"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 3 - When the Devil D" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

In the east it was much the same. The Appalachian line stretched from New York to
Georgia and linked up with the Tennessee River to create an uncrossable barrier from the
St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. The Appalachians, however, were nothing compared to
the Rockies. Not only were they lower throughout, but they had passes that were nearly
as open as flatland. Thus the Posleen found numerous places to assault all along the line.
And the fighting at all of them, Roanoke, Rochester, Chattanooga and others, had been
intense and bloody. In all the gaps regular formations, mixed with Galactic Armored
Combat Suits and the elite Ten Thousand, battled day and night against seemingly
unending waves of Posleen. But the lines held. They held at times only because the
survivors of an assault were too tired to run, but they held. They bent from time to time
but nowhere had they ever been fully sundered.
The importance of the Appalachian defenses could not be overstated. With the loss
of the coastal plains, and much of the Great Plains, the sole remaining large areas for
food production were Central Canada, the Cumberland plateau and the Ohio Valley. And
although the Canadian plains were high quality grain production areas, their total
production per acre was low and they were effectively unable to produce a range of
products. In addition, while there was increasing industry throughout British Columbia
and Quebec, the logistical problems of a broad-based economy in nearly sub-Arctic
conditions that had always plagued Canada continued even in the face of the Posleen
threat. It was impossible to shoehorn the entire surviving population of the U.S. into
Canada and if they did the survivors would be no better off than the Indians huddling in
the Gujarrat and Himalayas.
Lose the Cumberland and Ohio and that would be for all practical purposes the end
of active defense. There would be humans left on the continent, but like all the other
major continents, they would be shattered survivors digging for scraps in the ruins.
Knowing that the lower Great Plains were indefensible the forces there, mostly
armor and Galactic armored suits, had retreated, never engaging unless they could inflict
terrific casualties. This retreat had ended near the Minnesota River for much the same
reason as the Siberian retreat. However, the Posleen had succeeded in one objective,
whether they knew it was an objective or not. In the long withdrawal, the 11th MI, the
largest block of GalTech Armored Combat Suits on Earth, was destroyed.
All of these defenses were predicated on the Posleen's major weaknesses: inability
to handle artillery and inability to cross significant barriers. The God Kings were able to
engage aircraft and missiles with almost one hundred percent certainty but still were
unable to stop indirect, free-flight artillery. So as long as they were in artillery range of
humans they were vulnerable. And because of their odd mental dichotomy, it was
virtually impossible for them to overrun modern defensive structures. Posleen attacks that
carried the first layer of a prepared defense normally involved casualty rates of one
hundred Posleen for every human killed; even with their overwhelming numbers they
simply could not take more than the front rank of a prepared defense. And virtually all
the defenses along the Rockies and Appalachians were layered with large units up and
multiple supporting units. So the Posleen came on and they died in such vast numbers
that it was impossible to count. And they lost. Every time.
Now, in most areas humans crouched behind their redoubtable defenses while the
Posleen created a civilization just out of artillery range. And in between was a weed-
choked and ghost-haunted no-man's-land of shattered towns and ruined cities.
And it was this wilderness through which the LRRPs patrolled.
"Let's head out," Mosovich said quietly, slipping his binoculars into their case. The
binos were old technology, not even light gathering, but in conditions like this they
worked well enough. And he liked to have a completely nonelectronic backup; batteries,