John Ringo: Hell's Faire

Jake eyed the thin trail along the top of the ridge. In about a hundred meters it started to curve south and flatten out.

“Ma’am, my advice is to run!”

“Cool,” Sunday whispered, watching the expanding mushroom cloud into which the shuttle was apparently going to fly.

“Yep, that’s the real and the nasty, sir,” Blatt said. “Finally the kind of support we’re designed for.”

“Three minutes: Standby for deployment,” Captain Slight said over the company frequency. “I hope like hell everybody’s awake. If not you’re about to be woken up the hard way.”

Sunday’s chair suddenly straightened then rotated in two directions so that he was standing up, facing backwards.

“All troops,” Major O’Neal said, “prepare to deploy.”

The shuttles suddenly accelerated past Mach One in a series of barely felt sonic booms, approaching the last hill. They continued to accelerate as they hit the first compression wave from the nuclear explosions and began to noticeably rock in the turbulence.

“WHOOOEEEE!” Blatt yelled. “Comin’ in hot and ROCKIN’!”

As the shuttles crested Oakey Mountain they began firing the combat suits at the ground, starting from the back of the shuttle and working forward.

Tommy felt the slam of ejection over his inertial compensators and bent his knees as the ground came at him at nearly a thousand miles per hour. His on-board compensators and the disposable inertial pack that he was wearing combined to slow his speed to just below the speed of sound before he entered ground effect where a Terran bounce pack included in the inertial set slowed him even more.

The ejection was noticeable but hitting the ground hurt . He was still going at over two hundred miles per hour and felt the shock through his whole body as the suit automatically tucked and rolled backwards.

He went through two more rolls, mainly due to the slope, before the suit was able to establish control and throw him to his feet and a screaming halt.

He immediately turned towards the assembly beacon in the valley and took a count of his troops. The whole group of Reapers were on the ground and, despite exiting after him, were already bounding for the beacon.

Tommy started to shake his head and quelled the reaction, setting his suit to max-run instead and heading down the hill. He had a lot of catching up to do.

Mike threw the full power of his inertial compensators and half-flew, half-bounced from his position on the shoulder of Oakey Mountain to the battalion staff assembly beacon at the intersection of Black Creek and Silver Branch. It was a point of pride to be the first out and the first assembled, even if he did have farther to go.

“Scouts out,” he snapped as his foot touched down. “Two teams south, three teams north.” He looked around and then went flat into the streambed. Bravery was all well and good but there was plenty of time to get killed on this mission.

“Boss,” Stewart said, checking the intelligence schematic that collected sensor data from all the suits in the battalion. “I’d strongly suggest the last team up Rocky Knob. I’m getting some readings from up that a’way.”

“Concur,” Mike answered. He looked around at the battalion spreading through the bowl and took a deep breath as the first shuttle came under fire in the distance. “Bring in the fuel shuttles and make sure we’re covered on the south.”

“And you want us to go into that ?” Shari said, cradling Kelly under her body as the last shock wave shuddered away into stillness.

The sky to the east was still purple with fading plasma and a massive, complex, mushroom cloud glowed high into the air. Much of it was lost in the incoming cold front, but even that was momentarily shaken by man-made plasma.

“Well,” Mosovich replied, cradling one of the shivering children. “We’ve already given up our coats and our blankets and these kids are still going into hypothermia. So unless you have another suggestion?”

“What about radiation?” Wendy said carefully. She had killed Posleen, had seen them overrun her town, had fought her way out of an underground rat trap, but the towering mushroom clouds were a wholly new experience and she suddenly felt as if none of the previous battles had occurred, like a rank newbie. It was an odd and unsettling feeling.

If Mosovich was unsettled by the change in style of warfare, it wasn’t showing. “AID, radiation patterns.”

“Given the placement of the rounds, there should be no persistent radiologicals in the area of the O’Neal farm. All of the rounds were air-burst and any incidental fallout from irradiated casing or ground material should drift with the prevailing winds to the east. However, I have a secondary ability to sense harmful radiation and will warn you if we begin to experience any radiation high enough to be harmful to humans.”

“We’re going,” Elgars said, standing up. “We can argue all night and all that will happen is the children will die.”

“As if you care?” Shari snapped.

“I see it as my mission to get them to a place of safety,” the captain said, coldly. “Whether I like them or not is unimportant to the mission. And Cache Four is both hidden and strongly made. It is the best location to move to, despite being near the current fighting.”

“I’d like to find out about Papa O’Neal,” Wendy said. “And Cally.”

“All right,” Shari replied, staggering to her feet. Even with the enhancements they had gotten, it had been a long day and night. She was cold, tired, hungry and most of all tired. It felt as if she couldn’t put one foot in front of the other, especially while carrying Kelly. But she did it. And then another.

Elgars watched until she was moving and then took a position directly behind Mosovich.

All of them avoided looking to the east.

Cally picked herself up and looked around the interior of the cache. Several of the heavy ammunition and storage lockers had been tossed off their pallets and several small chunks of rock had fallen. But the Old Man had known what he was doing; a concrete arch and “plug” at the rear of the cache supported the only portion of the rock that wasn’t solid North Georgia granite.

“Fuck me,” she said quietly, wiping a little blood off her lip; her nose had taken the fall badly. It was a hell of a choice. Sit here and hope the shelter held or head out into who knew what. That had been the first nuclear blast in over a day, but that didn’t mean it would be the last.

Really, it wasn’t much of a choice. If the battle ran over her location she would probably die. But as long as the nukes stayed over by the Gap, and so far they had, and they weren’t too large, whatever that meant in terms of nuclear weapons, she should survive.

If she went outside, though, all bets were off.

“Fuck me,” she said again, louder, and started taking off her gear.

“I know there’s a pack of playing cards around here somewhere,” she commented, starting to pile boxes into a second shelter, under the concrete arch, just large enough for one. “Time to play some solitaire. I don’t think trying to build houses with them would work.” After a moment she picked up her helmet from where she had dropped it and put it back on.

“Blatt, pick up that ammo pack,” Sunday said, pounding past the Reaper. “We’re going to need all the ammo we can load.”

“Yes, sir,” the specialist said, grabbing the bulbous plastic sack. He heaved it over his left shoulder and clamped it on then stumbled slightly as it threw off even the suit’s massive gyros. “Gonna be hell to move with.”