When the Devil Dances

"Are pretty damned heavy."

"Yes," he said. "There are some hairpins I'm not sure about you being able to make. I'll be honest about that. If you get permanently stuck, I suggest you get out and board our trucks. But I hope you're able to meet us on the far side. God knows we can use the help."

"We might take a different route," Chan said scrolling around the map. "I really don't think this road will take us."

"I agree," Mitchell said with a sigh. "But I don't see another way out of the valley."

"I do," Chan said with another smile. "We'll follow you."

"Uh," the major paused. "We . . ."

"Make a hell of a mess," Chan said. "I know, we followed you here, remember? But you smash stuff more or less flat; heck, sir, you smash tree stumps into sawdust. It's bumpy, nearly impossible, for most vehicles. But an Abrams doesn't have a problem with it at all. So we'll just tag along behind you."

"Okay," Mitchell said. "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

"Well, sir, this was a hell of a plan," Kittekut said sourly. The Humvee was perched on the edge of a precipice that did not appear on the map.

The path up to this point had been no picnic. It was a forestry road and hadn't been maintained in years, certainly since the war had started. The road had not been particularly good to start with and washouts and fallen limbs had slowed them considerably. But this was certainly the icing on the cake.

"Good stop there, Specialist," he said, considering his map again. "This certainly is not what is supposed to be there. Or, rather, what is supposed to be there is not there."

"Whichever it is, we need to find someplace that is there," Kittekut said grumpily.

"Ah," he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a bottle of pills. "Take one," he said, handing it to her.

"What is this?" the specialist asked.

"Provigil," he answered, taking one himself. "It's getting late and it's been a long day and we're all tired, right?"

"Right," she said, taking the pill.

"Not anymore," he said. "What, you never read a manual on Provigil?"

"No," she said. "I've heard the name, but I don't know what it is."

"It makes you 'untired,' " he said. "It's not an upper; it's sort of the reverse of a sleeping pill. You don't get sleepy. You do tend to get stupid and you don't notice, but tomorrow some time, assuming that we don't get to sleep, which is likely, I'll pass around some uppers and those will increase our thought speed as well. We'll be almost good-to-go. Right up until the spiders start crawling all over us."

He considered the map again and frowned. "If we back up and head downhill there's another road that heads over towards Betty Gap along the ridge. It should be passable."

"If it's even there," she grumped, putting the Humvee in reverse.

"Oh ye of little faith," he said, leaning back. "Things could be worse, things could be much worse."

"Oh really?" she asked sarcastically.

"Trust me," Ryan said, fingering the 600 insignia on his chest. "Been there, done that, got the scar."

* * *

"You're doing what?" Shari asked. "Are you nuts?"

"Well, I'm not sure I'll tell anybody we did it," Wendy answered. "Assuming we live to get out of here. But, no, we're not nuts."

"You must be," Shari said angrily, looking around the room. "You can't blow this place up! There are survivors all through the Urb!"

"It took them four years to retake the Rochester Urb," Wendy pointed out. "The estimate is that after two weeks there will be less than two hundred survivors and I think that is being generous; I'd say less than two. Compare that to the Posleen losses if the whole Urb comes down on them; there are probably fifty or sixty thousand Posleen in this place right now."

"You can't blow the whole thing up anyway," Shari countered. "It's designed to survive a close explosion of a nuclear weapon."

"It's designed to be hit from the outside, lass," Elgars answered. "The supports aren't designed to take side damage. Plus the bleeding bombs will start fires; lots of them. If the Posleen aren't all burned out they will still weaken the supports and the whole thing will come down."

Shari looked at Elgars with a sidelong expression. "What bombs? And why do you have an English accent?"

"She's cha

"They look like . . . gray gunk," Shari said.

"Don't worry, it's a bomb," Wendy said. "A big enough one that it's going to gut the whole Urb and any Posleen that are in it."

"And all the human survivors," Shari said.

"And all the human survivors," Wendy agreed.

"That's sick," the older woman spat.

"No, it's war," Wendy answered coldly. "You remember where we came from?"

"I survived Fredericksburg," Shari snapped. "And there will be people who would survive this! But not if you detonate that bomb!"

"What was important about Fredericksburg was that it gave the Posleen a seriously bloody nose!" Wendy snapped back. "After that, they knew we could and would fuck them at every opportunity. With this we're going to cut the head off of their advance and take out a sizable chunk of their force. And that is worth the casualties. Worth the dead. In war, people die. Good people and bad people. If I thought most of them would survive, no, we wouldn't detonate the bomb. But almost all of them are going to die in these tu

"So are you going to stick around to be blown up?" Shari asked bitterly.

"Hell no!" Wendy said. "I'm going to get the fuck out, if I can. And bring you and the kids with me! And we're setting the bomb for six hours from . . ."

"About four minutes ago, actually," Elgars said, looking at the controls. "So I suggest you ladies get this discussion done."

"Shit," Shari said quietly. "Okay, okay. Let's go." She looked upwards to the rest of the Urb and shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry I didn't die in Section A," Wendy said, putting her hand on Shari's shoulder. "That would have been . . . clean. But we're going to fuck up the Posleen, and that's the bottom-line."

"Well, you two can talk about it all you'd like," Elgars said, heading for the far door. "But I'm getting the hell out of Dodge."

"Agreed," Wendy said, following her. "Agreed."

Shari took one more look at the controls and turned to follow the other two as the north door opened up.

The Posleen normal took one look at the three women and started trotting down the swaying catwalk, burbling a cry as it pulled its railgun around.

Wendy turned and let out a shout as she pulled her MP-5 to the front.

"NO!" Elgars yelled, ripping the submachine gun from her hands. "This whole place would go up!"

"Eat nitrogen, asshole!" Shari shouted, firing a stream of the cryogenic liquid at the catwalk and the Posleen.

The normal paused to look at the liquid flying in a foaming arch. It seemed confused as to why the thresh would spray white liquid all over the walkway. But as the catwalk began to shatter from tension and brittleness the Posleen let loose a stream of railgun rounds then fell screaming into the ammonia tank.

"Oh crap," Wendy said, getting up from having thrown herself on the floor. "Ah, hell, Shari."

Shari was lying on her back, hands clamped over her stomach, with blood pouring through the catwalk and onto the floor below.

Wendy walked over and rolled her onto her stomach, exposing the massive exit wound of the railgun round.

"Aaaahhh," the older woman yelled in pain. "Oh, God! Wendy, I can't feel anything from my waist down."