When the Devil Dances

Orostan snarled as artillery started to land on the hill. The thick deciduous and white pine secondary growth should have concealed their movements, but the fire had followed closely on another call from the human reconnaissance team. Now it seemed to be closing in on his more elite forces and that was not to be tolerated.

“I am getting tired of these insufferable humans,” the oolt’ondai snapped. The team was also slipping out of their sensor range, clearly escaping over the hilltop beyond even as the pincer movement appeared to be closing on them.

Cholosta’an flapped his crest with a great deal more resignation. “Artillery happens. I don’t like it, but I have yet to find a battle where the humans don’t use it.”

“Well, these will not for much longer,” the oolt’ondai replied, yanking a weapon up from around his feet.

The gun looked not dissimilar to the shotguns of Cholosta’an’s oolt’os. However, when the oolt’ondai fired it was clearly different. For one thing, since the humans had dropped over the back side of the hill and were under cover from direct fire, he would not have been able to hit them. But the senior Kessentai did not seem to be trying to, rather firing into their general vicinity. Another change was that the round was clearly visible, travelling at relatively low speed to drop into the distant white pine and hardwood forest. The last difference was that there was no apparent effect except a slight flicker in the tenar’s sensors.

“What was that?” Cholosta’an asked warily.

“A little present Tulo’stenaloor cooked up,” Orostan said. “Now to see if it worked.”

* * *

Nichols peered through the mountain laurels, trying to get a clear shot at the new Posleen force coming around the shoulder of the far ridge. The good news was that his position, hunkered down under two granite outcroppings and surrounded by mountain laurel, was both well concealed and protected from most fire. But the problem was that he would be firing through heavy vegetation. Although the .50 caliber rounds were unusually massive, they nonetheless tended to tumble and stray off course if they hit a branch. So it was critical to get a clear shot. And that didn’t seem likely. But when he saw the distant God King lift a weapon and fire something at the hill, he thought he could almost take the shot.

Then his sniper scope went black.

“Sarge,” he whispered into his radio. “What the hell just happened? My scope just went blank.” There was no immediate reply and he noticed that there was no sound from his earbuds, not even the usual background hiss of the frequency carrier. “What the fuck?”

He turned around and slid down the hill towards where the team had assembled. He was taking rear-end Charlie again, but the position had been good so it was no big deal. But now, with his scope down, he was going to need some help. He hit the diagnostic button on the side as he slid but nothing lit up. It was as dead as a doornail.

The area under the white pines was still fairly dark here on the west side of the ridge and this early in the morning so he flipped down his helmet visor and nearly slammed into a tree in the utter darkness.

“Sergeant Major?!” he yelled.

Mosovich slapped the diagnostic box on his Land Warrior suit and looked up. “Sister Mary?”

“I got nothin’, sergeant major,” she whispered. None of the communications gear was functioning and even some of the medical devices were not responding.

“Dump anything that doesn’t work,” he said, slamming his helmet into a tree. “Shit!”

“We’re golden, Jake,” Mueller said easily. “We can do this.”

“We can’t call for fire!” the team leader snapped back as Nichols slid to a stop. The team was gathered on a reasonably flat spot that was probably another one of the ubiquitous logging roads from the 1920s and ’30s. “Nichols, you down?”

“Everything, Sergeant Major,” the sniper said, furiously starting to change out the batteries on the sniper scope.

“That probably won’t help,” Sister Mary said. “I already tried on the commo gear.”

“Did you see anything unusual?” Mosovich asked.

“Yeah,” Nichols said, looking at the scope and shaking his head. “That group that was coming around the side of the ridge. One of the God Kings fired something, it looked like a grenade. I thought I was done, but there wasn’t an explosion, just my scope going dead.”

“EMP,” Sister Mary said. “Unbelievable.”

“Yep,” Mosovich replied. “Just fucking duckey.”

“EM-what?” Nichols asked.

“EMP,” Mueller answered, beginning to strip his Land Warrior suit. “Electo-fucking-Magnetic-motherfucking-Pulse.”

“Yep,” Mosovich said again. “Nichols, might as well shitcan that scope. And your helmet systems; keep the helmet, and all the other electronic gear. None of it’s going to work now.”

“How in the hell did they do that?” he asked, starting to dismount the scope. “And what is electro-magnetic Mfing pulse?”