John Ringo - Hell's Faire

“And we can believe as much of that as we like,” Papa replied.

“We’ll give you some bona fides eventually,” O’Reilly said dryly. “I think that after you get to know us the truth will become obvious. And the appearance of Michael O’Neal, Senior, or Cally O’Neal will be cause for some comment. Given that they are presumed most thoroughly dead.”

“I doubt that telling them the truth would be a good idea, huh?” Cally said.

“Not particularly. The Terran authorities would take you for nuts and the Darhel would have you silenced in very short order. We have a need for well-trained, highly motivated and self-directing special operations experts. You, Mr. O’Neal, have a long track record of such things and Team Conyers was most impressed on their brief visit.”

“I wondered when that was going to come up,” O’Neal said, nodding.

“And, with the exception of the experience part, the same goes for Miss O’Neal. If nothing else, the Bane Sidhe have been, from time immemorial, believers that ‘blood tells.’ And you are of the finest… stock imaginable. I cannot imagine you failing to be a fine operative, can you?”

“No,” Cally said with a grin and a shrug, finally taking a sip of the Coke.

“Both of you have a need, new identities, new lives and… trust me, protection in that anonymity. If the Darhel got wind you were alive… We have a need, and you are two of the best examples of a round peg in a round hole I have seen in quite some time.”

Cally sighed. “What the hell, I’m in. As long as the missions make sense.”

“You won’t need to worry about missions for a while young lady,” the monsignor replied. “You’ve got quite a bit of schooling, of all sorts, ahead of you.”

“School?” Cally asked, aghast. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, he’s not,” Papa O’Neal snapped. “You need to get an education. Even if you’re doing this… whatever it is, for the long haul, you still need an education.”

“School,” Cally grumped. “Great. I bet they’ll take away all my guns.”

“Only to put them in an armory,” O’Reilly said with a smile. “As I said, ‘of all sorts.’ Just… try not to kill any of the nuns?”

“Better and betterer. Nuns.” But she nodded. “As long as they don’t bang my fingers with rulers, I’ll let them live.”

“Okay, Cally’s taken care of,” Papa O’Neal said with a frown, staring at the priest. “And I’ll come on board too; I’ll hunt your Sidhe for you. I’ll be the best darn hunter of Sidhe you’ve got, a fucking Wild Hunt all on my own self.” He paused and flexed his jaw as if preparing for a fight. “But I have one condition…”

Shari stood in the line of refugees, waiting in another drizzling, cold rain, to get processed into the Knoxville tent city.

Most of the children had already been taken away by social services. After all that sweat and all that suffering and all that fear they had just been… whisked away with a disapproving snarl as if it was her fault that they had been in the damned Urb or gotten into the middle of a nuclear war. At least they were alive unlike… God… Everyone.

Wendy had gone to the hospital to see her boyfriend, and Mosovich and Mueller had disappeared to wherever it was that troopers go after the fight, leaving her with just Billy and Kelly and Susie. And another tent city. Another batch of frightened, shell-shocked strangers. Another beginning.

She squished forward a few more steps, holding onto Kelly and Susie’s hands and keeping one eye on Billy. He seemed… better since the whole episode, as if reliving the nightmares had somehow cleansed him instead of making him worse. He probably would do fine. It would have been better if…

It would have been better if the Posleen had never come. It would have been better if Fredericksburg had never been destroyed. It would have been better if two million people hadn’t died in the Urb or five billion scattered across the globe. So thinking that it would have been better if one worn-out old man had not died was just…

“Hey, lady, wanna dance?” a voice whispered in her ear.

She spun in place, furious, and let go of Kelly to slap the ignorant, pig-headed bastard across the face but stopped, arrested by his eyes.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the stranger said, smiling and holding out his hands. He was a little too tall, and far too young and his hair was fiery red and long instead of short, thinning and gray. But there was something about the eyes, about the cheekbones… Something about the huge wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek.

“Pity,” he said, taking her hands and starting to sway. “I’d heard you liked to dance. ‘Oh it’s a marvelous night for a moon-dance with the stars up above in our eyes… ’ ”

Shari didn’t know how she found him through the tears, but she managed to get her arms around him and after that everything was going to be okay. Somehow, beyond hope, beyond reason, it would all be okay.

David Drake considers explanations of books to be “bad art.” Well, I’m going to engage in some bad art as a means of apology.

What you have just finished reading is the ending of another book. I had never intended more than three books in this first portion of the novels that have come to be known as The Legacy of the Aldenata. I believe that a trilogy means three books, not four, five or nine. The reason there are four books comes down to the most unpleasant two words in modern America: September 11 th.

On the morning of 9/11 I had already completed ninety thousand words on When the Devil Dances . And then my brother called me and told me to turn on the television. At that time I was well on schedule for a delivery date of October 1 stbut from 9/11 to the beginning of October, I failed to complete a single additional word on that novel.

The novel was already scheduled, already announced. My publisher gave me extra time and more time, until it was down to the very wire. We cut some proofreading, it was hastily set and then off to the printer. And, of course, it was truncated. All my fault.

I’ll admit that the maximum range of an excuse is zero meters; this is not a request to be excused, I’m just telling you what happened and why. And, like Shari, I will not cry over an incomplete book. Compared to 3,000 dead, thousands out of work and the ongoing war, one book that’s not completely up to snuff seems a pretty minor point.

So if you take the two books and put them together, rip out the “and back in the last book” stuff in this one, you have one complete book called When the Devil Dances , the originally conceived third book in the trilogy.

Go ahead. Feel free. Rip the back off of WtDD , get some scissors and glue…

Changing subjects, quickly, people have asked me quite a few questions about this series, and since this “trilogy” is done I thought I’d share a few of the answers in this venue.

The Posleen War was originally conceived sometime in 1985. There was a glimmer of an idea before that but the major pieces, a technologically inept enemy, “friends” that had many levels to them and a major ground war, came to me while I was on guard duty on a mountain in Sinai.

I had been… dissatisfied with some of the other novels that had handled alien invasion. Admittedly, if a space-faring species with faster than light travel wants to take Earth they are probably going to succeed. Once a species “owns” the gravity well, there’s not much you can do about it.

Ergo, for humanity to survive (and have the book be much more interesting than “and then all the humans died and the evil aliens lived happily ever after”) the aliens have to be hamstrung. But, why would aliens with FTL be incapable of using their full potential?