He gestured for the TC to give up his crewman’s helmet and plugged it into the intercom. “Son, don’t worry about getting shot. Forget the SheVa for a second and get me up on a hill. I’ve got to get a look around.”
The Bradley obediently made a hard left and headed up the nearest slope. There was a house at the top, or had been — it was a shattered shell now — and the Bradley driver added insult to injury tearing up the driveway and into the yard. But it was a hell of a view.
Simosin had snuck up to the fighting positions during the battle and had seen the valley rippling with Posleen. What it was filled with now was… bodies. Human and Posleen, but mainly Posleen. Here and there a fighting vehicle smoked, but looking at the results by the light of the fires and the moon, he was convinced that they had charged across the entire valley at the cost of maybe a half a battalion of troops. And they had been taking that every few hours during the defense.
“Holy Mary Mother of God,” he muttered. “Holy…” He looked down at the TC and shook his head. “Get a squad out on security, get the RTO to contact headquarters and get me a relay to General Horner. Tell them to pass on that we’ve taken Savannah and are preparing to continue the advance.”
Angela shuddered as the giant tank rolled up the hill towards them. Other tanks, much smaller, were spreading out to either side and there were other vehicles underneath it.
The Posleen that had been guarding them weren’t firing; they seemed as shocked by the situation as the human captives. The hundreds of thousands of Posleen in the valley were just gone, with the last few survivors being hunted down ruthlessly. And now the tanks were driving up their hill and surrounding their position.
The giant tank, it must be one of the SheVa guns she had seen on TV, ground up to within a few dozen yards of the Posleen and then just stopped. It sat there for what seemed like forever and then a door opened in the base, flooding white light down onto the ground. An elevator dropped out of the door and all the way to the ground then opened and a single human stepped out. He was wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses and had a plasma rifle cradled in his arms, muzzle down.
He put a hand in his pocket and walked up the slope, looking around at the humans and Posleen as a massive spotlight turned on at the top of the SheVa. The spotlight swung around for a moment and then bathed the group in white light, flooding out the sight of the massed tanks. But in the darkness the sound of opening doors, squeaking turrets and pounding feet made it clear what was going on.
The single human walked up to the group and looked around until he spotted the God King on his saucer. He walked over to the alien, looked him up and down and then said one word:
“Leave.”
Angela looked at the leader of their tormentors and wondered what would happen. If it came to fighting, she was going to hit the ground and hope for the best. She suspected that there were riflemen out there, now, but in a fight if one of the tanks opened fire it would be all over for the humans.
She wasn’t sure if the Posleen could understand English or not. She’d heard that some could. But they never spoke it, just gestured. Usually for a person to put their head down to be cut off.
Now the God King looked down at the human and slowly fluttered his crest. He had to know more or less what was being demanded of it. And what the penalty would be for refusal.
Finally he raised his crest to its full height, lifted his plasma cannon, slowly, and turned his saucer around. In seconds, all the Posleen had faded into the night.
Angela looked up at the giant tank, the SheVa, and wondered for a moment why there was a picture of a rabbit on the front. Then she passed out.
Mitchell lowered the stairs of the personnel door and waved a hand in the general direction of his head at General Simosin. The general, who was sitting on the troop ramp of a Bradley, just grunted and went back to spooning down MRE beef stew. He had taken off his helmet and LBE and all of it was piled on the tail of the track.
“I just talked to Keeton,” the general said after another bite. He wiped up a bit on hisll, n then wiped it off his hands onto his filthy BDUs. “He kept trying to get me to say that I was back at Green’s Creek. Especially when I told him my lead element was reporting from halfway to Rocky Knob.”
“I’m beginning to wish I still was, sir,” the colonel replied, looking up at the SheVa. It didn’t look too bad from the back, but he knew the sides looked like Swiss cheese. “There’s going to be one hell of a bill for this repair.”
“Oh, don’t be that way,” the general grunted. “You’re the hero of the piece. Do you know how rare it is to recover Posleen captives? If it wasn’t for me controlling the traffic, and, of course, the Posleen still being all over the place, why we’d be crawling with reporters.”
“Ah, fame.” Mitchell snorted and then sat down on the perforated metal stairs. They dug into his butt, but since he ached from head to toe it wasn’t really noticeable. “That and a few billion credits will get this SheVa running again. We’re not exactly dead in the water, General, but we’re going to need some repairs before we’re fully combat effective again. Among other things we lost the main power bus for the MetalStorms right at the end. And we need more MetalStorm packs; I don’t know if there are any more around.”
“Yep.” Simosin glanced up at the wall of metal and then shrugged. “Your repair battalion’s got priority of movement and there’s a full battalion of MetalStorm supply trucks headed down the road from Asheville. I’ll tell the division to map out a spot down valley for you guys to do your repairs. You’re still planning on going over Green’s Pass?”
“It’s easier to access on both sides, sir,” Mitchell said with a nod and a yawn.
“You’re going to be swinging in the breeze over in the Tennessee Valley,” the general noted. “I’ve got all I can handle pushing up this way. And I can’t move behind you to support you, not with a whole division. You do too much damage to the roads.”
“Breaks of the game, sir,” the colonel replied. “We can’t get across Rocky Knob, not and leave anything you can use as a road. And even going up to Betty will tear things up. More than they are, that is.”
“Hmm.” Simosin looked around and smiled as an Abrams pulled to a stop beside his Bradley. “I think this is about the right cue.”
Mitchell watched Captain LeBlanc hoist herself out of the turret and chuckled. “Big tank, little lady. I think there’s something Freudian there.”
“I know why you’re thinking of Freud,” the general replied with a snort. “And I think it’s Freudian. I was thinking ‘big gun, little lady.’ ”
“You sent for me, General?” the captain said, saluting. After the general returned the salute she nodded at Mitchell. “Colonel.”
“Captain,” Mitchell replied soberly. “I’d like to thank you for all your support. We wouldn’t be here without your unit.”
“True,” she said immodestly. “But it wasn’t just my battalion or we both would be dead. I remember reading somewhere, Keegan or On Killing, I don’t recall which, that the purpose of tanks is not, as it is generally believed, to break the lines by shock, but to get themselves so entrapped by the enemy that it triggers in the infantry a ‘rescue’ reaction. ‘Oh, look, those stupid tankers are way the hell over there and if we don’t go get them they’re going to get kilt.’ I thought about that, from both sides, while we were riding to Balaclava.”