When the Devil Dances

The road was grown up with a variety of weeds and scrub, so if he had to he could go to ground. But this time he was careful to move around the worst of the grasses, preferring to drift through the more resilient white pine and beech. The careful movement stood him in good stead because just as he was reaching the bend where he would have been safely out of sight, he heard the unmistakable clatter of Posleen headed up the road.

It only took a moment’s thought for him to swing around, crouch down and swing up the ghillie cloak. He was better than seventy meters up the road, in light scrub and covered in a ghillie cloak. With humans there would have been no question that he was invisible, but these Posleen were starting to spook him.

The column of Posleen seemed like it would never end, a contiguous mass of alien centauroids. He automatically started a rough count, but when he went over four thousand he just gave up. This must be the brigade-sized force that had been menacing them at Seed. He wondered if it knew where they were, as it seemed to have on Oakey Mountain Road, but whatever prescience it had seemed to have deserted it and the last of the force passed quickly by.

He briefly wondered if he should have called for fire on the unit, but he wanted to put a bit more distance between them before he started playing artillery games again.

As soon as the last straggler had apparently passed he stood up in a half crouch and began backing slowly out of sight. As soon as the road was completely around the bend he turned and started trotting up the winding mountain trail. He clearly had a rendezvous to make.

Thirty chest-heaving minutes later he had climbed about five hundred feet and was on the top of Ochamp Mountain. The “mountain” wasn’t much more than a hill, but it afforded a good view of the Soque valley and, again, had a well wooded backside that he could use to break pursuit.

As soon as he found an open area — another former homestead from the weedy flowers growing in the torn ground — he pulled out his binoculars and started scanning. Without too much trouble he found the brigade force, or at least a bit of it, continuing up the road towards Batesville. The problem was, they were practically on top of where the team should be, more or less.

Mueller scanned to the south and found another God King patrol, this time well away from the team’s position. In fact, they were a just-possible sniper shot. With a scope they would have been dead easy, but using the ladder sight it was going to be tricky.

But if he missed the God King that would just make it better.

* * *

Lakom’set was beginning to wonder if following Tulo’stenaloor was the best decision he had ever made. So far the “Great War” had consisted of travelling up and down roads doing nothing. Given his preference he would be killing humans. But even being shot at by humans would be better than this endless wandering.

“This is boring, boring, boring,” he said aloud. Naturally, his normals didn’t respond. They could follow simple commands, but as conversationalists they left something to be desired.

Fortunately for him, just about then a .50 caliber round cracked by just over his shoulder and blew out the chest of the cosslain at his side.

“Maybe boring is good,” he said as he whipped his tenar around in the direction of the sniper.

* * *

Mosovich ducked as the rocks around him were flailed by fire, then slid backwards on his belly. Clearly these Posleen were no longer taking his little pot-shots with any degree of humor.

Time to didee-mao.

* * *

Mueller didn’t move as the shouting Posleen force headed to the south. Despite the fact that they passed less than fifty meters from the team’s position in the stream, the God King sensors did not detect them. He suspected there was something to be learned from that, but what he wasn’t sure.

It took nearly a half an hour for the whole to pass by. It was fortunate that the aliens hadn’t taken longer. Both of the recon team members were on the verge of succumbing to hypothermia; if they didn’t get out of the cold, running water soon they were going to drift off into the long sleep.

Their plan was simple. While Mosovich played rabbit and led the majority of the Posleen to the west, they were to head almost due north, passing through the human lines somewhere around the thinly held Lake Burton Line. The defenses in that section followed the trace of the Appalachian Trail and if the Posleen attacked or even took a section, they would be easy enough for light human forces to contain and push back. The roads into the sector had been demolished, walls thrown up in the lower sections and other than that the only activity was patrolling by infantry forces.