Hell's Faire

CHAPTER NINE Rabun Gap, GA, United States of America, Sol III 1522 EDT Monday September 28, 2009 AD

Mike didn’t have to look at his readouts to see how bad off the battalion was. Most of the suits were laid out flat on the log-covered hillside. Part of that was fatigue — even with the suits, being in combat was murderously tiresome — but the greater part of it was experienced troopers trying to conserve every erg of power. Some of the suits were down to one percent power and when it dropped to zero the suit would pop open and “decant” the Protoplasmic Intelligence System out onto the cold, wet ground. Not a happy prospect.

Together with the loss of Gunny Pappas, it was a pretty bleak and depressing situation.

There were other problems. He still had nearly two companies of troops, but he had lost Captain Holder in the landing and Charlie Company was looking pretty ragged as a result. And he was short on officers except on staff, where they were doing less and less good. At this point he didn’t really need an intelligence officer. The Posleen were right there and there and there and… On the other hand, he also didn’t need an operations officer. The Posleen were going to come on in the same old way and they would fight them in the same old way. Hell, this battalion didn’t even need a commander.

Stewart would probably be the best choice for a company commander. He was naturally charismatic, he had a good feel for tactical, and, hell, operational maneuver, and he didn’t have Duncan’s… problems.

So why did he keep thinking he should put Duncan in command of Charlie Company?

He took off his helmet and spit his dip out on the ground, looking around at the suits. The whole battalion was simply fragged. Half of the personnel had gone to sleep where they dropped, Provigil be damned. He wasn’t much better, which was why he was considering putting a combat-shocked officer in command of a company.

Duncan, along with Stewart and Pappas, had been with him for years, since his first company command. But before that Duncan had also been on Diess and then was transferred to Barwhon. Something about the fighting on Barwhon had just… snapped him. He was fine calling in fire and coming up with really elegant ways to manage complicated battles, but put him in the line and he just… closed down.

Duncan had a responsibility streak a mile wide, though. Putting him in charge of Charlie Company would do one of two things. It would either break him out of it or shut him down permanently.

And, frankly, if he went down, that would leave Stewart in place to take over battalion command. Which just might save everyone’s butts.

“Duncan,” he said finally. “I need you over here for a second.”

“This really sucks,” Shari said as she stumbled over another piece of debris.

The suits had cleared a path up the road to the house, but there wasn’t much they could do in the valley; it was just too torn up.

The Rabun Gap Valley had once been a rather pleasant place, its hillsides lined with trees and the valley itself filled with a mix of light industrial plants and cropland. But repeated nuclear-class explosions had changed all that.

The trees on the hillsides had not only been knocked down but in many cases thrown around, some of them out into the valley. Along with them were the remains of the corps that had died there, shattered hulks of tanks, howitzers flipped end for end and sticking out of the ground, bits and pieces of trucks, buildings and people scattered across the ground in a crazy quilt. Added to this were ripples of soil and craters thrown up by the explosions, some of which had happened low enough to dig into the ground to the bedrock.

Through this nuclear nightmare the suits and the unarmored humans stumbled with their massive loads. The suits had it fairly easy; with unlimited power they could practically float over obstacles. The humans, though, had to struggle under, over and around them.

“Don’t knock it,” Tommy said nervously, looking to the east. “I think we’d have had company before now if it wasn’t for all of this.”

“The Posleen should be able to plow through this,” Mueller said then cursed as he fell when one leg plunged into a hole. The weight of the battlebox on his back pushed him face down in the ground and for a moment he couldn’t get the angle to straighten up. “Shit.”

“No lying out, Master Sergeant,” Tommy said with a chuckle. He set down one of the boxes he was carrying and pulled the massive NCO out of the hole like a cork out of a bottle.

“You know, Lieutenant, you could positively get on a guy’s nerves,” Mueller said with a rueful grin.

“When we started across we came from down valley,” Sunday continued. “There’s a… pile, sort of ripple, of dirt and debris down the end of the valley. I looked at it from up on the hill and it looks like a lander must have just about been grounded when it blew up. Anyway, between that ridge and the fallen trees on all the slopes they’re going to have a hell of a time getting up here for a while.”

“Hmm,” Mosovich said. “So unless they come from the west, the cache should be okay.”

“Or from the north,” Mueller said. “There’s a road up there, too.”

“They’d have to be pretty lost,” Wendy chuckled. “That’s a lousy road.”

“ ‘S’ truth,” Mosovich said. “And good news.” He let out a hiss as a ridge of soil slipped out from under his feet. He looked up at the mountain they were supposed to ascend — it was covered in fallen trees — and sighed. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“Sergeant Major, thank you for helping us get this gear up here.”

Mosovich had never met the famous Mike O’Neal and wasn’t particularly impressed with what he saw. The suit was… weird, with some sort of demon hologram on the front. And the major’s unit was sprawled across the back side of Black Mountain like they weren’t going to be going anywhere soon; most of the suits were flat on their backs. After humping all this shit up the hill, the sight of all the armored combat suits apparently crapped out was not particularly pleasing.

“Yes, sir,” Mosovich replied correctly. “I’m not actually in command, Captain Elgars is.”

“Sort of,” Elgars said, dumping the battlebox she had carried up the hill. “What’s the situation, Major?”

“As soon as we can get the suits powered back up, we’ll be ready to move back into the Gap.” As he was speaking, a team of technician suits was connecting power leads to the antimatter generators. “Since this is standard ammo, as long as it holds out we shouldn’t have nearly as much need for power. And with the additional AM packs we’ll be able to fight for at least two days. Assuming we survive, of course.”

The suit was a blank image, but something about the body posture bespoke irony.

“I’m glad we could be of service, sir,” Mosovich commented, dryly.

“I know it looks sort of stupid to have a company of ACS flaked out on a hill,” O’Neal said, removing his helmet. “But we had to carry some of the suits the last hundred meters. We were that out of power. If I thought I could have gone, I would have. But Sunday and his Reapers were the only ones with enough power left to get to the cache. Again, thank you for your help.”

Mosovich watched as some of the suit gel slid off the major’s hair and arched out to drop into the open helmet. The officer was younger than he’d expected. He was a rejuv, of course, but something about him told Mosovich that he also was young, comparatively speaking. And tired.

“You gotten any rest lately, sir?” the NCO said, gruffly.

“That is what Provigil is for, Sergeant Major,” O’Neal answered with a frown as he looked out at the valley. “You know I grew up here, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir,” Mosovich hesitated for a moment. “I… knew your father. We had friends in common. I went up to the farm.”

“I understand his body was missing,” Mike said, reaching into an armored pouch and extracting a can of Skoal. “Dip?”

“No, sir, thank you,” the sergeant major replied. “Yes. Cally said that she had found his body at the bunker. But when we got there it was gone.”

“Well, at least Cally is okay,” Mike replied. “You need to get going. We’re going to rearm and fuel fast. And then we’re going to call in the mother of all nuclear strikes on this… situation. The inner cache is made out of plasteel armor and should hold out, but you may get buried. I’ll inform Fleet where you are so… when we retake this area you can get dug out.”

“How bad can it be?” Elgars asked. “The outer cache took, what, two blasts already?”

“I did say ‘the mother of all nuclear strikes,’ right?” O’Neal said with a lopsided grin. “How about one hundred and ten megatons.”

“Holy shit!” Mosovich gasped. “Nothing is going to stand up to that!”

“It’s going to be spread out,” the major said. “Individual areas will get something around a two-megaton blast. It will be airburst. That cache will more than hold. But you have to be in it, and so does my daughter.”

“Yes, sir,” Elgars said. “We left Cally holding the fort. We should get back.” She straightened her back and gave him a snappy salute.

O’Neal nodded at her and then slowly raised his hand in return. “We’ll see you when we see you, folks. Good luck.”

“Wendy,” Tommy said and stopped.

“It’s okay,” she answered, reaching up to stroke the face of the armor. It was a simple, blank facet, not a face, but somehow it felt right to be touching it.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, flexing her jaw. “And I don’t care what they say, you’re coming back to me. Do you understand that? We’ve got a wedding to attend.”

“I understand,” he said, the voice echoing hollowly from the suit. “I’ll be there.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“If you don’t show up,” she said, wiping at his face again. “I’ll cap you with your own Glock.” She tapped the front of the armor for emphasis then started back down the trail to the valley.

“Nice girl. I can see why you want to get married.”

Tommy hadn’t noticed the major come up behind him. Now he turned and looked down at the shorter figure.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. He paused then raised his hands, palms up. “I really love her. High school heartthrob. The whole bit.”

“I understand. I met Sharon in college and when I realized she saw anything in me… I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

“She’s… dead, sir?” he asked, cautiously.

“Very. She was outside her ship working on a stuck clamp when a B-Dec came out of hyper. The ship attempted to launch from the system she was working on. The missiles, the clamp, the ship and my wife all disappeared in a cloud of radiation and light. That would be just about the same time you were burying yourself under Fredericksburg, by the way.” He paused then tapped Tommy on the back. “That’s why I told you to get what you can while you can get it, son. There’s no guarantee she’s always going to be there for you. And no guarantee that you’re going to be there for her.”

“Will she be okay?” Sunday asked. “That’s… it’s a big fucking weapon they’re firing, pardon my French, sir.”

“That safe the gear was in will stand up to just about anything,” O’Neal replied. “She’ll be fine. They close the door, take their Hiberzine and go to sleep until somebody comes to dig them out. You’ve been there and done that, right?”

“Yes,” Tommy said. “And what about us?”

“I thought you lived for killing Posleen,” O’Neal said with a snort. “Good news, it’s a target-rich environment.”

“I live for killing Posleen,” Tommy replied. “I can’t kill them if I’m dead.”

“Well, we’re rearmed. And powered up. And the Reapers have more rounds. So we’ll go back and do what we always do; hold on until relieved.”

“For how long?” Tommy asked, quietly.

“How long indeed. Let’s just say I hope that goddamned SheVa gun puts the pedal to the metal.”

Cally snuggled the rifle into her shoulder and took a breath.

The weapon was a Steyr AUG II, a 7.62x59 version of the venerable AUG Bullpup. The weapon had been fielded as a replacement just before the first major landings and a few had turned up with special operations troops in the United States just before the Posleen landings stopped all normal commerce. Her father had managed to snag one for her through connections and she was glad he did. The weapon was smaller and shorter than most of the 7.62 weapons out there and it was easier for her to handle with her lighter build. And the built-in buffer reduced the recoil to something along the lines of a 9mm carbine. So she was pretty accurate with it. Especially with a 3-9x variable-power scope. The problem was she didn’t have a target.

She knew from talking to her dad and granddad that the most important thing to take out in a Posleen company was the God King. The God King had all the sensors so once you got him, the company was down to Mark One Eyeball. Also, after the initial, violent, reaction to the death of their God, the normals tended to get really disorganized and a bunch of them would just wander off to become ferals. So the God King had to be the first target.

The other side of that story was that Posleen were tough; if you hit one in an artery they just shunted to secondary systems and kept going. To kill one, quickly, required either hitting the heart or the brain.

The problem was that this God King had apparently learned the concept of Posleen shields and he was surrounded by his normals. So there wasn’t, ever, a close shot at the heart. And their heads, which held their brains just like humans, were on the end of long, mobile necks. So targeting a head was tough as hell.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only viable target. So she let the breath out slowly and stroked her trigger.

Cholosta’an was watching his sensors nervously. The sensors indicated that there was an electronic device somewhere on the ridge above him. That might just mean one of the randomly scattered sensors that permitted the humans to keep track of Posleen movement. And, if so, it was no bother; there weren’t many humans around to react.

But it also might mean a human or humans that had active electronics, like a radio or night-vision systems.

Unfortunately, the sensors couldn’t quite pin down the location; it was just beyond their sensory range. He kept glancing up the hill, though, trying to spot any target. Thus he wasn’t at all surprised when his sensors screamed a warning of an incoming round just as the oolt’os to his left grunted from the impact of a round on his neck.

The target was clear on the sensors now, an armed human with a chemical rifle. He swung his plasma gun onto the vector and fired, knowing that the rest of the oolt would follow his lead.

Cally flattened herself into the narrow crack in the rock and muttered curses under her breath. She had heard about the way that Posleen reacted to being fired on but hearing about it and being the target of it were two different things.

But she had thought the shot out carefully and the rocks around here were solid. Of course, they were now smoking and cracked from stray rounds. Fortunately, most of the fire was off target, down and to her left. She didn’t know what had kept the Posleen from being their normal accurate selves, but whatever it was, it had saved her ass. And for that she was thankful.

Not so thankful as to fire from this position again, though. As the fire slackened she shimmied backwards, concealed by the ghillie cloak she had donned before firing, and scooted around one of the rocks out of direct line of the Posleen fire.

Time to go find another point.

Cholosta’an sent one of the oolt’os up the hill to see if there was any sign of the sniper but before the normal was half way up the hill there was another shot and another one of his oolt was hit, dropping to the ground this time with a round straight through the heart.

“This is really getting annoying,” Cholosta’an muttered as he, again, targeted the sniper. He didn’t know why he was missing the gadfly but he intended to track it down and destroy it.

“Up the hill,” he shouted, pointing towards the targeting icon. “After it!”

This was one human that was not getting away; best to kill it before it started calling in artillery.

Aatrenadar snarled as another volley of artillery scythed thought his oolt’ondar. The human positions were dug in deep, so even with the massed fire of thousands of Posleen the defenders were holding out, laying down murderous direct machine-gun and rifle fire while their blasted “artillery” hammered from above.

What was worse was the situation the Posleen found themselves in. The humans had reacted quickly to the nuclear fire that had reduced the bulk of the host, then had driven forward in a mass tenaral charge, cutting down all the remaining Posleen in their path. Many of the Posleen were so shaken they had never even seen the human tanks and personnel carriers until they were upon them.

This push had pressed the remnant of the host into a pocket just south of the town of Green’s Creek. There was very little room to open out and get a mass of fire upon the humans since the humans had taken the high ground in the defile. Furthermore, the narrow, twisty road behind, while packed with oolt’os and Kessentai from a milling mass on the far side of the gap, barely fed enough through to sustain their losses. Add in the artillery fire that was dropping deeper in the pass and the Posleen, for once, were able to use the term “beleaguered” to describe their situation.

The only bright spot was that while the host could not advance, neither could the humans. If they came out of their holes they would be slaughtered and if there was no way for the Posleen to maneuver there, equally, was no way for the humans to maneuver large forces. It was a battle of attrition and as soon as the combat suit defenders in the southern pass were cleared out, it would be a battle of attrition the humans could not win.

Of course, he would not see the eventual victory, but the Path was a path of pain and death. As well here as anywhere. If he could just sink his teeth into one more human.

“Forward!” he cried. The oolt’os would fight like the simple beasts they were but the younger Kessentai needed encouragement. “Forward for the host! Forward for the Path! Blood and loot at the end!”

He toggled his tenar forward as the line jolted towards the humans, then froze it at a light like a giant flashbulb behind him. After a moment there was another great flash, then another and another. For a moment his shadow, stark and white on the backs of the oolt’os in front of him, was fixed on his vision, then it was as if the sun had darkened. But his enhanced vision quickly adjusted to all the changes in lighting and he thus had a clear view of the mass of metal, like a rolling mountain, that appeared around the shoulder of a distant hill.

“Third round away, sir,” Pruitt said. “I’m not happy with the accuracy at this range; we have to fire the damned things practically straight up and we have no solid data on winds aloft.”

“Is it going to drift to this side of the Gap?” Mitchell asked.

“No, sir, if anything it will be a bit far out.”

“Then I’ll live with it,” he said, tapping his map controls. “Okay, Pruitt, reload with anti-lander rounds, Major Chan, you’re just about up, Reeves, follow the vector I’ve laid in.” He took a look around the room and shook his head. “Let’s Rock.”

The monstrosity was as big as an oolt Po’osol and nothing that large should be able to crawl along the ground. It appeared around the side of a hill, leaning at an angle that, given its height, should have rolled it over on its side. But it didn’t fall. It just kept rolling forward, the fire, it seemed, of all the oolt’os and Kessentai in view sparking off its front carapace. Yet, still, with lines of plasma carving the picture on its face, with hypervelocity missiles sparking off of it like fireflies in the night, it kept coming.

Then it disappeared in a wall of water.

“Excuse me,” Colonel Mitchell said, looking into his suddenly blank monitor. The SheVa had lurched downward, indicating that they were descending into the valley of Sutton Branch, which should reduce some of the murderous fire they had been taking. But losing all visual references in the middle of a battle was… not good. “What in the hell just happened?”

“Colonel?” Chan called. “There’s a big… fountain of water up here. It’s all over the place! We can’t see shit, pardon me.”

“Negative visual, negative radar, negative lidar,” Pruitt sang out. “What in the hell just happened.”

“Darn,” Kilzer said. “Let me check my notes…”

“Mr. Kilzer!” the colonel shouted across the compartment. “Is this your doing?”

“Well, yeah,” the tech rep replied. “It’s an experimental anti-plasma defense. We mounted a fifty-thousand-gallon water tank in the front of the turret and…”

“Well, before you check your notes, kindly shut it off! We’re driving into the rear of an embattled division! Running over their headquarters, for example, would be a really big mistake!”

“HQ’s way back near Dillsboro, boss,” Pruitt pointed out. “But it would be nice to see so we can shoot.”

“Okay, okay,” the civilian muttered, toggling off a switch. “It wasn’t like anybody got killed…”

“Hold it here, Reeves,” Mitchell called, surprised how far forward they had traveled. They were already across the stream and on their way up the flank of the next hill. In fact, looking in his monitor he saw that the church that used to occupy the hilltop itself had just disappeared under a track and the primary power lines that had once been there were now scattered across Bun-Bun’s carapace.

“Oh, no, there goes Tokyo!” Kilzer said.

“Gojira!” Reeves shouted as the main support began to tumble down the hill.

“It’s one of those eternal questions.” Pruitt laughed. “Who would win in a fight, Bun-Bun or Godzilla?”

“Depends on the Bun-Bun,” Pruitt pointed out. “Maj… I mean Colonel, we’re in range of the Posleen, I think.” His comment was punctuated with the bong of another HVM round hitting the frontal plate.

“Major Chan, are you in range?”

“Yes, sir,” the MetalStorm commander replied. “We don’t really have much of a target, but we’re in range.”

“Put it on the road,” Mitchell replied. “They seem to be running right up it. After your initial volley, spread it to either side, arching it over the divisional positions.”

“Yes, sir,” Chan replied. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Mitchell opened his mouth and raised one finger just as Kilzer lifted his hand in a halting motion.

“Colonel, this isn’t strictly necessary, but I heartily recommend it,” Paul said, tapping a control. Over the intercom came a thump of drums, then the sound of bagpipes.

Mitchell paused to listen to the music for a moment, then grinned as the lyrics started.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his raised finger starting to thump the time in the air. “What is that?”

“March of Cambreath.”

“You’re right. Works for me. Major Chan!”

“Sir!” the MetalStorm commander replied, nodding her head to the beat.

“Open fire!”