When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 25 Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III 1309 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

Major Ryan pulled his fingers away from his ears and shook his head trying to clear the ringing. “I swear to God, one of these days I’ll remember earplugs,” he groaned.

“You okay, Major?” the specialist who shared the bunker with him asked.

“What?” Ryan yelled, standing up. The soldier sounded as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well.

“I asked if you were okay!” the specialist shouted, pulling earplugs out of her ears. “I’m, personally, a little shook up.”

“Fine,” Ryan shouted back. “Time to see if anything’s left.”

One corner of the bunker had crumpled, but the rest was intact and the doorway was only partially blocked. Crawling through, Ryan looked out on a scene of devastation.

The picturesque school on the top of the hill had been flattened down to stumps. The bricks of the school were scattered down the western slope of the hill along with various less identifiable bits. Ryan saw a few survivors crawling out of bunkers or, in one incredible case, simply sitting up in the wreckage. But for all practical purposes the corps headquarters was gone. He wasn’t sure what might have happened to the three division headquarters, but from his perspective it didn’t really matter. The corps was for all practical purposes bound to rout, the only question was what he, personally, should do about that.

He looked down at the specialist who, having crawled out of the bunker was now perched on it, looking around at the devastation with an expression of interest on her face.

“What’s your specialty…” He glanced at the nametag which read “Kitteket” and raised his eyebrows. “Kitkay? Kitta… ?”

“You have a problem with my name, Major?” the specialist yelled back with a grin. “It’s Native American. It’s pronounced Kit-a-kutt. Not, and I want to be clear about this, not Kittycat.”

“Okay,” Ryan answered bemusedly. “What the hell, my sergeant at Occoquan was named Leon…”

“I’m a clerk typist, sir,” the soldier replied loudly. “You know, all the antimatter in that thing must not have gone up. Otherwise this bunker would have collapsed like a tinfoil hut.”

“That’s not usually the sort of thing that a clerk typist knows,” Ryan pointed out. The motorpool fence had been shredded by the expanding shockwave so he walked around the gate and through a gap.

“I read a lot of manuals.”

“Uh, huh. I guess that’s why you made for the bunker when they started pounding the SheVa?”

“You betcha,” she answered with a grin. “I helped build these things, the hell if I was gonna let ’em go to waste!”

“Well, if we’re not all going to go to waste we need to beat feet,” Ryan commented, striding down the hill.

“Where are you… we going?” she asked. “And shouldn’t we be… I dunno, organizing the defenders or something?”

“Nope,” Ryan said. “In just about five minutes it’s going to sink in with most of the support units that the Posleen are coming and nothing’s gonna stop ’em. When that happens they’re going to rout. And that means that all the roads will be jammed.”

He pulled open the door of the first reasonably intact Humvee and tried to start it. After he reset a breaker it cranked up.

“What we’re going to do is head for the nearest ammo depot,” he continued. “Along the way we’re going to pick up about four more bodies. And then we’re going to head for the hills.”

“Like I thought,” she said, getting in the other side. “Running away.”

“Nope,” he grinned. “Hills where roads get steep. Because what we’re going to pick up at the ammo depot is all the explosives that will fit in this thing…”

Mueller walked out of his quarters and looked down the valley as the first concussion of the space-based weaponry echoed up the mountains. He couldn’t see the SheVa gun from his angle, but he did see the signature of its firing and the track of the “silver bullet” heading down range. Nonetheless it was fairly obvious a major attack was underway and he stroked his chin for a moment thinking about what their mission should be. The recon groups were pretty useless in a heavy assault. But these Posleen were acting out of character already by using the landers to assault the Wall.

He stood there for a moment as other NCOs started to filter out of the barracks until he saw the flight of Posleen flying tanks.

“AID,” he said, holding his wrist up where the device could observe them. “Do you see those?”

Most of the group had moved out of sight to the right, presumably attacking the artillery park. But one group could be seen sweeping up and down in singles, apparently assaulting something on the east side of the valley.

“I do, Sergeant Mueller. Be advised, the target of those weapons is SheVa Fourteen. Given their weaponry and the number of passes, it is likely that they are going to penetrate its containment system.”

“Map the corps forward areas,” he said, glancing at the hologram. “Map probable destruction zone of SheVa catastrophic kill.”

The results were not good; if… when SheVa Fourteen went, it would gut the corps.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Get me Sergeant Major Mosovich… and you’d better make sure General Horner is aware of this.”

Horner looked at his own hologram and shook his head. He had, indeed, been apprised of the situation in the Gap by a call from Eastern Headquarters, and he had to admit that it looked rather bad. He recalled one of his favorite maxims for a moment like this, coined by one of the few really effective British generals of World War II, to the effect that things are never quite as good or bad as first reports indicate. In that case what had just happened in the Gap was simply a disaster rather than the end of the war.

He also noted that even with an AID, the map was not the reality. And it never hurt to ask an on-scene observer.

“AID, where is Sergeant Major Mosovich in that mess?”

“Sergeant Major Mosovich is about four miles west of the Corps Bachelors Noncommissioned Officers Quarters.”

“Get him for me, please.”

Mosovich adjusted the strap of his pack as the team reached the top of the ridge. From there it was easy to see the stream of vehicles that indicated a corps in full “bug-out boogie” mode. Not that he could blame them; the detonation of the SheVa was bad enough, but he could see the rear group of landers swarming over the main valley of the Gap; without a functional SheVa gun there was no way to resist those.

“Sergeant Major,” his AID chimed. “General Horner calling.”

“Put him through.” Mosovich sighed. “Afternoon, sir.”

“I notice you don’t say ‘Good afternoon,’ Sergeant.” The AID threw up a hologram of the officer in the distant headquarters and he had his habitual tight, grim smile locked down. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Full tilt bug-out boogie, sir,” Mosovich said. “We’re heading up into the hills to try to swing down and take a look at them as they pour past or, if it goes the way I’m figuring, try to E E out to the west. The AID says they’re pouring through one hundred thousand an hour and that matches my rough guess of the ones I can see. And we saw flying tanks; the AIDs have visuals on them now. I don’t see the corps rallying either, sir. And there’s a Sub-Urb just to the north; I’m afraid that’s going to be on its own, sir. I’ll tell you the truth, sir, I don’t like it at all.”

“Neither do I, Sergeant Major,” Horner replied. “Normally this corps would be backstopped at some point, but this area…” He shrugged. “There’s also the fact that, apparently in support of this move, the Posleen all up and down the eastern seaboard are pushing at all the passes, gaps and roads, everywhere. There’s even a small incursion that has made it into the Shenandoah between Roanoke and Front Royal. I expect other small incursions as things go by. For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost more than one Sub-Urb in this campaign; we’ve never been under a full court press before.”

“That’s… not good,” Mosovich said. “Among other things, we’ve got a lot of industry in the Shenandoah, don’t we?”

“No, it’s not good,” Horner agreed. “The area that they are in actually has three SheVas; unfortunately all of them are under construction and none of them are armed; we’re looking at losing them half built, which is four months production down the tubes. Move as you see fit, Sergeant Major. If we need you at a particular point, I’ll call.”

“Can I ask what you intend, sir?” the sergeant major asked diffidently. “In this area, I mean.”

“I’ll probably try to plug the hole,” Horner said. “Eastern Command is moving units to close the roads out of the area; there’s a recovering division east of Knoxville that is being spread out and pushed forward. But, realistically, the Gap is like the bottom of a funnel; once you get out of the gap, there are roads in every direction. Closing all of them against that much Posleen pressure is going to be hard; better to close the Gap again and deal with the landers if and when.”

“Plugging the hole will be… difficult, sir,” Mosovich said, shaking his head. “Whatever unit is in there is going to be hit from four directions at once; there’s probably still over five million Posleen down in Georgia trying to force their way up, there’s going to be nearly a million at their back, there’s landers in the air… Just about anybody would evaporate like spit on a hot griddle. With all due respect.”

“You’re right, Sergeant Major,” Horner said with a very tight smile. “Just about anyone would.”