John Ringo: When the Devil Dances

Dedicated to:

Thomas Burnett, 38, father of three, and all the other warriors of flight 93.

They died that others might live.

October 9, 2004 — First Landing Five Globes: Landings: Fredericksburg, Central Africa, S.E. Asia, Uzbekistan.

July 28, 2005 — First Wave 62 Globes: Primary Landings: East Coast North America, Australia, India.

August 15, 2005 — Last Transmission: Australian Defense Command, Alice Springs.

April 12, 2006 — Second Wave 45 Globes: Primary Landings: China, South America, West Coast N.A., Middle East, S.E. Asia.

May 14, 2006 — Last Transmission: Chinese Red Army, Xianging.

May 28, 2006 — Last Transmission: Turkic Alliance, Jalalabad.

June 18, 2006 — Last Transmission: Combined Indochina Command, Angkor Wat.

December 19, 2006 — Last Transmission: Allies of the Book, Jerusalem.

January 23, 2007 — Battle of L3: Loss of Supermonitor Lexington, Task Fleet 4.2.

February 17, 2007 — Battle of Titan Base.

March 27, 2007 — Third Wave 73 Globes: Landings: Europe, North Africa, India II, South America II.

April 30, 2007 — Last Transmission: Islamic Defense Forces, Khartoum.

July 5, 2007 — Last Transmission: Indian Defense Force, Gujarrat.

August 25, 2007 — Last Transmission: Forces of Bolivar, Paraguay.

September 24, 2007 — First Battle of Irmansul: Loss of Supermonitor Enterprise , Yamato , Halsey , Lexington II , Kuznetsov , Victory , Bismarck . Task Fleets 77.1, 4.4, 11.

December 17, 2007 — Second Battle of Earth: Loss of Supermonitor Moscow , Honshu , Mao . Task Fleet 7.1, 4.1, 14.

December 18, 2007 — Fourth Wave 65 Globes: Primary Landings: China II, East Coast North America II, Europe II, India III.

March 14, 2008 — Last Transmission: European Union Forces, Innsbruck.

August 28, 2008 — Fifth Wave 64 Globes: Primary Landings: West Coast North America II, East Coast North America III, Russia, Central Asia, South Africa, South America III.

September 17, 2008 — Last Transmission: Grand African Alliance, Pietermaritzburg.

October 12, 2008 — Last Transmission: Red Army, Nizhny Novgorod.

October 21, 2008 — Official Determination: No coherent field forces outside of North America.

November 14, 2008 — Second Battle of Irmansul: Loss of Supermonitor Lexington III , Yamato II , Task Fleet 14.

December 1, 2008 — Senate Select Committee classified report: Earth Human Population Estimate 1.4 billion Posleen Population Estimate: In excess of 12 billion.

May 26, 2009 — Last operational Posleen force destroyed on Irmansul.

The night sky over the ruins of Clayton, Georgia, was rent by fire as a brigade’s worth of artillery filled the air with shrapnel. The purple-orange light of the variable time rounds revealed the skeleton of a shelled-out Burger King and the scurrying centauroid shapes of the Posleen invaders.

The crocodile-headed aliens scattered under the hammer of the guns and Sergeant Major Mosovich grinned at the metronomic firing of the team sniper. There had been three God Kings leading the Posleen battalion, what the invaders called an “oolt’ondar,” a unit over size varying from a human battalion to a division. Two of the three leader castes had been tossed from their saucer-shaped antigrav craft with two precisely targeted rounds before the last had increased the speed of his saucer-shaped craft and flown quickly out of sight. Once he was gone the sniper began working on the Posleen “normals.”

The rest of Long Range Reconnaissance Team Five held its fire. Unlike the sniper, with his match-grade .50 caliber rifle, the tracers from the rest of the team would be sure to give them away. And then it would be wheat against the scythe; even without their leaders, the battalion of semi-intelligent normals would be able to wipe a LRRP team off the map.

So they directed and corrected the artillery barrage until all of the remaining aliens had scattered out of sight.

“Good shoot,” Mueller said, quietly, glancing at the dozens of horse-sized bodies scattered on the roads. The big, blond master sergeant had been fighting or training to fight the Posleen since before most of the world knew they existed. Like Mosovich he had seen most of the bad, and what little good, there had been of the invasion.

When they first got orders to fire up any targets of opportunity while on patrols it did not seem to be a good idea. He’d been chased by the Posleen before and it was no fun. The aliens were faster and had more endurance than humans; getting them off your trail required incredible stealth or sufficient firepower.

However, the invaders never seemed to sustain any pursuit beyond certain zones, and the LRRPs had sufficient firepower to wipe out most of their pursuers. So now they took every chance they could to “fire-up” the invaders. And, truth be told, they took a certain perverse satisfaction from a good artillery shoot.

“Took ’em long enough,” Sergeant Nichols groused. The E-5 was a recent transfer from the Ten Thousand. Like all the Spartans the sergeant was as hard as the barrel of his sniper rifle. But he had a lot to learn about being beyond the Wall.

“Arty’s usually late,” said Mueller, getting to his feet. Like the sniper, the team second, who always took point, was draped in a ghillie cloak. The dangling strips of cloth, designed to break up the human outline and make a soldier nearly invisible in the brush, were occasionally a pain. But it was manifestly useful in hiding the oversized master sergeant.