When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 21 Clarkesville, GA, United States, Sol III 0115 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

“So, Goloswin, how does it go?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.

The Posleen technician looked up from his monitor and flapped his crest. “It is going well. We have received a new piece of… intelligence.”

“Ah?” Tulo’stenaloor asked. “From the Net?”

“Yes,” Goloswin answered, gesturing at the monitor. “From a Kessentai who was on Aradan. It seems he has gained access to control codes for the metal threshkreen communications. We are now ‘in their net’ as the humans would say. This includes communications between the chief of all threshkreen in this land and the metal threshkreen. Also, there are other threshkreen who use this communications medium; among others your lurp friends. I also have their numbers and disposition in the entire U.S.; the only available unit is in its quarters in the area the humans call ‘Pennsylvania.’ It also permits entry to Indowy communications on the planet, few as they are. The few Darhel are still locked out, but it gives me a starting point to work on them as well.”

“Excellent,” Tulo’stenaloor said, flapping his crest in reply. “The assault starts tomorrow at midday. With this information we can know when the damned ‘ACS’ is coming.”

“We can change some of their information,” Goloswin said. “Make them think that things have been said which have not or tell them false items. But that will quickly be detected. Or we can simply listen in. As long as they do not realize that we are acting on the basis of the information they should never know.”

“That is good,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “I think we’ll just listen for now. Ensure that Esstu has this information.”

“I shall,” Goloswin bubbled happily. “It is so very timely!”

“Yes,” Tulo’stenaloor said, fingering his crest ornament in thought. “Very timely indeed.”

“Balanosol, your forces are a mess,” Orostan snapped. He cast a baleful eye over the Kessentai’s oolt and raised his crest in anger. The oolt’os were half starved, many of them showing prominent shoulders and backbones, and their equipment was falling apart.

The Kessentai, on the other hand, was a resplendent figure in gold and silver harness — he had enough heavy metal on his harness alone to feed his oolt for a month — and his tenar sported the heaviest model of plasma gun.

“I think,” the oolt’ondar continued, “that all things considered, you shall have the honor of leading my portion of the assault on the morrow.”

The conversation was taking place under the light of a half moon, just north of Clarkesville where the millions of Posleen were opening up and getting in position to begin the assault. It would be a three hour movement for the front rank from this rear assembly area to the forward assembly area in the ruins of Clayton. By the time they reached Clayton, they could be expected to be under artillery fire; not that that should last long for once.

“Well, I don’t think so,” Balanosol said, raising his own crest in defiance. “I have seniority over half these young nestlings, including your sorlan here. Let them take the honor of the front rank; I intend to survive this assault.”

“Do you?” Orostan hissed. “Then look you at the woodline.”

The Kessentai turned his head to the side and, in the dim light, saw the flicker of metal in the woods.

“You agreed to obey our orders,” Orostan hissed quietly. “That was your word. Not to whimper at the first one you were given. You have eaten our rations and drunk our water and breathed our air for the last month; you owe us edas. And the reason that you have, that we have permitted your fuscirto oolt to eat up our stores, is that we needed you, and other scum like you, to take the front rank. And if you think you’re going to limp along in the rear, scavenging the leavings of your betters, think again. You can either move to your ‘jump-off’ position, or I will have my oolt’ondai kill and eat you and your pitiful oolt. You see, the humans may kill you. But if you don’t move out I will kill you. If for no other reason than to remove your blot from the race.”

As the rag-tag oolt moved up the highway to their designated position, Cholosta’an flapped his crest. “So this is what you meant by ‘political units.’ ”

“Indeed,” Orostan said with a snap of his muzzle. “Better to weed out those like him, better for the force, better for the race. If he survives he will just grab the first useless piece of territory he comes to.”

“Instead of getting a cut of everything,” Cholosta’an said. “But even your ‘political units,’ even my unit will eventually have to brave the Gap. And we will not do so unscathed.”

“Oh, if we were far enough back we would,” Orostan disagreed. “But I, for one, have no interest in walking up the pass.

“I’m too old to ride tenar everywhere like you young nestlings,” he continued, as the first oolt’poslenar drifted over and dropped to the ground, light as a feather. “Nope, no Gap and no tenar for us; we’re riding in style.”

Shari yawned as she looked out the window of the Humvee. Franklin was coming up and when they got to the Urb it would be back to the daily grind. But, she recalled with a smile, not for long.

“So you’re really going to move up there?” Wendy asked. “What the hell am I going to do?”

She pulled at the leather pants she’d picked up at the O’Neals’, trying to get a better fit. Papa O’Neal had been more than kind and insisted on outfitting the kids. So when she found the pants while digging in the back of a closet, and clearly liked them, he had also insisted on her wearing them. And when Papa O’Neal insisted, people listened. Only later did she find out they were the late Sharon O’Neal’s. She had to admit that the lady must have been in shape; she’d had to roll the cuffs up and was still having trouble getting the… ahem, stretched out. Sharon O’Neal must have had legs like a giraffe and a butt the size of an ant.

“I thought you were moving out to live with Tommy,” Shari answered. “And, yeah, I think I’ll take him up on it. He’s a very nice man, a very gentle one for being so… dangerous. And God knows growing up on that farm will be better for the kids than in the Urb.”

“Well, I’m happy for you, even if I’m sad for me,” Wendy said. “And we’ll just have to see with Tommy. He just made staff sergeant so I should be eligible to move to enlisted housing. It’s on Fort Knox and the joke is it’s guarded tighter than the gold. I can live with that; I’m tired of being in a target.”

“That is the base of the Ten Thousand, right?” Elgars said. She was perched on Mueller’s lap on the front seat and she gently rotated his snoring face — he had passed out almost immediately on boarding the truck — away from hers. “So that is where I would go if Colonel Cutprice accepts me ‘back’?”

“Yeah,” Mosovich said. “And I’m going to recommend that.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Major,” she said quietly. “I’d like to get back to a unit. I feel a real need to get back to grips. Maybe because it’s the only thing I know.” She looked out the window to the east and shook her head. “What in the hell is that? And where did it come from?”

Mosovich looked where she was pointing and nodded. “I guess Eastern Command decided that we needed some backup.”

The SheVa gun was just setting into place, to the east of Dillard. To the north, paralleling the highway and occasionally touching on it, was a smashed track of its movement.

“That’s a SheVa gun,” Mosovich said. “An anti-lander gun. There’s another one down by corps headquarters, but you didn’t notice it since it was camouflaged.”

As he said that, green and brown foaming liquid began to pour out of inconspicuous ports along the side of the base. The foam quickly hardened creating a mound that built up along the base of the gun system.

A large tractor trailer, with what looked like two brass missiles on the back, backed up to the rear of the SheVa gun and tilted one of the “missiles” upwards, sliding it into a port on the rear of the gun.

“That looks like the biggest… bullet in creation,” Shari said.

“That’s more or less what it is,” Mueller answered. “They fire full rounds, not projectiles, bullets, with propellant bags or something. They’re the biggest cartridges ever made and the most complicated; among other things the system uses a plasma enhancer that requires resistors to be threaded through the propellant. They’re not just stuffed with cordite or something.”

“In an hour it will look like a big, green and brown mound,” Mosovich said. “Then when landers come over the horizon, it just drives out and engages; the foam flakes off relatively easily. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to set up than that much camouflage netting.”

“What does it fire?” Elgars asked, still staring at the slowly disappearing monstrosity.

“A sixteen-inch discarding sabot with a nuclear round at the center,” Wendy said with a smile in her voice. “When you care enough to send the very best…”

“Antimatter, actually,” Mosovich said. “Much cleaner than even the cleanest nuke. It’s a bit of overkill for the Lampreys; the penetrators generally tear them up pretty good. But it’s necessary for the C-Decs, the command ships. They’re bigger and have more internal armoring. I hear when they hit a lander’s containment system it’s pretty spectacular.”

“Why’s it here?” Shari asked nervously. “This corps already had one, right? I thought they were pretty rare.”

“They are,” Mosovich said thoughtfully. “Like I said, I guess Eastern Command decided we needed some backup.”

“So, is something about to go wrong?” Shari asked.

“I hate these things,” Sergeant Buckley said. “There’s a billion things to go wrong.”

Sergeant Joseph Buckley had been fighting the Posleen almost since the beginning of the war. He had been in the first, experimental, ACS unit in the fighting in Diess. After Diess, he had been medically evacuated as a psychological casualty; after being caught in a fuel-air explosion, being stuck under a half a kilometer of rubble, having your hand blown off trying to cut your way out, getting swept away in a nuclear blast front and having half a space cruiser land on you, driving you back under a half kilometer of rubble, anyone could tend to go around the bend.

But desperate times called for desperate measures and in time even Joe Buckley was found fit for duty. As long as it wasn’t too stressful and had nothing to do with combat suits. It was his only insistence, and he was firm about it to the point of court-martial, that he would not have to put on a suit. The series of events on Diess had given him a permanent psychosis about combat suits and all peripheral equipment. In fact, he had come to the conclusion that the whole problem with the war was an emphasis on high technology over the tried and true.

“I tell you,” he said, ripping the plastic cover off of the recalcitrant M134 7.62 Gatling gun. “What we need up here is…”

“… water-cooled Browning machine guns,” said Corporal Wright. “I know, I know.”

“You think I’m joking,” he said, pulling out the jammed round and snarling at it. “This would never happen with a Browning. That’s the problem, everybody wants more firepower.”

The fighting position was on the second tier of the Wall, overlooking Highway 441. Clayton was out of sight around the edge of the mountain, but they had gotten warnings from the Black Mountain observation post that there was a Posleen swarm on the way up the road. So getting Gun Position B-146 back in operation was a priority.

The Wall was a mass of firing and observation ports. Beside the Gatling ports, there were regular heavy weapons, designed for engaging tenar, and rifle ports for the soldiers, whose main job was feeding the guns, to get in the occasional shot if they so desired. But, really, it was the Gatling guns, and the artillery hammering down from above, that did most of the damage.

The gun was mounted on an M27-G2 semi-fixed mount. On command, it would automatically move back and forth across a fixed azimuth, putting out a hail of bullets. The firing circuit was keyed in parallel with all the other guns in the B-14 zone, and at the press of a button, a button located in an armored command center, all twelve weapons would open up, each spitting out either 2000 or 4000 rounds per minute, depending on the setting, and filling the air with 7.62 rounds.

At least, that was the theory. The M134 was a fairly reliable system and the basic M27 mount design was older and more tried than Buckley. But tiny changes in design, necessary to convert both systems to a ground, universal availability, fixed, remotely controlled firing system instead of an aerial, regular availability, firing system, had led to tiny quirks, some of them related to the design, but most of them related to trying to integrate it. To manage those quirks, six soldiers, under Sergeant Buckley, were supposed to keep the guns mechanically functional and “fed” both between battles and during them.

In the case of Buckley’s squad, instead of one soldier per two guns it seemed that they needed two soldiers per gun. Buckley, personally and publicly, blamed this on the units that they replaced; duties in the defense line rotated between the three divisions of the Corps and Buckley was convinced that the units that had the guns in the other divisions never pulled maintenance and/or actively sabotaged the guns.

The Wall unit, one of the three divisions in the corps, was on duty twenty-four hours per day for four weeks, living in rather squalid quarters within the Wall itself; then it was rotated to the rear. There it went through a maintenance and support cycle, living out of barracks and, in the event of a heavy attack, moving to tertiary defenses that were actually behind the corps headquarters. After four weeks in that status, the unit would rotate “forward” to the secondary defense positions, which meant it had to be “on call” for combat. Until recently that had meant sitting in the barracks reading girly magazines and getting into fights. However, since that engineer prick from headquarters had shown up it meant working on the trenches and bunkers twelve hours per day. After twelve hours of shovelling and filling sandbags you could barely make it to the club.

Buckley was morally positive that those bastards in the 103^rd had sabotaged his guns. And now they were probably sucking down a cold one in the NCO club and laughing at him behind his back.

Everyone else in the squad, and in the company for that matter, privately blamed the situation on Buckley. Anyone who has a ship fall on them tends to get a bad luck reputation and that condition seemed to have spread to everything he touched. Whether it was an issued Humvee or the guns on the line or even his personal rifle, something odd and unusual always seemed to happen to it.

In this case it was Gun B-146, which absolutely refused to fire in any sort of reliable and continuous manner.

“I think it’s a short,” Specialist Alejandro said, ramming a cleaning rod with a Breakfree-soaked swab down the number four barrel.

“We checked for a short,” Buckley snarled. “The gun’s drawing what it should and no more.”

“I think it’s the ammo,” Wright said.

“We replaced the box,” Buckley said, pointing to the huge case of belted 7.62 mounted under the gun. “And ran the ammo on 148; it ran fine.”

“I think it’s a ground fault coming off of the M27,” Alejandro insisted, pulling out the cleaning rod. “The M27 is acting funky too.”

“I think it’s you, Sergeant,” Wright said, rotating the gun manually.

“It’s those fuckers from the 103^rd,” Buckley said. “They’re fucking with all the guns. I tell you, they just want us to look bad.”

“Well, that’s not hard,” Wright said quietly.

“What’s that, Specialist?” Buckley said.

“Nothing, Sergeant,” Wright answered. “It’s functioning now, let’s test it.”

“Okay,” Buckley said, stepping back. “Reset the breaker, Alejandro.”

The specialist ensured the barrels were free of obstructions, took the tags off the breakers for the gun and the mount and threw them over. “We’re hot.”

“Safe off,” Buckley said, plugging in a local controller. “Weapon is hot,” he continued, rotating a round into the first chamber.

“Earplugs aren’t in,” Wright said hastily, reaching in his breast pocket.

“It’s just a short burst,” Buckley answered. “Here goes.”

He set the gun to four thousand rpm, max speed, and pressed the fire button.

The rounds flew out with a ripping snarl like a chainsaw and the fire looked like nothing so much as an orange laser; every fifth round was a tracer and they were so close together they looked like one continuous stream.

Buckley nodded as the gun continued to fire and then frowned as it clanked to a halt with a shrill scream of disengaged torsion controller. “Shit.” The brass cartridge that had caused the latest jam was clearly evident, “stovepiped” in the ejector. “Shit, shit, shit,” he continued, reaching for the cartridge.

“Sarge, the gun’s hot,” Wright objected.

“Screw that,” Buckley said, waving Alejandro away from the breakers. “I want to get this over with before…”

The two specialists never found out what it was he wanted to get it over with before because the problem was a short, but not in the gun or even in the M27 mount. The problem was in the resistor that controlled power flow to the M27.

The resistor coil stepped down the power that was supplied to all the guns so that the voltage going to the mounts was at the proper level. But in the case of Mount B-146, the resistor was slightly flawed, and it was permitting a higher charge through.

This charge had been “bleeding over” to the gun, and since the gun was driven by an electrical motor it was causing the motor to run at a slightly higher rpm than it was strictly designed for. But since the gun was on a controlled ground, the full power of the flawed resistor had never been released.

When Sergeant Buckley grabbed the brass, though, the power, having found a conduit, went to work. And he was suddenly hit by 220 volts of AC power.

Buckley stood in place, shaking for a moment, until all the breakers for the sector blew out.

“Damn,” said Wright. “That’s gotta hurt. You didn’t have to blow him to hell to prove your point, Alejandro.”

“I didn’t,” the specialist replied, pulling an injector of Hiberzine out of the first aid case. “Call the medics while I start the CPR. Tell ’em Buckley’s having a bad day again.”

“Come!”

Lieutenant Sunday walked into the company commander’s office and came to the position of attention. “You asked to see me, ma’am?”

“You don’t have to pop to attention every time you come in, Sunday,” Slight said with a smile. “Bowing will suffice.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, starting to bow.

“Oh, cut it out.” She laughed. “Look, Lieutenant, I know it’s Saturday, but we’re in a bind. First Sergeant?”

It was only then that Tommy noticed First Sergeant Bogdanovich in the corner, lounging like a leopard on the company commander’s couch.

Boggle’s brow furrowed and she leaned forward urgently. “Lieutenant, several suits in the company have a critical shortage of biotic undergel. Since it’s a Galtech controlled substance, it can only be released to a qualified Fleet officer.”

“I’m hereby appointing you Armory officer for the company,” Slight continued. “I want you to go over to S-4 and find all the undergel you can lay your hands on. Clear?”

“Clear, ma’am,” Sunday said, snapping to attention. “Permission to leave?”

“Go,” Slight said seriously. “And don’t come back until you have it; we really need to get the suits up to speed.”

After the mountainous lieutenant was well clear of the room the two women exchanged glances and then First Sergeant Bogdanovich, veteran of countless battlefields, gave a very uncharacteristic giggle. “Two hours.”

“Less,” Slight said shaking her head. “He’s no dummy.”

Lieutenant Sunday marched into the office of the S-4 NCOIC, who started to get to his feet.

“At ease,” the lieutenant said waving his hand. “Rest even.”

“Good morning, L-T,” the staff sergeant said. “What can I do for you this fine… er… Sunday morning.” The combination of the name of the day and the officer’s name clearly had him baffled.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunday said. “I’ve dealt with it all my life; I’m used to it. The CO sent me over here to draw some undergel. I’ve been designated the ‘Armory Officer’ so I’m cleared.”

“Ah, undergel, huh?” McConnell said with a frown. “I think we’re about out, sir. The Indowy used it up fitting suits last month. We’ve got a shipment on order, but… well, you know how the Galtech supply line is.”

“Damn,” said Sunday, nodding his head seriously. “All out, huh? There’s not like, you know, one can, someplace? Or maybe a short case hiding under somebody’s desk?”

McConnell looked at him sidelong for a second then nodded. “Well, I think there might be a can in the battalion headquarters,” he answered on a rising note.

“Gee,” said Sunday, putting his hands on his hips. “Maybe I should run over to battalion and see the… ?”

“Battalion commander,” McConnell answered.

“You sure?” Sunday asked, honestly surprised. “It’s not like, oh, I dunno, the S-3 NCOIC or, maybe, the sergeant major?”

“Nope, L-T,” McConnell answered, definitely. “Major O’Neal. He has the can of undergel. Or so I have been given to believe.”

“Right,” Sunday said, getting to his feet. “Here I go to see the Battalion Commander to Get Some Undergel. See? And, oh, by the way, Sergeant.”

“Yesss?” asked McConnell.

“I think maybe you should call the BC and tell him I’m coming over,” Sunday said with a feral grin. “But, maybe, you should leave the… overtones of our conversation out.” He leaned over the sergeant’s desk and smiled in a friendly manner. “Okay?”

“Okay,” McConnell said with a grin. “Whatever you say, L-T.”

“Apropos of nothing whatsoever, Sergeant,” Sunday continued, straightening up. “I feel constrained to mention that I’m something of a student of the Armored Combat Suit. And, if memory serves correctly, the suits generate their own underlayer nannites. What do you have to say that?”

“I wouldn’t know what to say, L-T,” the NCO said with a smile.

“I’m also constrained to mention, sarge, that when someone in the military refers to the other by their bare rank, or a negative derivation thereof, such as the name of a bottom-feeding fish, it is generally a sign that that person does not truly respect the individual, whatever their rank. What do you have to say that?”

The NCO laughed. “I wouldn’t say a damned thing to that, sir.”

“Call me Tank, Sergeant McConnell,” Sunday said on the way out the door. “All my friends do.”