John Ringo - When the Devil Dances

Unfortunately the trenches and bunkers that had once been there had not been replaced and there was hardly any work done yet on the tertiary lines. What that meant was that if there was a breach, a serious one, the Posleen, conceivably, had a nearly clear shot at the heart of the corps. And because this part of the front had been stripped of support, there wouldn’t be anything to stop them short of the mountains. Certainly there wasn’t anything short of Franklin. Which meant making sure the defenses were as ready as possible was high on the list of priorities.

He shook his head as the ambulance pulled away from the base of the wall. Admittedly the pace of work meant that there would be a slight increase in injuries. But that was the price of war; better a few accidents than a breach.

He ducked in through the armored door and threaded his way through the internal maze. The Wall really should have been called the Fortress; it was wider than it was high and filled with barracks, mess-halls, storerooms and magazines. Only the forward portion and a few points along the back were devoted to fighting; the rest was the facilities necessary to support an embattled division including shops and parts to keep the guns running.

Ryan continued on into the bowels of the facility until he came to a guarded door. He showed the MP his key-card and entered the command center for the Wall.

One glance at the status board told him most of what he had to know; the Posleen were pressing forward a solid block up Highway 441 and all side roads. The assembly area was Clayton and some smart Posleen had apparently moved two Lampreys into the area. They were marked on the schematic along with a note that artillery fire was being interdicted over the whole town. There was spot interdiction along the roads as well, indicating the presence of landers, but these were out of sight of the observation post on Black Mountain.

The command post was technically in charge of the division G-3, a bird colonel, but Ryan had long since found that the Division Plans officer, a major like himself, had a firmer grasp on moment-to-moment realities than the G-3. Not that Colonel White was the sort of loser that General Bernard tended to surround himself with. But Major Brandt tended to be more on the up and up.

He stepped over to the major’s command console and raised an eyebrow. “Anything I should know?”

“Full court press,” Brandt said, glancing up. “If they keep on this way, though, it should be something like Waterloo.”

“ ‘A near run thing’?”

“ ‘They came at us in the same old way…’ ”

“Ah,” Ryan said with an uncertain nod. “Better. I was afraid from the intel we’d gotten about that globe that they weren’t going to act ‘the same old way.’ ”

“Well, two? no, three years ago, we had a C-Dec get close enough that it could fire directly at us. I understand that was hairy; it had a space-capable plasma cannon and it really gouged up the Wall. But we still stopped them. And it got taken out by a company of Screaming Meemies. We’ve got a SheVa now, two from what I hear.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said unhappily. “I’m still jumpy about some of the stuff that the Lurps reported. There were indications of a massive ingathering, but this looks like it’s about the size of a single globe force, maybe four or five million. They’ve hit us with that before and bounced. I just… I dunno.”

“Same old same old,” Brandt said with a shrug. “Fine by me.”

“Just… keep your eyes open,” Ryan said. “I’m heading back to HQ; that’s where I’m supposed to be anyway.”

“Okay, have fun,” Brandt said with a grin. “I’m gonna be busy killing Posleen anyway.”

“Been there, done that,” Ryan muttered as he walked out of the command center. “Got the scars.”

Ryan wandered out the way he had come in, noting in passing that the level of activity in the hallways was increasing and that the automatic cannons on the top level had opened fire.

He tromped down the stairs to his Humvee and shook his head as the first of the Gatling guns opened up. Next month they had planned on rebuilding the wire and stake obstacles to the front of the wall, but it looked like that would have to wait.

He quickly drove through the serpentine road, slowing whenever groups of soldiers, who should have already been in place, crossed the road to their defense positions. There was a steady stream of vehicles heading to the Wall and the secondary defenses and half the time he felt like he was fighting against a salmon run. Twice MPs waved him off the road to let groups through in the opposite direction, but after a half an hour he finally reached the motorpool on the west side of the corps headquarters.

As he mounted the steps towards the former school he noted that the green-and-blue “hill” to the east was starting to shake and he looked to the south. Sure enough, landers were coming in view. Oh, this should be good.

“I feel… uncomfortable watching the assault from a place of safety, Oolt’ondai,” Cholosta’an said.

They were both observing through vision screens the progress of the assault. The lead companies, including Balanosol, had been for all practical purposes wiped out. There might be a few members of the surviving oolt that had been lead oolt’os, but none of the Kessentai had survived.

The humans were devilishly effective at finding and engaging the Kessentai, but the mass assault had masked a greater danger; among the “political units” were Kessentai and cosslain who had “taken a leaf” as the humans would say and were sniping the anti-Kessentai defenses.

The first to be removed were the automated cannons on the top. Once the type had been identified their detectors were easy to spot and Kessentai had engaged them, using manual sights since the automatics were overloaded by fire, from beyond the effective range of the human weapons.

Once those were reduced the slaughter of Kessentai lessened, making the attack more coherent, but there were still other guns engaging the Kessentai. These were engaged in order; the front rank Kessentai were now close enough to bring their oolt to bear and that added to the effect. By the time the fourth rank of the assault was in range of the miniguns all of the upper rank heavy weapons had been engaged and destroyed. Most of the guns were recessed, but if enough plasma is pumped into the hole it doesn’t matter.

“Ah, well, that relative safety will be reduced soon, eson’sora,” Orostan said with a snap of his mouth. The losses had been heavier than anticipated, including among the “political” Kessentai; the human heavy “sniper” weapons had been engaging them as the automatics were engaging the mass assault. “But I think we have their attention well and truly fixed on the front door, do we not?”

“Indeed, Oolt’ondai,” the younger Kessentai said. “And now?”

“And now, we slam the door,” Orostan answered, waving to a subcommander.

“Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about 146,” Wright said philosophically.

Alejandro ducked as another wash of plasma gouted through a firing port. “Or 144 for that matter!”

There was a clang from the armored door to the west as it bent inward, the paint on the surface beginning to smoke.

“Jesus!” Wright said, looking to the other two exits. The one to the east was still intact, apparently, but the smoking ruin of gun 146 was in the way to it. Their last exit was the door to the interior zones of the wall. It was in a “gap” in the firing points and as long as some random round didn’t punch out the four feet of rebar concrete they’d still be able to get out that way.