“Captain O’Neal,” said Horner.
Mike thought he sounded more tired than ever. Maybe they could both get some rest. “General, I would like to report that we have the infestation stopped at the Potomac. As soon as forces are reassembled we can begin reducing them in northern Virginia.”
“That is good, Captain,” said Jack.
“So, formal, sir?” he quipped. It was a heady high to have succeeded so totally in the sight of his old mentor. “It’s okay, General. We’ve taken too much damage, but we’ll take it to them next.”
“Yes, we will, Mike,” said Horner. “Captain O’Neal…” he continued with a catch and stopped.
“Jack,” said Mike with a smile, “it’s okay…”
“No, it’s not, Mike. Captain O’Neal, I regret to inform you that your wife, Lieutenant Commander Sharon O’Neal, was lost in action this morning at approximately oh-five hundred hours.”
“Oh, shit!” said Mike, in a near wail. “Oh, fuck!”
“I convey the regrets of the new President.”
“Oh, goddamn, Jack!”
“I’ve ensured a qualified contact team is on the way to the farm.” Horner waited through the silence, not sure what was happening on the other end. “Mike?”
“Yes, sir,” said Captain O’Neal in a toneless voice.
“Are you going to be okay? I, you can ask for some time, if you want it.”
“No, sir. That will be fine,” the captain said in a monotone. “I’ll be just fine.”
“Mike…”
“I will be fine, sir.”
“If you’re sure?” The general knew that this was not going to be the end of it. But there were other demands on his time. Other needs to fill.
“I will be just dandy, General, sir,” said the captain in an icy voice. “Just dandy.”
And he was, as he watched the remorseless destruction of the centaurs. As he led his battalion in the part of the anvil. For the anvil never cries for the iron.
Visions
Fredericksburg, VA, United States of America, Sol III
0926 EDT October 27th, 2004 ad
The sensor wand was much more sensitive than the detectors on their suits. And Minnet was a maestro. For all the damn good it was doing.
The cold, pouring rain was washing the remaining soil and grit off the ridge. It had already formed gullies around the bits of buildings and roads, uprooting ancient flagstones and undercutting the three-hundred-year-old foundations that were all that was left of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Minnet took another bound forward on the search grid and second squad bounded with him, grav-guns tracking. In the last two weeks they had hammered the Posleen in the Rappahanock Pocket into gravy. But there were still a few around. And dead was dead.
Using the untouched Fort Belvoir as a base, the battalion had split up into companies and had ravaged through the remnant Posleen. When a unit found a concentration they would call for fire then finish off the survivors. If the Posleen force was too large the company could either join up with other companies or fall back on Belvoir. The Army Engineer had been only too enthusiastic about turning his base into a giant fortress. The work was still ongoing, with concrete slowly replacing compacted dirt, but the facilities were more than adequate for the purpose. When a couple of thousand Posleen came up to the walls topped with a giant wooden effigy of the Engineer Corps symbol, they got the point. Just before the battleship rounds started falling. In the south the same was being done by a brigade from the Eleventh MID. With much the same result.
So now the Posleen were down to nuisance levels. The new President was even considering letting people back into northern Virginia. Those who wanted to.
Most of the refugees were already being installed in the Sub-Urbs. The vast underground cities were still under construction, but there was enough done to take the trickle of Virginians. With their homes mostly destroyed and the area still under threat of the Posleen, most of them opted to take the government settlement payment and start a new life. It was better than seeing the wrack of their once-beautiful state.
That was left to the ACS. As usual. They had carefully swept the battlefields of the Ninth and Tenth Corps, hoping against hope for a survivor. All they found was the occasional warrior staff, with a hero beside it. Usually the story was unknown. The biggest surprise had been on the first day of sweeps. They found nearly a whole company of the Third Regiment and a single God King all piled on The Tomb. And two staffs. There must have been a hell of a story there. But there was no one left to tell it.
Now they had come to the center. The detector would sniff out any living human, no matter how damaged, no matter how buried. But so far they were coming up empty.
“Hey, Sarge,” called Wilson, waving for Stewart to join him.
The small NCO bounded over towards Wilson. He looked at his map and shook his head. He should have been standing on the site of the oldest Presbyterian Church in America. Instead there was a scoured flat waste. And one upthrust warrior staff with a small device dangling from it.
“What kind of unit was it here?” asked Wilson.
The question was probably rhetorical. They had been briefed. But Stewart answered anyway. “Engineers. A light battalion.”
Wilson plucked the device off the staff. “Well, they must have been some bad news juju,” he said grimly. He handed the scrap of cloth to Stewart.
Stewart popped off his helmet and turned his face up to the pouring rain. The cold fall would probably be sleet by morning. But now it worked admirably to wash away the tears. The bloody scrap of cloth was a tab from an engineer officer’s uniform.
“Bad fuckin’ juju, man,” he agreed, his voice thick. He wiped his eyes and put the helmet back on. The nannites scurried to carry away the intruding water. If they had been human they might have clucked in approbation.
“Contact!” shouted Minnet, swerving to the side. He bounded twenty feet through the air and landed on a section of crumpled road. The point was damn near ground zero of the fuel-air explosion. How anything could have survived was a mystery.
Stewart caught a flash out of the corner of his eye and started to track on it before he realized that it was the captain. The officer was taking full use of the almost unlimited power available through the antimatter generator in his suit. He now flew towards the reported contact. The lidar on Stewart’s suit clocked him at over four hundred klicks an hour. When they all had those it would make things a lot easier.
“Where?” said O’Neal, landing next to the sensor-toting private.
“Right under your feet, sir. Two forms. In hibernation or so it tells me.” The private dropped and started to pull up the mixture of concrete, asphalt and glass that overlaid the find.
O’Neal laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hang on.” He slid out his monomolecular fighting knife and cut into the mixture. A few slices and he had a cube of the overlay which he threw to the side.
The rest of the squad dove in and before long they were to a brick ceiling.
“What the hell is this, sir?” asked Stewart. The captain was tracking again, which was good. It had looked rocky the first day. But he seemed to be coming around. If he didn’t, there wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do about it.
“Dunno,” said O’Neal, flipping through his database on Fredericksburg. “There’s no mention of structures like this.” A quick sonic pulse indicated that it was a single layer of brick. Mike lifted himself on his AG drive and took a slice out of the ceiling.