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"ETA?" Pruitt asked.
"About an hour, the way Posleen travel," Kittekut said. "I'm telling Eastern that, too."
"Oh, the hell with this," Mitchell cursed. "No more Mister Nice-Bu
"Yes, sir," the gu
"Kittekut, find out where the main concentrations are and an estimate of where the leading forces will be in . . . oh, ten minutes," Mitchell said. "And find out why it seems we're the only ones fighting for this pass!"
* * *
The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of those American icons, like Route 66 or the Appalachian Trail. It runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge, which is really a series of smaller mountain ranges, from the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Along the way it passes through some of the prettiest, and most rugged, country in Eastern North America. Ru
But it was as good as it got for Thomas.
He'd gotten up on the parkway near Woodfin Creek, using a little known track that co
He noticed the tops of trees gone as he rounded a curve then slowed down when he saw some of them in the road. Towards the end of the curve the parkway was littered with them and many of them were already begi
All things considered, it was good that those harbingers were present because as he rounded the curve, still doing nearly twenty miles per hour, he slammed into the first of thousands of fallen poplars blocking the road.
"Oh, shit!"
* * *
"Sir, I've got a message from Eastern Command," Kittekut said. "More good news."
"Go ahead," Colonel Mitchell said, pointing to a spot on the map for Pruitt.
"There's a reason we're the only ones fighting for the pass, sir: Our nuke caused a rockslide on the road up to the pass on the Asheville side. The brigade that was supposed to be up there by now is blocked off. They're clearing the road, but it will take at least another hour. There's some light infantry trying to climb past it, but they're going to be a while too."
"Fine," Mitchell replied, tapping in his secondary release codes. "Tell them we're just about to clear the Scott Creek Valley of Posleen."
Pruitt finished setting the firing commands and turned to look at the SheVa commander. "All three rounds, sir?"
"You were perhaps saving them for a more festive occasion, Pruitt?" the colonel asked. "All three rounds. One on the crossroads, one on the head of the Posleen and one on the mass backed up on the other side of the river. If that doesn't slow them down, nothing will."
"Yes, sir," the gu
* * *
Between them, the BIA and the United States Congress may have come up with some really silly regulations, one of which Thomas was now limpingly in violation of, but they did spring for the militia's equipment. Especially once it was pointed out that with the casino closed "for the duration," the Nation didn't have much in the way of income. And, being a government agency, they didn't stint. Which was why he used to have a nice, camouflage painted Honda ATV.
But he'd survived the wreck and so had his rifle in its case, and his binoculars and his ammunition. So he was ahead of the game. Sort of. Getting to the ridge where he could fire down on the Posleen was going to be tougher than he'd expected; that nuke had really torn the place up.
The whole area around the intersection was a tangled mass of fallen timber. It looked like some of the pictures from Mount St. Helens. He'd done a paper on that disaster back when he was in the eighth grade and he still remembered the pictures of the elk picking their way through the fallen trees. Well, now he knew how they felt: pissed.
He pulled his right leg over another log and swore. He'd wrenched his knee in the wreck and clambering over this pile of twisted sticks wasn't helping one bit. Especially in this nearly pitch black dark; the sun was fully down and the moon was ru
Just down from the ridge, along what one of the sniper instructors had termed the "military crest," there was a line where some of the trees had stayed up, sheltered from the blast. It wasn't exactly a "path," but it was better than what he'd been crossing and it gave him a chance to angle up the ridge out of sight of the Posleen.
Finally, finally he limped up to the top of the ridge and got down on his stomach. The blast had dropped many of the trees more or less parallel to each other and for a change it was the direction he was going. So he was able to belly up through the gaps in between until he could see first the overpass, then the Posleen positions under it.
He also could see the burning tracks on the road; the infantry guys had really gotten the shit kicked out of them from the looks of it. But he could see two of them low-crawling towards the Posleen position.
Time to give them some covering fire.
* * *
The last time Joe Buckley could remember low-crawling was the last time he took an EIB test. That would have been in the dawn of man when the only thing he had to worry about was breaking his leg on a jump or wrecking his bike or getting into a fight over some fat chick on Bragg Boulevard.
Man, those were the days. No Posleen. No skyscrapers falling on you. No ships exploding. Just the occasional pissed-off sergeant and watching Pinky and the Brain while waiting for afternoon formation. It just didn't get any better.
He tucked his butt lower as a round skittered off the pavement and whistled by overhead. Frankly, it was lots better then than now.
One of the two privates had gotten a little too high and was toasted by a plasma gun for his mistake. The other one had frozen halfway and was now belly down and shivering in the median. Buckley wasn't sure why he was still going. It might have been sheer stubbor
He snuggled even closer to the ground as the first artillery shell plunged out of the sky. If all went well, his approach would be covered by the fire.
On the other hand, if the gu
It didn't, though; it hit on top of the overpass. He waited impatiently as the RTO walked it down off the overpass and onto the ground. Falling as it was now, the majority of the fragmentation from the round should be thrown under the overpass and onto the Posleen. It didn't mean it stopped them, but it should keep their heads down a bit, making it a tad easier for him to move. As he moved out, a round from the next gun came screaming in.