When the Devil Dances

“You might be wondering why I called you here and all that…” He smiled and nodded at the boxes. “All of you transferred in from other units, and when you got here we took a rank away from you to make sure that you could cut the mustard, that you weren’t just garrison rangers with great counseling statements and no damned heart for war.” He looked at Sunday and shook his head.

“As it turned out, you all were what the Ten Thousand wanted; warriors to the core, psychotic motherfucking Posleen killers, willing to walk into the fire over and over and never flinch.” He shook his head again, this time in sorrow. “And now we’re losing you to those ACS bastards.

“Well, those ACS bastards do the same thing,” he noted, taking the first box. “They take a stripe away when you get there, just to make sure you’re what they need in a warm body. Then they stuff you in a can until you look like a worm that crawled out from under a rock.” He glanced at the note attached to the box and nodded.

“Sunday, get your ass over here,” he growled. “I don’t know if your old unit did this before you came here, but they should have. Most of you is getting bumped a rank before you leave, that way when you get to the damned clankers you’ll end up at the rank you have, by God, earned.

“The exception,” he continued, looking up at Sunday, “is you, Tank. I’d been thinking about doing this for a while and I don’t know what took me so long.” He glanced at Mansfield then looked away. “Some paperwork problem. Anyway, I’m going to screw you for all time. You ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Sunday said in confusion. “Whatever you think is best.”

“Okay, if you’re that trusting,” Cutprice said with an evil grin, “you deserve this. Attention to orders!

“Staff Sergeant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is released from Service of the United States Ground Forces September 17, 2009, for the Purposes of accepting a commission as a Regular Officer of the United States Ground Forces and concurrent reentry to the United States Ground Forces as First Lieutenant. First Lieutenant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is ordered to active duty this September 17, 2009, with date of rank September 17, 2009.” Cutprice stopped reading, reached in his bellows pocket, pulled out a battered pair of first lieutenant’s bars and replaced Sunday’s staff sergeant collar stripes. “You don’t owe me anything for these, by the way. I had them rattling around in the back of my desk.”

* * *

“Very well, Orostan,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “I’ll send Shartarsker in to make sure they are not coming closer to the base.” He looked at the map and considered the report the oolt’ondai had sent in. “Good luck.”

Goloswin looked up from the sensor readout. “It does not go well?”

“The team apparently has escaped,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “After ravaging Orostan’s oolt’ondar.”

“Well, they are not in the sensor region,” Goloswin said, gesturing at the map. “Or at least not marking themselves as such. I’m not sure if they can at this point. There is a way to communicate with these boxes without other devices, but this assumes the humans are as clever as I am.”

“So even if they are in the sensor net, we might not know it?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.

“Yes,” Goloswin answered, ruffling his crest. “There is a way to modify their software to make them detect humans. The sensors ‘see’ the humans, but they also see the thresh of the woods and all the greater thresh of this planet. The ‘deer’ and ‘dogs’ and such-like that have survived. The humans have designed the systems, quite efficiently I might add, to sort through the information they collect in several different ways. And it sorts out anything but Posleen and humans that are ‘in the net’ and telling it they are there and want to be tracked. Thus I would have to tell all the boxes to change their filters to find humans. And even then it would assume the humans are not cloaking themselves in any of several ways. I could do it — I am, after all, clever. But the humans might, probably would, notice. They, too, have clever technicians.”

“And then they would know that we… How did you put it?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.

“They would know that they have been ‘hacked,’ ” Goloswin said. “That we ‘own’ their system.”

“We don’t want to do that,” Tulo’stenaloor mused. “Yet.”

“What do you want to do in the meantime?” Goloswin asked. “Or can I go back to tinkering?”

“Just one last question,” the War Leader said. “Can you set the system to ‘filter’ out the Po’oslena’ar?”

* * *

Wendy shook her head as she watched Elgars finish up her workout. The sniper always closed with an exercise that was peculiar to her. She had suspended a weight, in this case fifty pounds of standard metal barbell weights, from a rope. The rope, in turn, was wrapped around a dowel; actually a chopped down mop handle.

Elgars would then “winch” up the weights by twisting the rope in her hands. Up and slowly back down, fifty times. Wendy was lucky if she could do it five times.