When the Devil Dances

If drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!

— Rudyard Kipling

“Recessional” (1897)

Major Mitchell looked at the warrant officer as she popped up through the hatch. “Can we start firing yet?” he asked.

The major was a rejuv and, long ago as a newbie officer, had trained to fight the Soviets in Fulda Gap. After his initial shock at this attack he came to the conclusion that this situation wasn’t all that different. The “tanks” were larger and one side was flying, but, really, the numerical disparity was about right; there were forty or so landers and only one of them. Perfect.

The technique for fighting forces like this was trained into his bone: shoot and scoot. In boxing it was called “stick and move”; fire off a good, well-aimed blow then move away so that the counter-punch missed. Of course, having friends around in war was good, so the Army also called it “shoot, move and communicate.” And Major Mitchell had trained for it most of his adult life. He could jab, he could uppercut and he had the footwork. It was gonna be easy.

Riiight.

The only good news was that they had trained as hard as he could manage over the last few months. The team had been put together even before the SheVa was completed and began working in the simulators and fixed systems at Fort Knox, trying to get a feel for their actions and reactions in a fight. The initial assault had caught him, had caught all of them, off-balance. But he remembered somebody once telling him that surprise was a condition in the mind of a commander. All you had to do was push it aside and play the cards you were dealt.

Now that he was in the groove it was time to do what he had trained for almost his whole life. It was an odd moment, he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Yes, sir,” Indy said, sliding into her seat and buckling in. “I’ve taken off the lockout; the lidar should be able to rotate and the guns move.”

“I hate this mechanical monstrosity,” Pruitt bitched, coming up through the hatch and dogging it down. “We need a bigger engineering crew. Or Riff.”

“Engineering?”

“Go,” Indy said. “Everything’s green.”

“Driver?”

“Up,” Reeves said. “We are ready to roll.”

“Gunner?”

“Up,” Pruitt said, sliding into his own chair and slapping on the straps. “Bun-Bun is in the green and ready to kick Posleen.”

Mitchell rotated his shoulders and flipped his commander’s screens live. “Blow the camo, and let’s see what we’re in for.”

* * *

“Tulo’stenaloor, this defensive area is reduced and the humans are in flight,” Orostan said. “The support companies have moved up and are gathering what thresh and weapons are salvageable from the pass.”

This latter was another innovation. Usually individual Kessentai would have their forces scavenge as they moved. Tulo’stenaloor had put a stop to that; no matter how efficiently a unit did it, it tended to slow them down. Units moving through the Gap had to move steadily, not stop to loot. So special units under cosslain and Kenstain had been detailed to clean up the battlefield.

“The movement through the Pass is going well. We’re going to move out to our secondary objectives.”

“Agreed,” Tulo’stenaloor said over the circuit. “It has gone very well.”

“Losing most of the tenaral and two ships surely is not ‘very well,’ ” Orostan protested.

Tulo’stenaloor flapped his crest in humor. “I always forget; you’ve never fought humans before. This was easy; fear what is up the valley. The metal threshkreen will be here soon, of that I’m sure. And other humans will do things to torment you as you proceed. Ignore it; stick to the mission and don’t get bogged down by resistance.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Orostan said, gesturing to his communications monitor to give the orders to move up valley. “Nonetheless, we shall prevail.”

“Oh, yes,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “We shall. Nothing can stop us now.”

* * *

“I get six landers up, sir,” Pruitt called. “Five Lampreys, one C-Dec. I don’t know where the rest are.” This would be his first “warshot.” He had fired the fixed simulator at Roanoke, where the impact area was all of eastern Virginia. But he’d been told it was different with actual penetrators and in the SheVas; the mobile guns, for all their immense size, were much more susceptible to the shock of firing.

“Probably on the ground,” Major Mitchell said, tapping his screen and highlighting the appropriate unit. “Hit this one and this one,” he said, flipping them so they highlighted. “Then we get the hell out of Dodge.”