When the Devil Dances

“It’s kind of like a big electro-magnet,” Sister Mary answered, starting to dig all the commo out of her rucksack. “It scrambles electronics, completely shuts down anything with a microchip in it. Most military stuff used to be partially hardened, but I guess since the Posleen weren’t using anything that generated EMPs they backed off on that.”

“The suits were supposed to be,” Mosovich said. “Same with the scopes. My guess is that it was just a mother of an EMP burst.” He looked over at Nichols, who had nearly finished unbolting the scope. It was not designed to be removed in the field and acted like it. “Can you shoot that mother without a scope?”

“I have,” Nichols said, yanking off the last recalcitrant bolt and, just for the fun of it, wacking the $50,000 anchor into a tree. “There’s a ladder sight and a ghost ring. I shot with both of them in sniper school.” He paused. “But sniper school was a long damned time ago.”

“Okay, gather up whatever you’re going to carry,” Mosovich said, flipping the last piece of nonfunctioning electronics away into the brush and hefting his rucksack. “Just because we got hit doesn’t mean the Posties slowed down. So we need to get a move on.” Mosovich moved to flip up the map on his visor and frowned when he realized he didn’t have a paper backup.

“AID,” the sergeant major said, wondering if the Galactic technology had survived. “Do you have maps for this area?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” the light soprano of the system answered, bringing up a local map as a hologram. The map was three dimensional, which the Land Warrior suit could only do with difficulty, and Mosovich wondered for a moment if the AID was jealous of how much more he used the human systems.

“Okay,” he said, pointing to the faintly glowing dot on the hillside that was the team. “We’re about a klick and a half from the Soque, if the ground was flat. But it’s practically vertical instead. So we get down this hill fast. Unless the Posleen react really fast we should be able to make it across 197 before they get there.”

“And if they are there already?” Nichols asked.

“We cross that stream when we come to it,” Mueller growled.

* * *

Orostan grunted as it became clear that the artillery both at his location and in the gap had ended. “It appears to have worked.”

“Yes,” Cholosta’an said. “But they still have slipped away,” he added, gesturing at the sensors.

“There are oolt moving to the far road,” Orostan said with a shrug. “Sooner or later we will box them and without communications they will not be able to call for fire on us. Then we will finish them once and for all.”

* * *

Mosovich frowned as he caught another tree to keep from falling down the mountain. “AID, can you get a communication back to the corps?”

There was a pause that did not seem to be entirely for effect and the AID answered. “I can, Sergeant Major. The Posleen will be aware that you are communicating.”

“Will they be able to find our location?” he asked. “Or decipher it? I assume it will be encrypted.”

Again there was a pause. “I calculate a less than one tenth of a percent chance that they will be able to decipher it while in the GalTech net. There is no chance that they will be able to physically localize you. However, I do not have secure entry into the military communications system; all AIDs were locked out of it after the 10^th Corps blue-blue event. I can only contact the corps by standard land-line. That system is not only non-secure, it has occasionally been hacked by the Posleen. The alternative is contacting someone in the corps chain-of-command and having them set up secure communications. There is a secure land-line system, but AIDs do not have standard access to it so I can’t just connect.”

“Why don’t I like that option?” Mosovich said quietly.

“The first person in the corps chain of command with AID access is the Continental Army Commander.”

* * *

Jack Horner balanced his cheek on one closed fist as he watched the hologram. The speaker was a spare man with dark eyes. Dark pupils, dark irises and dark circles. In better days the Continental Army Commander and the commander of the Irmansul Fleet Strike Force had spent some good times together. At this point both realized that there were no more good times. That was not, however, something that they mentioned in anything other than private e-mails. Such as this one.