When the Devil Dances

“Sensor round inbound, sir,” the lieutenant said, shunting the data to his monitor.

The round was based on a standard 155 millimeter round. But instead of explosive it carried more dangerous weapons: a camera and a radio.

As the round left the distant artillery gun, a shroud fell away and the camera was uncased. Using an internal gyroscope it compensated the sensor mount against the spin of the round and kept the camera pointed at the indicated target, which in this case was the ground.

The camera was only a sophisticated visual light system; transmitting systems such as millimeter wave radar were engaged by every God King and lander in sight. But the visual light system was able to pick out the shapes of Posleen and Posleen devices from the background clutter, sending the data back to the intelligence center in narrowly directed, short, encrypted bursts.

Despite the short, directed transmissions, the Posleen were able to detect and destroy the rounds most of the time in flight and they did so in this case, catching the round as it passed over Lake Burton, but leaving all its non-transmitting brethren, who only carried high explosives and lethal shrapnel, alive.

Ryan shook his head in bafflement. None of the humans could understand why the Posleen were so damned effective at destroying anything that maneuvered or transmitted, but left “ordinary” artillery alone. He checked the FireFinder radar, which actively worked with the gun targeting systems to ensure accuracy, and, sure enough, the rest of the rounds went on their way to the target.

The picture that had come back from the round was interesting enough. The artillery had reached over fourteen thousand feet in its parabolic arc, and the “visual footprint” had stretched from Dahlonega to Lake Hartwell. There were red traces of Posleen throughout the area, but the majority of them were concentrated around Clarkesville and Lynch Mountain. In other areas the centaurs were scattered. Clarkesville was still obscured because of the angle of flight of the round and the resolution on the Posleen around Lynch Moutain wasn’t all that great.

“Get the intel guys to massage this as much as they can,” Ryan said, scrolling his view around the snapshot of the battle and zooming in on the area around Mosovich. “In the next volleys I want you to have them set the sensor rounds so that they don’t go active until they are a few seconds out. That way we may not have as wide a field of view, but we’ll at least be able to see what we’re hitting. Or not hitting. It’s pretty clear that the Posleen are beyond our current fire point.”

“Should I adjust fire, sir?” the lieutenant at the artillery control station asked.

“No,” Ryan answered. “When Mosovich wants it, he’ll call for it.” Ryan pulled up a topographic map of the area, zoomed the resolution and then laid on recent overhead. After scratching his chin for a second he grunted. “But take everything that’s not tasked and put it right… there,” he continued, pointing to the saddle with a feral grin. “It’s the only place there’s a path the Posleen could use.”

“Do you think that the sergeant major is up on the mountain?” the lieutenant asked, scanning his own system for a trace of the NCO. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Oh, he’s there, somewhere,” Ryan answered. “What I don’t know, is where in the hell he thinks he’s going.”

CHAPTER 13 Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III 1925 EDT Monday September 14, 2009 ad

Major John Mansfield crouched low, hiding in the shadows of the roof of the trailer. He could hear the crunch of gravel as his target approached and this time there would be no way to escape. He’d been tracking him for the last four days and tonight would be the time of reckoning. Preparing to spring he pulled his legs under him and clutched the sheaf of paperwork attached to a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other; being adjutant for the Ten Thousand was no picnic.

As the official personnel officer for eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-three soldiers, officer and enlisted, all of whom were about as safe as Bengal Tigers, his was not always the funnest job. But the worst part was trying to pin the colonel down long enough to do his paperwork.

It had become something of a game. Cutprice would set up an obstacle course, human and often physical, between himself and his adjutant. Mansfield would try to pass it to get the colonel to take his paperwork in hand. Once a human being put something, anything, in the colonel’s hand, he was very concientious about completing it. But forget putting it in an “In” box.