John Ringo - When the Devil Dances

“I will keep that in mind,” Orostan said, gesturing to his communications monitor to give the orders to move up valley. “Nonetheless, we shall prevail.”

“Oh, yes,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “We shall. Nothing can stop us now.”

“I get six landers up, sir,” Pruitt called. “Five Lampreys, one C-Dec. I don’t know where the rest are.” This would be his first “warshot.” He had fired the fixed simulator at Roanoke, where the impact area was all of eastern Virginia. But he’d been told it was different with actual penetrators and in the SheVas; the mobile guns, for all their immense size, were much more susceptible to the shock of firing.

“Probably on the ground,” Major Mitchell said, tapping his screen and highlighting the appropriate unit. “Hit this one and this one,” he said, flipping them so they highlighted. “Then we get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Yes, sir,” Pruitt said, laying the gun on a C-Dec almost directly over the former Mountain City. He was nervous on several levels. They were about to make themselves a gigantic target and the death of SheVa Fourteen had been far too noticeable to think that they were invulnerable. And keeping them alive was going to be about hitting these damned maneuvering ships, not the easiest thing in the world. And then there was firing his first warshot. So, as he waited about a half a second until the C-Dec outlined in green his mouth was dry and his palms were sweating. But he was doing his drill and going to by God let them know that Bun-Bun had arrived. “TARGET!”

“Confirm!”

“ON THE WAAAAAAAAAY!” the gunner called and squeezed the trigger. The result felt like being inside a massive bell that had just been hit by a giant. The command center was heavily sound-proofed, but the result of firing wasn’t so much “sound” as a vast presence that rang through their bodies, shook the massive structure of the tank like a house made of straw and vibrated every surface. It was the most overwhelming, frightening and invigorating feeling he had ever experienced; like he truly was controlling Shiva, the God of Destruction.

“Target!” Major Mitchell called as the lander stopped in midair and dropped like a stone; that was going to make a nice monument once it cooled in a few years. He laid his aiming reticle on the Lamprey over the western valley. “Second target!”

“TARGET!”

“Confirm!”

“ON THE WAAAY!”

Cally ducked into the tunnel and headed back. The tunnel was cut out of the heart of the mountain behind the O’Neal household. When the first Michael O’Neal had settled these hills, he had been just another fortune seeker in the gold rush. He quickly determined two things; that he could make more money selling moonshine to the other miners than by mining himself, and that having a bolt hole to escape from the revenue agents was a good thing.

Subsequent generations had taken the lessons of the first Michael O’Neal to heart and the bolt hole had, from time to time, been expanded, improved and restocked. The tunnel ran back to a mineshaft that was the center of the complex. Another tunnel ran back to the house, connected through the basement, and three other tunnels ran off to various exits; when Papa O’Neal had complained about no bolt hole he had been speaking from experience.

The mineshaft was reconstructed during the Cold War as a true nuclear bomb shelter, with heavy steel replacing the original wooden supports. It was capable of withstanding a near strike by a nuclear weapon and had been stocked, and restocked as necessary over the years, for three years of almost completely autonomous survival.

Cally opened the inner door to the mineshaft and looked back. “Hurry up , Gramps!” she shouted.

“Done,” he called. “Coming…” and the world went white.

“SON OF A BITCH!” Pruitt shouted as all the viewscreens went black then flickered back on. “What in the hell?!”

The western valley of the Gap had a towering mushroom cloud over it and fires had started in every direction. The devastation area was wider than that from the SheVa explosion and there were no landers visible at all.

“Catastrophic kill!” Major Mitchell said. “Yeeeha! Get us the hell out of here, Schmoo!”

“What in the hell caused it, sir?” Pruitt asked as the shockwave hit. “Whoa big fella!”

“Posleen ships use antimatter as an energy source,” Indy said. “You probably managed to penetrate their fuel magazine. I’ve seen the schematics for them; they’re hard to hit and even harder to penetrate. Congratulations. But we’ve lost some systems from the EMP. Nothing major; most of our stuff is hardened and the EMP really wasn’t all that high.”

“A couple more of those and we won’t have to worry about any landers,” Pruitt said, patting his control panel. “Good Bun-Bun, good rabbit. EAT ANTIMATTER, Posleen-Boy!”

Orostan raised his crest to full height and screamed as the shockwave rocked his C-Dec. “WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!”

“There must have been two of them,” Cholosta’an said with a resigned flap of his own crest. “I’m glad we were landed.”

“ESSTUUUUUU!” the enraged oolt’ondai yelled.

“There was no report, Oolt’ondai,” the Kessentai snarled. “Nothing. It must have just moved into position! I don’t know why it waited until then to fire. It is fortunate that we were not all in flight.”

“Well, we’re all getting up now ,” Orostan snarled. “All ships in the air! Find this damned gun and destroy it! Stay low except when you must cross the ridges, then look for it quickly and drop back down. Tenaral, forward! Find it, destroy it if you can, locate it and cripple it at the minimum. Go!”

“Any station this net, this is SheVa Nine,” Major Mitchell called. The frequency was designated for anti-lander units. There was damned little chance that anyone was monitoring it, but just in case there was another SheVa in range to fire he could use some help. “Any unit. This is SheVa Nine.”

Of course, with the loss of Fourteen, there were only forty other SheVas in existence and he was pretty sure he knew that the nearest was in Asheville, but it beat chewing on his fingernails.

“SheVa Nine, this is Whisky Three-Five,” a female voice replied. “Go ahead.”

“We are retreating up the Little Tennessee Valley,” Mitchell said as the gun rounded Hickory Knoll. Firing Point Two was on the shoulder of the Knoll, but they needed to get it between them and the Lampreys and C-Decs that were undoubtedly chasing them. It wasn’t the landers that he was worried about, though. “We are in engagement with an estimated forty landers of both types. SheVa Fourteen was engaged and destroyed by some sort of flying tank. I don’t have a thing onboard to engage them; we could use some cover fire if anyone has anything useful. What sort of unit am I talking to?”

“Uh, SheVa Nine, stand by over,” the voice replied.

He flipped through the codes that he had, but he didn’t have an AA unit listed for Whiskey Three Five. Since the landers could only be engaged, for all practical purposes, by SheVa guns, there weren’t many AA units of any stripe left; most AA personnel had been swallowed by the regular forces.

“SheVa Nine, this is Whiskey Three-Five actual,” a different, more assured female voice answered. “We’re a Screaming Meemie unit attached to Eastern Command, over. Our orders are to move forward and engage the Posleen forces in direct fire mode. What is your situation and location, over.”

“We’re at UTM 17 379318E 3956630N. Our situation is we are engaging an estimated forty landers of all shapes and descriptions. We’re okay with that, but there are some new flying tanks that are a pain in the butt. I think a Screaming Meemie unit is just what the doctor ordered, over.”