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He looked around at the group that had gathered. Most of them were enlisted from Bravo Company—Pappas must have been telling the truth about hearing him at the Barracks—the rest were officers and NCOs from battalion.
"Okay, boys," he rasped, looking around at the group. "Let's all go get kil't."
* * *
It had been nearly thirty minutes since the last sound of activity around the Wall. There was sound down in the valley, but it was the sound of thousands of feet and the occasional crack of a railgun or plasma ca
"Damn," Cally whispered as the first Posleen came into sight at the notch. "I don't think there is a corps anymore, Granpa."
"Yeah," O'Neal said. "But that's not the worst," he continued, pointing at the tenaral floating up into sight over the eastern edge of the holler. "That's worse."
Cally looked out the firing slit to the west and tapped his arm. "No, that's worse."
Papa O'Neal flinched at the shadow that was looming over the farm; the Lamprey was heading west from the Gap at about four thousand feet above ground level. As he watched, a beam of silver stabbed downward into the valley and there was a secondary explosion from the direction of the artillery park.
"Are we go
"Neither do I," Papa O'Neal said. "Okay, Plan B is activated."
"Run like hell?" Cally asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Or at least as far as the mine; it is reinforced for a nuke; we'll hole up there for a while until the first wave should be past, then we'll head up into the woods."
"Let's go," Cally said, turning around and pressing in the plywood on the back of the bunker. It pushed inward slightly then popped out on hinges revealing a heavy steel door set well into the hill. She undogged the hatch and stepped through. "You are coming right?"
"Yeah," Papa O'Neal said, "keep the door open, I've got to set all these command mines on a timer. And rig the final destruct sequence; the hell if these bastards are go
"Well, move it," Cally said nervously. "I don't want to go crawling around these hills on my own."
"Be there in a minute," Papa O'Neal said. "Get moving."
CHAPTER 27
If drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
–Rudyard Kipling
"Recessional" (1897)
Near Dillard, GA, United States, Sol III
1427 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad
Major Mitchell looked at the warrant officer as she popped up through the hatch. "Can we start firing yet?" he asked.
The major was a rejuv and, long ago as a newbie officer, had trained to fight the Soviets in Fulda Gap. After his initial shock at this attack he came to the conclusion that this situation wasn't all that different. The "tanks" were larger and one side was flying, but, really, the numerical disparity was about right; there were forty or so landers and only one of them. Perfect.
The technique for fighting forces like this was trained into his bone: shoot and scoot. In boxing it was called "stick and move"; fire off a good, well-aimed blow then move away so that the counter-punch missed. Of course, having friends around in war was good, so the Army also called it "shoot, move and communicate." And Major Mitchell had trained for it most of his adult life. He could jab, he could uppercut and he had the footwork. It was go
Riiight.
The only good news was that they had trained as hard as he could manage over the last few months. The team had been put together even before the SheVa was completed and began working in the simulators and fixed systems at Fort Knox, trying to get a feel for their actions and reactions in a fight. The initial assault had caught him, had caught all of them, off-balance. But he remembered somebody once telling him that surprise was a condition in the mind of a commander. All you had to do was push it aside and play the cards you were dealt.
Now that he was in the groove it was time to do what he had trained for almost his whole life. It was an odd moment, he wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
"Yes, sir," Indy said, sliding into her seat and buckling in. "I've taken off the lockout; the lidar should be able to rotate and the guns move."
"I hate this mechanical monstrosity," Pruitt bitched, coming up through the hatch and dogging it down. "We need a bigger engineering crew. Or Riff."
"Engineering?"
"Go," Indy said. "Everything's green."
"Driver?"
"Up," Reeves said. "We are ready to roll."
"Gu
"Up," Pruitt said, sliding into his own chair and slapping on the straps. "Bun-Bun is in the green and ready to kick Posleen."
Mitchell rotated his shoulders and flipped his commander's screens live. "Blow the camo, and let's see what we're in for."
* * *
"Tulo'stenaloor, this defensive area is reduced and the humans are in flight," Orostan said. "The support companies have moved up and are gathering what thresh and weapons are salvageable from the pass."
This latter was another i
"The movement through the Pass is going well. We're going to move out to our secondary objectives."
"Agreed," Tulo'stenaloor said over the circuit. "It has gone very well."
"Losing most of the tenaral and two ships surely is not 'very well,' " Orostan protested.
Tulo'stenaloor flapped his crest in humor. "I always forget; you've never fought humans before. This was easy ; fear what is up the valley. The metal threshkreen will be here soon, of that I'm sure. And other humans will do things to torment you as you proceed. Ignore it; stick to the mission and don't get bogged down by resistance."
"I will keep that in mind," Orostan said, gesturing to his communications monitor to give the orders to move up valley. "Nonetheless, we shall prevail."
"Oh, yes," Tulo'stenaloor said. "We shall. Nothing can stop us now."
* * *
"I get six landers up, sir," Pruitt called. "Five Lampreys, one C-Dec. I don't know where the rest are." This would be his first "warshot." He had fired the fixed simulator at Roanoke, where the impact area was all of eastern Virginia. But he'd been told it was different with actual penetrators and in the SheVas; the mobile guns, for all their immense size, were much more susceptible to the shock of firing.
"Probably on the ground," Major Mitchell said, tapping his screen and highlighting the appropriate unit. "Hit this one and this one," he said, flipping them so they highlighted. "Then we get the hell out of Dodge."
"Yes, sir," Pruitt said, laying the gun on a C-Dec almost directly over the former Mountain City. He was nervous on several levels. They were about to make themselves a gigantic target and the death of SheVa Fourteen had been far too noticeable to think that they were invulnerable. And keeping them alive was going to be about hitting these damned maneuvering ships, not the easiest thing in the world. And then there was firing his first warshot. So, as he waited about a half a second until the C-Dec outlined in green his mouth was dry and his palms were sweating. But he was doing his drill and going to by God let them know that Bun-Bun had arrived. "TARGET!"