Hell's Faire

by John Ringo

  Mitchell nodded and sighed, looking around at the devastated landscape.

  "I'd hoped for better, but . . ." He looked up at the mountain of metal that had been their home for the last few days and shook his head. "What now?"

  "Get some rest?" the repair commander said.

  "Will do," Mitchell replied. He looked at Indy and Chan then shrugged. "Ladies, I do believe there is an officers' club in Asheville that is calling our names. Can I buy you ladies a drink? I'm sure we can bum a ride."

  "Hey, what about us?" Pruitt asked, gesturing at Reeves. "You're just going to walk off into the sunset with the girls and leave us in the middle of a radioactive wasteland?"

  "Pruitt, an officer's first duty is to his men," Mitchell replied solemnly, holding his arms out on either side to the warrant and the major. "You and Reeves have a four-day pass. Report to the 147th G-1 in four days. Don't drink and drive. This completes your pre-pass safety briefing. Have fun." With that he turned around and started walking towards the nearby vehicle park.

  "Well, that sucks," Reeves growled. "Where the hell are we supposed to go?"

  "After them," Pruitt said, spotting Major LeBlanc striding up the hill. "As fast as we can!"

  Kilzer spotted her at about the same time and looked around wildly. She was between him and the vehicles, and going back into the SheVa without a rad suit was suicide. But he considered it for just a moment. He suspected he was going to lose his balls anyway, might as well be to some more or less painless radiation damage.

  "Mister Kilzer," the major said, walking up to him and planting both fists on her hips, "a moment of your time?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Paul said.

  LeBlanc looked down to where his hands had just naturally fallen to protect his groin.

  "I'm not going to kick you in the balls," she said, with a shake of her head. Then when he smiled and moved his hands aside she did exactly that.

  "Oh!" she cried, kicking him again as he rolled around on the ground. "I'm sorry! My mistake! I meant to say 'I am going to kick you in the balls!' I don't know how that 'not' got in there! Maybe a side-effect of radiation poisoning?"

  "Aaah! I'm sorry! It was a mistake!"

  "Yeah, I know you are. Sorry that is." LeBlanc stepped back and shook her head. "Get up, you look like a baby down there whining and clutching your privates in pain."

  "Are you going to kick me again?" Kilzer groaned.

  "Are you going to be an ignorant asshole again?"

  "Oh, shit."

  "Get up. I'll let you buy me a drink."

  "You're really not going to kick me again?" Kilzer said, getting painfully to one knee. "Promise?"

  "Not unless you screw up again."

  "Damn."

  * * *

  "We have to quit meeting like this," Wendy said softly.

  "You've only seen me, what, once before in the body and fender shop?" Tommy said from inside the tank. He was fully submerged in a red solution, but a bubble of air was open around his mouth and nose. He grinned through the nannite solution and pointed to where a darker, more opaque cloud was worrying around his shoulder. "Hey, if only they could increase the size of my cock!"

  "You don't need that," Wendy said, looking at the tank and suddenly seeing it as old technology. It was practically magic to most people, able to regrow limbs and heal almost any wound short of death. But she had seen real magic, for which even death was not an impossible barrier. And she really wondered what in the hell was going to happen when someone figured out what she knew. The world was already a very dangerous place; she didn't need non-random enemies.

  "I'll be out in a couple of days," Tommy said, when she seemed to have drifted off. "I'll have some leave coming and with the Fleet back, well, I'm not sure what they're going to do in the way of forces. Anyway, I was wondering . . . you wanna get married?"

  She looked at her boyfriend and shook her head. "You can't kneel in that condition and it would be hard to hold out the box and then put the ring on my finger. So, under the circumstances, I'll accept the method of proposal!" she said with a broad grin.

  "Great!"

  "What about Fleet? What are they going to say?"

  "Fuck 'em. What are they going to do, send me on a suicide mission?"

  "Not anymore, love," Wendy said quietly. "No more."

  "Well, I've got to do something," Tommy said in a worried tone. "They're talking about cutting back the Fleet and even Fleet Strike. I might be a discharged lieutenant with no training and no future. That wouldn't be fun to be married to!"

  "We'll cross that bridge when or if we come to it," Wendy said. "But I'd be just as glad if you weren't working for Fleet, to tell you the truth."

  "Well, I've got to do something."

  * * *

  "I'm still trying to get straight if you guys are white hats or black hats," Papa O'Neal said, taking a sip of coffee.

  The meeting room was apparently deep under ground. Now that he had seen what a Himmit ship could do to rock, he was not surprised. What he had been surprised by was the briefer.

  "The Bane Sidhe would, I think, qualify as white hats," Monsignor O'Reilly said, quietly. "You'll be told some of our history and background. You of course understand the term 'need to know.' You will be told what you need to know. For the rest, well, we're the people who saved you. We have done favors for your son as well. This is in our interest, you understand. Michael O'Neal is one of several possible paths to victory over the true enemy in this war. And it is for that that we saved you, in the hope of recruiting you to this great task."

  "Uh, huh," Cally said. She had a Coke in her hand but so far she hadn't touched it. "Who is the real enemy, then?"

  "The Darhel, of course," O'Reilly said. "It is they who waited until the last minute to warn Earth. It is they that, when it was apparent humans were going to be even more inventive than they gave them credit for, slowed production of essential war materials both off-planet and on Earth. They have supplied the Posleen with critical intelligence, without the Posleen's knowledge by the way. On a personal note they forced the choice of commanders on Diess that nearly got your father killed, hacked the Tenth Corps data net and did various other things, including sending an assassin after you when you were eight, to make your life less pleasant than it could have been. The only personal loss that is not directly attributable to them is the loss of your mother. Random chance does play a role in war. And even there . . . she should have been in command of a cruiser, not stuck with a half-finished, poorly constructed, poorly designed frigate. This, too, could be laid at the door of the Darhel."

  "And we can believe as much of that as we like," Papa replied.

  "We'll give you some bona fides eventually," O'Reilly said dryly. "I think that after you get to know us the truth will become obvious. And the appearance of Michael O'Neal, Senior, or Cally O'Neal will be cause for some comment. Given that they are presumed most thoroughly dead."

  "I doubt that telling them the truth would be a good idea, huh?" Cally said.

  "Not particularly. The Terran authorities would take you for nuts and the Darhel would have you silenced in very short order. We have a need for well-trained, highly motivated and self-directing special operations experts. You, Mr. O'Neal, have a long track record of such things and Team Conyers was most impressed on their brief visit."

  "I wondered when that was going to come up," O'Neal said, nodding.

  "And, with the exception of the experience part, the same goes for Miss O'Neal. If nothing else, the Bane Sidhe have been, from time immemorial, believers that 'blood tells.' And you are of the finest . . . stock imaginable. I cannot imagine you failing to be a fine operative, can you?"

  "No," Cally said with a grin and a shrug, finally taking a sip of the Coke.

  "Both of you have a need, new identities, new lives and . . . trust me, protection in that anonymity. If the Darhel got wind you were alive . . . We have a need, and you are two of the best examples of a round peg in a round hole I have s
een in quite some time."

  Cally sighed. "What the hell, I'm in. As long as the missions make sense."

  "You won't need to worry about missions for a while young lady," the monsignor replied. "You've got quite a bit of schooling, of all sorts, ahead of you."

  "School?" Cally asked, aghast. "You're joking, right?"

  "No, he's not," Papa O'Neal snapped. "You need to get an education. Even if you're doing this . . . whatever it is, for the long haul, you still need an education."

  "School," Cally grumped. "Great. I bet they'll take away all my guns."

  "Only to put them in an armory," O'Reilly said with a smile. "As I said, 'of all sorts.' Just . . . try not to kill any of the nuns?"

  "Better and betterer. Nuns." But she nodded. "As long as they don't bang my fingers with rulers, I'll let them live."

  "Okay, Cally's taken care of," Papa O'Neal said with a frown, staring at the priest. "And I'll come on board too; I'll hunt your Sidhe for you. I'll be the best darn hunter of Sidhe you've got, a fucking Wild Hunt all on my own self." He paused and flexed his jaw as if preparing for a fight. "But I have one condition . . ."

  * * *

  Shari stood in the line of refugees, waiting in another drizzling, cold rain, to get processed into the Knoxville tent city.

  Most of the children had already been taken away by social services. After all that sweat and all that suffering and all that fear they had just been . . . whisked away with a disapproving snarl as if it was her fault that they had been in the damned Urb or gotten into the middle of a nuclear war. At least they were alive unlike . . . God . . . Everyone.

  Wendy had gone to the hospital to see her boyfriend, and Mosovich and Mueller had disappeared to wherever it was that troopers go after the fight, leaving her with just Billy and Kelly and Susie. And another tent city. Another batch of frightened, shell-shocked strangers. Another beginning.

  She squished forward a few more steps, holding onto Kelly and Susie's hands and keeping one eye on Billy. He seemed . . . better since the whole episode, as if reliving the nightmares had somehow cleansed him instead of making him worse. He probably would do fine. It would have been better if . . .

  It would have been better if the Posleen had never come. It would have been better if Fredericksburg had never been destroyed. It would have been better if two million people hadn't died in the Urb or five billion scattered across the globe. So thinking that it would have been better if one worn-out old man had not died was just . . .

  "Hey, lady, wanna dance?" a voice whispered in her ear.

  She spun in place, furious, and let go of Kelly to slap the ignorant, pig-headed bastard across the face but stopped, arrested by his eyes.

  "You look like you've seen a ghost," the stranger said, smiling and holding out his hands. He was a little too tall, and far too young and his hair was fiery red and long instead of short, thinning and gray. But there was something about the eyes, about the cheekbones . . . Something about the huge wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek.

  "Pity," he said, taking her hands and starting to sway. "I'd heard you liked to dance. 'Oh it's a marvelous night for a moon-dance with the stars up above in our eyes . . .' "

  Shari didn't know how she found him through the tears, but she managed to get her arms around him and after that everything was going to be okay. Somehow, beyond hope, beyond reason, it would all be okay.

  The End

  Author's Afterword

  David Drake considers explanations of books to be "bad art." Well, I'm going to engage in some bad art as a means of apology.

  What you have just finished reading is the ending of another book. I had never intended more than three books in this first portion of the novels that have come to be known as The Legacy of the Aldenata. I believe that a trilogy means three books, not four, five or nine. The reason there are four books comes down to the most unpleasant two words in modern America: September 11th.

  On the morning of 9/11 I had already completed ninety thousand words on When the Devil Dances. And then my brother called me and told me to turn on the television. At that time I was well on schedule for a delivery date of October 1st but from 9/11 to the beginning of October, I failed to complete a single additional word on that novel.

  The novel was already scheduled, already announced. My publisher gave me extra time and more time, until it was down to the very wire. We cut some proofreading, it was hastily set and then off to the printer. And, of course, it was truncated. All my fault.

  I'll admit that the maximum range of an excuse is zero meters; this is not a request to be excused, I'm just telling you what happened and why. And, like Shari, I will not cry over an incomplete book. Compared to 3,000 dead, thousands out of work and the ongoing war, one book that's not completely up to snuff seems a pretty minor point.

  So if you take the two books and put them together, rip out the "and back in the last book" stuff in this one, you have one complete book called When the Devil Dances, the originally conceived third book in the trilogy.

  Go ahead. Feel free. Rip the back off of WtDD, get some scissors and glue . . .

  Changing subjects, quickly, people have asked me quite a few questions about this series, and since this "trilogy" is done I thought I'd share a few of the answers in this venue.

  The Posleen War was originally conceived sometime in 1985. There was a glimmer of an idea before that but the major pieces, a technologically inept enemy, "friends" that had many levels to them and a major ground war, came to me while I was on guard duty on a mountain in Sinai.

  I had been . . . dissatisfied with some of the other novels that had handled alien invasion. Admittedly, if a space-faring species with faster than light travel wants to take Earth they are probably going to succeed. Once a species "owns" the gravity well, there's not much you can do about it.

  Ergo, for humanity to survive (and have the book be much more interesting than "and then all the humans died and the evil aliens lived happily ever after") the aliens have to be hamstrung. But, why would aliens with FTL be incapable of using their full potential?

  The few novels that had approached this problem I found unsatisfactory. So, to address this, I developed the Posleen. Starting from certain premises I traced the logic back and as I did many things derived from the logic rather than forcing the logic. Tom Clancy says that the two parts to a successful novel are "what if" and "what's next"?

  What if . . . there was a species that . . . (but that would be telling). And what next?

  I originally had intended for them to be able to destroy artillery, for example, but the logic of their origins militated against it. Likewise their enormously resistant physiologies. Yes, any oxygen breather will have trouble with cyanide. But at what concentration? And for what duration? But is it possible to design a species that would be highly resistant to truly weird environmental conditions? Planets where most of the atmosphere is gaseous sulphur, planets with semi-sentient and aggressive biospheres? Take every horror planet ever conceived in science fiction and design a race to survive them, and even thrive on them. And, if so, wouldn't they be resistant to any chemical attack?

  And so, with some logic in hand and a vague series of images I set out to write a book. It was not intended to be published (indeed, until about three months before I sent Hymn Before Battle off to Baen Books I had never considered becoming a published author), but rather it was a book for me, something that I wanted to read, an alien invasion where the "good guys" (that's us) got to really sink their teeth into the bad guys (that's the Posleen). No gray areas, no ambiguity. Victory or death. Vive le morte! Once more unto the breach! Take that bunker or die trying!

  I mean, if it isn't victory or death, what's the point? (Oh, Art? Excuse me while I laugh. Go read some of the reviews of Dickens.)

  At some point in the future there will be stories that expand upon the logic and reveal all the strings behind the curtains. And books in which the focus slides completely off of the Posleen as the enemy a
nd onto newer, more silvery, pastures. And, yes, books that are "grayer."

  But, alas, the writing of those books will be some time. I've sort of "burnt out" on the Posleen and I'm going to be writing some other stuff for a few years. I don't think that there will be anything in them that will cause any of my current readers to go astray and I hope that they are more "approachable" to some of the readers who, let us say, don't care for piles of yellow, leaking corpses.

  Rest assured, though, Mike O'Neal, Papa and of course Cally (as if I was going to kill her) will be back. In the meantime just imagine them out there. Mike is retaking planets from the Posleen and Papa and Cally are covering his back. Kickin' ass and not even bothering to take names.

  Whether he knows it or not.

  Take care and just remember; the good guys always win in the end.

  John Ringo

  Commerce, GA

  October 6, 2002

  Author's Acknowledgements

  I'd like to thank a bunch of people for help with this book and all the other books.

  I'd like to thank Sandra Hearn. Yes, Sandy, I did kill you, finally and permanently. I'd like to thank Doug Miller for giving me hours of good copy. And I'd like to thank Bob Hollingsworth, Tony Trimble and John Mullins for some really great stories. Writing is about taking the world and synthesizing it. Without the input of experience it is very difficult to write well. All of these people have made my life a richer and fuller experience, each in their own inimitable way.

  As noted in the dedication, thanks to all the Barflies. Baen Publishing maintains a very active webboard community called Baen's Bar. We, and I consider myself a Barfly of long and serious standing, refer to ourselves as the Barflies. (The group is a "buzz" as in "A Buzz of Barflies" and a Buzz of Barflies can be found around almost any collection of good books.)