“They’re still trying to flank us,” said Colonel Abrahamson, apparently reading his mind. “They still might.”
“Maybe,” agreed the general. “They’ve still got the numbers for it. And I’ll worry about that if it looks like they’re coming back in a serious way. And then I’ll send somebody out to poke them in the snout.”
“Somebody else, I hope,” the colonel said, dryly.
“Somebody else,” the general agreed.
“Good,” said the exhausted officer. “It’s about time somebody else had some fun.”
CHAPTER 61
Rabun County, GA, United States of America, Sol III
0612 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad
“Gee, isn’t this fun?” snorted Papa O’Neal.
The Tennessee Volunteers had thus far failed to live up to their name. The landing was small, only a single lander. That meant no more than six hundred Posleen, probably closer to four hundred. But the force had gone one way and run into the unVolunteers. Then it had recoiled the other way and run into the Rabun Gap defenses. Now it was milling around more or less at the head of O’Neal’s Hollow. And the first trace of entering scouts had appeared on the sensors.
“That was how you knew,” said “Raphael” quietly, watching the sensors.
“Yeah. You guys made a signature like a rocket.” Papa O’Neal chuckled.
“Hmm.” The special action team leader nodded. “My fellows are confused by your granddaughter. They don’t know what to make of her.”
“Well,” said O’Neal, dryly, “it’s more what she makes of them.”
“You ever use one of these?” Cally asked the black-masked commando, gesturing at the General Electric mini-gun. Since she would be handling the demo, putting one of the commandos on the 7.62mm Gatling freed Grandpa up to handle overall actions.
At his negative head shake she touched a control. “That arms it,” she said as the barrel advanced with a whine. “Butterfly triggers just like a Ma-Deuce, but the safety is on the side.” She pointed to the appropriate button then released it. “Other than that it works just like a hose. Fires eight thousand rounds a minute. Looks sort of like a laser going downrange. Just walk the fire onto the enemy.” She stood on tiptoes to look out the slot of the bunker but declined to fire. The Posleen weren’t in sight yet and they still might just go away.
The commando nodded and stepped forward. He carefully put the safety back on and advanced the barrels again. A single round flew out and dropped into an open blue plastic fifty-five-gallon drum.
“Keeps you from getting awash in brass,” said Cally, gesturing to the huge box of ammunition under the weapon. “It’ll only catch ’em on a narrow traverse, but it helps.”
The commando nodded again and looked out the slit.
Cally tapped her foot a few times and rotated her shoulders to relieve the chafing of the armor. It was a lot more comfortable when it was dry. “You sure don’t talk much.”
The mask turned towards her and brown eyes regarded blue. He cleared his throat. “We kin talk,” was all he said.
The accent was faint, but completely different from the team leader’s. Cally nodded and put that and a few other facts together. “Can I ask you one thing?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Can I see your left hand?”
The head of the commando tilted slightly to the side but then he pulled the thin black Nomex glove off his hand. He held it up for a brief inspection, rotating it so that she could get a good look and then waggling his fingers. He obviously thought it a silly question. He put the glove back on.
Cally glanced at the hand and smiled. When he was done with his little pantomime she looked him straight in the eye and made the Sign of the Cross.
As the commando’s eyes flew wide she smiled again, turned and left the bunker without a word.
“Oh, this is truly good!” snarled Monsignor O’Reilly, reading the missive on his Palm Pilot.
The message was written in Attic Greek, encrypted half a dozen ways, and used code phrases. The message was, nonetheless, clear.
“What?” asked Paul, looking up from the card game he was engaged in with the Indowy. The Himmit stealth ship was in two hundred feet of water in Hudson Bay. And the Indowy had explained that it would stay there until the majority of the Posleen were destroyed and clear areas declared. Himmit would risk much on occasion, but they believed that discretion was better than valor.
“Our team is trapped at the O’Neal farm!” he snarled.
“Calmly, Nathan, calmly,” soothed the Indowy. “The O’Neals are an inventive clan. The team will be well taken care of.”
“Bit of a turnabout for the books.” Paul smiled, taking a card off the stack on the table. He grimaced. “Your move.” The cards were difficult to read in the odd blue-green light. This Himmit ship, unlike some, had never been converted for human use.
The table was too low and the bench he sat on was designed to be used by lying on a hairy belly. The air was thin, the gravity too heavy and the lighting set to Himmit norm, which meant that it was mainly in shades of violet invisible to human eyes. The result was an odd blue-green that made everything look as if it was under deep water. There were odd sounds at the edge of hearing; the Himmit communicated in hypercompressed squeaks that were barely in the human audible range. There were strange chemical smells and occasional odd slurping noises. All together it was one of the most uncomfortable environments the widely traveled des Jardins had experienced.
Aelool looked to the Monsignor, who finally gave a resigned gesture. “It is not as if there haven’t been breaches before,” the little alien said.
“Hmm,” said the Monsignor, irritably. “But there are reporters swarming nearly as thick as the Posleen. There are already reports that there is a well-defended farm near the landing. And the local commander says that the reason they haven’t attacked Posleen yet is to see how the farm fairs. He says he’s afraid of hitting the farm with friendly-fire, but it sounds more like he trusts the O’Neals to take care of the attack. One old man and a young girl up against a Posleen company?!”
Paul smiled sardonically. “Well, they are Irish, no?”
Nathan’s eyelids dropped, giving him a sleepy look and he stared at des Jardins’s back. “This is a small ship, Paul, and the lighting is really getting on my nerves. Don’t push it.”
“We gotta push it, sir,” said Captain O’Neal, looking into the Virtual infinity of data. He was in a trance of data assimilation as graphs and maps cascaded past. The data included snippets of live video from the front lines, where reporters were finally encountering the enemy firsthand.
In many cases the locations of advancing Posleen had to be assumed. Here a company not responding, there a transmission suddenly cut off. But the picture was firming up. The battalion was still well short of the District while the Posleen were well into Fairfax County and nearly over the border into Arlington. They had spread up to the Potomac on the north side and were moving rapidly down the Beltway towards the crossing to the east of Arlington.
The movement was unconscious, but it was creating a pocket in the Arlington area. All the survivors were being pushed towards the downtown D.C. bridges, just as General Horner had anticipated.