John Ringo - When the Devil Dances

“I noticed,” the major said with a curse. “The good news is it’s the only part that’s heavily armored. The bad news is it’s the armor on the magazine.”

“No wonder they’re keeping a safe distance,” Pruitt said, sweeping the gun from side to side, looking for targets. “The really good news is that we’re nearly out of rounds so if they do penetrate the magazine there won’t be as large of a boom.” He thought about what he’d just said and shook his head. “Mommy!”

Mitchell keyed for the outside line and called the Screaming Meemie unit. “Whiskey Three-Five this is SheVa Nine; we could use some help, over.”

“What in the fuck is that, ma’am?”

Captain Vickie Chan shielded her eyes against the westering sun and shook her head. “I dunno, Glenn, I just don’t know.”

Captain Chan had joined the U.S. Army in 1989 in payment to University of Nebraska Army ROTC. The ROTC had provided the daughter of Fusian immigrants with a scholarship and monthly spending money. So when the Army in its infinite wisdom assigned her to Air Defense Artillery she had put on her soldier suit and wandered into the wilderness.

One fairly successful tour — very few women in ADA made captain in one hitch — had proven to her that a career in the Army was the last thing she wanted. Towards the end of the tour she had looked around at the senior females and determined that there were two types: sluts and battleaxes. She had no desire to be either so she calmly turned in her papers and went back to civvie street.

However, with the coming of the Posleen, she, along with virtually every other human who had ever worn military uniform, received a letter in the mail ordering her to service. Initially she was assigned to an armor unit, but with the need for anti-lander systems and the creation of the initial systems to combat them, a computer had spit out her name near the head of the list. She had ADA background and, at the time she was transferred, was a commander of an armor company. Perfect.

Then her burgeoning career — she had settled on battleaxe — had been nipped in the bud. She was assigned to one of the first Screaming Meemie units, a system officially referred to as the M-179 “Rosser” Medium Anti-Lander System, and, when it became apparent that the system was suicidal and useless against landers, there she had been left. There was no definable utility for the Meemies, but it was too much trouble to reconvert the Abrams tanks that they had been designed around back to direct fire systems and although the Meemies were very effective there were other systems that were just about as good. So for the last five years she had been shuttled around from one corps to another, shoring up a defense here and there, but generally shuttled back out of the way; nobody knew quite what to do with Meemies and few cared to learn.

At the moment she would have happily traded her current position for any of those other corps or any of those boring useless, days. It was apparent that this corps was in full flight, and driving forward to slow the Posleen down sounded like a permanent solution to a temporary problem; there was no way that one Meemie unit could stop a Posleen assault of this magnitude.

However, here she was. And maybe, just maybe, the company would survive. All they had to do was shoot down these… whatever they were.

“The computer’s balking,” Specialist Glenn said. The gunner was a female, like her commander, and had fine, light brown hair that constantly escaped from under her crewman’s helmet. She brushed it out of the way and looked up. “It refuses to lock them up. The radar sees them, but the computer won’t aim the gun.”

Chan sighed and slipped down into the turret. She was fairly sure she knew what was happening. The computer software had been pulled from the long defunct Sergeant York program. That system had been a nightmare from the word go, but it was the closest analogue to the Screaming Meemies, so the software had been assumed to be similar.

“Assumed” had so many connotations. In this case some bug in the software probably was telling the computer that these were not valid targets. She hated the software. If she ever found the idiots who had written it, she was going to line them up against a wall and shoot them.

With the commander’s machine gun; the ro-ro would probably miss.

She rolled her shoulders and shrugged. “Okay, Glenn, switch control up here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the gunner said. “What are you gonna do?”

“Use up a shitload of ammo,” she answered, switching the gun to manual.

She watched the… whatever they were for a moment. They would come sweeping in, high, really high, behind the SheVa, fire a few rounds into the back deck then bank off and come around for another shot. She considered it for a moment and hit another control.

“All tanks, flip your guns to remote control,” she said over the company net then switched to the SheVa’s frequency. “SheVa Nine, I need you to turn to the east and take a constant bearing for a few minutes, please.”

Mitchell felt like he was driving a wounded elephant. The SheVa was barely lumbering along and smoke was streaming from multiple strikes. So the call from the Meemie commander fell on welcome ears.

“I’d wondered where you’d gone,” he said. “Roger that, will do.”

He flipped to intercom and checked his screen. “Schmoo, turn east and head up the slope; don’t worry about going at max speed, just keep a constant course.”

“Yes, sir,” the private said, turning the lumbering gun to the east.

“Major Mitchell,” the warrant called. “This is Indy. We’re getting hammered, sir. We’re taking damage belowdecks.”

“I know,” Mitchell called back. “How bad is it?”

“We’ve taken some damage to the gun mounts which is really bad,” the warrant called back. “But they’ve got some redundancy in them. I think we can still fire. But if we take many more hits we’re going to be useless.”

“What’s the status on power?” Mitchell asked. “If we can speed up we can throw them off some. They aren’t coming down to engage; I guess SheVa Fourteen’s demise has put a scare in them.”

“I’ve restarted the reactors, sir,” the engineering officer replied. “But the turbines have a required warmup period; you really don’t want me to override it. Another five to seven minutes.”

“Okay,” the commander sighed. “It will have to do.” Mitchell considered his readouts and looked over at the gunner. “You gonna be up to this, Pruitt?”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said. “We’ve only got two rounds left.”

“I can read,” the commander said, gesturing at his controls. “I’ll call for a reload, but we’re going to have to put some distance between us and them first.” He shook his head at the next series of plasma strikes. “And get rid of our companions; I don’t want them shooting at our reloads.”

“Oh, good God no,” Pruitt chuckled.

“If I recall correctly, the fuel bunker for a Command Dodec is just below center,” Mitchell mused. “I think the next shot you get, they’ll be closer than they have been; under ten klicks…”

“You want me to try to get the fuel bunker,” Pruitt said.

“Simply aim with great care,” Mitchell said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

“Okay, here goes nothing,” Chan said. She watched the six circles rotating around the sky — she had hooked all six “tanks” together and now had them all under manual control — and picked a point above and behind the SheVa gun. “We really don’t want to shoot that thing in the ass.”