When the Devil Dances

“Well, this conversation has taken a turn for the morbid,” Mike said with a shake of his head. He pulled on the cigar for a moment looking at the lieutenant in the blue haze then shrugged. “You’re not the only one with a story, L-T. Yours is well known, but it’s not the only one. Gunny Pappas lost a daughter to the Posleen in the Chicago drop. Duncan’s family farm is nearly five hundred miles behind the lines. Captain Slight’s lost her mother and brother to the war; both of them were civilians.

“If all that any of us do is kill Posleen, they’ve won. When this war is over, we’re going to have to go back to being humans again. If the only thing we know how to do is kill Posleen, if we’ve forgotten how to be human, to be Americans not to put too fine a point on it, we might as well not even fight it. You can feel free to hate the Posleen as long as that doesn’t eat you up as a person. Because at the end of the day what we’re fighting for is the right to wrap ourselves around a blonde in peace.”

“Understood, sir,” the lieutenant said. But Mike recognized the closed expression; the lieutenant understood the argument, but wasn’t willing to admit its validity. “I’ve got a question, if I may, sir.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you hate the Posleen?” Sunday asked warily.

“Nope,” Mike answered instantly. “Not a damned bit. They’re pretty obviously programmed to be what they are. I don’t know who programmed them — I’m pretty sure in other words that the tin-foil hat types are wrong and it wasn’t the Darhel — but if we ever meet them, I’ll damned well hate their asses. I don’t know what the Posleen were like before they got tinkered with, but I doubt they were interstellar conquistadores. The Posleen can’t help being who they are and we can’t help resisting them. Not much room for hate in that situation. But if it helps you to hate them, go right ahead.

“Look, let’s change the subject for a bit. It’s after seventeen hundred and none of this crap is really vital. Let’s go find the officers’ mess together and talk games design. I’ll think about the marriage thing and try to find an out. In the meantime I hear Mongolian Barbecue and some really lousy beer calling to me.”

“Hell, sir, it’s practically free,” Sunday pointed out. “And free beer is, by definition, good beer.”

“Boy,” the major said with a shake of his head. “You even drink love-in-a-canoe beer. You’re going to fit right in.”

On the back wall the battalion sign painter shook his head and carefully cleaned up the last part where his stifled laugh had caused his hand to slip. Then he continued with painting the new battalion motto on the commander’s wall.

But he had to wonder. Most mottos made sense. “Fury From the Sky,” “The Rock of the Marne,” “Devils in Baggy Pants” and, of course, “Semper Fidelis.”

But somehow he was having a hard time getting his head around: “He Who Laughs Last, Thinks Fastest.”

CHAPTER 18 Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III 0925 EDT Friday September 25, 2009 ad

Shari awoke with a start and rolled over to look out the window of the small bedroom. The sun was already high and the bedside clock, which she had set and wound up last night, showed that it was nearly 9 a.m., an unheard-of time for her to still be sleeping.

She looked over where Amber had been in her crib and felt a stab of fear when she noticed she was gone. But then, faintly through the house, she heard her squealing in glee at something and the sounds of children playing outside. Apparently someone had crept into her room and slipped out with the baby while she slept.

She stretched and ran her fingers through the tangle of her hair. She’d only been awakened once in the night, to give Amber a change and a bottle, and that was another miracle. All in all she felt as well rested and comfortable as she had felt in… about five years come to think of it. Maybe longer.

Everyone referred to the destruction of Fredericksburg in hushed tones, but her life had come apart well before then. Marrying one of the football team was considered a coup in high school, but twelve years, repeated battered women’s referrals, three kids and a divorce later and it didn’t look like such a good idea. Having the Posleen land and destroy the town had just seemed like a natural progression.

Now she found herself thirty… something, with three kids, a GED, wrinkles to shame a forty-year-old and — she took off the night dress she had found in the closet and looked down — a skinny body with… okay still fairly decent breasts, and stretch marks. She also lived in a cubicle with eight children. A catch she was not.