“There wasn’t anything to use at the Hydrological Station.” The Posleen raided for loot, then destroyed every trace of previous habitation. While the station hadn’t been leveled it had been emptied. As had every other building they had checked.
Shari Reilly grimaced. “It’s still nearly fifteen miles,” she said. “Even carrying the kids, I don’t see how we can make it.”
Shari had been thirty-two, a waitress and single-mother of three, when the Posleen dropped on her hometown of Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was one of the very few survivors from that town and was resettled, along with her three children, in one of the first underground cities. It had been placed in an out-of-the-way valley in western North Carolina, despite a lack of roads to supply it, for two reasons: it was unlikely the Posleen would attack into such rugged country, and the local congressman was the chairman of the appropriation’s committee.
As it turned out, after five years of battering their heads everywhere else the Posleen did attack up the Rabun Valley. And Shari Reilly had, again, been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Story of her life, really.
“I’d like to find out what happened to Cally and Papa O’Neal,” Shari admitted quietly. The group had previously visited the O’Neal family farm and she and Papa O’Neal had gotten along very well, to the point that he had asked her, and the children, to come live with him. With the Posleen having overrun the area that plan, like so many others in her life, had been nipped in the bud. But she still felt it necessary to find out what happened to the O’Neals.
Wendy Cummings shrugged and shook her head, pulling a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“We’re still in the same boat,” she said, gesturing at the gray skies. In the last few hours the sky had begun to darken. While the women, with their new upgrades, could probably survive the environment, the children were without any shelter or heavy clothing. Getting them both was the second highest priority, the highest being to keep them out of the hands of the Posleen.
Wendy was the main point of contact between the other two women and sometimes she felt like the only thing holding the group together. She was a well-endowed blonde, another survivor of Fredericksburg, who had until recently been stymied in her desire to go off and kill Posleen like her boyfriend was doing. She was doing it now, whenever the Posleen came in view, but killing Posleen while carting kids around took all the fun out of it.
Still, a mission was a mission.
“We need to get the kids some clothes and we could use some supplies,” she continued, gesturing at the two soldiers. “Even with what the sergeant major and Mueller supplied, it’s not enough.”
“There was plenty in the cache,” Mueller noted. He slid a little more dry wood into the fire and looked up at the sky. “If we move fast we can make it to the O’Neal house by midnight.”
“Later,” Mosovich replied. The sergeant major was the antithesis of his subordinate, slight and wiry. But he had been beating around the bush when Mueller wasn’t even a gleam in his father’s eye and could carry loads that were frankly astonishing. What he would not do, in these conditions, was lie. “Even with their girls’… improvement, we can’t carry all the kids that far. And in a few hours it’s gonna start raining, cold rain. And by morning we might be looking at sleet.”
“You think we should try something else?” Mueller asked.
“No, but we’re not going to make it there before morning.” The sergeant major looked at the children and shook his head. “We’ll try like hell, but we won’t make it.”
“We’ll make it,” Elgars said, getting to her feet. “But not if we debate about it all day. Sergeant Major, I’m apparently the ranking officer, but I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing. How are we going to handle that?”
“Well, ma’am,” the recon specialist said with a faint grin. “I’ll make suggestions and you give the orders. And if you don’t give the orders I suggest, you’d better have a damned good reason or I’ll shoot you.”
“Works for me,” she said with a laugh. “And your suggestion is… ?”
“Let’s move out,” he replied. “It’s not going to get any easier as it gets darker.”
“Can I say just one thing?” Shari asked.
“Sure.”
“I really hate the Posleen.” As they started off, a gentle, cold, mist began to fall.
Tulo’stenaloor cursed and shook his crest. The senior commander of the Posleen forces assaulting Rabun Gap had been fighting the humans for nigh on ten years. And over the time he had developed a healthy respect for their abilities. Outnumbered though they were, outgunned though they were, the humans were clever about using well-honed skills and an almost devilish ingenuity to defeat the assaults of the Posleen.
But the current group was really starting to annoy him.
“I hate humans,” he grumped. “What do we know of this cursed metal threshkreen ‘unit.’ ”
The Posleen had first met the humans at the planet Aradan 5, what the humans called Diess. Up until that encounter the advance of the host had been continuous and without major check. There were three races that they had encountered in near space and none of them, not the little green Indowy nor the taller, slim Darhel, nor the insectile Tchpth, would give fight. Sometimes the Darhel would fight, but not well and not long. Mostly it was a matter of simply rounding them up and butchering them for dinner.
Until Aradan 5.
Tulo’stenaloor had been there, when the host had met its first defeat. It had been a nightmare. Each time they thought they had the humans defeated something had hit them from a different direction. It was necessary to dig the humans out like abat or grat and they stung worse. The host had taken fantastic damage before a unit of these demons-be-damned metal threshkreen had arisen from the ocean of the world and destroyed his first oolt’ondai. He still remembered the unholy destruction visited upon his fine collection of genetic specialists, ripped to shreds in bare seconds. Other threshkreen, who had at first fled before the host, had stopped and formed a wall of fire that seemed unbreakable. Faced with an implacable foe to the side and an impossible foe to the front, the host had fled. He had barely escaped with his life, limping off planet in a simple in-system ship, and it had taken him years to recover from that debacle.
“It is led by a human named ‘Michael O’Neal’ who is one of their Kessanalt. The term the humans use is a ‘hero’ or ‘elite.’ And this is their finest group of metal threshkreen.”
Generally other species, and Posleen that had become too injured or old to be of use, were referred to simply as “thresh” or “food.” Threshkreen was “food that stung.” All humans should be called threshkreen; even their nestlings fought.
“Do we know their plan?” Tulo’stenaloor said. “We need to push as many oolt’os through the pass as we can; we cannot afford to be trapped here.”
“They intend to open up the area with nuclear bombardment…” the S-2 answered.
“What?” Tulo’stenaloor snapped, his crest rising. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The area they will be able to cover is limited,” the intelligence officer pointed out, bringing up a map. “They will be firing ballistic systems from the northern regions and from the sea. Few of them can even be targeted on this area and most will be destroyed by oolt Po’osol. So all of them are targeted on a relatively small area. Given that most of the blast will be trapped by these accursed hills, we should take minimal casualties. They intend to land in this area forward of the original defenses, where ‘Mountain City’ once stood. Their fire will only fill that gap in the mountains and the immediate areas of the pass.”