"Excellent," Tulo'stenaloor said, flapping his crest in reply. "The assault starts tomorrow at midday. With this information we can know when the damned 'ACS' is coming."
"We can change some of their information," Goloswin said. "Make them think that things have been said which have not or tell them false items. But that will quickly be detected. Or we can simply listen in. As long as they do not realize that we are acting on the basis of the information they should never know."
"That is good," Tulo'stenaloor said. "I think we'll just listen for now. Ensure that Esstu has this information."
"I shall," Goloswin bubbled happily. "It is so very timely!"
"Yes," Tulo'stenaloor said, fingering his crest ornament in thought. "Very timely indeed."
* * *
"Balanosol, your forces are a mess," Orostan snapped. He cast a baleful eye over the Kessentai's oolt and raised his crest in anger. The oolt'os were half starved, many of them showing prominent shoulders and backbones, and their equipment was falling apart.
The Kessentai, on the other hand, was a resplendent figure in gold and silver harness—he had enough heavy metal on his harness alone to feed his oolt for a month—and his tenar sported the heaviest model of plasma gun.
"I think," the oolt'ondar continued, "that all things considered, you shall have the honor of leading my portion of the assault on the morrow."
The conversation was taking place under the light of a half moon, just north of Clarkesville where the millions of Posleen were opening up and getting in position to begin the assault. It would be a three hour movement for the front rank from this rear assembly area to the forward assembly area in the ruins of Clayton. By the time they reached Clayton, they could be expected to be under artillery fire; not that that should last long for once.
"Well, I don't think so," Balanosol said, raising his own crest in defiance. "I have seniority over half these young nestlings, including your sorlan here. Let them take the honor of the front rank; I intend to survive this assault."
"Do you?" Orostan hissed. "Then look you at the woodline."
The Kessentai turned his head to the side and, in the dim light, saw the flicker of metal in the woods.
"You agreed to obey our orders," Orostan hissed quietly. "That was your word. Not to whimper at the first one you were given. You have eaten our rations and drunk our water and breathed our air for the last month; you owe us edas. And the reason that you have, that we have permitted your fuscirto oolt to eat up our stores, is that we needed you, and other scum like you, to take the front rank. And if you think you're going to limp along in the rear, scavenging the leavings of your betters, think again. You can either move to your 'jump-off' position, or I will have my oolt'ondai kill and eat you and your pitiful oolt. You see, the humans may kill you. But if you don't move out I will kill you. If for no other reason than to remove your blot from the race."
As the rag-tag oolt moved up the highway to their designated position, Cholosta'an flapped his crest. "So this is what you meant by 'political units.' "
"Indeed," Orostan said with a snap of his muzzle. "Better to weed out those like him, better for the force, better for the race. If he survives he will just grab the first useless piece of territory he comes to."
"Instead of getting a cut of everything," Cholosta'an said. "But even your 'political units,' even my unit will eventually have to brave the Gap. And we will not do so unscathed."
"Oh, if we were far enough back we would," Orostan disagreed. "But I, for one, have no interest in walking up the pass.
"I'm too old to ride tenar everywhere like you young nestlings," he continued, as the first oolt'poslenar drifted over and dropped to the ground, light as a feather. "Nope, no Gap and no tenar for us; we're riding in style."
* * *
Shari yawned as she looked out the window of the Humvee. Franklin was coming up and when they got to the Urb it would be back to the daily grind. But, she recalled with a smile, not for long.
"So you're really going to move up there?" Wendy asked. "What the hell am I going to do?"
She pulled at the leather pants she'd picked up at the O'Neals', trying to get a better fit. Papa O'Neal had been more than kind and insisted on outfitting the kids. So when she found the pants while digging in the back of a closet, and clearly liked them, he had also insisted on her wearing them. And when Papa O'Neal insisted, people listened. Only later did she find out they were the late Sharon O'Neal's. She had to admit that the lady must have been in shape; she'd had to roll the cuffs up and was still having trouble getting the . . . ahem, stretched out. Sharon O'Neal must have had legs like a giraffe and a butt the size of an ant.
"I thought you were moving out to live with Tommy," Shari answered. "And, yeah, I think I'll take him up on it. He's a very nice man, a very gentle one for being so . . . dangerous. And God knows growing up on that farm will be better for the kids than in the Urb."
"Well, I'm happy for you, even if I'm sad for me," Wendy said. "And we'll just have to see with Tommy. He just made staff sergeant so I should be eligible to move to enlisted housing. It's on Fort Knox and the joke is it's guarded tighter than the gold. I can live with that; I'm tired of being in a target."
"That is the base of the Ten Thousand, right?" Elgars said. She was perched on Mueller's lap on the front seat and she gently rotated his snoring face—he had passed out almost immediately on boarding the truck—away from hers. "So that is where I would go if Colonel Cutprice accepts me 'back'?"
"Yeah," Mosovich said. "And I'm going to recommend that."
"Thank you, Sergeant Major," she said quietly. "I'd like to get back to a unit. I feel a real need to get back to grips. Maybe because it's the only thing I know." She looked out the window to the east and shook her head. "What in the hell is that? And where did it come from?"
Mosovich looked where she was pointing and nodded. "I guess Eastern Command decided that we needed some backup."
The SheVa gun was just setting into place, to the east of Dillard. To the north, paralleling the highway and occasionally touching on it, was a smashed track of its movement.
"That's a SheVa gun," Mosovich said. "An anti-lander gun. There's another one down by corps headquarters, but you didn't notice it since it was camouflaged."
As he said that, green and brown foaming liquid began to pour out of inconspicuous ports along the side of the base. The foam quickly hardened creating a mound that built up along the base of the gun system.
A large tractor trailer, with what looked like two brass missiles on the back, backed up to the rear of the SheVa gun and tilted one of the "missiles" upwards, sliding it into a port on the rear of the gun.
"That looks like the biggest . . . bullet in creation," Shari said.
"That's more or less what it is," Mueller answered. "They fire full rounds, not projectiles, bullets, with propellant bags or something. They're the biggest cartridges ever made and the most complicated; among other things the system uses a plasma enhancer that requires resistors to be threaded through the propellant. They're not just stuffed with cordite or something."
"In an hour it will look like a big, green and brown mound," Mosovich said. "Then when landers come over the horizon, it just drives out and engages; the foam flakes off relatively easily. And it's a hell of a lot easier to set up than that much camouflage netting."