander's office. "Permission to enter, ma'am?"

  "Oh, come in, Sunday," Captain Slight said. "Did you find the undergel?"

  "Alas, no, ma'am," Sunday said, coming to attention with a long face. "It appears it has all been expended by Charlie Company, ma'am. However, I remembered in my reading that alternate materials can sometimes be substituted," he continued, pulling the case of K-Y jelly out of the paper bag and setting it on the company commander's desk, "and I thought that, given the specifications, this might satisfy your needs."

  Captain Slight blushed bright red as Bogdanovich broke into howls of laughter. "Why, yes, sar . . . Lieutenant. I suppose that . . . could be a useful substitute in some cases."

  Captain Slight shook her head in chagrin. "Major O'Neal warned me not to do this."

  "I think we should listen to him next time, ma'am," Boggle said, wiping the tears out of her eyes. "Tricky, L-T."

  "I almost considered it over the top," Sunday admitted. "I considered simple Vaseline, but I was afraid it wouldn't get the point across quite as effectively."

  "Don't push it," Slight said with a smile. "We got the pun. Okay, to business. I've decided that the best choice is to put you with the Reapers."

  "Yes, ma'am," Sunday said with a puzzled expression.

  "The Reapers are almost entirely long service," she said. "However, in Roanoke their former platoon sergeant got hit and is going to be in the Regen tanks for a while. We're short on NCOs so you're basically going to be your own platoon sergeant as well as platoon leader. Normally that's the sort of thing that I'd throw on an experienced NCO . . ."

  "But you don't have any," Sunday said with a smile. "And I am an experienced NCO. What am I getting?"

  "Well, they all know their job," First Sergeant Bogdanovich answered. "And they do it, in combat."

  "And in garrison they're impossible," Sunday said.

  "Well, we haven't been 'in garrison' in a long time," the company commander said. "But . . . the Bravo Reapers tend to be . . . a bit of a handful. This little charade we went through was, as much as anything, a test to . . ."

  "See if I knew how to handle a practical joke?" Sunday said with a huge grin. "They like to play games, huh? I love to play games." He grinned ferally. "I am a master of playing games."

  "Well, then you should have fun," Captain Slight said with a smile. "You got anything else?"

  "No ma'am," the lieutenant said, reaching for the case of KY jelly. "I guess I'll return this."

  "No, no," she said, putting her hand on the case. "I think I'll keep it. As an object lesson. You go get ready for the return of your troops; they'll be back tomorrow morning, most of them, hung over and unhappy."

  "That I will, ma'am," Sunday said, saluting and stepping out the door.

  He paused in the outer office and pursed his lips in thought. "AID, let's start looking at records of the Bravo Reapers. I want both combat reports, live audio-video whenever possible, and personal records." Know thine enemy, he thought with a chuckle.

  * * *

  Major Ryan was of the opinion that there was no substitute for checking up on the progress of the defense works in person. Especially on Sundays when it was just as likely that everyone was laying out.

  Today they'd probably be busy, though. He could already hear Colonel Jorgensen's precious artillery tubes firing on the approaching horde; he imagined that somebody would be up and ready to receive them. Indeed, the Wall appeared to be a veritable beehive of activity; it even looked a bit like one.

  The Wall was over seven stories high at the point that it passed through Black Mountain gap, with each level sporting a different mix of weaponry. These ranged from Shrike light anti-lander systems to giant sheets of directional mines called Longswords. In the last five years only one attack had made it to the Wall, and that one had been repulsed by the Longswords.

  He climbed up one of the back stairs and looked out over the secondary defenses. 23rd Division had just replaced the 103rd, and that division was well to the rear, but the 49th was currently at work on the trench lines that backstopped the Wall.

  The trenches were supposed to be almost continuous from one side of the defense zone to the other with integrated bunkers. Most important of all, there was to be no direct route to the rear from the primary line of defense. However, because of the diff
iculties of supporting a division in the Wall, and because nobody thought the Posleen would ever be able to breach it after the first year or so, a road had been put back in, on the base metal for 441, most of which had never been removed, and there was now a four-lane highway that led from the wall to the corps supply depot. In addition, many of the corps units that directly supported the wall had been "forward deployed," that is they were often plunked directly on the secondary and tertiary trench lines. In many cases commanders of these support forces, for a variety of reasons including the ever popular "safety," had filled in the trenches and even disassembled the bunkers. What was left was the most unholy mess imaginable.

  In addition to that mess, directly to the rear of the Wall was a large parking area for the hundreds of vehicles the commanders and staff in the wall division felt absolutely necessary for their daily use.

  Well, there had been. The parking area was gone; the Standard Operating Procedure for the entire U.S. was that commanders of forward deployed units moved forward with their units and stayed there, with only a few personnel being shuttled back and forth, and transportation for them was provided by "higher." Thus if the Corps commander wanted to talk to, say, the 23rd division commander he sent a Humvee to pick him up. And he didn't keep him away from his unit for long.

  One of the first things that Ryan had mentioned on inspecting the defenses was the habit of the forward deployed commanders, and just as often staff officers and even senior NCOs, running back to their quarters to spend the night, rather than in the Wall where they were supposed to be. Taking away the vehicles was one way to prevent it.

  In addition the trench lines once again ran across the direct route with a winding road threading through them to the front. The Posleen, if they took the wall, would have to choose to maneuver into and out of trenches, something the equi-form aliens had remarkable trouble with, or take the winding road, adding time to their movement and opening up their formations to flanking shots.

  Unfortunately the trenches and bunkers that had once been there had not been replaced and there was hardly any work done yet on the tertiary lines. What that meant was that if there was a breach, a serious one, the Posleen, conceivably, had a nearly clear shot at the heart of the corps. And because this part of the front had been stripped of support, there wouldn't be anything to stop them short of the mountains. Certainly there wasn't anything short of Franklin. Which meant making sure the defenses were as ready as possible was high on the list of priorities.

  He shook his head as the ambulance pulled away from the base of the wall. Admittedly the pace of work meant that there would be a slight increase in injuries. But that was the price of war; better a few accidents than a breach.

  He ducked in through the armored door and threaded his way through the internal maze. The Wall really should have been called the Fortress; it was wider than it was high and filled with barracks, mess-halls, storerooms and magazines. Only the forward portion and a few points along the back were devoted to fighting; the rest was the facilities necessary to support an embattled division including shops and parts to keep the guns running.

  Ryan continued on into the bowels of the facility until he came to a guarded door. He showed the MP his key-card and entered the command center for the Wall.

  One glance at the status board told him most of what he had to know; the Posleen were pressing forward a solid block up Highway 441 and all side roads. The assembly area was Clayton and some smart Posleen had apparently moved two Lampreys into the area. They were marked on the schematic along with a note that artillery fire was being interdicted over the whole town. There was spot interdiction along the roads as well, indicating the presence of landers, but these were out of sight of the observation post on Black Mountain.

  The command post was technically in charge of the division G-3, a bird colonel, but Ryan had long since found that the Division Plans officer, a major like himself, had a firmer grasp on moment-to-moment realities than the G-3. Not that Colonel White was the sort of loser that General Bernard tended to surround himself with. But Major Brandt tended to be more on the up and up.

  He stepped over to the major's command console and raised an eyebrow. "Anything I should know?"

  "Full court press," Brandt said, glancing up. "If they keep on this way, though, it should be something like Waterloo."

  " 'A near run thing'?"

  " 'They came at us in the same old way . . .' "

  "Ah," Ryan said with an uncertain nod. "Better. I was afraid from the intel we'd gotten about that globe that they weren't going to act 'the same old way.' "

  "Well, two? no, three years ago, we had a C-Dec get close enough that it could fire directly at us. I understand that was hairy; it had a space-capable plasma cannon and it really gouged up the Wall. But we still stopped them. And it got taken out by a company of Screaming Meemies. We've got a SheVa now, two from what I hear."

  "Yeah," Ryan said unhappily. "I'm still jumpy about some of the stuff that the Lurps reported. There were indications of a massive ingathering, but this looks like it's about the size of a single globe force, maybe four or five million. They've hit us with that before and bounced. I just . . . I dunno."

  "Same old same old," Brandt said with a shrug. "Fine by me."

  "Just . . . keep your eyes open," Ryan said. "I'm heading back to HQ; that's where I'm supposed to be anyway."

  "Okay, have fun," Brandt said with a grin. "I'm gonna be busy killing Posleen anyway."

  "Been there, done that," Ryan muttered as he walked out of the command center. "Got the scars."

  Ryan wandered out the way he had come in, noting in passing that the level of activity in the hallways was increasing and that the automatic cannons on the top level had opened fire.

  He tromped down the stairs to his Humvee and shook his head as the first of the Gatling guns opened up. Next month they had planned on rebuilding the wire and stake obstacles to the front of the wall, but it looked like that would have to wait.

  He quickly drove through the serpentine road, slowing whenever groups of soldiers, who should have already been in place, crossed the road to their defense positions. There was a steady stream of vehicles heading to the Wall and the secondary defenses and half the time he felt like he was fighting against a salmon run. Twice MPs waved him off the road to let groups through in the opposite direction, but after a half an hour he finally reached the motorpool on the west side of the corps headquarters.

  As he mounted the steps towards the former school he noted that the green-and-blue "hill" to the east was starting to shake and he looked to the south. Sure enough, landers were coming in view. Oh, this should be good.

  Chapter 23

  Mountain City, GA, United States, Sol III

  1113 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

  "I feel . . . uncomfortable watching the assault from a place of safety, Oolt'ondai," Cholosta'an said.

  They were both observing through vision screens the progress of the assault. The lead companies, including Balanosol, had been for all practical purposes wiped out. There might be a few members of the surviving oolt that had been lead oolt'os, but none of the Kessentai had survived.

  The humans were devilishly effective at finding and engaging the Kessentai, but the mass assault had masked a greater danger; among the "political units" were Kessentai and cosslain who had "taken a leaf" as the humans would say and were sniping the anti-Kessentai defenses.

  The first to be removed were the automated cannons on the top. Once the type had been identified their detectors were easy to spot and Kessentai had engaged them, using manual sights since the automatics were overloaded by fire, from beyond the effective range of the human weapons.

  Once those were reduced the slaughter of Kessentai lessened, making the attack more coherent, but there were still other guns engaging the Kessentai. These were engaged in order; the front rank Kessentai were now close enough to bring their oolt to bear and that added to the effect. By the time the four
th rank of the assault was in range of the miniguns all of the upper rank heavy weapons had been engaged and destroyed. Most of the guns were recessed, but if enough plasma is pumped into the hole it doesn't matter.

  "Ah, well, that relative safety will be reduced soon, eson'sora," Orostan said with a snap of his mouth. The losses had been heavier than anticipated, including among the "political" Kessentai; the human heavy "sniper" weapons had been engaging them as the automatics were engaging the mass assault. "But I think we have their attention well and truly fixed on the front door, do we not?"

  "Indeed, Oolt'ondai," the younger Kessentai said. "And now?"

  "And now, we slam the door," Orostan answered, waving to a subcommander.

  * * *

  "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about 146," Wright said philosophically.

  Alejandro ducked as another wash of plasma gouted through a firing port. "Or 144 for that matter!"

  There was a clang from the armored door to the west as it bent inward, the paint on the surface beginning to smoke.

  "Jesus!" Wright said, looking to the other two exits. The one to the east was still intact, apparently, but the smoking ruin of gun 146 was in the way to it. Their last exit was the door to the interior zones of the wall. It was in a "gap" in the firing points and as long as some random round didn't punch out the four feet of rebar concrete they'd still be able to get out that way.

  "143 jammed!" Private Gattike called, running to where the two NCOs were huddled in a cool spot. "What do I do?"

  "Unjam it?" Wright asked, getting to his feet. "Any idea why?"

  "I dunno," the private snarled. "Maybe it was setting up that second battle-box? It's run through fifty thousand rounds so far!"

  "Ah." Wright hit the floor as another set of HVMs hit the wall, filling the interior with splinters. The walls had rubber on the interior to reduce the ricochets, but one slammed into the private at his side with the sound of an axe hitting a watermelon. He looked over at Gattike and shook his head.