When the Devil Dances

"Well . . . sir, I was wondering something," Tommy said carefully.

"Spit it out," Mike said with another pull on the cigar.

"Well, it's like this. Ground Force does not recognize dependents for anyone under E-6. I'd just made staff when Rochester came up. But if I'd stayed in Ground Force, we could have . . ."

"Gotten married," Mike said with a frown. "You ever hear the thing 'lieutenants shouldn't marry'?"

"Yes, sir," Sunday answered quietly.

"Shit," the major said with a shake of the head. "Fleet's started to get some very 'old fashioned' types in its upper echelons; and some of them are getting downright nasty on the dependents issue. I'm not sure if it will fly for a lieutenant. The fickle finger of fate, eh?"

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant answered. "I still wanted to transfer, sir, I'm still glad I'm here, however that affects Wendy and I. I . . . killing Posleen is what I do."

"That's a bit of an understatement and an underestimation, son," O'Neal answered. "I've seen your code. It's good; you even know what to rip off and what not to. Killing Posleen isn't all of what anyone should do."

"Well, sir, with all due respect I don't have much more," the lieutenant said. "My mom is in an Urb in Kentucky; she and my sister were in the Bunker. But, really, we hardly keep in touch. With the exception of Wendy, everything I ever knew is gone. And it seems like to make a real life, I have to kill all the Posleen I can. Until they're gone, we can't begin to get back to normalcy. So . . . I kill Posleen."

"Well, this conversation has taken a turn for the morbid," Mike said with a shake of his head. He pulled on the cigar for a moment looking at the lieutenant in the blue haze then shrugged. "You're not the only one with a story, L-T. Yours is well known, but it's not the only one. Gu

"If all that any of us do is kill Posleen, they've won. When this war is over, we're going to have to go back to being humans again. If the only thing we know how to do is kill Posleen, if we've forgotten how to be human, to be Americans not to put too fine a point on it, we might as well not even fight it. You can feel free to hate the Posleen as long as that doesn't eat you up as a person. Because at the end of the day what we're fighting for is the right to wrap ourselves around a blonde in peace."

"Understood, sir," the lieutenant said. But Mike recognized the closed expression; the lieutenant understood the argument, but wasn't willing to admit its validity. "I've got a question, if I may, sir."

"Shoot."

"Do you hate the Posleen?" Sunday asked warily.

"Nope," Mike answered instantly. "Not a damned bit. They're pretty obviously programmed to be what they are. I don't know who programmed them—I'm pretty sure in other words that the tin-foil hat types are wrong and it wasn't the Darhel—but if we ever meet them, I'll damned well hate their asses. I don't know what the Posleen were like before they got tinkered with, but I doubt they were interstellar conquistadores. The Posleen can't help being who they are and we can't help resisting them. Not much room for hate in that situation. But if it helps you to hate them, go right ahead.

"Look, let's change the subject for a bit. It's after seventeen hundred and none of this crap is really vital. Let's go find the officers' mess together and talk games design. I'll think about the marriage thing and try to find an out. In the meantime I hear Mongolian Barbecue and some really lousy beer calling to me."

"Hell, sir, it's practically free," Sunday pointed out. "And free beer is, by definition, good beer."

"Boy," the major said with a shake of his head. "You even drink love-in-a-canoe beer. You're going to fit right in."

On the back wall the battalion sign painter shook his head and carefully cleaned up the last part where his stifled laugh had caused his hand to slip. Then he continued with painting the new battalion motto on the commander's wall.

But he had to wonder. Most mottos made sense. "Fury From the Sky," "The Rock of the Marne," "Devils in Baggy Pants" and, of course, "Semper Fidelis."

But somehow he was having a hard time getting his head around: "He Who Laughs Last, Thinks Fastest."

CHAPTER 18

Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III

0925 EDT Friday September 25, 2009 ad

Shari awoke with a start and rolled over to look out the window of the small bedroom. The sun was already high and the bedside clock, which she had set and wound up last night, showed that it was nearly 9 a.m., an unheard-of time for her to still be sleeping.

She looked over where Amber had been in her crib and felt a stab of fear when she noticed she was gone. But then, faintly through the house, she heard her squealing in glee at something and the sounds of children playing outside. Apparently someone had crept into her room and slipped out with the baby while she slept.

She stretched and ran her fingers through the tangle of her hair. She'd only been awakened once in the night, to give Amber a change and a bottle, and that was another miracle. All in all she felt as well rested and comfortable as she had felt in . . . about five years come to think of it. Maybe longer.

Everyone referred to the destruction of Fredericksburg in hushed tones, but her life had come apart well before then. Marrying one of the football team was considered a coup in high school, but twelve years, repeated battered women's referrals, three kids and a divorce later and it didn't look like such a good idea. Having the Posleen land and destroy the town had just seemed like a natural progression.

Now she found herself thirty . . . something, with three kids, a GED, wrinkles to shame a forty-year-old and—she took off the night dress she had found in the closet and looked down—a ski

She shook her head and looked out the window; it looked like a beautiful day, she'd gotten a chance to sleep in and there was no reason for her to be falling into this melancholy mood. With a deep breath she picked up her neatly stacked clothes off the bedside table and then wrinkled her nose. It had been a long and active time the day before and they were still slightly damp with sweat. Shari was a fastidious woman and wandering around smelling like a bag lady was not her idea of a good time. After a moment's thought she looked at the chest of drawers and the closet. After her shower last night she'd peeked in the closet hoping to find something to wear to bed and had glimpsed a large number of plastic wrapped dresses. Now she opened up the top drawer of the chest of drawers and shook her head; the room was packed with clothes.

She pulled out a pair of bikini briefs and sniffed them. They were musty with long storage, with a faint hint of a spice that had probably been in the drawer as a preservative, and slightly . . . fragile in feel, as if they were quite old. They still smelled better than what she had been wearing . . . and they fit. They were on the large size, but they were close enough; the elastic had apparently survived storage.

Rummaging further she found bras and, in lower drawers, blouses, T-shirts and jeans. Whoever's clothing this was had been addicted to jeans; there were at least seven pairs, most of them hip-hugger bellbottoms.

Shari pulled one out and shook her head; there was no question that these were "originals" and not from the brief pre-Posleen renaissance. Not only did they have that same old, fragile feel as the panties, that she now realized must have been at least thirty years old, but someone had taken a pen to them in some bygone fit of insanity and covered them in graffiti. Kids of the turn years had rarely known who "Bobby McGee" was, although the peace sign and the "I got laid at Woodstock" would be recognizable. The strangest, scrawled on the seat in a different hand, was "Peace through superior firepower."