When the Devil Dances

Duncan stood up from where he was talking with Captain Slight and took a sip of beer then cleared his throat. “President of the Mess!”

“Yes, Captain?” Tommy said.

“Arrrrgh!” Captain Slight shouted.

“Sacrilege!” Stewart yelled.

“No rank in the mess, Tommy,” O’Neal said, waving everyone down.

“President of the Mess!” Duncan continued. “Call the pipers!”

“We don’t have any,” Tommy complained. “We checked the whole battalion and nobody knows how to play them. And we don’t have any pipes anyway.”

Stewart leaned over and pointed at a device in the corner, whispering in the lieutenant’s ear. Tommy went over and, after whispering to his new AID, keyed the controls.

“But it does appear that we have a pirated version of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ ” Tommy said. “Lucky us.”

Duncan cleared his throat and took another sip of beer as the melancholy notes of a uilleann pipe echoed through the mess.

“ ’Twas the darkest days of the fourth wave, January 17^th, 2008, when the sky was still filled with the meteoric tracks of Second Fleet, its smashed remains leaving trails of fire across the sky, when, if you cranked up your visor, you could catch a glimpse of the last task force battling its way through the Posleen wave, towing away the pulverized wreck of the Supermonitor Honshu.

“First Battalion, Five Hundred Fifty-Fifth Infantry had been tasked with holding a vital ridgeline outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. From the ridge it was just possible to see the smoke from the final assault on Philadelphia and the millions of fresh Posleen, newly landed from their ships, were even more evident. The Planetary Defense Center to the north was heavily engaged with airmobile landers, and repeated kinetic energy strikes were hammering into it as the battalion sustained wave after wave of suicidal Posleen assaults. Conventional units were heavily engaged to the south, so heavily engaged that they had full priority on all artillery, leaving the battalion to fend for itself. The air was filled with the shriek and silver of grav-gun rounds as the sky was pierced with nuclear fire.

“That was, until the Alpha company began to run low on ammunition. To their front was a gully, and the Posleen waves were, in part by accident, sheltered by said gully. The Reapers had used their grenades to good effect, but the resupply line had been partially flanked and was sustaining heavy interdicting fire. So, slowly, the company got lower and lower on ammunition until they were down to firing individual rounds.

“The Posleen, meanwhile, had through trial and error rediscovered the concept of ‘cover’ and the survivors were hunkering in the gully, popping up to fire a few rounds, and then hunkering back down.

“The situation was at an impasse; the company did not have the grenade rounds to destroy the Posleen and the Posleen had gotten tired of getting killed in the open.

“It was at that moment that our redoubtable leader made his appearance by running full tilt through the hail of fire that had already garnered three of the resupply personnel. Arriving at the Alpha Company lines he wandered down the slit trench, observing the goings on, until he reached the Alpha Company commander. That would be…”

“Craddock,” Mike said, taking a gulp of beer.

“Captain James Craddock,” Duncan continued, raising his glass. “Absent companions.”

“Absent companions,” everyone murmured.

“Captain Craddock related their predicament and noted that if they didn’t do something, and soon, the Posleen would build up to where they had enough force to engage in hand-to-hand. And that would be… unpleasant. He requested that the supply personnel, the medics and techs basically, do whatever was necessary to support his operation, at whatever cost.

“Our esteemed leader, doing his notorious impression of the sphinx, then looks around, picks up a small boulder and rolls it down the hill.”

“You could hear the crunch when it hit the horses,” Stewart chimed in. “It was nearly as big as he is… He looked like an ant lifting a big chunk of dirt…”

“Then he turns to the company commander and says…”

“He who laughs last is generally the one that thought fastest on his feet,” Mike said, taking a sip of beer.

“We edited for content and punch,” Duncan said. “Using boulders from the surrounding terrain, Alpha Company then proceeded to play ‘Bowling for Posleen’ for the next few hours.”

“Then we got our artillery support back and everything was hunky dory,” Mike noted. “Artillery is what has saved this war. But I’ve noted that surviving these little predicaments is generally a matter of who comes up with the winning tactic at the last possible moment. You go in with a plan, knowing it’s going to… go awry. And then you adjust. Whoever is the best, the fastest, at adjusting usually is the winner.”

“We’re very fast at adjusting,” Slight said thickly. “And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the veterans in this room. That’s why we’re here.”

Stewart raised his glass. “To those who think fastest; may they always be humans!”