When the Devil Dances

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 fourth 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.

“DRT?” Alejandro yelled.

“Yep,” Wright answered, crawling forward. “I think 143’s gone too.”

“Okay,” Alejandro yelled back. “Where in the hell are Lewis and Schockley?” he continued. “There’s nobody on the left side!”

“I dunno,” Wright yelled. He got to 145 and noted that it was out of ammo. “Hey, Alejandro! Gemme a battle-box!”

The specialist shook his head and opened up the ammo port, rolling the box out with difficulty — it was a two-man job — and then hitting the ground as the entire massive structure shuddered. The aftershocks continued for a few moments as he tried to keep the four-hundred-pound box from rolling back on him. “Okay,” he muttered. “This day officially sucks.”

Major Jason Porter, commander of SheVa Fourteen, swore bitterly. With some difficulty his driver had hoisted this behemoth to the top of the hill just south of the waste treatment plant and now he could see the Wall, or a portion of it. And the top of the Wall was smoking.

The Posleen were clearly hammering the defenses, but so far there was no sign, from this side, of Lampreys or C-Decs. He considered backing back down the hill; that way they would be out of sight when, if, Posleen ships did come into view. However, as he was getting ready to give the word, the radar pinged with a detection.

One or more ships was moving up the valley towards the Wall. They were staying low, which was unusual enough, but every now and again they popped up for a second. The gun was having a hard time locking on.

“Edwards,” he called to the gunner. “Put the gun on a fixed azimuth and elevation that approximates their estimated position and let’s see if it can get a lock.”

“Roger, sir,” the gunner called.

“Come on,” Porter whispered. “Get up where we can see you you sons of mares.”

“All ships,” Orostan called. “Engage the human defenses.”

Despite desperate winnowing on Tulo’stenaloor’s part, there were only forty Kessentai who were capable of “fighting” their ships without automatics. Since this required a real “crew,” including intelligent and trained persons to man weapons consoles, instead of just hitting the odd flashing button, it was not too surprising. All told, the forty ships were crewed by over four hundred Kessentai. Normally there would have been a bare sixty at most.

But these Kessentai arguably had the second most important job in the entire “mission”; removing the Wall. And that meant real weapons.

The viewscreen went dark as the first anti-ship missile impacted on the Wall.

“Oh, shit,” Porter whispered. A section of the Wall the size of a house had just been blasted into the air.

“Solution!” Edwards called.

Porter dropped his eye to the firing sight and hit the confirm key. “Fire!”

“On the Way!”

“Fuscirto uut!” Orostan snarled. “All ships! Stay low! Tulo’stenaloor, where are those tenaral!”

“Coming up any time,” Tulo’stenaloor said over the circuit. “You do want it to be a surprise, don’t you?”

“Yes,” the oolt’ondai said. “But I have vital missions for every single ship; I need that gun removed. Now.”

“Almost there,” Tulo’stenaloor said, shifting the data to Orostan’s screens. “Almost there.”

Pacalostal screamed in pride as the human valley came into view. The sixty tenaral had taken a winding path up and down the valleys of the area the humans called “Warwoman” and now their surprise was complete. The human valley was open to them and they could see both of their primary targets clearly. The hated “SheVa” gun was on a knoll just to the south of them and the majority of the human artillery was to the west, grouped around “John Beck Road” and “Fork Road.”

He sent a command to the second division, which swept down to near ground level and increased speed as it entered the corps rear area. Then he took the first division and dropped onto the SheVa gun to the south.

The first warning Major Porter had was a garbled call over the corps command frequency. The second warning was when the first plasma blast hammered into his back deck.

SheVas were not, strictly speaking, armored vehicles. They had a lot of really heavy metal pieces on them, some of them quite hard, but they were necessary to support the energies released with each firing of the massive gun. They were not designed to withstand close range heavy plasma fire and that became clear on the second hit, when the right rear track separated.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted as one of the craft flew past a camera. “What in the hell is that?”

The craft looked like something straight out of a 1950s science fiction novel. It was more or less saucer shaped with a small turret on the top. Most of the turrets seemed to have… Posleen plasma guns mounted in them. As he panned the camera to follow the craft’s flight it fired another bolt into the front quadrant.

“We’ve lost the right track and drivers fourteen and fifteen,” Warrant Officer Tapes called. “I’ve hit the track release, but we’ll have to drive off of it. And that drops our max speed way down.”

“Get us out of here,” Porter said. “Back us up.”

“Solution!”

“Belay that order,” he called, dropping his eye to the sight. Without really looking he hit the confirm button. “Fire!”

“On the Way!”

“DOWN, DOWN, stay DOWN!” Orostan called. He flapped his crest happily, though, at the sight of the crumbling wall. The massive concrete structure was completely shattered across the center from repeated antimatter and plasma strikes and the way would soon be open. Rocky — the front ranks would have some clearing to do — but open. “And the artillery is dropping off,” he added.

“Yes, it is,” Cholosta’an said. “Soon we will be through. A real breakthrough. This is amazing.”

“It has been years in planning,” Orostan pointed out. “We will sweep up the mountains, opening pass after pass…”

“And at each point, establishing ‘toll booths,’ ” Cholosta’an said with a flap of humor. “That was brilliant. Anyone who passes through must agree to submit ten percent of their earnings.”

“Brilliant indeed,” Orostan said. “Tulo’stenaloor feels that these humans owe him much. If he cannot take it from them directly, then indirectly will do as well.”

“We should not be too happy yet,” Cholosta’an said. “These humans… tend to be tricky. And they don’t give up easily.”

“When we are finished here, we and the tenaral will fly up the valley and take all of the key terrain positions on the initial route. The humans may try to block us, but we shall be there first. As soon as the Wall is down.”

“And the SheVa gun taken care of,” Cholosta’an said.

“Of course.”

Another ripple of plasma fire slammed into the gun and one of the rounds penetrated through multiple layers of machinery into the command center.

The damage control panel came apart like a bomb as the last burst of plasma buried itself in the console. Control runs fused together sending power arcing through the panel and into the primary gun controls.

Sergeant Edwards flew back from his controls with a yell, hitting the chair release and backing away as sparks flew out of the targeting system. The fire control computer sparked on for a moment and then died with a rasp.

Major Porter coughed on the smoke and shook his head. “Is it just me or is this like a bad TV sci-fi show?” He hit his own chair release and pulled the warrant officer’s back. In the red emergency lights he could see that the warrant had massive burns across his face and chest, but the engineer was still breathing. “Will the gun fire at all?”

“Negative!” Edwards shouted nervously. “I can’t even clear the round in the breech!”

“Oh, this is so very good,” Porter muttered, laying the warrant’s chair flat and gently unstrapping him.

“Uh, sir,” Edwards said, supporting half the weight of the warrant as they lifted him out of his chair. “I think we’re mostly getting hit on our back deck…”

“I noticed,” Porter said, looking around. “Tamby! Abandon ship!”

There was no reply from the driver’s position so he slid across the smoking deck and looked down.

The driver’s position was surrounded by multiple monitors so that the drivers had an almost 360-degree view at all times. Unfortunately, that meant that when a power surge hit there were thousands of volts all of a sudden going nowhere.

Porter slid down into the position, trying not to put his feet into the carbonized figure strapped into the driver’s chair, and checked the drive controls. They, remarkably, seemed to be working so he set them on auto, driving forward, and climbed back out. Then he slid back across the floor and hit the escape hatch. The red painted panel opened with a susurrant hiss and lights came on below.

“Where’s Tamby?” Edwards asked, dragging the limp warrant officer towards the hatch.

“Tamby won’t be joining us today,” Porter said, taking the warrant’s feet. “You drive. And drive like a bat out of hell.”

“Who’s going to gun?” Edwards asked.

“Who the hell cares?” Porter said. “If we’re not at least five miles away before they pound through the magazine nobody’s going to be driving!”

Atrenalasal flapped his crest and keyed his communicator. “Pacalostal! The gun has stopped firing! We should join the attack on the artillery.”

“No,” the tenaral commander replied. “The orders are to continue firing until it is stopped and burning. Follow the orders.”

“Very well,” the Kessentai replied. For some reason, pounding plasma round after plasma round into the burning hulk seemed… wrong. But orders were orders.

Major Porter hit the lowering circuit before Edwards was even in his seat, but the gunner had the escape vehicle starting before they had dropped more than a meter. Porter sighed as the scream of the jet turbine engine caused the vehicle to purr like a tiger. Functional power was a good thing.

“Thank God for General Motors,” he said. He glanced at the height reading then hit the release as another wash of plasma hit the massive SheVa above them. Fuck it. The torsion bars would handle the drop.

At forty miles per hour and accelerating the still bouncing M-1 Abrams burst from under its larger brethren and headed for the shadow of the nearest ridge.

Behind it, plasma rounds continued to dig into the more recalcitrant armor on the back deck of the SheVa gun, right over its nearly full magazines.