When the Devil Dances

“Others weren’t,” Wendy said darkly. “So we don’t like the corps in the Urb. Anyway, the Urb was put off-limits to military personnel…”

“Unless they had orders,” Mueller pointed out.

“Unless they had orders to go there,” Wendy agreed. “And now they stay up here and we stay down there and any girls who want to go…”

“Ply a trade?” Mosovich asked. “I get the point. But you don’t have to worry about human threats either.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” Wendy said, stroking her rusted rifle. “It might be a bit screwed up, but it will do for a club if it comes to that…”

CHAPTER 16 Ground Force Headquarters, Ft. Knox, KY, United States, Sol III 1453 EDT Thursday September 24, 2009 ad

General Horner read the debrief of the recon team with a blank expression. His intelligence section was of two minds about it; Mosovich had an excellent reputation, but nobody had ever seen flying tanks before.

Horner didn’t have a problem in the world with the information. It was bad. That was normal.

He sighed and pulled up a graph that he knew he looked at too much. It was his own AID’s estimate, based upon all available information, of… relative combat strength in the United States. It took into account that the casualty ratio of humans to Posleen tended to be about one thousand to one, but it also took into account the dwindling supplies of soldiers and Posleen birthrates. What it said was that sometime in the next twelve months, when the current crop of Posleen nestlings reached maturity and were given their weapons, there would be enough Posleen to swamp every major pass in the Appalachians. And it wouldn’t even take smart Posleen.

Add in smart Posleen and things just went right down the old tubes.

The report from Georgia, though, was very troubling. He knew that Rabun was considered one of the less well maintained defenses, mostly because it had hardly been hit. There was a defense specialist down there, the name hovered on the edge of his recollection, but they needed more than that.

And Bernard was there. That would give the Posleen all the advantage they needed.

What to do, what to do…

First he typed in orders for the Ten Thousand to prepare for movement. They could stay in place, they needed the break, but they went to a four hour recall and were ordered to begin packing all their gear for a move. Cutprice was probably already packed, but it never hurt to be sure. He considered doing the same for the ACS, but if he did O’Neal would probably put everybody in suits and head for… Oh… shit.

He looked at the map again and shook his head. That put a twist in the whole plan. He really needed to not mention the situation to O’Neal, who really needed a few more days rest. Getting the battalion south fast, though, would be tough. Or not.

He checked the inventories and they had a sufficiency of Banshee stealth shuttles in inventory. The shuttles had been ordered when it appeared the Galactic largesse was unending. In twenty-twenty hindsight he wished they had the same relative value of suits, but they had to play with the hand they were dealt. If it really dropped in the pot in Georgia he could fly O’Neal and the Black Tyrone down by shuttle. Most of them were out west, but he should have some warning before it dropped in the pot.

That was the extent of the forces he had immediately available. He would have his staff start looking at what else was available to reinforce in the Gap. But then he noted that it only had one SheVa. Moving one of those was not a short term operation.

He tapped the controls and noted that there was a SheVa in movement to Chattanooga.

Not any more.

* * *

Mosovich looked at the façade of the building. The business had once been a family-owned barbecue restaurant and Mosovich had vaguely recalled it from years before when he visited the area. The local VFW had been next door.

Now it was a bar designed to separate soldiers from their money in the shortest possible time.

The front deck was packed with soldiers, most of them lightly armed and heavily drunk. Squeezed into spaces in between were the waitresses and other working girls.

He winced as a soldier stumbled out the main door. The unshaven sergeant was supported by a lightly clad female who couldn’t have been over the age of consent. The sergeant squinted at the sunlight, grabbed the girl by a tit and stumbled off down the street, weaving on and off of the sidewalk towards a nearby motel.

“Not,” he said.

“Not,” Wendy agreed as she shivered in the wind. “Five gets you ten he gets rolled. Any other bright ideas?”