When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 39 Near Balsam Gap, NC, United States, Sol III 1952 EDT Sunday September 27, 2009 ad

Despite the danger, Captain Chan had ordered all her tank commanders to stick their heads out of their hatches; when it came down to it mark-one eyeball was probably going to be faster than anything else. And each of them had been given an assigned sector to watch.

As luck would have it, the first person to spot the slow-moving C-Dec was Captain Chan. And when she saw where it was she cursed fluently.

“TARGET, C-DEC, TWO THIRTY, LEVEL, THREE HUNDRED METERS. All TCs! Close hatches!”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Pruitt cursed, frantically slewing the gun down and around.

“Fire when you bear,” Major Mitchell said calmly.

“We’re under three hundred meters, sir,” Kitteket said.

“Understood,” the major replied. “That’s the breaks.”

“I understand, sir,” the specialist replied. “But you know that these rounds have a minimum arming distance, right?”

“Put it down! Put it down!” Besonora shouted.

“I am!” the pilot said. “But there’s no place flat.”

“Fuscirto uut to flat!” the oolt’ondai cursed. “Just get the oolt on the ground!”

“All guns, fire as you bear!”

Eleven “facets” of the twelve sided C-Decs had weaponry on them. Unlike the Lampreys, which only had one face with an anti-ship weapon, the command dodecahedrons sported a mix of heavy and “light” weapons.

In this case, the facet that was pointed right at Bun-Bun mounted quad plasma guns.

“This is gonna suuuck!” Reeves shouted, bending down and putting his fingers in his ears as the gun finally leveled on the C-Dec.

The first plasma round entered the gun system low, punching through a road-wheel and the compartment wall of the engine room. Plasma rounds transferred enormous amounts of energy, but like bullets that shatter when they hit a wall, they didn’t have a lot of “penetration.” In this case, the plasma vented into the engine room, raising the temperature notably, but otherwise doing no damage. The second round did much the same, hitting slightly to the side and taking out a section of track. The SheVa was now effectively immobilized, but maneuvering hadn’t been an issue anyway.

The third plasma bolt hit the upper deck of the engine system and boiled twenty feet of steel into the air. The fourth missed entirely.

Then it was Bun-Bun’s turn.

“TARGET!”

“FIRE!”

“ON THE WAY!”

By the time Pruitt was finished with the “on” the round had already struck the C-Dec, centerline vertically and just off center to the right.

The round penetrated the outer layer of armor and the portions of it that had not already been converted to plasma and gaseous uranium proceeded to crash through the interior and break apart.

This was the point where most rounds would have detonated their antimatter charge. However, as Kitteket had pointed out, the rounds had a minimum arming distance of six hundred meters. What happened instead is that about halfway through the ship, the containment vessel shattered. The result, from the outside, was very like an antimatter explosion, but in reality it was a very fast flash-fire.

“Hooowah!” Pruitt yelled in relief. No huge explosions, just lots of plasma gouting out of all the ports. Some of it washed over the SheVa, but it was not much more than a wall of flame by the time it got there; Bun-Bun could shrug it off. “The Rabbit strikes again!”

“Captain Chan, you with us?” Mitchell called.

“Oh, yeah,” the MetalStorm commander answered. “Did you guys fire yet?”

“Sir,” Kittekut said, “the force in the pass is getting cut up. I’ve lost contact with Major Anderson, but all but one of the transmitters from the tracks has cut out and the last word I got was that there were still Posleen in the pass. Some of the militia scouts say they see columns of smoke and what look like secondary explosions in the area.”

“Oh,” Colonel Mitchell said. “Keep trying to raise them. And try to get ahold of the force on the Asheville side; maybe they can clear it.”

“Yes, sir. A few of the militia scouts are headed over to see what they can do.”

“Good,” Mitchell said, not adding for what it’s worth. “Anybody seen Indy? Or know what the damage report is?”

“We’re dead in the water is the answer, sir,” the warrant officer replied, coming up through the engineering hatch. Her face was covered in soot, but she appeared uninjured. “We’ve got full track severance on the right side and probably some major damage to the drive train; there’s a huge hole in the side of the gun where a drive wheel used to be. I think we might have taken a hit on one of the firing support struts as well. But it looks like we kept all the motors this time.”

“Oh,” Major Mitchell said again. “This is such a good time.”

“So, what you’re saying,” Pruitt said with a manic grin, “is that we’re dead in the water, we’re surrounded and the only combat forces around, the guys who would normally be holding off the million or so Posleen coming up the valley at us, are getting wiped out trying to clear the Posleen in the pass?”

“Pretty much sums it up,” Major Mitchell said with a nod.

“By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Kitteket agreed.

“Nice recap there, Torg,” Reeves said.

“Just trying to be clear, here,” Pruitt answered. “Why do the words ‘we’re fucked’ resonate through my head?”

Sergeant Buckley considered his situation carefully as he looked to the front. Now that things were a bit less chaotic it was obvious that there wasn’t a lot of fire coming from the overpass. He counted maybe three missile launchers, a pair of heavy plasma guns and some, not many, railguns. There didn’t seem to be any shotguns at all.

Which meant that the pass was held by one of the Posleen “heavy” companies. That meant experienced God Kings and veteran troops.

Better and better.

He looked around, but all there was in view were the two privates with him and burning tracks. There was a blackened body hanging out of the one they had unloaded from and another was in sight in the middle of the road. That one was near torn in half and Buckley recognized the sure sign of a close encounter of the worst kind with a plasma round. He’d finally figured out what had kept him and the other two alive; the tank the Brad had been following had started to blow smoke right after the first plasma fire came in. That had given them just enough concealment that the Posleen hadn’t fired up the Brad for a few seconds. Which meant that if those dumb-fucks in the Brad had followed him out right away, rather than stopping to debate it, they might still be alive.

The price of cowardice was just getting unacceptably high.

“You guys see anybody else?” he asked.

“No,” one of the privates replied. “But I heard firing off to the right earlier.”

“Hey!” he yelled. “Somebody out there!”

“Over here!” a voice replied. “Who’s that?”

“Sergeant Buckley!” the sergeant replied, knowing it wouldn’t mean a thing.

“You seen Major Anderson?”

“No! Anybody with you?”

“No!”

“You got a radio?”

“Yes!”

“Hot diggity,” Buckley said quietly. “Stay the fuck down! You may be the only thing that keeps us alive! Anybody else out there?!”

He listened for a moment, but all he heard were moans behind him somewhere, the crackle of ammunition cooking off in the vehicles and the whistle of wind in the pass.

“That’s it?” one of the privates asked. “Just us?”

“Looks like it,” Buckley replied. “Could be worse.”

“How?!”

“We could be in the ACS. Hey! RTO! You got anybody on that radio?”

“No!”

“You got the frequency Major Anderson was using?”

“Yes!”

“Switch to it!” He looked around at the two privates with him and at the drainage ditch. It led to within twenty yards of the overpass, but then it rapidly shallowed out. The three of them could probably low-crawl to within a few yards of the Posleen positions. He hadn’t gotten a good look at them yet, but it looked like the Posleen had blown a trench across the road, under the overpass. Which was way more smarts than he wanted to see out of the horses.

The Posleen basically had stopped firing, there was only the occasional round going overhead. He wasn’t sure if it was intended to keep their heads down, but it had the effect. Really, though, now that he got a look at the situation, they might be able to pull it out. All it would take was a little luck.

He thought about that for a moment then whispered: “Good luck. All it will take is a little good luck.”

“Sir, I’ve got contact with a survivor up in the pass,” Kitteket said. “There’s not many of them left, this guy says he only knows of four including himself.”

“Well, that’s just ducky,” the colonel said.

“He says the sergeant up there wants some artillery support. He wants an… ‘individual tube adjustment.’ That’s one I haven’t heard before.”

“Put him through.” Mitchell waited until he could hear the carrier frequency then replied. “Infantry, this is SheVa Nine. How do you want that artillery?”

“This is Lima Seven Nine,” the RTO replied. “Sergeant Buckley says he wants an individual tube adjustment, right in front of the Posleen positions. Get this, the horses are dug in under the bridge and half the bridge is still up. The overhead’s not getting near ’em. You got that, over?”

“Roger,” Mitchell called. “We’ll give you the frequency for the artillery and monitor; the only thing we’ve got to throw would kill you quicker than the Posleen.”

“That’s a big ten four, good buddy,” the RTO replied. “We don’t want any nukes, clear?”

“Got that. Do you have a count on the Posleen?”

“Negative, we’re taking some heavy fire and having to keep our head down. But it doesn’t look like many. A few railguns and some plasma cannons sure did for the tracks, though. They’re all gone.”

“Understood. I’m sending you back to the commo officer, she’ll put you in touch with the artillery. Write when you get work.”

“Roger, out here.”

He waited until Kitteket turned over the frequency to the distant RTO and then gestured for everyone to turn to the center.

“Okay, Kitteket, we’ve got contact with one or two infantry in the Gap, the artillery and a few of the militia. Anyone else?”

“Not so far, sir,” she answered. “I don’t have frequencies for the units on the far side of the Gap and everyone else is out of range. I…” She stopped and shook her head. “I’ve got an idea, but I’m not sure it will work.”

“What is it?”

“The nuclear control system,” she said. “It’s a two way system that…”

“Bounces off of the ionization tracks of meteors,” Mitchell said. “But it’s only for sending code groups.”

“Yes, sir,” the specialist replied. “And you can only send three text characters at a time. But it can send any set of text characters; you could type out the dictionary, slowly.”

“Do it,” Mitchell said. “Get us the frequencies for the unit on the far side; we need them to clear the pass. Either that or we’ll have to leave it up to the militia.”

“Somehow, I don’t think assaulting passes is their forte,” Kitteket said.