"Ply a trade?" Mosovich asked. "I get the point. But you don't have to worry about human threats either."
"Oh, I'm not worried," Wendy said, stroking her rusted rifle. "It might be a bit screwed up, but it will do for a club if it comes to that . . ."
CHAPTER 16
Ground Force Headquarters, Ft. Knox, KY, United States, Sol III
1453 EDT Thursday September 24, 2009 ad
General Horner read the debrief of the recon team with a blank expression. His intelligence section was of two minds about it; Mosovich had an excellent reputation, but nobody had ever seen flying tanks before.
Horner didn't have a problem in the world with the information. It was bad. That was normal.
He sighed and pulled up a graph that he knew he looked at too much. It was his own AID's estimate, based upon all available information, of . . . relative combat strength in the United States. It took into account that the casualty ratio of humans to Posleen tended to be about one thousand to one, but it also took into account the dwindling supplies of soldiers and Posleen birthrates. What it said was that sometime in the next twelve months, when the current crop of Posleen nestlings reached maturity and were given their weapons, there would be enough Posleen to swamp every major pass in the Appalachians. And it wouldn't even take smart Posleen.
Add in smart Posleen and things just went right down the old tubes.
The report from Georgia, though, was very troubling. He knew that Rabun was considered one of the less well maintained defenses, mostly because it had hardly been hit. There was a defense specialist down there, the name hovered on the edge of his recollection, but they needed more than that.
And Bernard was there. That would give the Posleen all the advantage they needed.
What to do, what to do . . .
First he typed in orders for the Ten Thousand to prepare for movement. They could stay in place, they needed the break, but they went to a four hour recall and were ordered to begin packing all their gear for a move. Cutprice was probably already packed, but it never hurt to be sure. He considered doing the same for the ACS, but if he did O'Neal would probably put everybody in suits and head for . . . Oh . . . shit.
He looked at the map again and shook his head. That put a twist in the whole plan. He really needed to not mention the situation to O'Neal, who really needed a few more days rest. Getting the battalion south fast, though, would be tough. Or not.
He checked the inventories and they had a sufficiency of Banshee stealth shuttles in inventory. The shuttles had been ordered when it appeared the Galactic largesse was unending. In twenty-twenty hindsight he wished they had the same relative value of suits, but they had to play with the hand they were dealt. If it really dropped in the pot in Georgia he could fly O'Neal and the Black Tyrone down by shuttle. Most of them were out west, but he should have some warning before it dropped in the pot.
That was the extent of the forces he had immediately available. He would have his staff start looking at what else was available to reinforce in the Gap. But then he noted that it only had one SheVa. Moving one of those was not a short term operation.
He tapped the controls and noted that there was a SheVa in movement to Chattanooga.
Not any more.
* * *
Mosovich looked at the faзade of the building. The business had once been a family-owned barbecue restaurant and Mosovich had vaguely recalled it from years before when he visited the area. The local VFW had been next door.
Now it was a bar designed to separate soldiers from their money in the shortest possible time.
The front deck was packed with soldiers, most of them lightly armed and heavily drunk. Squeezed into spaces in between were the waitresses and other working girls.
He winced as a soldier stumbled out the main door. The unshaven sergeant was supported by a lightly clad female who couldn't have been over the age of consent. The sergeant squinted at the sunlight, grabbed the girl by a tit and stumbled off down the street, weaving on and off of the sidewalk towards a nearby motel.
"Not," he said.
"Not," Wendy agreed as she shivered in the wind. "Five gets you ten he gets rolled. Any other bright ideas?"
"Just one," Mosovich said, looking up at the sun. They had managed to pack the whole group into the appropriated Humvee by much sitting on laps and packing some of the children in the bed. But traveling much further would be problematic. And the afternoon was upon them; it was October and most of the kids were underdressed for nighttime fall temperatures. "How you doing, Captain?"
"I'm . . . fine," Elgars said, shifting her body to track on the sergeant as he stumbled past. "The . . . number of armed personnel is throwing me. I'm . . . feeling twitchy."
"That's normal," Jake admitted. "And not out of reason; there've been some hellacious firefights in these military towns." He looked around and shook his head. "Franklin is out. There are probably places frequented by the locals, but it would be pointless to look for them."
He looked at the sun again, counted on his fingers then looked at Wendy. "Do you trust me?"
She regarded him calmly for a moment and then nodded. "Strangely enough, yeah. Why?"
"I've got a buddy who's got a farm near here. He's got a granddaughter not much older than Billy and he'd probably be more than happy to have some company. We could go there, but it would be an overnight stay."
"Oh." Wendy looked at Shari, who shrugged then looked at the sun herself. "We need to get the kids out of the cold before dark."
"That won't be a problem," Mosovich said. "Getting back might have been a problem, but not getting there. And, frankly, he's probably got some clothes that would fit them; they're the worst outfitted kids I've seen in years."
"All we've got for the surface is what we arrived in," Shari said quietly. "Billy's wearing a jacket I borrowed a couple of years ago. And none of the other children have anything."
As if on cue, Kelly pulled at Shari's hand. "Mommy, I'm hungry."
"That's it," Mosovich said. "The farm or go back to the Urb as a bad plan."
"I don't want to go back underground," Elgars admitted. "Not just yet. I . . . like it up here."
"So do I," Shari admitted, looking up at the sky. "I miss the wind. Okay, if you're sure this friend of yours won't completely freak at having five adults and eight kids descend on him out of the blue."
"Not a problem," Mosovich said. "He can handle anything."
* * *
Michael O'Neal, Sr., pulled the Palm from his belt and frowned. Since the interesting events a few years back he had updated his security systems. The cameras at the front gate now transmitted back to a webserver that, in turn, sent a compressed video stream to the device. So he found himself looking at a Humvee piloted by Mosovich. Not a big deal, Jake had been up a couple of times in the last year. But the fading light showed that the Humvee was packed with other bodies.
O'Neal rolled the huge wad of Red Man in his cheek from one side to the other and frowned in thought. He was not a huge man, but he had an aura of squat stolidity that was almost preternatural; it appeared as if it would take a bulldozer to move him. His arms were overlong for his body, reaching, simianlike, almost to his knees, and his legs were just a tad bandied, adding to the overall aura of a slightly annoyed male silverback.
He jacked up the gain on the distant cameras and zoomed in on the front seat. Jake was driving and the guy next to him had to be Mueller from past descriptions. But Mueller had two kids on his lap and unless Papa's eyes were deceiving him there was a female leaning between them. Hot diggety. Just what he'd been praying for this last few months; maybe there was a God who took care of fools and drunks.