When the Devil Dances

“I sort of remember it,” Elgars admitted. “All this stuff is just sort of ‘coming’ to me as I go along. I think the shrinks were right; I think the Crabs implanted… more than just skills, but sort of ‘memories’ in me. When I dredge one up, the… personality associated with it comes up to the front too. Then when I use it for a while, when I get used to it, the personality fades. Sometimes I get real memories along with it. Sometimes I even seem to be the person for a while. I think they might have given me most of my day-to-day skills through a single entity and she’s who comes to the fore most of the time.”

“So who is the real you?” Wendy asked.

“I dunno,” Elgars said softly. “But for the time being I’ll take what I can get; better than getting eaten by the Posleen.”

Wendy nodded for a moment then grinned. “So, you’re channeling the spirit of a British mad bomber? Does he know any good drinking songs? The Brits usually know all the good drinking songs…”

Elgars laughed and went back to the main control board. “Trust you to see the humor of it.”

“Nah, it’s just a matter of looking on the bright side of any really fucked up situation,” Wendy said with a muffled chuckle. “I didn’t know how to do that at first; I really had a hard time understanding how Tommy could be so… comfortable in Fredericksburg. I mean, we were all getting ready to be either blown up or killed and eaten. It’s because the rest of us had had our heads in the ground for years about the Posleen. But he had been thinking about what fighting them would be like, getting beaten by them would be like, for years. So when the time came, he just did it while I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, crying and worrying and half useless.”

“That I have a hard time believing,” Elgars said. She cut the power to the tank that the leads had been run to and walked back. She carefully leapt to the mixer arm and waved at the wires. “Hand those to me, would you?”

“Sure,” Wendy answered, pushing the bundle across the gap. “But really, the difference now is that most of us have been thinking about what might happen down here for years. Oh, there were some that thought the Posleen would never come; just like there are some that planned on getting drunk enough not to notice. But most of us realized that they might, and thought about what we would do about it. Generally, that was ‘head for a defense point and hold out until we’re relieved,’ but even that is wishful thinking; the Posleen will overrun those in an hour or two. There’s no way that the Army is going to be back before we’re all snacks.”

“Was this your plan from the beginning?” Elgars asked. She carefully leaned over the edge and lowered the wires into the ammoniated muck in the bottom, pressing the wires and spray can deep into it.

“No,” Wendy said with a sigh that could barely be heard over the grinding of the other motors; the material in the bottom was mostly anhydrous ammonia and the mixture was harder than cookie dough. The motors were designed to drive against liquid and although they were about thirty percent overrated for that, they were quickly reaching the point where failsafes were going to pop out. “My plan had been to be in the emergency crews; they would have been at the front lines, trying to hold the Posleen back for as long as possible. But that presumed that we got some warning; I don’t know why we didn’t.”

“So the longest that the defense points could hold out is… what?” Elgars asked, wiping her gloves off on a rag and jumping back to the catwalk. She walked back over to the central console and started shutting down the pumps.

“Three to six hours,” Wendy said. “That’s the estimated time for a Posleen force to eliminate ninety percent of resistance and presence. Of course, nobody says that, but I’ve seen the estimates. That presumes this wasn’t just a Lamprey, but if it was there wouldn’t be Posleen down here already.”

She keyed the information terminal and dove into the database. She had to enter her password twice, but she finally found the appropriate file.

“Two hours after reduction of primary defense — that’s the security forces in A section — ninety percent of the population will have been removed,” Wendy said, referring to the document. “Within six hours after reduction, ninety-eight percent will have been removed.”

“I guess we’re in the two percent then,” Elgars said.