Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin
to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin
to roll.—Rudyard Kipling
"Tommy"
The external viewers had adjusted the night to sixty percent of daylight ambiance. The wood-shrouded hills were dark and cool under the gibbous moon and the Gap valley was occasionally visible as the shuttles crested the ridges.
Then everything went white.
The weapons were the sole survivors of a massive salvo fired from the northern tier of what was left of the United States. The Posleen assault on Earth had shattered almost every other industrialized nation but through a combination of foresight, ruthlessness and terrain the United States had managed to hold on to productive areas in the eastern Midwest, what had come to be known as "the Cumberland Pocket." It was comprised of most of Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa and Michigan. In addition there was a northern tier of states—Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana—that were above where the Posleen could effectively campaign.
It was from these latter that most of the nuclear weapons had been fired.
Nuclear missiles from silos throughout the Midwest had been recovered and moved to safety ahead of the Posleen hordes. Violating numerous treaties, they had been converted to mobile launchers and now were positioned throughout the northern tier of states, most of which remained in human hands, and even up into Canada. Many of them would not have the angularity to reach the target area—their "minimum range" was still too long—but a few would. In addition, while most of the nuclear ballistic missile submarines had been converted to transports, a few of them retained their missiles. All of these weapons, enough to gut any country, were available to support the ACS airmobile.
But Posleen antimissile systems were tremendously effective; practically anything that crested the horizon that was under power or maneuvered would be destroyed. So the only viable choice was to try to saturate the defenses. However, it was not just the innumerable weapons on God King saucers that could engage the missiles; as they reached apogee they were visible to the thousands of landers still scattered across North America. So out of the thousands of nuclear weapons that were fired, only a handful survived to enter ballistic trajectories and become mysteriously invisible to the Posleen targeting systems.
Those handful would be more than enough.
The salvo of reentry rounds landed in a triangle pattern, one directly in the Mountain City Gap and the other two in the passes to the north and south. Each of the explosions was one hundred kilotons, almost ten times stronger than the weapon that hit Hiroshima, and wasted a circle three thousand meters in diameter, smashing every tree and scrap of brush to the ground or incinerating them and tossing them into the column of fiery gas that reached to the heavens.
The blast of fire and pressure reached out and scoured the ridges to either side, ripping up the trees and smashing them into toothpicks, flattening the maturing forests and ripping the soil out to the bare rock all the way to the tops of the hills.
"Sergeant Major." Jake's artificial intelligence device still had the toneless tenor that was the "factory" default. He had never bothered to personalize it. The AID was a Galactic introduction, a small, black, formable piece of what looked like plastic but that was, in fact, a continuous computing unit. The devices were fully AI and linked together in a seamless web of data that stretched across an entire planet. In this case the AID had picked up a piece of information from the net and after a nanosecond's consideration determined that, yes, this was something that its human needed to know.
"Multiple incoming nuclear rounds targeted on Rabun Gap. The unit is outside the zone of direct danger, but anyone looking in that direction will experience flash-blindness."
"Holy shit," Mueller muttered. They were traversing one of the innumerable ridges in the area and while the Gap was quite some distance away, the fireball would not only be visible, it would seem like it was right on top of them. The ridgeline was a knifeblade of rock, made slippery by the rain.
"Down," Jake snapped, pointing over the edge of the ridge to the north. It wasn't a cliff, but it was steep.
"How?!" Shari snapped, shifting Kelly higher on her back and freeing an arm to brush hair out of her face. As far as she could tell, one step to the side and she and the girl were both going to slide a couple of hundred feet to rocks.
"Carefully," Mueller replied. He was carrying both Tommy and Amber but he nonetheless started to shift down the steep hillside. But in a moment he stopped and shook his head. "Jake, it's not going to work."
"Why?" Mosovich said then cursed. "I'm a senile old fool: ground-shock."
"We can make it down, but . . ."
"It'll flip us off the side," Mosovich said, looking around. The ridges in the area were usually fairly easy slopes to either side; just their luck they were on one of the knife-edge portions.
"AID, how long?"
"Five minutes," the computer replied. "Many of them have been destroyed, but between three and twelve will probably hit. None of them will hit between our present position and the Gap."
Jake eyed the thin trail along the top of the ridge. In about a hundred meters it started to curve south and flatten out.
"Ma'am, my advice is to run!"
"Cool," Sunday whispered, watching the expanding mushroom cloud into which the shuttle was apparently going to fly.
"Yep, that's the real and the nasty, sir," Blatt said. "Finally the kind of support we're designed for."
"Three minutes: Standby for deployment," Captain Slight said over the company frequency. "I hope like hell everybody's awake. If not you're about to be woken up the hard way."
Sunday's chair suddenly straightened then rotated in two directions so that he was standing up, facing backwards.
"All troops," Major O'Neal said, "prepare to deploy."
The shuttles suddenly accelerated past Mach One in a series of barely felt sonic booms, approaching the last hill. They continued to accelerate as they hit the first compression wave from the nuclear explosions and began to noticeably rock in the turbulence.
"WHOOOEEEE!" Blatt yelled. "Comin' in hot and ROCKIN'!"
As the shuttles crested Oakey Mountain they began firing the combat suits at the ground, starting from the back of the shuttle and working forward.
Tommy felt the slam of ejection over his inertial compensators and bent his knees as the ground came at him at nearly a thousand miles per hour. His on-board compensators and the disposable inertial pack that he was wearing combined to slow his speed to just below the speed of sound before he entered ground effect where a Terran bounce pack included in the inertial set slowed him even more.
The ejection was noticeable but hitting the ground hurt. He was still going at over two hundred miles per hour and felt the shock through his whole body as the suit automatically tucked and rolled backwards.
He went through two more rolls, mainly due to the slope, before the suit was able to establish control and throw him to his feet and a screaming halt.
He immediately turned towards the assembly beacon in the valley and took a count of his troops. The whole group of Reapers were on the ground and, despite exiting after him, were already bounding for the beacon.
Tommy started to shake his head and quelled the reaction, setting his suit to max-run instead and heading down the hill. He had a lot of catching up to do.
Mike threw the full power of his inertial compensators and half-flew, half-bounced from his position on the shoulder of Oakey Mountain to the battalion staff assembly beacon at the intersection of Black Creek and Silver Branch. It was a point of pride to be the first out and the first assembled, even if he did have farther to go.
"Scouts out," he snapped as his foot touched down. "Two teams south, three teams north." He looked around and then went flat into the streambed. Bravery was all well and good but there was plenty of time to get killed on this mission.
"Boss," Stewart said, checking the intelligence schematic that collected sensor data from all the suits in the battalion. "I'd strongly suggest the last team up Rocky Knob. I'm getting some readings from up that a'way."
"Concur," Mike answered. He looked around at the battalion spreading through the bowl and took a deep breath as the first shuttle came under fire in the distance. "Bring in the fuel shuttles and make sure we're covered on the south."
"And you want us to go into that?" Shari said, cradling Kelly under her body as the last shock wave shuddered away into stillness.
The sky to the east was still purple with fading plasma and a massive, complex, mushroom cloud glowed high into the air. Much of it was lost in the incoming cold front, but even that was momentarily shaken by man-made plasma.
"Well," Mosovich replied, cradling one of the shivering children. "We've already given up our coats and our blankets and these kids are still going into hypothermia. So unless you have another suggestion?"
"What about radiation?" Wendy said carefully. She had killed Posleen, had seen them overrun her town, had fought her way out of an underground rat trap, but the towering mushroom clouds were a wholly new experience and she suddenly felt as if none of the previous battles had occurred, like a rank newbie. It was an odd and unsettling feeling.
If Mosovich was unsettled by the change in style of warfare, it wasn't showing. "AID, radiation patterns."
"Given the placement of the rounds, there should be no persistent radiologicals in the area of the O'Neal farm. All of the rounds were air-burst and any incidental fallout from irradiated casing or ground material should drift with the prevailing winds to the east. However, I have a secondary ability to sense harmful radiation and will warn you if we begin to experience any radiation high enough to be harmful to humans."
"We're going," Elgars said, standing up. "We can argue all night and all that will happen is the children will die."
"As if you care?" Shari snapped.
"I see it as my mission to get them to a place of safety," the captain said, coldly. "Whether I like them or not is unimportant to the mission. And Cache Four is both hidden and strongly made. It is the best location to move to, despite being near the current fighting."
"I'd like to find out about Papa O'Neal," Wendy said. "And Cally."
"All right," Shari replied, staggering to her feet. Even with the enhancements they had gotten, it had been a long day and night. She was cold, tired, hungry and most of all tired. It felt as if she couldn't put one foot in front of the other, especially while carrying Kelly. But she did it. And then another.
Elgars watched until she was moving and then took a position directly behind Mosovich.
All of them avoided looking to the east.
Cally picked herself up and looked around the interior of the cache. Several of the heavy ammunition and storage lockers had been tossed off their pallets and several small chunks of rock had fallen. But the Old Man had known what he was doing; a concrete arch and "plug" at the rear of the cache supported the only portion of the rock that wasn't solid North Georgia granite.
"Fuck me," she said quietly, wiping a little blood off her lip; her nose had taken the fall badly. It was a hell of a choice. Sit here and hope the shelter held or head out into who knew what. That had been the first nuclear blast in over a day, but that didn't mean it would be the last.
Really, it wasn't much of a choice. If the battle ran over her location she would probably die. But as long as the nukes stayed over by the Gap, and so far they had, and they weren't too large, whatever that meant in terms of nuclear weapons, she should survive.
If she went outside, though, all bets were off.
"Fuck me," she said again, louder, and started taking off her gear.
"I know there's a pack of playing cards around here somewhere," she commented, starting to pile boxes into a second shelter, under the concrete arch, just large enough for one. "Time to play some solitaire. I don't think trying to build houses with them would work." After a moment she picked up her helmet from where she had dropped it and put it back on.
"Blatt, pick up that ammo pack," Sunday said, pounding past the Reaper. "We're going to need all the ammo we can load."
"Yes, sir," the specialist said, grabbing the bulbous plastic sack. He heaved it over his left shoulder and clamped it on then stumbled slightly as it threw off even the suit's massive gyros. "Gonna be hell to move with."
"You're doing fine," the officer replied, scanning up and to the left. "If you don't keep up, the Posleen will eat you. McEvoy, take your squad and pick up the spare gun packs; I'm thinking we're gonna need 'em."
"Gotcha," the specialist said. "When are we gonna rock and roll?"
Sunday looked around the smoking landscape and shivered. "Soon enough."
"UP! Up the hill!" Gamataraal called. "Sweep down upon them."
"The shuttles!" Aalansar said. His second in command gestured to the east. "We're supposed to wait for their shuttles."
"They send scouts up the hill," the oolt'ondai snapped. "In a moment we'll be under fire; we can't wait."
"Hey, we gots company, boss," Stewart called. "I make it a lesser oolt'ondai, heavy on weaponry. And it's right up in the gap on Rocky Knob."
"Now ain't that interesting," Duncan said. "I got no fire support, boss. The nukes are shot out and we're out of range of everybody else."
"And the Reapers are all loaded for anti-lander," Mike said. "Battalion grenade fire; we need to suppress these guys quick."
"Call off the shuttles?" Duncan asked.
"Negative," the commander replied. "Calculated risk; we need to move out, they need to come in. Spread 'em out, though."
"By teams!" Captain Slight called. "Grenades, my target, mark!"
"We're out of it," Blatt cursed trying to swing the huge bag to a better position as he trotted to the northeast.
"Not quite," Sunday said calmly. "Lamprey emanations over Black Rock Mountain. Platoon: Target!"
"Battalion, fire!" Mike called and watched the flight of the grenades to their targets. The suits mounted dual launchers and carried 138 of the 20mm balls in onboard storage. Each of the balls had a range of just over three thousand meters and an effective kill radius of thirty-five meters. So the battalion fire mission dropped across the oncoming oolt'ondar like the wrath of God, the grenades detonating at one meter above ground height and flailing the air with shrapnel.
"Check fire," O'Neal called, noting that most of the enemy had been swept away by the fire mission. "Prepare to receive landers."
The enemy landing craft were designed for space combat but their secondary weapons could reach down and destroy the spread-out battalion if allowed to engage without resistance. Unfortunately, the battalion had limited resources to take them on. "All Reapers, engage Lamprey targets west."
"This is getting a tad hot," Duncan remarked, dialing in the grenade targets.
"Yes, what," Stewart said. "Scouts are reporting a movement up the valley. If we don't get the hell out of here we're going to be walled up."
"It's all a matter of timing," Mike replied. "Battalion, rifle fire on the hills; suppress Posleen fire for incoming shuttles. All things considered, though," he continued, switching back to the staff frequency, "it might have been better to bring them in with us."
"Yeah, but we weren't expecting an ambush," Duncan noted. "Now, did they have every LZ covered I wonder?"
"Yeah, I wonder," Stewart said. "I'm putting that in the intel folder with a high-priority mark. I think we were set up, sir."
"But they bit off more than they could chew," Mike noted as the battalion fire started to sweep the charging Posleen off the ridgeline. However, he could see trooper icons dropping as well; the force on the hill was as heavily armed as any he had ever seen. "I hope."
"We are getting slaughtered," Aalansar said bitterly.
"The way the Path has taken us," Gamataraal said as another of the dismounted Kessentai was removed from the Path. "We close, and we kill. As long as they are unable to move, we are well off."
"Shuttle coming in to the south," his second noted. "But we have no targeting systems." The superior Posleen antiaircraft fire depended upon the sensors and motors of the saucerlike vehicles the God Kings normally rode. However, they also made the God Kings easy targets.
"The Path is never an easy one," the commander said. "Fire everything at it. Ignore the threshkreen."
"Oh, damn," Gunny Pappas noted. He had just come back from checking out the battalion as it tried to fight its way out of the pocket and the incoming shuttle couldn't have been timed worse. And the reaction of the Posleen wasn't all that peachy either.
"Now, why would they do that?" O'Neal asked as every single Posleen that was still under God King control turned their fire away from the suits and onto the shuttle.
"I dunno, but I think it's gonna work," Duncan noted, digging his head into the streambed. "Don't you?"
"Yeah, probably," Mike noted calmly. "Bank the other shuttle behind Oakey Mountain. Battalion: INCOMING!"
The oolt'ondai was armed with three-millimeter railguns, plasma guns and hypervelocity missiles. The shuttle crested the south shoulder of Oakey Mountain and headed down Stillhouse Branch, accelerating past Mach Four and preparing for a hot inertial drop along Black Creek. It turned out to be hotter than anticipated.
Most of the fire went behind or to either side, but the targeting systems of the God King's weapons were still good enough to lead the craft, and a hurricane of railgun and plasma rounds hammered the shuttle as it rocketed down the stream. In a blink of an eye it started to come apart, scattering its highly volatile cargo into the fire.
Class Five Antimatter Reactors, the system installed on shuttles, were designed for combat and to withstand the occasional misdirected round. They were not, however, designed to be hit by a storm of plasma fire. In less than a millisecond the containment was pierced and all hell broke loose.
"ASS TO THE BLAST!" Mueller yelled, dropping to his face then pulling the shrieking children on his back around to cover them. The flash of white had been so bright, like a flashbulb on megaoverdrive, that he could still see the trees and bodies ahead of him even after he shut his eyes.
All of the adults dropped, grabbing any child still standing, and waited for the blast wave. By luck they were on a relatively flat hill, so when the ground shock hit they merely slid a short distance down the muddy slope then stopped. Shortly after, the outer layer of the overpressure wave hit, but at the distance they were from the explosion it amounted to not much more than a strong wind that shook the brown leaves from the surrounding trees and dropped streams of frigid water onto their backs.
Slowly most of the screaming dropped to sniffles. No one had been looking at the burst and the distance was far enough that there hadn't been any flash-blindness or thermal pulse burns.
"This is insane," Shari said, getting to her feet. "Insane."
"Insane or not, we have to keep going," Wendy replied, tiredly. She hugged Amber to her as the child shivered uncontrollably. "We have to get them out of the wet."
"Just put one foot in front of the other," Mosovich said, picking up Nathan and perching him on top of his rucksack. "We either make it, or we don't. I'm glad we're not in it, though."