John Ringo: Hell's Faire

“So we’ll lose less than two oolt’ondai,” Tulo’stenaloor nodded. “That is fine. But we need a response, a ‘counter-attack’ as the humans would use. Prepare one of the elite oolt’ondai and all the remaining tenaral for an assault upon them as soon as they are on the ground. And two oolt’pos.”

“We are almost out of trained forces,” the S-2 pointed out.

“I’m aware of that,” Tulo’stenaloor said dryly. “But if we can’t keep this pass open until others are breached, it will all be for nothing. We need to crush these metal threshkreen before they can get dug in or we’ll be trying to kill them two days from now. Have the oolt’ondar move immediately to the hills above the landing zone, in this gap where they will be out of danger from the heavy fire. Tell them to wait to attack until the unit lands and is in the process of unloading.”

“The humans are in two groups, estanaar. They have two ‘resupply’ shuttles filled with antimatter following them.”

“That should be an interesting target,” Tulo’stenaloor said with a rise of his crest. “Have the oolt’ondai wait until those shuttles land in particular, but ensure that they are struck. That is most important.”

“Very well, estanaar,” the officer replied. “What shall we tell Orostan?”

“Nothing for now,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “He has his own problems. And more than enough forces at the moment; it is when he hits resistance that he will need those passing through right now. Get the oolt’ondar moving immediately; ensure they are heavily weaponed. As the humans would say, they must ‘load for bear.’ ”

Cally O’Neal looked at the pack and shook her head; she wanted to load for bear but there was just too much to carry.

She had spent half the night curled up in a ball, alternately sleeping fitfully and waking up to cry. She wasn’t very good at crying — it really ticked her off when she did — but she had a lot to cry about.

When the word of the Posleen invasion had come, both of her parents were recalled to duty. Because her mother was considered “off-planet,” Cally’s older sister, Michelle, had been moved to safety on a distant Indowy world. Cally had been left behind in the care of her grandfather on the family farm in Rabun County in north Georgia. The farm just happened to be about five miles on the good side of the Eastern U.S. line of defense.

The Posleen had hit the Wall at Rabun Gap several times over the last few years, but this was the first time they had ever succeeded in breaching it. Now they were all over the place and she was alone in a friggin’ cave, behind the lines and without the comfort and advice, not to mention combat support, of Papa O’Neal.

It was not the Posleen who had killed Papa, though, or at least not directly. Something had hit one of the landers when it was passing over their valley and the antimatter containment system had failed. The explosion, equivalent to a one-hundred-kiloton nuke, had come as she was moving back to the deeper shelters. But Papa O’Neal had still been in the outer bunker.

She had found him later, or at least an arm, which was as far down as she could dig, but it was still and cold. She had covered it back up and headed to Cache Four where she had spent the night.

The cache had everything a person on the run could need. Papa O’Neal had spent plenty of time opening up Viet Cong tunnels and he knew what the best ones stocked. He had simply updated the list to the times.

The first thing she donned was her body armor. The Class IIIA armor was custom made — nobody made body armor for thirteen-year-old girls — but she carried it without thought; she had spent so much time already in her life in body armor it was like a second skin. The armor was studded with pouches for ammunition and grenades, and they were all filled.

The base of the armor had latch points for more equipment and she had a holstered Colt .44 magnum on one side and a combat knife on the other. The .44 was a revolver — she just didn’t have the wrists for a Desert Eagle yet — but she was nearly as quick with a speed-loader as most people were with a magazine. She also had two quart canteens — they would supplement the camelbak built into the back of the armor — and a buttpack with an absolute minimal of survival materials.

In the pouches she had her basic load, 180 rounds of 7.62, five fragmentation grenades, five white phosphorus grenades and two smoke. She probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to use the smoke, but if she needed it she would need it bad. With the armor, pistol, ammunition pouches and grenades she was already looking at over forty-five pounds. Which was half her body-weight.

Around her neck she had a set of night-vision goggles. They were lightweight and had binocular zoom capability, both optical and electronic. As such they had it all over standard helmet monoculars. But, with the weapons sights she wasn’t sure she should carry them. And the helmet she had just put on seemed like an unnecessary extravagance. Papa O’Neal was always adamant about it when they were going in hot against Posleen, but if she was on the move she wasn’t sure she could afford the extra weight.

She thought about Papa O’Neal and a lump rose in her throat. He had always seemed… invincible, immortal. He had fought in just about every brush-fire war that existed for nearly two decades then came back to the farm when his father died. With her mother dead and Dad off with the ACS, he had been all she had and for him it seemed like a chance to make up for never being there when her father grew up.

He had taught her, intensively, from the first day she arrived. And she, in turn, had been an apt pupil. Demolitions, close combat, long distance shooting, she had taken to all of it as if only having to be reminded. It had seemed a very odd pair to the few people who knew them, the ancient mercenary and his towheaded granddaughter, and jokes had been made, carefully out of his hearing, about “the farmer’s daughter.” The jokes had tended to die, though, rather than increase as she “blossomed” and turned into a real Appalachian belle, albeit one that walked around with a panther’s stride and a pistol on her hip. And they had stopped, or at least changed fundamentally, after she shot the sergeant major.

The command sergeant major of the 105 thhad been quite taken by the twelve-year-old beauty in the hardware store. So taken that he had finally trapped her in the nuts and bolts section, which at the time he thought very appropriate.

When a simple “go away” had been insufficient, and when the fat old soldier had his hand down her newly filling blouse, Cally had simply drawn her Walther and shot him in the knee. Then walked away while he rolled around on the ground screaming like he’d actually been hurt or something.

It wasn’t like it was the first time she’d shot a man, and the other time had been far messier. An assassin, an acquaintance of Papa O’Neal from his Phoenix days but young again courtesy of a bootleg rejuvenation, had come recruiting. When it was clear that Papa O’Neal was uninterested in becoming a hired gun for whatever shadowy group Harold had represented, it was also clear that the assassin had revealed too much to let them continue breathing. Cally had realized things were going wrong when Papa’s right hand had started twitching like he was reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, a sure sign of agitation that she had used to good effect while playing poker against him.

Aware that things were about to go from bad to worse, and dismissed by the normally paranoid assassin as an irrelevant eight-year-old loose end that would soon be tied up, she shot the visitor in the back of the head while he was drawing on Papa O’Neal.