When the Devil Dances

Cutprice glanced at the two letters. He had come up from the ranks himself and he was a little short on college education, but he was a fast and accurate reader. The letter from the psych was the normal bureaucratic gobbledygook. The patient was refusing “treatment” and acting manifestly crazy. The shrink tried to cloak that with words she thought the colonel probably hadn’t heard, but in that the psychologist was wrong; the colonel had heard them before from shrinks talking about him. The letter from the captain was a bit different. Straightforward, spelling wasn’t too great, but that was normal for enlisteds which was what she really was. She wanted to see another shrink, her original one was treating her like she was nuts. Yada, yada. Huh?

“She says she’s got two people’s memories?” Cutprice asked.

“Apparently so, sir,” Mansfield replied.

“No wonder her shrink thinks she’s nuts,” the colonel mused. “She says she thinks the Crabs did it to her.”

“Her treatment was experimental, sir,” Mansfield noted. “It… sort of hangs together. And she doesn’t want to discontinue treatment, she just wants to continue with a psychologist that doesn’t think she’s nuts.”

“Sure, if you’re willing to believe she’s not,” Cutprice said.

“We’ve got a lot of people who are a few bricks short of a load,” Wacleva pointed out. “Look at Olson, I mean, nobody is sane if they go around wearing a God King crest all the time.”

“Well, sure, but…” Cutprice paused. The captain had apparently been a pretty good shooter and she might be a good addition. He read the postscript and frowned. “She says she knows Keren and it got forwarded by Sergeant Sunday. Both of those are recommendations in my book. Better than any fucking shrink’s.”

“That is one of the reasons I’m here, sir,” Mansfield noted. “I talked to Keren and he really went off. He didn’t know she was out of her coma and he wants to go see her. Now. He really had good things to say about her. ‘Greatest shooter on Earth. Natural leader. Crazy as a bedbug…’ ”

“But I can’t afford to send him to North Carolina just to straighten this out.” Cutprice picked up the bottle of bourbon and poured himself a drink. “I’ll tell him that myself and why. Next suggestion.”

“Nichols,” said the S-1. “He’s not an officer, but I cross-checked the records for any of the Ten Grand who have been in contact with her and they both went through the 33^rd sniper course before the Fredericksburg drop. In the same class no less. He transferred to the LRRPs and he’s stationed down in Georgia or North Carolina, in that corps zone. If you send him orders to go see her, he could stop by and talk. Get an idea if she’s nuts or what. But he’ll need written orders; they won’t let the riff-raff in the Sub-Urbs.”

“Nichols?” the sergeant major replied dubiously. “He’s a decent troop, but for one thing he’s not Six Hundred and she is and the other thing is he’s… just a troop. Nothing against Nichols, but he’s just a spear-carrier.”

“Well, the other suggestion is that I know his teamleader,” Mansfield said. “And Jake Mosovich ain’t just a spear-carrier. If I ask Jake very nicely, he’ll probably even do it.”

“I know Mosovich too,” Cutprice said with a chuckle. “Tell ’im if he doesn’t, I’ve got pictures from an SOA convention he doesn’t want to see the light of day. And video from a certain AUSA convention elevator. Okay, send Nichols and ask Jake to backstop. Tell Nichols you just want him to stop by and say ‘Hi,’ but tell Mosovich the real reason they’re there. It’s pointless to add, but tell him to handle it as he sees fit and ask him for an after-action report. Also, put him in touch with Keren. If she’s not crazy, according to Mosovich, I’ll tell her psych to take a running jump at a rolling donut. If she is nuts, and unusable nuts, I want her off the rolls. She’ll always be Six Hundred, but I don’t want her messing up the rolls of the Ten Thousand. Clear?”

“As a bell,” Mansfield said with an evil grin. “I’m sure that Mosovich could use a little authorized ‘comp’ time away from his daily rut. He’s probably getting bored at this point.”

* * *

Mosovich swallowed the last of the jerky and washed it down with a swig of water from his Camelbak just as there was a “crack” and a puff of smoke from the saddle.

The device he dropped on the trail had started life as a scatterable mine. The devices were packed into artillery rounds and fired into battlefields to “scatter” and create a problem for the enemy to deal with.

The Posleen response to minefields was to drive normals across them. It was an effective method of clearing and, from the Posleen’s point of view, very efficient since they would scavenge the bodies for weapons and equipment then butcher the dead for rations.

Therefore, generally the humans didn’t use scatterable mines. While “every little bit helped” in killing Posleen, by and large minefields were pretty inefficient. There were, generally, and with the exception of Bouncing Barbies, better uses for artillery.