It was near the Tuckasegee crossing, at Dillsboro, that the roads forked. There, Highway 23 separated off and went to Asheville. That was a critical juncture; just up the road at Waynesville was another Urb and if the Posleen got that far it was a mostly open plain all the way into the city. For that matter, at Balsam Gap the road crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway. Since that was a support road for the majority of the Appalachian Line, getting up onto it would permit the Posleen to spread nearly at will. And just east of Waynesville they would hit Interstate 40; that would permit them just about unrestricted movement.
There was part of a division out of Asheville headed towards the Balsam mountains. But Asheville was under heavy attack on two fronts and couldn’t spare much in that direction. Major Mitchell had, therefore, decided to head up the road to Balsam, using the SheVa and the MetalStorms to slow the Posleen advance. This program was not without its detractors; the main road to Balsam Gap was not going to be usable by the SheVa, which meant going off-road. And the terrain around Balsam Pass was worse than what they were crossing at the moment.
But that obstacle was far off. For now it was simply a matter of surviving the descent.
“Good Lord,” Indy said, looking at her own screen. “It’s even worse in daylight!”
The route down from Betty Gap was a normal Appalachian mountainside, carpeted in a mixture of moutain laurel and deciduous trees with a thin covering of loam over schist and gneiss rocks; the morning light had brought with it a thin layer of the wispy fog that gave the Smoky Mountains their name and the pearlous light made the scene almost unreal. Especially since it also was an almost six-hundred-foot drop to the valley in less than a mile, a good bit of it relatively unbroken slope. They had discovered to their occasional despair that the thin coating of loam tended to strip off and act as a lubricant when a seven-thousand-ton tank tried to cross it.
“Sir?” Reeves said in an exhausted tone.
“Go slow,” the major replied. “If we start to slip just… put it in reverse.”
“Yes, sir,” the private said, gently revving the tank in idle. “Of course, I could just put it in forward and try to go down really fast.”
“Please don’t joke,” Indy said. “I’m surprised we haven’t blown a track or a bar yet; I don’t want to think about what hitting the valley floor at ninety miles an hour would be like.”
“Just… take it slow, Reeves,” the major repeated, gripping the arms of his chair and leaning back.
“Bun-Bun would have something quippy to say right about now,” Pruitt said, leaning back like the major. “But at the moment I’m too terrified to come up with anything.”
“Just think of it as skiing?” Reeves muttered.
“I don’t think this will slalom very well.”
“Captain Chan,” Mitchell said, switching to the Storms’ frequency. “We’re going to have to attempt this slope. There is a road along the ridge that should handle your tanks; I suggest you try that first, rather than trying to toboggan after us.”
“Agreed,” Chan replied. “And… good luck.”
Wendy slid from between two of the children and walked to the entrance of the cave. She should have been out like a light, but for some reason she had started awake about ten minutes before and been unable to get back to sleep. Elgars was standing watch, staring off to the east where the first faint glimmer of light could be discerned. The lights of Franklin had been extinguished, but fires had been set throughout the valley, the Posleen being nearly as incendiary as Old World mercenaries. She could barely see the forms moving down below, but she knew that thousands, tens of thousands, millions of Posleen were pouring past to the north, headed for Knoxville, headed for Asheville. Many of them perhaps pouring into their former home.
She looked at her watch and nodded. That was probably what had awakened her.
“Has it gone off yet?” she asked.
Elgars shook her head. “I thought it should have gone off about five minutes ago.”
“ ‘There should have been an earth-shattering kaboom,’ ” Wendy intoned. “ ‘Where was the earth-shattering kaboom?’ ”
“The Martian, right?” Elgars asked.
“You remember?”
“Nah, I saw it while I was watching the kids the other day,” the captain said. As she did, there was a faint shudder in the floor of the cave, and then a second stronger one. It felt like a very small earthquake. To the east, there was a gout of light and a section of land settled slightly then formed a giant, smoking crater.
“I feel, really ambiguous about this,” Wendy said after a moment. “I just lost quite a few friends. People that I care about. On the other hand…”
“On the other hand they were already dead,” Elgars said, standing up and brushing off her butt. “Or as good as. Most of them would have become rations for the Posleen, a use that we have prevented. And we got who knows how many Posleen in there. Yes, it wasn’t pretty. War isn’t.”
“Easy enough for you to say,” Wendy snapped. “Those were my friends.”
“Wendy, with the exception of you, and Shari, and the kids, and…” She stopped and counted on her fingers then nodded. “And Papa O’Neal and Cally and Mosovich and Mueller, the people we just buried are all the people I know in the world. We, I, just buried all my nurses, all my doctors, all my therapists under a billion tons of rubble. They’ll probably never be pulled out; they’ll just put up a monument with a list of names. I did that. With my hands. And if you think I don’t have some problems with that, you’re not the friend I thought you were. But if I had it to do over again, I’d do it over again. Because it was the right decision. Morally and tactically.”
“You’re so sure,” Wendy said quietly.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” Elgars said with a snort. “It’s your turn for guard anyway. Go ahead and think it over for the next few hours. Then get some rest; it’s a long way to Georgia.”
Orostan had found that patience was like a tool with the Indowy. It was clear that the engineers were going as fast as they could, so simply being there and watching patiently was his best bet. But with the coming of dawn, the bridge, a hastily constructed span of I beams torn from buildings and wooden planks, was nearly complete.
“You have done well, thresh,” the oolt’ondai said. “There will be other bridges to build; there is one to the north that will be more difficult. I want you to look at the human maps and make plans to create one more swiftly there. Understood?”
“Yes, lord,” the Indowy replied.
“Your clan yet exists,” the Posleen commander said. “Continue to serve me well and it will be permitted to continue. Fail me, and the last of your clan will be eliminated. It shall be as if you were never born. Understand?”
“Understood, lord,” the clan chief replied. “We will need maps and any pictures of the next bridge that are available.”
“I will ensure you have them,” Orostan replied.
Cholosta’an’s head came up as there was a rumble to the southwest. “What was that, lord?”
“I’m not sure,” Orostan said. “Perhaps this area is prone to earth movements,” he added, forgetting that Cholosta’an was a native-born.
“Not that I’m aware of, lord,” the Kessentai said. “And… I hate to say it, but that is from the direction of the underground city.”
“Arrrrrh!” the oolt’ondai shouted, pulling up his tactical net. “Telenaal fusc! Aralenadaral, taranal! I will eat these humans, body, blood, bone and SOUL!”
“The city is gone,” Cholosta’an said, looking at his own display in disbelief.