When the Devil Dances

“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.”

CHAPTER 26 Newry Cantonment, PA, United States, Sol III 1405 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favor and contrivance of their kind?

— Rudyard Kipling

“Mesopotamia” (1917)

Mike touched the next e-mail in the queue, which was from Michelle, his youngest daughter, and the message flashed up on his hologram. Michelle had been evacuated off-planet, along with over four million other Fleet dependents from a variety of countries. The ostensible reason for this was to free up the Fleet personnel from worrying about the security of their children. However, since only one child was taken per Fleet “family,” the recognized reality was to create a pool of humans in case Earth was lost. When Mike was feeling really cynical he wondered if they were also hostages to ensure the good behavior of the Fleet. Practically everyone in the service had at least one child being raised by Indowy; it would be easy enough for the Darhel to arrange “accidents” if necessary.

Michelle sent him a letter once per week, whether he needed it or not. In the last year they had gotten… colder and colder. Not upset or angry with him, just… leeched of emotion. It was starting to bother him enough to want to mention it, but he’d come to the conclusion there was no way to do a darn thing about it from 84 light-years away.

Michelle was as brunette as her sister was blonde and, to make things worse, she seemed to have inherited her father’s nose. Other than the nose, however, she was starting to be the spitting image of Sharon O’Neal, down to the voice. It was hard, sometimes, for Mike to remember he was dealing with his daughter; Sharon had occasionally taken that same cold, remote tone when things were bad.

“Good day, Father,” she began, giving him a small nod. “There are four items of interest this week…”

She wore mostly Indowy fashions now and the covering that was standard Indowy dress looked something like a Mao jacket. Between that and the expressionless monotone of her delivery it was like listening to a poorly designed robot; she could have written the thing and built in more emotion. The Indowy were an almost aggressively selfless race, making the individual submission to the whole something of a religion. It was probably that influence that was making her so remote, so… alien.

He realized he had blanked on what she was saying and re-ran the video. Comments on old earth news, report on the final battle for Irmansul — he had an after-action report, a better one than she did, on his AID — discussion of a promotion, of a type he couldn’t decipher, for an Indowy he couldn’t place at the moment. It occasionally occurred to him that as an honorary Indowy lord, more like a duke or archduke, he really should take more interest in Indowy society. On the other hand, most of his brain cells these days seemed sort of wrapped up in better ways to kill Posleen.

He realized he’d drifted again and there was something important he’d missed; she’d seemed almost animated for a moment. Ah…