John Ringo - When the Devil Dances

When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3540-0

Cover art by Patrick Turner

First printing, April 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ringo, John, 1960–

When the Devil dances / John Ringo

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-3540-0

1. Human-alien encounter—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.I577 W47 2002

813'.6—dc21 2001056460

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to:

Thomas Burnett, 38, father of three,

and all the other warriors of flight 93.

They died that others might live.

_

Call me not false, beloved,

If, from your scarce-known breast

So little time removed,

In other arms I rest.

For this more ancient bride,

Whom coldly I embrace,

Was constant at my side

Before I saw thy face.

Live, then, whom Life shall cure,

Almost, of Memory,

And leave us to endure

Its immortality. —Rudyard Kipling

"The Bridegroom"

Epitaphs of the War

Baen Books by John Ringo

A Hymn Before Battle

Gust Front

When the Devil Dances

with David Weber:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

Posleen Invasion Timeline

October 9, 2004

First Landing Five Globes: Landings: Fredericksburg, Central Africa, S.E. Asia, Uzbekistan.

July 28, 2005

First Wave 62 Globes: Primary Landings: East Coast North America, Australia, India.

August 15, 2005

Last Transmission: Australian Defense Command, Alice Springs.

April 12, 2006

Second Wave 45 Globes: Primary Landings: China, South America, West Coast N.A., Middle

East, S.E. Asia.

May 14, 2006

Last Transmission: Chinese Red Army, Xianging.

May 28, 2006

Last Transmission: Turkic Alliance, Jalalabad.

June 18, 2006

Last Transmission: Combined Indochina Command, Angkor Wat.

December 19, 2006

Last Transmission: Allies of the Book, Jerusalem.

January 23, 2007

Battle of L3: Loss of Supermonitor Lexington, Task Fleet 4.2.

February 17, 2007

Battle of Titan Base.

March 27, 2007

Third Wave 73 Globes: Landings: Europe, North Africa, India II, South America II.

April 30, 2007

Last Transmission: Islamic Defense Forces, Khartoum.

July 5, 2007

Last Transmission: Indian Defense Force, Gujarrat.

August 25, 2007

Last Transmission: Forces of Bolivar, Paraguay.

September 24, 2007

First Battle of Irmansul: Loss of SupermonitorEnterprise ,Yamato ,Halsey ,Lexington II ,

Kuznetsov ,Victory ,Bismarck . Task Fleets 77.1, 4.4, 11.

December 17, 2007

Second Battle of Earth: Loss of SupermonitorMoscow ,Honshu ,Mao . Task Fleet 7.1, 4.1, 14.

December 18, 2007

Fourth Wave 65 Globes: Primary Landings: China II, East Coast North America II, Europe II,

India III.

March 14, 2008

Last Transmission: European Union Forces, Innsbruck.

August 28, 2008

Fifth Wave 64 Globes: Primary Landings: West Coast North America II, East Coast North

America III, Russia, Central Asia, South Africa, South America III.

September 17, 2008

Last Transmission: Grand African Alliance, Pietermaritzburg.

October 12, 2008

Last Transmission: Red Army, Nizhny Novgorod.

October 21, 2008

Official Determination: No coherent field forces outside of North America.

November 14, 2008

Second Battle of Irmansul: Loss of SupermonitorLexington III ,Yamato II , Task Fleet 14.

December 1, 2008

Senate Select Committee classified report: Earth Human Population Estimate 1.4 billion Posleen

Population Estimate: In excess of 12 billion.

May 26, 2009

Last operational Posleen force destroyed on Irmansul.

CHAPTER 1

The Commando's Prayer

Give me, my God, what you still have;

give me what no one asks for.

I do not ask for wealth, nor success,

nor even health.

People ask you so often, God, for all that,

that you cannot have any left.

Give me, my God, what you still have.

Give me what people refuse to accept from you.

I want insecurity and disquietude;

I want turmoil and brawl.

And if you should give them to me,

my God, once and for all,

let me be sure to have them always,

for I will not always

have the courage to ask for them.

—Corporal Zirnheld

Special Air Service

1942

Clayton, GA, United States, Sol III

2325 EDT Friday September 11, 2009 ad

The night sky over the ruins of Clayton, Georgia, was rent by fire as a brigade's worth of artillery

filled the air with shrapnel. The purple-orange light of the variable time rounds revealed the skeleton of a

shelled-out Burger King and the scurrying centauroid shapes of the Posleen invaders.

The crocodile-headed aliens scattered under the hammer of the guns and Sergeant Major

Mosovich grinned at the metronomic firing of the team sniper. There had been three God Kings leading

the Posleen battalion, what the invaders called an "oolt'ondar," a unit over size varying from a human

battalion to a division. Two of the three leader castes had been tossed from their saucer-shaped antigrav

craft with two precisely targeted rounds before the last had increased the speed of his saucer-shaped

craft and flown quickly out of sight. Once he was gone the sniper began working on the Posleen

"normals."

The rest of Long Range Reconnaissance Team Five held its fire. Unlike the sniper, with his

match-grade .50 caliber rifle, the tracers from the rest of the team would be sure to give them away.

And then it would be wheat against the scythe; even without their leaders, the battalion of semi-intelligent

normals would be able to wipe a LRRP team off the map.

So they directed and corrected the artillery barrage until all of the remaining aliens had scattered

out of sight.

"Good shoot," Mueller said, quietly, glancing at the dozens of horse-sized bodies scattered on the

roads. The big, blond master sergeant had been fighting or training to fight the Posleen since before most

of the world knew they existed. Like Mosovich he had seen most of the bad, and what little good, there

had been of the invasion.

When they first got orders to fire up any targets of opportunity while on patrols it did not seem to

be a good idea. He'd been chased by the Posleen before and it was no fun. The aliens were faster and

had more endurance than humans; getting them off your trail required incredible stealth or sufficient

firepower.

However, the invaders never seemed to sustain any pursuit beyond certain zones, and the LRRPs

had sufficient firepower to wipe out most of their pursuers. So now they took every chance they could

to "fire-up" the invaders. And, truth be told, they took a certain perverse satisfaction from a good

artillery shoot.

"Took 'em long enough," Sergeant Nichols groused. The E-5 was a recent transfer from the Ten

Thousand. Like all the Spartans the sergeant was as hard as the barrel of his sniper rifle. But he had a lot

to learn about being beyond the Wall.

"Arty's usually late," said Mueller, getting to his feet. Like the sniper, the team second, who always

took point, was draped in a ghillie cloak. The dangling strips of cloth, designed to break up the human

outline and make a soldier nearly invisible in the brush, were occasionally a pain. But it was manifestly

useful in hiding the oversized master sergeant.

The lines along the Eastern seaboard had been stable for nearly two years. Each side had strengths

and weaknesses and the combination had settled into stalemate.

The Posleen had extremely advanced weaponry, hundreds of generations better than the humans.

Their light-weight hypervelocity missiles could open up a main battle tank or a bunker like a tin can and

every tenth "normal" carried one. The plasma cannons and heavy railguns mounted on the God King's

saucers were nearly as effective and the sensor suite on each saucer swept the air clear of any aircraft or

missile that crested the horizon.

In addition to their technological edge they outnumbered the human defenders. The five invasion

waves that had hit Earth, and the numerous "minor" landings in between, had ended up dropping two

billion Posleen on the beleaguered planet. And it only took two years for a Posleen to reach maturity.

How many there were on Earth at this point was impossible to estimate.

Of course not all of those had landed on North America. Indeed, compared to the rest of the

world the U.S. was relatively unscathed. Africa, with the exception of some guerrilla activity in central

jungles and South African ranges, had been virtually wiped from the map as a "human" continent. Asia

had suffered nearly as badly. The horselike Posleen were at a distinct disadvantage in mountainous and

jungle terrain, so portions of Southeast Asia, especially the Himalayas, Burma and portions of Indochina,

were still in active resistance. But China and India were practically Posleen provinces. It had taken the

horses less than a month to cross China, repeating Mao's "Long March" and, along the way, slaughtering

a quarter of the Earth's population. Most of Australia and the majority of South America, with the

exception of the deep jungle and the Andes spine, had fallen as well.

Europe was a massive battleground. The Posleen did poorly in extreme cold, not from the cold so

much as an inability to forage, so both the Scandinavian peninsula and the Russian interior had been

ignored. But Posleen forces had taken all of France and Germany except portions of Bavaria and swept

around in an unstoppable tide to take all the North German plain to the edge of the Urals. There they

had stopped more from distaste for the conditions than any military resistance.

At this point there was resistance throughout the Alps and down through the Balkans and Eastern

Europe but the beleaguered survivors remained low on food, manufacturing resources and hope. The

rest of Europe, all of the lowlands and the bulk of the historically "central" zones, were in Posleen hands.

America, through a combination of luck, terrain and strategic ruthlessness had managed to survive.

On both coasts there were plains which, except for specific cities, had been ceded to the Posleen.

But the north-south mountain ranges on both sides of the continent, along with the Mississippi, had

permitted the country to reconsolidate and even locally counterattack.

In the West the vast bulk of the Rockies protected the interior, preventing a link-up between the

Posleen trapped in the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea. That narrow strip of

land, however, had once contained a sizable percentage of the population of the U.S. and the effect of

the dislocation and civilian loss there was tremendous. In the end most of the residents of California,

Washington and Oregon made it to safe havens in the Rockies. Most of them found themselves in the

still-building underground cities, the "Sub-Urbs" recommended by the Galactics. There they sat, working

in underground factories to produce the materials the war needed and sending forth their hale to defend

the lines.

There were many untapped sources of materials in the Rockies and all of them were being

exploited, but what was missing was food production. Prior to the first landing all holds had been

released on agricultural production and the American agricultural juggernaut had responded

magnificently. But most of the spare food had ended up being sent to the few fortified cities on the plains.

They were scheduled to hold out for five years and food was their overriding concern. So there was,

elsewhere, a severe shortage when the first massive landing occurred. Almost all the productive

farmlands in the west, with the exception of the Klamath Basin, had been captured by the Posleen. So

most of the food for the Western Sub-Urbs had to be provided over a long, thin link across the

Northern Plains following I-94 and the Santa Fe Railroad. Sever that link and eighty-five million people

would slowly starve to death.

In the east it was much the same. The Appalachian line stretched from New York to Georgia and

linked up with the Tennessee River to create an uncrossable barrier from the St. Lawrence to the

Mississippi. The Appalachians, however, were nothing compared to the Rockies. Not only were they

lower throughout, but they had passes that were nearly as open as flatland. Thus the Posleen found

numerous places to assault all along the line. And the fighting at all of them, Roanoke, Rochester,

Chattanooga and others, had been intense and bloody. In all the gaps regular formations, mixed with

Galactic Armored Combat Suits and the elite Ten Thousand, battled day and night against seemingly

unending waves of Posleen. But the lines held. They held at times only because the survivors of an

assault were too tired to run, but they held. They bent from time to time but nowhere had they ever been

fully sundered.

The importance of the Appalachian defenses could not be overstated. With the loss of the coastal

plains, and much of the Great Plains, the sole remaining large areas for food production were Central

Canada, the Cumberland plateau and the Ohio Valley. And although the Canadian plains were high

quality grain production areas, their total production per acre was low and they were effectively unable

to produce a range of products. In addition, while there was increasing industry throughout British

Columbia and Quebec, the logistical problems of a broad-based economy in nearly sub-Arctic

conditions that had always plagued Canada continued even in the face of the Posleen threat. It was

impossible to shoehorn the entire surviving population of the U.S. into Canada and if they did the

survivors would be no better off than the Indians huddling in the Gujarrat and Himalayas.

Lose the Cumberland and Ohio and that would be for all practical purposes the end of active

defense. There would be humans left on the continent, but like all the other major continents, they would

be shattered survivors digging for scraps in the ruins.

Knowing that the lower Great Plains were indefensible the forces there, mostly armor and Galactic

armored suits, had retreated, never engaging unless they could inflict terrific casualties. This retreat had

ended near the Minnesota River for much the same reason as the Siberian retreat. However, the Posleen

had succeeded in one objective, whether they knew it was an objective or not. In the long withdrawal,

the 11thMI, the largest block of GalTech Armored Combat Suits on Earth, was destroyed.

All of these defenses were predicated on the Posleen's major weaknesses: inability to handle

artillery and inability to cross significant barriers. The God Kings were able to engage aircraft and

missiles with almost one hundred percent certainty but still were unable to stop indirect, free-flight

artillery. So as long as they were in artillery range of humans they were vulnerable. And because of their

odd mental dichotomy, it was virtually impossible for them to overrun modern defensive structures.

Posleen attacks that carried the first layer of a prepared defense normally involved casualty rates of one

hundred Posleen for every human killed; even with their overwhelming numbers they simply could not

take more than the front rank of a prepared defense. And virtually all the defenses along the Rockies and

Appalachians were layered with large units up and multiple supporting units. So the Posleen came on

and they died in such vast numbers that it was impossible to count. And they lost. Every time.

Now, in most areas humans crouched behind their redoubtable defenses while the Posleen created

a civilization just out of artillery range. And in between was a weed-choked and ghost-haunted

no-man's-land of shattered towns and ruined cities.

And it was this wilderness through which the LRRPs patrolled.

"Let's head out," Mosovich said quietly, slipping his binoculars into their case. The binos were old

technology, not even light gathering, but in conditions like this they worked well enough. And he liked to

have a completely nonelectronic backup; batteries, even GalTech batteries, ran out. "I suspect those

guys were headed south towards our target."

"What, exactly, are we supposed to do against a globe, Jake?" Mueller asked. But, nonetheless, he

headed down the slope to the south.

The week before one of the gigantic "battleglobes" of the Posleen invader had been detected in a

landing pattern. The vessel had landed with more control than normal for the Posleen. Usually the

landings were more or less at random but this globe landed in one of the few areas in the Eastern U.S.

that was not covered by heavy fire; the Planetary Defense Center that would have interfered with the

landing had been destroyed before completion.

The globes were made up of thousands of smaller vessels from multiple worlds. They formed at

predetermined deep-space rendezvous then proceeded to the target planet. When they reached the

outer strands of the atmosphere the globes broke up and the subvessels, Lampreys and Command

Dodecahedrons, would fan out in a giant circle around the landing target.

It was one of these that had landed somewhere around the already conquered Clarkesville,

Georgia. And it was the LRRP's job to find it and find out where the forces from it were going.

So far it looked like they weregathering forces, not leaving. Which was, to say the least, unusual.

"First we find it," said Mosovich. "Then we figure out what to do."

Finding it would be difficult. There were parties of Posleen moving everywhere throughout the

rugged countryside. Since the centauroid Posleen found mountains difficult, that meant they were

confined to the roads. That meant in turn that the LRRP team had to be careful to avoid roads. The best

way to do that would have been to "ridge run"—follow ridges from hilltop to hilltop. However, the

general trend of the ridges in the North Georgia hills was from east to west, rather than north to south.

Thus the team had to first climb up one ridge, averaging from two to six hundred feet, then down the

other side. In the valley they would carefully cross the inevitable stream and road, then ascend the next

ridge.Mosovich took them wide off of Highway 441, descending from their perch on Black Rock

Mountain and down into the wilderness around Stonewall Creek. The pine and oak woods were

shrouded in a medieval darkness; the background light of civilization had been extinguished for years.

The primeval woods rustled with wildlife and in the hills south of Tiger Creek they startled up a herd of

bedding deer that must have numbered in the hundreds.

Up the hill from Tiger Creek Mueller stopped and raised a hand. From ahead there was a low,

constant rustling. He crept forward, cranking up the gain on the light amplification goggles.

When he saw the first of the beasts climbing laboriously out of a ten foot high mound of dirt, he just

nodded and backed up. He looked at Mosovich and gestured to the south, indicating that they needed

to go around. At Mosovich's gesture of inquiry he held out two fingers, formed in a V and curved down,

then gestured as if driving them at the ground. The sergeant major nodded and gestured to the south as

well; nobody wanted to go through an abat meadow.

The creatures were one of the pests brought by the Posleen. Like the Posleen they were

omnivorous and capable of surviving on Terran vegetation. They were about the size of rabbits, white

and looked somewhat like a cross between a rat and a pillbug. They moved like a rabbit, hopping along

on a single rear leg that had a broad, flexible pod-foot. Individually they were inoffensive and, unlike

Posleen, fully edible to humans; Mueller had eaten them and he had to admit that they tasted better than

snake, something like capybara. However, they nested in large colonies dug into the ground like anthills

and defended their colonies viciously, swarming out on anything that came near them and attacking with

a pair of mandibles that looked like oversized rat-teeth. They also cleared large meadows out of the

forests, felling the trees like beaver and chewing them up to create underground fungus gardens. They

also ate a variety of vegetation and had been observed to scavenge carcasses.

They were eaten by everything at this point including wolves, feral dogs and coyotes, but their only

natural predator was what the Posleen called "grat." The grats were much worse than abat, being a flying

pest that looked remarkably similar to a wasp. However, grats were limited since theonly thing they

could eat was abat. With a mature abat nest in the area, Mueller made sure to keep a sharp eye out for

grat; they were much more territorial than the abat and the sting from one was deadly.

The rest of the trip was without incident, however, and by dawn they were bedded down

themselves on the hills overlooking Lake Rabun. Their movement had been slow but that was okay. By

tomorrow they would be snooping around the Posleen encampment and sending back reports.

Clarkesville was within range of the 155mm artillery batteries around the Gap so whatever the Posleen

were doing they could expect to receive a warm welcome.

Sister Mary gave a thumbs up that communications were established. The commo sergeant had

been preparing to become a nun when the word came of the pending invasion. She was released from

the preliminary vows of a novice and enlisted in the Army. The first days of the war had her repairing

field radios in St. Louis but when a Posleen globe surrounded the city, her service in a scratch company

earned her a Distinguished Service Cross. The unit of odds and sods from the support units in St. Louis

—no more than eight hundred personnel, none of them infantry—had ended up defending the Granite

City Steel Works and shattering better than a hundred times their number. Her own exploits were too

numerous to list, thus the simple "actions in and around the Granite City Steel Works" in her citation.

The communications situation Beyond the Wall was complex. The Posleen had become more and

more adept at detecting and localizing radio transmissions. After repeated losses, the LRRP teams began

using automatic laser retransmitters for commo. Every team went out with large numbers of the

bread-loaf sized devices and emplaced them on the ridges in their areas of operations. Since the

retransmitters doubled as sensors they also gave the commands a feel for movement in their area.

Thus the short, stocky commo tech carried a huge load of retransmitters. And had to continually

ensure that they were in communication with the rear.

Mueller rolled out his poncho liner and covered it with the ghillie blanket. Crawling under the

combination he held up two fingers indicating he wanted second watch.

Mosovich nodded, pointed to Nichols and held up one finger then four fingers to Sister Mary. They

would sleep most of the day and head down to the river near dusk. By the next morning he intended to

be looking at Clarkesville.

Nichols dragged the ghillie blanket up to cover himself and his rifle then set up on a convenient

rock. The march had been a bastard; the hills were pretty steep and the undergrowth was thick as hell.

But he had a secret he was not about to share. The secret was that a bad day hiking up and down hills

was better than a good day in the Ten Thousand. All in all he would rather be here than Rochester.

Chapter 2

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

DoGeorgia over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

—Rudyard Kipling

"Recessional" (1897)

Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III

0755 EDT Saturday September 12, 2009 ad

Mike O'Neal looked down at the smoke shrouded valley where Rochester, New York, used to

be. The embattled city was now flatter than any hurricane could have made it; the humans were adept at

fighting in rubble whereas the horselike Posleen found it nearly impossible. But that didn't mean it was a

human city anymore. Just that two different species of vermin battled over it.

The rain was misting, a thick, drizzly fog blown in from Lake Ontario. Mike cradled his helmet in

one hand and a grav pistol in the other. Behind him was a distant rumbling like thunder and on the east

side of the Genesee River a curtain of white fire erupted with the snapping of a million firecrackers. The

heights above the former Rochester University were taking another misdirected barrage.

"These mist covered mountains, are home now for me," he sang, twiddling the pistol in one hand

and watching the fire of the ICM.

"But my home is in the lowlands, and always will be.

Someday you'll return to your valleys and farms.

And you'll no longer burn to be brothers in arms."

Dancing in front of him was a hologram. A tall, lithe brunette in the uniform of a Fleet lieutenant

commander was talking about how to raise a daughter long distance. The commander was very

beautiful, a beauty that had once been an odd contrast to the almost troglodytic appearance of her

famous husband. She also was calmer and wiser in the ways of people, an anodyne to the often

hot-headed man she had married.

What she was not was as lucky as her husband. A fact he never could quite forget.

Another wash of ICM landed and hard on its heels a flight of saucer shapes lifted into the air and

charged west across the river. The Posleen were learning, learning that terrain obstacles could be

crossed with determination and a well led force. He watched clinically as the hypervelocity missiles and

plasma cannons of the God King vehicles silenced strong points and a force of normals crossed on the

makeshift bridge. The wooden contraption, simple planks lashed to dozens of boats scavenged from all

over, would have been easily destroyed by the artillery fire but, as usual, the artillery concentrated on the

"enemy assembly areas" and "strategic terrain." Not the Posleen force, without which the terrain would

no longer be strategic.

"They learn, honey," he whispered. "But we never do."

They hadn't learned in the unexpected skirmishes before the war officially started, when they lost

Fredericksburg and almost lost Washington. When lightly armed "fast frigates" had been thrown

willy-nilly at battleglobes.

The battleglobes were constructed of layer upon layer of combat ships. A direct hit by an

antimatter warhead would strip a layer off a section of the exterior but the inner ships would simply blow

the damage off and reengage. Thus the theory of using a massive punch to break them up and then

engaging the scattered ships with "secondaries." But that required not only fleets of secondary ships,

fighters, frigates and destroyers, but a massive central capital ship.

However, rather than wait until the Fleet was fully prepared the Galactic command had thrown

more and more ships, practically right out of the shipyards, into the battle. Pissing them away in dribs

and drabs not only in Terran space but over Barwhon and Irmansul. The loss of the ships, the

secondaries that were vital to the overall plan, was bad enough, but the loss of trained personnel had

been devastating.

The invasion of Earth had practically cut it off from space and none of the other races of the

Galactic Federation could fight. To provide the planned crews for the Fleet, Earth had been stripped of

likely candidates and they were put through months and years of simulator training in preparation for

when they would venture forth to triumph in space. Instead, they had been thrown away in skirmish after

skirmish, none of them doing any noticeable damage to the Posleen. Thus, the limited number of

off-planet forces had been bled white before the first capital ship was completed.

The second invasion wave was fully in swing before the first "superdreadnought" was launched.

This massive ship, nearly four kilometers long, was designed to use its spinal hypercannon to break up

the globes. And it worked with remarkable facility. Coming in at high velocity from Titan Base the

Lexington smashed two of the globes headed for Terra. And then it was swarmed.

Thousands of smaller ships, the skyscraper shaped Lampreys and C-Dec command ships,

surrounded the beleaguered superdreadnought and pounded it to scrap. Despite the heavy anti-ship

defenses along the sides and despite the massive armor it was stripped to a hulk by repeated antimatter

strikes. Finally, when no further fire was forthcoming, the wreckage was left to drift. So durable was the

ship the generators at its core were never touched and it was eventually salvaged and rebuilt. But that

took more years, years that the Earth didn't have.

Mike wondered how many other wives and husbands, mothers and fathers were pissed away by

the goddamned Fleet. By "admirals" who couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the

heel. By a high command that kowtowed to the damned Darhel. By senior commanders who had never

seen a Posleen, much less killed one.

And he wondered when it was going to be his turn.

He watched the ghost of his wife's smile as the cold autumn rains dripped off his shaved head and

the artillery hammered the advancing centaurs. And flicked the safety of his pistol on and off.

* * *

Jack Horner stood arms akimbo smiling at the blank plasteel helmet in front of him. "Where in the

hell is O'Neal?"

Inside his armor Lieutenant Stewart winced. He knew damned well where the major was. And so

did the Continental Army Commander. What neither one of them knew was why O'Neal wasn't

responding to their calls.

"General Horner, all I can say is where he is not, which is here." The battalion intelligence officer

gave an invisible shrug inside the powered battle armor. "I'm sure he'll be here as soon as possible."

The colloquy of commanders and key staff from the Ten Thousand and the ACS were gathered on

the hills above Black Creek. From there, even with the waves of cold, misting rain coming off the lake,

the successful Posleen assault across the river was clearly visible. As was the ineffectual artillery fire of

the local Corps. Whose headquarters, commander and staff were forty-five miles behind the Continental

Army Commander's current position.

"We need to get this penetration contained," said Colonel Cutprice. The colonel looked to be

about twenty until you saw his eyes. In fact he had been one of the most decorated veterans of the

Korean War. Thanks to the miracles of Galactic rejuvenation, and a push for more "warriors" in the

officer corps, the decrepit old warrior had been restored to youth. And almost immediately started

gathering medals again.

The silver eagles on his shoulders were almost an affectation; the "Ten Thousand" force that he

commanded was better than a brigade in strength and thanks to its converted Posleen equipment had the

combat power of an armored corps. But he refused any rank higher than bird colonel and the one

abortive attempt to replace him had resulted in something very close to mutiny. So a colonel commanded

a pocket division.

"My boys and the 72ndDivision have 'em contained along Genesee Park Avenue and there's a

company or so of the 14thholding on in The Park; they're dug in hard on the hill. But more of the fuckin'

horses are pushing over that damned bridge all the time. We need to drive in a counterattack and

destroy the crossing. It would be helpful if we could get some combat suit support on that."

Stewart winced again at the neutral tone. For conventional forces, or even the unarmored Ten

Thousand, assaulting the Posleen was a brutal business. The railguns and plasma cannons of the enemy

turned troops in the open into hamburger and the God Kings opened up main battle tanks like tin cans. It

was why the ACS, the Galactic supplied Armored Combat Suits, werealways used for assaults. But

that meant that the ACS had been whittled away in attack after attack, especially on the Great Plains

and here in the Ontario Salient. And with Earth interdicted and the only factories for making suits

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