Gust Front

by John Ringo

  "Papa, they are already here. I still don't estimate we'll hold. The Posleen look fresh and they are charging the line even as we're talking. The ACS is spread out and looks pretty confused. I don't intend to do the bug out boogie, but I don't see us stoppin' these guys, either. Tell corps to get ready to run. Over."

  "November One Five. All of corps's reserves are on the line. You are ordered to hold. Over."

  "You're dreamin', Papa. November out."

  * * *

  "Tango Three Six, this is November One Five, over."

  There was a pause. The fire control center for the defense was busy; they were still scrambling to replace the central fire net.

  "Calling unit say again callsign, over."

  "Tango three six, this is November One Five. Final protective fire call, designation One-One-Bravo. Posleen in close-contact. Final protective fire. Over."

  "November, be advised we are tapped out for artillery at this time. We are in final protective mode for the entire Ninth Corps, over."

  "Well, if we get overrun you're gonna have visitors pretty damn quick. So make up your mind. Out."

  * * *

  "All guns!" yelled Keren, out the back of the Suburban. "Final Protective Fire! Continuous fire!"

  * * *

  Specialist Nick Warren crouched in his foxhole and tried to count kills. The foxhole had been built for interlocking fire, with a mound of earth in front of it and the firing slot angled out to the right at a forty-five degree angle. The idea was to fire at everything from the side and not be shot at by the horses you were shooting at. Which was fine except that the whole wall was being hammered by railgun and shotgun rounds. Dirt drifted around him in streams as the pounding fire tore apart the sandbags on the outer layer, then began to destroy the packed dirt of the fill.

  His zone of fire was packed with horses. There were so many that he had stopped bothering to aim. If he missed one the bullet was sure to hit the one behind. He would run but he had done that once and knew what it brought. The horses could run you down faster than you could escape. There was nothing to do but kill them and keep killing them and hope it was enough. He had to keep them off the other holes and hope that there were enough guys left to keep the horses off his. He wished he'd saved some grenades, they'd be a treat. But he was out of gun grenades and the hand kind both.

  His bolt flew back on an empty chamber and the plastic magazine dropped out. He was patting his ammo pouches trying to find another magazine when he heard a sound like a machete hitting a watermelon and looked over his shoulder.

  The other soldier in the foxhole was down, half her face torn away by the railgun round that had finally punched through the wall of sandbags. He couldn't even remember her name, some chick from headquarters company. He had a moment of shame at his first thought, which was joy that he could see she had two magazines left. But he didn't have much time to dwell on the shame. There was a sudden shower of dirt, heavier than the earlier ones. He never even saw the blade that clove into the back of his head, slicing through the Kevlar helmet, bone and brain like butter.

  * * *

  There just wasn't enough concentrated firepower. Fighting Posleen had often been described as trying to stop an avalanche with a fire hose. It only works if you have enough fire hoses.

  The Posleen were on a narrow front, crossing an open beaten zone. They were, in fact, a perfect target for a prepared veteran unit with backup or even an intact, dug in, green ACS unit. But without massive artillery fire, without an intact ACS battalion, without more troops and tangle-foot and barbwire and mines, Ardan'aath drove his forces forward in a wild charge that overwhelmed the defenders in bare minutes.

  Bravo Company of the ACS was the first to fall, left exposed on the flank of the mechanized company. Their lines of silver lightning stretched out to the charging Posleen and tore them apart like paper. The same carnage would have shocked a human force into immobility. But there were over twelve thousand Posleen charging down the narrow front and dozens of God Kings. And Posleen just don't stop.

  The Posleen focused on this danger first, striking the company with direct-fire. The armor was usually proof against anything but a plasma cannon or an HVM. But as the mass of fire pounded them, occasional three-millimeter rounds would find a weakness. And there were over six hundred HVM launchers and nine hundred heavy railguns in the force. Between those and the God Kings the exposed ACS company was eliminated without killing more than five or six hundred of the enemy.

  The dug-in forces fared better, but not so much that it mattered. The first to be silenced was the partially dug-in Charlie Company as their grav-guns and Grim Reapers were picked out for special attention by the heavy weapons of the Posleen brigade. Charlie Company put up a hard fight but the whistling centaurs drove forward against the wall of fire, piling up windrows of their dead in an effort to close with the armored humans. It finally came down to hand-to-hand as the Posleen reached the foxholes of the unit and overwhelmed it in a charge with monomolecular blades.

  In the meantime the lighter railguns and shotguns of the Posleen normals concentrated on the foxholes of the mechanized unit, in most cases hammering them so hard they were unable to respond. Anyone who jumped out of a hole and started to run was cut apart by massed fire. When the Posleen reached the firing line it was all over. The forlorn troopers were butchered in place like so many sheep. A few made it away in the confusion, but for all practical purpose the unit had ceased to exist.

  * * *

  "We cannot leave those metal thresh wandering around," said Kenallurial, gesturing at the display. Inside he was bitter with envy. He knew his worth, but a successful te'naal charge like that one would be spoken of for a thousand years. That it was his trickery and thought that brought them here would be forgotten.

  "Ardan'aath will dispose of them in good time," said Kenallai calmly. "Look at the thresh run," he continued, gesturing at the schematic. The remnants of the Tenth Corps were pulling up stakes and backpedaling towards Manassas as fast as they could. "Like abat from a corpse."

  "We should press them," said Kenallai. "We must not let them stop and build defenses before the great prize to the north."

  "We will, my eson'antai, we will," the oolt'ondar said, fluffing his crest. "Don't be so envious."

  Kenallai turned away at that insight, tapping the display to bring it wider. This was a fine land, rich and with much booty to be won. There would be fine fiefs to be had. If only the Net recognized his contributions.

  In the distance there was an end to the screaming and a fading sound of diesel engines.

  CHAPTER 57

  Rabun County, GA, United States of America, Sol III

  0446 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad

  Cally rubbed the orange solvent into the Cordura nylon, trying to get the last stains out. "I wish those white-suits had stayed around long enough to clean this stuff."

  Papa O'Neal chuckled, working a bit of bone out of a crevice. They had both taken fast showers to get the bits of the late Harold Locke off, but the armor had picked up quite a bit of evidence. Getting it cleaned up was a priority.

  "Yeah, well, I guess we're just going to have to use a little elbow grease." He took a puff off his pipe and scrubbed at another spot of blood.

  "Who do you think they were, really?" she asked in a serious tone.

  He stopped looking for spots on the black cloth for a moment and leaned back. It was a good question. "Honey, I don't rightly know. They were obviously here to save our bacon. Now, I've got a lot of friends in the business, but nobody that could call up a team like that. And they knew Harold was coming to call. Now, they might have figured on being able to cover things up so whoever sent him didn't figure out what happened. That's more or less what happened. If the question gets bandied around we can take quiet credit for it.

  "But that still begs the question of who sent 'em."

  She nodded her head and went back to working, but he could tell from the expression on her face she was
thinking about something. "Penny for your thoughts," he said.

  "I think it was somebody that thought they owed Daddy a favor."

  He started to open his mouth to dismiss the suggestion and stopped. Mike Junior had told him about the present of the combat suit. At half a billion credits, one of the suits was, to say the least, no small gift. Somebody who thought they owed him a half-billion-credit suit might think they owed him a quick response from a special actions team. Instead of dismissing the thought he nodded his head in agreement. "Okay, I can buy that."

  She nodded in turn and picked up the toothbrush as a sonic boom hit.

  Both of them looked upwards and cursed simultaneously.

  "Oh, fuck!" said Mike Senior.

  "Batshit!" echoed Cally.

  Michael O'Neal, Sr., looked at the wet, orange-scented armor in his hands and shook his damp head. "What the hell else is going to go wrong today?" he asked with a slightly hysterical laugh.

  * * *

  The team leader pressed the fingers of his hand into his forehead, as if to press in an idea. There were no safe houses nearby where the team could to go to ground. Even if the lander did not land on them, the team would surely be stopped, the vehicles might be commandeered by the local response teams. And then the shit would well and truly hit the fan. Their hastily prepared covers would not survive investigation.

  There was only one possible path to obscurity.

  "Turn around," he snarled to the driver. The monk obeyed without a word, swerving right and spinning the over-powered van into a fishtail. "Go to the O'Neal house." He pulled out his cell phone for the second time in an hour.

  * * *

  Papa O'Neal had the local weather radio turned up loud as he and Cally battened down the hatches. There was a protocol for a landing, one that they had not been able to perform for their unexpected visitors. Shutters were closed across the windows, even the ones that had cracked at the sonic boom. The horses were brought into the barn. The cows could fend for themselves. Circuits were rechecked, ammunition was laid out, spare weapons were set up to hand.

  The phone ringing was almost drowned out by the radio, the automated voice now chanting a mantra of landing warnings. But Cally heard it and ran to pick it up.

  "Hello?" she said.

  "Miss Cally O'Neal?" asked a faintly accented voice.

  "Yes."

  "May I speak to Mr. Michael O'Neal, Senior?"

  "May I ask who's calling?"

  "Recent visitors," said the voice with a note of faint humor.

  "Oh. Hang on." She ran outside and clamped the cordless phone against her side. "Granpa!" she shouted.

  He looked up, startled, from where he was fixing one of the defective firing circuits.

  She waved the phone overhead vigorously. "He'll be here in a second," she said to the "recent visitor."

  There was a pause as they waited for the senior O'Neal to trot up the hill. Cally could hear a background of a growling engine. Their visitors appeared to be in a hurry.

  "Might I ask a question?" asked the accented voice in the interim.

  "Sure."

  "How to say it? The other visitor. He appeared to be . . ."

  "Me."

  "Ah. That would explain it." The voice sounded somehow satisfied with the answer.

  "Here's Grandpa. Bye."

  She covered the mouthpiece again and smiled. "Our visitors seem to be coming back to tea."

  "Oh, shit," said O'Neal, Sr., shaking his head. "Be careful what you ask for."

  "Hello?"

  "Mr. O'Neal?"

  "Speaking."

  "This is one of your recent visitors. We find ourselves somewhat at a disadvantage . . ."

  "Come ahead. Put the vehicles in the garage. I'll move the truck out so there's room. And hurry. If our friends get here before you I'm activating the minefield and you're on your own."

  "Of course. We're nearly there."

  In the distance there was a thump of artillery and a rattle of machine-gun fire. The Posleen lander had managed to land squarely between the Fifty-Third Infantry, defending Rabun Gap, and the main positions of the supporting Tennessee Volunteers. And only two miles from the entrance to the O'Neal valley. In all likelihood they would bypass the small entrance to the valley. The turn was deliberately obscure.

  On the other hand, the way the day had been going . . .

  * * *

  Papa O'Neal rotated a shoulder to get the armor seated better. Either it had picked up ten pounds of water in the cleaning, or he was getting too old for this shit. He smiled at the black-masked commando coming up the walkway and held out his hand. "Mike O'Neal. And you are? I didn't quite catch the name before."

  "Call me Raphael," said the team leader. He took the proffered hand as his team hurried up behind him. The "white-suits" were following them. Although the black-suited commandos were armed, the white-suits were unarmed and without armor.

  "You want to outfit them?" asked Papa O'Neal, gesturing with his chin at the white-suits.

  "It would be fairly pointless," said "Raphael." "I doubt they could hit the side of a mountain. But if you have some little hidey-hole it would be perfect."

  "Well, can't say as I'm sorry you came back," admitted Papa O'Neal. "We can do with the extra firepower if the Posleen come up here." He gestured towards the house and started walking.

  "I take comfort in the fact that we are not the only ones assailed by these visitors," said the visitor dryly. "Surely we are not forsaken by God if they also land upon the Muslim."

  * * *

  Lieutenant Mashood Farmazan sighed as he gazed down at the enemy host through the ancient Zeiss binoculars. The Posleen group was a remnant of the mass that had descended upon Turkmenistan. The force had slashed through the impoverished country, spreading out from their landing around devastated Chardzhou and destroying every unit thrown against them. The force that was marching towards the Iranian border was still tens of thousands strong and had cut a bloody swath through Bagram-Ali and Mary following the Old Silk Road. Fellow forces had leveled ancient Buchara and now pressed storied Tashkent. This force was presumably headed for Teheran and the riches it hoarded.

  He would like to say that this was as far as they were going. The terrain at this pass through the Koppeh Dagh was very favorable for stopping their advance. However, he was the commander and sole officer of the single understrength battalion that now stood between the Posleen and the Fars plateau.

  The unit was part of the First Armored Division, the Immortals. The division traced its roots to the fabled days of the Medes and Cyrus. It had, however, fallen upon hard times since the days of the Shah. The current regime seemed to question the integrity of a unit that traced its genesis to Zoroaster.

  But the predecessors of the division had blooded their teeth repeatedly on barbarian invaders in these very mountains. Smart barbarians took the long way around through Pulichatum and up the flank of the Dasht-e-Kavir to capture Mashad. Or to the north to the passes along the Caspian. Only very stupid barbarians came through the little village of Bajgiran. Up through the serpentine Bajgiran Pass. Through the easily defended pass.

  Since this was a well-known fact, the majority of the division, along with two other regular infantry divisions, was assembled outside Mashad. Reserve divisions and the Islamic Guard were assembling around Gorgan. Mazandaran might be lost but the enemy would be stopped well short of Quramshar.

  The only unit available to defend the inconsequential Bajgiran pass was a "battalion" of clap-trap M-60s from the days of the Shah. The total number of working tanks was less than a company and those were held together with baling wire. And a single unprepossessing, politically unconnected, overly intellectual officer to command what was a battalion in name only. Such were the defenders of Bajgiran.

  The village nestled in the high mountain valley behind him. A typical village of the uplands, the green winter rye was just starting to sprout on the fields and a stream chuckled between the fields and
a large stand of poplars. The village itself was a huddle of ancient mud and brick houses nestled at the base of the soaring gray mountains, with a few more modern structures scattered among them. Even these dated back to the heydays of the '70s. Nothing much ever changed in the upland villages.

  Roads were paved or cobbled, then faded back into dirt tracks. Empires waxed and waned, power structures rose and fell in distant Teheran or Isfahan or Tashkent, whichever owned them at the time. But the muezzin called the faithful to prayer five times a day, regardless. And the goats ate the sparse grasses of the mountains, regardless. And the snows of winter came, regardless. And the occasional invader came through, regardless. Then the fields would be uprooted by battle until a new tax collector was appointed. And life, for most, would go on.

  Lieutenant Farmazan had had the most difficult time persuading the local mullah that such was not the case with this invader. He had shown the old man pictures from distant stars. They had been dismissed as fairy tales. He had shown him the edicts of the revolutionary counsel, requiring evacuation in the face of the oncoming horde. They had been dismissed with a long exposition on the Koran and the inconsequence of mortal rulers. He had shown him videos from distant America where battles ranged on land, air and sea. A well-known place of perfidy was the response. Such could only be expected in such a Gomorrah. Finally, nearly tearing his hair out, the lieutenant had invoked the demon Tamerlane.

  At this dread name the stern old mullah had blanched. The Mongol invader had reduced the fabled Aryan empire of old to a shadow of its former self, killing every single lord, leader, official or member of the intelligentsia. The only Persians that were left after Tamerlane swept through the country were the peasants. And most of them had been killed or enslaved.

  After hearing further descriptions and having the similarities pointed out, the mullah relented. With histrionic wailing and gnashing of teeth he had begun chivvying the poor farmers and artisans of the remote town out of their houses and down the long road towards distant Mashad. The last forlorn figure was still visible at the final turn of the plateau as the terrible host on the plains hove into view.