When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 19 Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III 1325 EDT Friday September 25, 2009 ad

“So that’s a .22?” Wendy asked in disbelief. The weapon was odd looking, resembling nothing so much as an undersized “Tommy Gun” with the drum magazine placed on top. She could see the tiny aperture in the barrel, but she found the concept of this warrior-child carrying a .22, a round usually used by eight-year-old boys to shoot rats, ludicrous. The gun looked like a toy, which she knew was a dangerous mental attitude.

“Yep,” Cally said, walking around onto the range. “Range is cold, people, no locking, no aiming, no, no, no firing; safe your weapons.” She picked up a broken cinderblock off of a stack and, with remarkably little difficulty, carried it halfway to the first target and set it on a section of tree trunk that had apparently been set up for the purpose. “This is the standard demonstration for the American 180,” she continued, walking back to the firing line.

There were two ranges set up on the O’Neal property. The first, where they were preparing to fire, was a standard target range. There were a variety of pop-up targets, scoring circles and man- and Posleen-shaped silhouettes, ranging out to two or three hundred yards. The other range, which ran along the road to the entry, was a tactical firing line.

Cally looked at the group and frowned. “Papa O’Neal usually covers this, but I think I’m elected. How many of you have been on a range before?”

Most of the children had wandered over and she frowned when none of them raised their hands. “None of you have been on a range? Where do you do weapons training?”

“It’s illegal to let a person under sixteen handle a weapon in the Urb,” Wendy said with a frown.

“That’s… ridiculous,” Cally said.

Wendy shrugged. “You’re preaching to the choir; there were kids in the Hitler Youth that were younger than that. They tended to surrender pretty quick and they weren’t much good. But they fought in a real war.”

“I won’t even go there,” Cally said with a frown.

“Have you ever shot a Posleen?” Shari asked. “I only ask because… I don’t see somebody Billy’s age being…”

“Useful?” Cally said with a snort. “You see the bunker by the house? I killed my first Posleen when I was his age, covering Granpa with my rifle; he was manning the mini-gun. It was during the Fredericksburg landing cycle and a Posleen company landed at the head of the valley and ended up coming up the trail. None of them left the holler; we hit ’em with the band of claymores and then stacked the survivors. So, yeah, I think Billy could be pretty useful if you let him be.”

“It’s not my rule anyway,” Shari said with a shrug.

“Whatever,” Cally replied. “You gonna mind if he fires one here?”

“Will it be safe?” Shari asked, looking at the odd little rifle in trepidation.

“Of course it will,” Cally said. “The first thing to cover is range safety.”

She ran through an abbreviated range safety briefing covering hearing protection, ensuring that the weapons were safed and cleared if anyone was to be downrange, keeping fingers off the triggers and always assuming a weapon was loaded. “The most important thing is that; never, ever point a gun, even an ‘unloaded’ gun, at anything you don’t want destroyed. For the purposes of safety, every gun is loaded. Guns aren’t evil magic; they’re just tools for killing something at a distance. Treat them as useful, but dangerous tools, like a circular saw or a chainsaw, and you’ll be fine.”

She picked up the rifle and flicked on the laser sight; a tiny red dot settled on the cinderblock. “If not, this is what happens.” Holding the weapon by her side, the dot barely shivering on the block, she opened fire.

The weapon was quiet: a series of pops like a distant, poorly tuned outboard motor. An outboard motor going very fast.

Wendy shook her head as the cinderblock disintegrated. The individual rounds were tiny, an individual .22 round was about as big around as a drinking straw. But the gun was spitting dozens of them in under a second and with negligible recoil; Wendy could see the rounds impacting in the haze of dust and the laser aiming point still wasn’t moving.

After a few moments the bolt clicked on an empty chamber and Cally pulled the drum off, a single round falling into the dust at her feet, and replaced it. The cinderblock had been hammered into a pile of dust and chunks no larger than a thumb.

“It runs through its rounds in a jiffy,” Cally noted, setting the weapon down. “And it’s no good at any sort of range. But it’s good in close, even against Posleen, and it’s fun as heck to fire. However, if we’re going to fire anything else, we need to put on our earmuffs.”

Cally gestured to Wendy to hand over the Steyr then waved to Billy. “Your turn.”

She jacked a round into the chamber and settled the weapon into his shoulder. “Left hand on the stock, right hand on the pistol grip, finger off the trigger,” she continued, gently moving it away. “Safety is by your right thumb. Look through the rear ring, lay your cheek onto the stock and find the front sight and focus on it. Lay the top of the front sight on the target. Take a breath and let it out and when you’re comfortable, slowly squeeze the trigger. Squeeze it gently; the shot should feel like a surprise.”

Billy looked at her and nodded then leaned into the rifle, pulling it into his shoulder hard.

“Don’t tense up so much,” Cally said. “This is a bittly little .308 round. The recoil is not going to knock you on your ass.”

Billy nodded again and slowly squeezed the trigger, putting a round into the center of the man-shaped target and knocking it down.

“Good,” Cally said as he grinned. “Now, I’m going to pop up a target of a Posleen. There’s a head-sized patch on its side, right behind the shoulder, marked in red. I want you to shoot it there. Okay?”

Billy looked unhappy, but eventually shrugged and nodded. So Cally popped up the target.

The Posleen was twenty-five meters downrange, a cold shot for a rifle, and in line with where the human silhouette had been. Billy was so startled that his first round went high, but he quickly settled down and put the second one into the target area.

“You don’t like Posleen, do you?” Cally asked. Billy shook his head.

“They die,” she said with a grin. “You shoot ’em and they die. Fall down and go boom. The point is that you have to shoot ’em, and you have to shoot ’em before they shoot you. Now shoot it again.”

They spent the next few hours on the range, eventually going back to the house for a picnic lunch, feeding the baby and more ammunition. All the children were permitted to fire something, even if it was the target air gun from the armory. After putting a couple of thousand rounds, combined, downrange, Cally called a halt.

“I think that’s enough for one day,” she said, taking a Sig-Sauer .40 from a reluctant Kelly; the six-year-old had just scored two bull’s-eyes at twenty-five meters and was suitably awed with herself. “Maybe you guys can come back some time and we’ll do some more. But I have to go make sure the pig hasn’t caught on fire.”

“That would be a shame,” Wendy said. “I’m going to be hungry. And I’m sure the walkers are as well.”

“Speaking of which, I wonder where they are?” Shari said.

From high on the mountains a resounding “Booom” echoed across the holler.

“Somewhere around Cache Four, it sounds like,” Cally said.

“What was that?” Wendy asked.

“At a guess, Granpa’s hand cannon.”

“Is he all right?” Shari asked, shading her eyes against the glare to fruitlessly look up the mountain.

“Oh, yeah,” Cally said, setting the kids to policing the brass. “If he wasn’t you would have heard everyone else open up as well.”

Papa O’Neal pointed down what appeared to be a sheer bluff about fifteen meters high then to a hickory sapling growing on the edge.

Looking closely, Mosovich could see where there was a worn patch on the trunk of the sapling. He nodded and gave the farmer a quizzical look.

Papa O’Neal smiled, shouldered his rifle and swung his feet out over the edge, dropping straight down.

Looking over the edge, it was clear now that there was a thin ledge below, upon which O’Neal was now perched. With a grin he ducked and disappeared into the mountain.

Mosovich shrugged and grabbed the tree, repeating the maneuver. He noted that O’Neal was now crouched in a cave opening, apparently prepared to catch the sergeant major should the likely event of his falling outward have occurred.

Mosovich shook his head at the local’s grin and shuffled to the side; Mueller would have a tougher time than he did. Mueller, though, came down slightly more circumspectly, grasping a hand- and foothold on the wall and lowering himself carefully to the ledge. He then shuffled past O’Neal and deeper into the cave.

Elgars looked down the cliff and shrugged. She grabbed the tree and dropped, landing slightly off-balance. But before Mosovich or O’Neal could react, one hand reached up in a smooth slow-looking maneuver and grabbed a small protuberance between index finger and thumb, seizing the tiny handhold like a mechanical clamp. She slowly pulled herself vertical then ducked to enter the cave.

There was a short passageway, high enough at the center that a person could duckwalk through, and then the cave opened up and out to either side. On the right the roof sloped quickly down to the floor, bringing with it a trickle of water that collected in a small apparently man-made basin. On the left the wall was more vertical and the floor extended further back. At least, it seemed to; the actual left-hand wall was obscured with boxes.

There were metal and wood ammo boxes, plastic “rough tote” waterproof containers and even a few Galplas ACS grav-gun and grenade cases. There were also about a dozen cases of combat rations.

“It’s not all ammo,” Papa O’Neal said, going over and hauling down a long, low case that had “Ammo, 81mm, M256 HE” stamped on the side. The box turned out to contain several old style BDU combat uniforms, wrapped in plastic and packed with mothballs. “There’s a full outfit, including combat load out, for a squad. And four days rations. Water?” he gestured to the pool. “And there are filters in one of the boxes.”

“How many caches like this do you have?” Mosovich asked, shaking his head. “This is… Jesus, just the thought of the cost makes my teeth ache.”

“Oh, it took a few years to set them all up,” Papa O’Neal said with a laugh, sending a stream of tobacco juice to the floor. “And I did it bit by bit, so the cost wasn’t all that bad. Also… there’s some government programs now to do this sort of thing. At least that’s what they’re really about if you read the fine print: The BATF would shit if Congress had come right out and said as much. And recently, well…” He grinned and shook his head. “Let’s just say that my son has done pretty well financially in this war.”

Mosovich had to admit that was probably the case. The Fleet used something similar to prize rules, a combination of Galactic laws and human application. Since the ACS was generally the lead assault element, they got the maximum financial benefit of all the captured Posleen weaponry, ships and stores that generally were lying around in a retreat. He also noted that Papa O’Neal had neatly sidestepped the question of how many similar caches there were.

“And he’s a great source of surplus,” Mueller said, kicking a grav-gun ammo case.

“Uh, yeah,” Papa O’Neal said with another grin. “They go through a lot of grav-gun ammo.” He duckwalked back to the entrance and gestured down the hill where the farm and the pocket valley beyond were faintly visible. The main valley of the Gap was still shrouded by a shoulder of the hill, but Black Mountain was in clear view — it dominated the southern horizon — and a corner of the wall was faintly visible. “This spot makes a fair lookout, but of course there’s no back door. I don’t like going to ground when there’s no back door.”

“Yeah, I been treed by the Posleen a couple of times,” Mosovich said, glancing down the bluff. It was climbable, with difficulty. “I don’t care for it.”

As he stepped back Elgars gasped and shook her head. “Now that was a bad one,” she said with an uneasy chuckle.

“What was a bad one?” Mueller asked, ducking through to crowd the ledge.

“You ever get flashbacks, Sergeant?” she asked.

“Occasionally,” Mueller admitted. “Not all that often.”

“Well, I get flashbacks of stuff I’ve never done,” Elgars said with a grim chuckle. “And you know, I’ve never been to Barwhon, but I’ve come to hate that cold-assed rainy planet.”

“It is that,” Mosovich said. “I’ve only been once and I have no desire to return.”

“I understand that it has a high species diversity,” Papa O’Neal said with a chuckle, reaching up to climb up the bluff. “Every really nasty place I’ve ever been — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Biafra — had the same damned description.”

“It does that,” Mueller agreed. “It has about a billion different species of biting beetles, all the size of your finger joint. And forty million species of vines that get in your way. And sixty million species of really tall trees that screen out the light.”

“And lots and lots of Posleen,” Mosovich said with a laugh. “Well, it used to.”

“I had this sudden really clear image of a Posleen village, a few pyramids and some other stuff. I was looking through a scope, right eye in the scope, left scanning outside. I know that in just a second a Posleen’s gonna come through a door and I have to engage it. Then there were some explosions and, sure enough, a Postie comes right in view. Ah take it out, and some others, then there’s a God King and it’s all okay, Ah’m in the zone, servicing the targets. Ah’ve got an IR blanket on and the signature’s covered so Ah’m safe, counterfire is not an issue. The gun’s big, probably a Barrett, and I have to reposition a couple of times cause Ah’m on this really big branch or something. Then the tree I’m shooting in starts shuddering and Ah look down and there’s this line of shot-marks walking up the tree and then it goes white.”

“Are you jerking my chain?” Mosovich asked quietly.

“No,” Elgars answered. “Why?”

He looked at Mueller, who was standing there, white faced, and thought about simply answering. Finally he shook his head.

“Not here, not now,” he said. “Later. Maybe. I have to think about this.”

“It’s not the only memory where I die,” Elgars said with a shrug. “There’s another one where I’m running and I’ve got a burned hand, it hurts anyway, and I’m carrying something and then the ground’s coming up at me and I die. And another where I’m up to my waist in water, firing a gun, a light machine gun, offhand. And I die. And another where I blow up and die.”

“You die a lot,” Mueller commented looking at her oddly.

“Yep,” Elgars answered. “Game over, man. Happens to me all the time. Practically every night. It really sucks. Hard to get much confidence going when you die all the time.”

“The shrinks didn’t tell me about that,” Mosovich said.

“That’s because by the time the flashbacks started, I’d figured out to stop talking to the shrinks,” the captain said with a shrug.

“I have dreams where I die,” Papa O’Neal said, spitting over the side. “But it’s usually an explosion, usually a nuke. I have that one recurrently. By the way, this is a weird fucking conversation and I need a beer for one of those.” He reached up and grasped the tree trunk, hauling himself back up the bluff. “Time to wander down and see if Cally has burned the pig.” He turned to give Mosovich a hand then turned back as there was a crackling in the brush.

The Posleen normal had apparently been screened by a holly thicket. Now it charged down the hillside, spear held at shoulder height.

Mosovich had just started to haul himself up and was in no position to respond, but that didn’t really matter.

Papa O’Neal didn’t bother going for the assault rifle on his back. Instead, his hand dropped to the holstered pistol, coming back up in a smooth motion as the Posleen closed to within feet of him.

The Desert Eagle tracked to just above the protuberance of the double shoulder. Bone over the shoulder, and the shoulder itself, tended to armor the front of a Posleen. But just above and below were open areas; the higher open area, corresponding to the clavical region in a human, also contained a nerve and blood-flow complex.

Papa O’Neal triggered one round and then pirouetted aside, blocking the now limply held spear with the barrel of the gun. The Posleen continued on for a few steps then slid down the hill and off the bluff.

“Heads up,” O’Neal called calmly. Then he dropped out the magazine and replaced it with a spare, carefully reloading the original magazine as the Posleen bounced down the hill and off a cliff.

Mueller shook his head and wiped at his face, where a splash of yellow marked the demise of the normal. “God, it’s nice dealing with professionals,” he chuckled.

Elgars shook her head in wonder. “I don’t care if it is difficult to use. That Posleen had a hole I could fit my hand in going all the way through it. I need to get one of those pistols.”

“They are nice,” Mueller agreed, grabbing the trunk. “On the other hand, they are loud.”

“We heard you up on the hill,” Cally said as the foursome hove into view of the barbeque pits. “I’m surprised you didn’t skin it out and bring back a haunch.”

“Slid down the hill,” Papa O’Neal said with a grin. “Damned bad luck if you ask me. Where’d everybody go?”

“Most of the kids are taking a nap,” the thirteen-year-old said, poking at the hickory fire. She had pulled her hair back and put on a full-length apron to work on the fire. Between that and the smudge of ash on her hands and face she looked like some medieval serving wench. “Wendy and Shari are technically inside getting side dishes ready. But I told them there was plenty of time and I suspect they’re racked out, too. Any other trouble?”

“These guys are pretty good in the hills,” O’Neal said. “Almost as good as you.”

“No trouble,” Mueller said. “But I’ve got a question: I’ve heard of people eating Posleen, but…”

Papa O’Neal looked sort of sheepish as Cally laughed hysterically.

“Yeah, he ate one,” she said. “Parts of a few, actually.”

“They really taste like shit,” he said with a shrug. “They’re tough, they’re stringy, they don’t soften up when you cook ’em and they really, really taste bad; worse than sloth and that’s saying a lot.”

“You’ve eaten sloth?” Mueller asked. “Shit, I’ve never met anybody who’s eaten one of those.”

“Yes you have,” Mosovich said with a grimace. “I did one time. If Posleen’s worse than that, they’re pretty bad. It’s hard to describe how bad sloth is; it tastes sort of like what you’d think a road-killed possum would taste like after a few days on the road.”

“That’s a pretty good description,” Papa O’Neal said. “And Posleen tastes worse. I loaded it up with nam pla even, my own recipe for nam pla with added habanero, and the taste still came through.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mosovich laughed. “That’s bad!”

“I finally figured out that I could eat it if I coated it in berbere,” O’Neal said with a shrug. “That shit’s so hot you can’t taste anything at all; it puts Thais on their ass.”

“Man, you must have been everywhere,” Mueller said with another laugh. “I’ve heard of berebere but…”

“I had it once,” Mosovich said. “Somebody bet me I couldn’t eat a whole plate of something called ‘wat har bo.’ ” He shook his head. “I took one bite and paid off the bet; I’d rather eat my pride and give up a C note than die.”

“Berbere isn’t for the faint of heart,” Papa O’Neal admitted. “Even I can’t stomach much of it and I’ve eaten more really hot shit than I want to think about. So I don’t eat ’em anymore. And I don’t let Cally eat it at all; you can get a disease from it, like when cannibals eat brains. It’s caused by a little protein they’ve got that we can’t break down.”

“Kreinsfelter or something like that?” Mueller asked. “Same thing as Mad Cow Disease basically. I’ve heard you can get it from eating Posleen. So why did you?”

“That’s it,” Papa O’Neal said. “But, hell, the onset is a couple of decades normally.” He grinned and waved at his body. “One way or another, I don’t really think I’ve got another couple of decades.”

“I’m hungry,” Mueller said with a grin. “But I don’t want to die from what I eat. Is there anything else?”

“Well, you sort of missed lunch,” Cally said somewhat sourly. “This will be ready in about an hour. But there’s other stuff to get ready too.”

“We’ll get on it,” Mosovich said with a chuckle. “Just point us in the direction, O Viking princess!”

She shook her head and brandished a burning brand at him then gestured to the house. “Since the sweet corn is still up, I think we should have that again. Cornbread is in the oven. I had the kids pick some broccoli and that probably should be cut up and put in a big dish and microwaved. We could have a side of fresh beets if somebody went out and picked them. Ditto on tomatoes, they’re always good with a little seasoning. What am I missing?”

“Beer,” Papa O’Neal said, picking up a large set of skewers and jabbing them in the butterflied pig. “And turning this. How long has it been on this side?”

“About an hour,” Cally said. “I got Wendy and Shari to help me the last time.”

“I’ll take over here,” O’Neal said. “As long as somebody brings me a beer. You go rule the kitchen. Give these heathens no mercy! Teach them… canning!”

“Ah! Not that!” Cally said with a grin. “We don’t have anything to can. And besides, they’re guests.”

“You take all the fun out of it,” Papa O’Neal said with a grin. “Go on, I’ll handle the meat.” As she left he rummaged in a box by the barbeque and pulled out a large stoneware jug. “Here,” he said, offering it to Mueller. “Try some of this. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

“I’ve always been proud of my relatively hairless chest,” Mueller said, tilting the jug back for a drink. He took a sip and spit half of it out, coughing. As the clear liquid hit the fire, it roared up. “Aaaaah.”

“Hey, that stuff’s prized around here!”

“As what?” Mueller rasped. “Paint stripper?”

Papa O’Neal took the jug and sniffed at it innocently. “Ah, sorry,” he said with a chuckle. He reached into the same box and came up with a mason jar. “You’re right, that was paint stripper. Try this instead.”

Tommy stood up and raised his mug. “Gentlemen… and ladies. Absent companions.”

“Absent companions,” the rest of the room murmured.

Having released the troops to descend upon the unprotected towns of Newbry and Hollidaysburg, Major O’Neal had decreed that the officers would have a dining in. His stated reason for this was to start integrating the two new officers they had received, but Tommy suspected it was because he was afraid the officers would do more damage than the enlisted.

Major O’Neal stood up and raised his beer. “Gentlemen and ladies: Who Laughs Last.”

“Who Laughs Last,” the group murmured.

“Sir,” Captain Stewart said somewhat thickly. “I think it’s important that the new officers become acquainted with the reason for the battalion motto, don’t you?”

Mike snorted and looked around. “Duncan, you are our official battalion storyteller. Tell them the story.”

Duncan stood up from where he was talking with Captain Slight and took a sip of beer then cleared his throat. “President of the Mess!”

“Yes, Captain?” Tommy said.

“Arrrrgh!” Captain Slight shouted.

“Sacrilege!” Stewart yelled.

“No rank in the mess, Tommy,” O’Neal said, waving everyone down.

“President of the Mess!” Duncan continued. “Call the pipers!”

“We don’t have any,” Tommy complained. “We checked the whole battalion and nobody knows how to play them. And we don’t have any pipes anyway.”

Stewart leaned over and pointed at a device in the corner, whispering in the lieutenant’s ear. Tommy went over and, after whispering to his new AID, keyed the controls.

“But it does appear that we have a pirated version of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ ” Tommy said. “Lucky us.”

Duncan cleared his throat and took another sip of beer as the melancholy notes of a uilleann pipe echoed through the mess.

“ ’Twas the darkest days of the fourth wave, January 17^th, 2008, when the sky was still filled with the meteoric tracks of Second Fleet, its smashed remains leaving trails of fire across the sky, when, if you cranked up your visor, you could catch a glimpse of the last task force battling its way through the Posleen wave, towing away the pulverized wreck of the Supermonitor Honshu.

“First Battalion, Five Hundred Fifty-Fifth Infantry had been tasked with holding a vital ridgeline outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. From the ridge it was just possible to see the smoke from the final assault on Philadelphia and the millions of fresh Posleen, newly landed from their ships, were even more evident. The Planetary Defense Center to the north was heavily engaged with airmobile landers, and repeated kinetic energy strikes were hammering into it as the battalion sustained wave after wave of suicidal Posleen assaults. Conventional units were heavily engaged to the south, so heavily engaged that they had full priority on all artillery, leaving the battalion to fend for itself. The air was filled with the shriek and silver of grav-gun rounds as the sky was pierced with nuclear fire.

“That was, until the Alpha company began to run low on ammunition. To their front was a gully, and the Posleen waves were, in part by accident, sheltered by said gully. The Reapers had used their grenades to good effect, but the resupply line had been partially flanked and was sustaining heavy interdicting fire. So, slowly, the company got lower and lower on ammunition until they were down to firing individual rounds.

“The Posleen, meanwhile, had through trial and error rediscovered the concept of ‘cover’ and the survivors were hunkering in the gully, popping up to fire a few rounds, and then hunkering back down.

“The situation was at an impasse; the company did not have the grenade rounds to destroy the Posleen and the Posleen had gotten tired of getting killed in the open.

“It was at that moment that our redoubtable leader made his appearance by running full tilt through the hail of fire that had already garnered three of the resupply personnel. Arriving at the Alpha Company lines he wandered down the slit trench, observing the goings on, until he reached the Alpha Company commander. That would be…”

“Craddock,” Mike said, taking a gulp of beer.

“Captain James Craddock,” Duncan continued, raising his glass. “Absent companions.”

“Absent companions,” everyone murmured.

“Captain Craddock related their predicament and noted that if they didn’t do something, and soon, the Posleen would build up to where they had enough force to engage in hand-to-hand. And that would be… unpleasant. He requested that the supply personnel, the medics and techs basically, do whatever was necessary to support his operation, at whatever cost.

“Our esteemed leader, doing his notorious impression of the sphinx, then looks around, picks up a small boulder and rolls it down the hill.”

“You could hear the crunch when it hit the horses,” Stewart chimed in. “It was nearly as big as he is… He looked like an ant lifting a big chunk of dirt…”

“Then he turns to the company commander and says…”

“He who laughs last is generally the one that thought fastest on his feet,” Mike said, taking a sip of beer.

“We edited for content and punch,” Duncan said. “Using boulders from the surrounding terrain, Alpha Company then proceeded to play ‘Bowling for Posleen’ for the next few hours.”

“Then we got our artillery support back and everything was hunky dory,” Mike noted. “Artillery is what has saved this war. But I’ve noted that surviving these little predicaments is generally a matter of who comes up with the winning tactic at the last possible moment. You go in with a plan, knowing it’s going to… go awry. And then you adjust. Whoever is the best, the fastest, at adjusting usually is the winner.”

“We’re very fast at adjusting,” Slight said thickly. “And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the veterans in this room. That’s why we’re here.”

Stewart raised his glass. “To those who think fastest; may they always be humans!”