WHEN THE DEVIL DANCES
Calculation of PSI Overpressure Wave for Nuclear Explosions
Posleen Invasion Timeline
October 9, 2004
First Landing Five Globes: Landings: Fredericksburg, Central Africa, S.E. Asia, Uzbekistan.
July 28, 2005
First Wave 62 Globes: Primary Landings: East Coast North America, Australia, India.
August 15, 2005
Last Transmission: Australian Defense Command, Alice Springs.
April 12, 2006
Second Wave 45 Globes: Primary Landings: China, South America, West Coast N.A., Middle East, S.E. Asia.
May 14, 2006
Last Transmission: Chinese Red Army, Xianging.
May 28, 2006
Last Transmission: Turkic Alliance, Jalalabad.
June 18, 2006
Last Transmission: Combined Indochina Command, Angkor Wat.
December 19, 2006
Last Transmission: Allies of the Book, Jerusalem.
January 23, 2007
Battle of L3: Loss of Supermonitor Lexington, Task Fleet 4.2.
February 17, 2007
Battle of Titan Base.
March 27, 2007
Third Wave 73 Globes: Landings: Europe, North Africa, India II, South America II.
April 30, 2007
Last Transmission: Islamic Defense Forces, Khartoum.
July 5, 2007
Last Transmission: Indian Defense Force, Gujarrat.
August 25, 2007
Last Transmission: Forces of Bolivar, Paraguay.
September 24, 2007
First Battle of Irmansuclass="underline" Loss of Supermonitor Enterprise, Yamato, Halsey, Lexington II, Kuznetsov, Victory, Bismarck. Task Fleets 77.1, 4.4, 11.
December 17, 2007
Second Battle of Earth: Loss of Supermonitor Moscow, Honshu, Mao. Task Fleet 7.1, 4.1, 14.
December 18, 2007
Fourth Wave 65 Globes: Primary Landings: China II, East Coast North America II, Europe II, India III.
March 14, 2008
Last Transmission: European Union Forces, Innsbruck.
August 28, 2008
Fifth Wave 64 Globes: Primary Landings: West Coast North America II, East Coast North America III, Russia, Central Asia, South Africa, South America III.
September 17, 2008
Last Transmission: Grand African Alliance, Pietermaritzburg.
October 12, 2008
Last Transmission: Red Army, Nizhny Novgorod.
October 21, 2008
Official Determination: No coherent field forces outside of North America.
November 14, 2008
Second Battle of Irmansuclass="underline" Loss of Supermonitor Lexington III, Yamato II, Task Fleet 14.
December 1, 2008
Senate Select Committee classified report: Earth Human Population Estimate 1.4 billion Posleen Population Estimate: In excess of 12 billion.
May 26, 2009
Last operational Posleen force destroyed on Irmansul.
CHAPTER 1
The Commando's Prayer
Give me, my God, what you still have;
give me what no one asks for.
I do not ask for wealth, nor success,
nor even health.
People ask you so often, God, for all that,
that you cannot have any left.
Give me, my God, what you still have.
Give me what people refuse to accept from you.
I want insecurity and disquietude;
I want turmoil and brawl.
And if you should give them to me,
my God, once and for all,
let me be sure to have them always,
for I will not always
have the courage to ask for them.
–Corporal Zirnheld
Special Air Service
1942
Clayton, GA, United States, Sol III
2325 EDT Friday September 11, 2009 ad
The night sky over the ruins of Clayton, Georgia, was rent by fire as a brigade's worth of artillery filled the air with shrapnel. The purple-orange light of the variable time rounds revealed the skeleton of a shelled-out Burger King and the scurrying centauroid shapes of the Posleen invaders.
The crocodile-headed aliens scattered under the hammer of the guns and Sergeant Major Mosovich grinned at the metronomic firing of the team sniper. There had been three God Kings leading the Posleen battalion, what the invaders called an "oolt'ondar," a unit over size varying from a human battalion to a division. Two of the three leader castes had been tossed from their saucer-shaped antigrav craft with two precisely targeted rounds before the last had increased the speed of his saucer-shaped craft and flown quickly out of sight. Once he was gone the sniper began working on the Posleen "normals."
The rest of Long Range Reconnaissance Team Five held its fire. Unlike the sniper, with his match-grade .50 caliber rifle, the tracers from the rest of the team would be sure to give them away. And then it would be wheat against the scythe; even without their leaders, the battalion of semi-intelligent normals would be able to wipe a LRRP team off the map.
So they directed and corrected the artillery barrage until all of the remaining aliens had scattered out of sight.
"Good shoot," Mueller said, quietly, glancing at the dozens of horse-sized bodies scattered on the roads. The big, blond master sergeant had been fighting or training to fight the Posleen since before most of the world knew they existed. Like Mosovich he had seen most of the bad, and what little good, there had been of the invasion.