Yellow Eyes

Chapter 1

It was a cold, blue-green swamp under a violet sky. Lieutenant Connors had seen some swamps in his day; after all, he’d spent a number of years at the original “Camp Swampy,” Fort Stewart, Georgia.

“Nothing like this shit, though,” he muttered, as he struggled for a balance between conserving power for his Armored Combat Suit, and not sinking waist deep in the muck. Not sinking continued to win the toss as he reduced mass on his suit and applied power to forward thrusters to keep going even when the ground slid away in a lumpy slurry beneath him. His feet still sank ankle deep in the crud below.

The ACS encasing Connors was Galactic-built, but to human-drawn specifications. Despite this, and despite being symmetrically bipedal — two arms, two legs — and having a largish lump right where the head should be, the thing did not look too terribly human. In fact, it looked completely inhuman. For one thing, the suit had colored itself a dull blue-green to match the vegetation of the swamp. For another, it lacked obvious eyes and ears, while having a number of weapons stations sprouting from it.

The jury was still out on the camouflage. Other schemes had been tried. The blue-green mottled pattern on Connors’ suit had worked as well as any of them, and not one whit better. The Posleen’s yellow eyes were just different, different in their structure and different in what they saw.

Inside his suit, the lieutenant shrugged, unseen by any but the artificial intelligence device that ran the suit for him. He didn’t know what camouflage would work (neither did the AID) and just followed the latest guidance from higher on the subject.

Around him, likewise mottled in the blue-green pattern and likewise struggling for an acceptable compromise between longevity and speed, Second Platoon, Company B-1^st of the 508^th Mobile Infantry (ACS), was spread out in a very sharp and narrow “V” to either side of a churned-muck trail.

Ordinarily, on Earth, the trail would have been superfluous as a means of control and orientation. The Global Positioning System was capable of telling a soldier, or a group of them, exactly where they were all the time. On Barwhon, however, there was no GPS. Moreover, while the suits were capable of inertial reckoning on their own, by and large the enemy Posleen were not. Thus, the Posleen followed the trail and, thus, the MI were led to battle them along it.

Besides, the trail was the shortest distance to an American light infantry company cut off some miles ahead on the wrong side of a river ford, their backs to the stream and no good way to cross back under fire.

Connors, like the men of Second Platoon, moved forward under radio listening silence. They could hear the commands of higher, when higher deigned to speak. They could also hear the heartbreakingly precise reports and orders emanating to and from one Captain Robert Thomas, commanding the company trapped at the ford. They’d been hearing them for hours.

The MI troopers had heard, “Zulu Four Three, this is Papa One Six. Adjust fire, over.” They’d heard, “Echo Two Two this is Papa One Six. I’ve got a dozen men down I have to get dusted off.” They’d eavesdropped on, “Captain Roberts, we can’t fuckin’ hold ’em… AIIII!”

Connors heard Echo Two Two, which the key on his display told him was the brigade’s medical company, come back in the person of some breaking-voiced radioman, and say, “We’re sorry, Papa. God, we’re sorry. But we can’t get through for your dust-off. We tried.”

Things got worse from there.

“Echo Three Five, this is Papa One Six. We are under heavy attack. Estimate regimental strength or better. We need reinforcements, over.”

A Posleen regiment massed two or three thousand of the aliens. A light infantry company at full strength with the normal attachments was one twelfth that size… or less. In this case, the personnel replacement situation being what it was, the trapped company was less. Much less.

That’s a good man up there, Connors thought, in consideration of the incredibly calm tone of a man, Roberts, who knew that he and all his men were on the lunch menu. Too damned good to let get eaten.

Then came the really bad news. “Papa One Six, this is Echo Three Five, actual;” — the brigade commander — “situation understood. The Second of the 198^th was ambushed during movement to reinforce you. We have at least another regiment…”

Things really got shitty then, though the first Connors knew of it was when the point man for the company column shouted, “Ambush!” a half a second before the air began to swarm with railgun fleshettes and the mucky ground to erupt steaming geysers with the impact of alien missiles and plasma cannon.

The problem with killing the stupid Posleen, Connors thought as he lay in the muck, is that the rest of them get much, much smarter.

The air above was alive with fire. Most of this was light railgun fire, one millimeter fleshettes most unlikely to penetrate the armor of a suit. Enough was three millimeter, though, to be worrisome. That was heavy enough to actually penetrate, sometimes, if it hit just right. It had penetrated several men of the company, in fact.

Worse than either were the plasma cannon and hypervelocity missiles, or HVMs, the aliens carried. These could penetrate armor as if it were cheesecloth, turning the men inside incandescent.

Worse still were the tenar, the alien leaders’ flying sleds. These not only mounted larger and more powerful versions of the plasma cannon and HVMs, they had more ammunition, physical or energy, and much better tracking systems. They also had enough elevation on them that, at ambush range, they could fire down, completely skipping any cover the MI troopers might have hastily thrown up. Nor did the jungle trees, however thick, so much as slow the incoming fire. Instead, they splintered or burst into flame at the passing. Sometimes they did both. In any case, the air around Connors resembled some Hollywood idea of Hell, all flame and smoke and destruction, unimaginable chaos and confusion.

The only good thing you could say about the situation was that the Posleen apparently had few tenar. Otherwise, there was no explanation for the company’s continued survival.

Connors traded shots with the Posleen, round for round. That wasn’t really his job though. On the other hand, trying to do a lieutenant’s job was rough, once things heated up.

“Call for fire, Lieutenant Connors?” suggested his AID.

“Do it,” he answered, while cursing himself, I should have thought of that first. “And show me platoon status.”

The AID used a laser in the suit’s helmet to paint a chart directly on Connors’ retina. He’d started movement with thirty-seven men. It pained him to see seven of those men marked in black, dead or so badly wounded that they were out of the fight. Under the circumstances, they were almost certainly dead.

He keyed his attention on one particular marker on the chart. “Show me detail on Staff Sergeant Duncan.”

Instantly, that chart was replaced with another showing vital statistics and a record summary for one of Connors’ squad leaders. He didn’t need the record summary; he knew his men. The statistics were something else again.

Shit, Duncan’s on overload.

It took an experienced eye to see it. The first clue was the soldier’s silhouette projected by the AID. Duncan should have been prone or at least behind some kind of cover. He wasn’t; he had taken one knee and was trading shots with the Posleen, burst for burst. That was all well and good against normals; they were usually lightly armed. But doesn’t the idiot see the goddamned HVMs coming in?

It got worse on closer examination. Adrenaline was up, but that was normal. The brain activity was skewed though.

“AID, query. Analyze record: Staff Sergeant Robert Duncan. Correlate for ‘combat fatigue’ also known sometimes as ‘nervous hysteria.’ ”

AIDs thought very quickly, if not generally creatively.

“Duncan is overdue for a breakdown, Lieutenant,” the AID answered. “He has forty-four days continuous combat — without rest — now. He has over three hundred days in total. He’s stopped eating and has less than four hours sleep in the last ninety-six. Loss of important comrades over the past eighteen months approaches one hundred percent. He hasn’t been laid lately, either.”

“Fuck… Duncan, get down, goddamn it,” Connors ordered. The silhouette painted on his eye didn’t budge.

“Incoming,” the AID announced, tonelessly. The splash of friendly artillery fire began to play on the aliens surrounding the company. “I am adjusting.”

With the help of the artillery, that ambush was beaten off. It made no difference. The Posleen were swarming between the company and its objective. They were swarming in much greater than mere regimental strength. Much.

Duncan was a problem. He couldn’t be left behind; there were still thousands of Posleen that would have overcome and eaten him on his own. Connors had had to relieve the man and place his Alpha Team leader in charge of the squad. Worse, all you could get out of the sergeant were unconnected words of one syllable.

And I can’t leave anyone behind to guard him. I can’t even autoprogram the suit to take him back to base; he’d be dogmeat on his own.

At least the sergeant could follow simple orders: up, down, forward, back, shoot, cease fire. Connors kept him close by during the long, bloody grueling fight to reach the ford. They reached it too late, of course. Captain Roberts’ radio had long since gone silent before the first B Company trooper splashed into the stream.

By that time, Connors found himself the sole officer remaining in the company. That was all right; the company was down to not much more than platoon strength anyway.

Connors heard his platoon sergeant — no, now he’s the first sergeant, isn’t he? — shout, “Duncan, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Looking behind, the lieutenant saw his damaged sergeant beginning to trot back to the rear, cradling a body in his arms. Some friendly hovercraft were skimming the greasy-looking water of the swamp as they moved to reinforce the ford.

“It’s okay, Sergeant… First Sergeant. Let him go,” Connors said, wearily. “It’s safe back there, now. See to the perimeter, Top.”

Leaving the NCO to his work Connors sat down on the mound the Posleen had created apparently to honor the spirit and body of the late Captain Roberts. He began to compose a letter to his wife, back home on Earth.

“Dearest Lynn…”

The battalion had suffered grievously in the move to and fight for the ford. B Company was down to one officer and fifty-one others. Of the fifty-one, one — Staff Sergeant Duncan — was a psychiatric casualty. The rest of the battalion’s fighting companies were in no better shape.

The battalion commander was gone, leaving the former exec, Major Snyder, to assume command. Only two of the company commanders had lived, and one of those was chief of the headquarters company which didn’t normally see much action. In total, the battalion’s officer corps had left to it one major, two captains, half a dozen first lieutenants and, significantly, no second lieutenants. Like other newbies, the shavetails had died in droves before really having a chance to learn the ropes.

Connors thought he was lucky keeping his old platoon sergeant as the company first sergeant. Snyder had wanted to take him to be battalion sergeant major.

Somehow, Connors thought, I don’t think Snyder meant it entirely as a compliment when he let me keep Martinez.

“Sir,” Martinez asked, when they were alone in the company headquarters tent, “what now? We’re too fucked to go into the line again.”

The tent was green, despite the bluish tint to all the vegetation on Barwhon V. It smelled musty, and a little rotten-sweet, from the local equivalent of jungle rot that had found the canvas fibers to be a welcome home and feed lot.

“The major… no, the colonel, said we’re going home for a while, Top,” Connors answered, distantly. “He said there’s not enough of us left to reform here. So we’re going back to get built up to strength before they throw us in again.”

“Home?” Martinez asked, wonderingly.

“Home,” echoed Connors, thinking of the wife he’d left behind so many long months before.

“Attention to orders,” cracked from the speakers above the troopers’ heads as they stood in ranks in the dimly and strangely lit assembly hall.

“Reposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity, and abilities of…” The 508^th’s acting adjutant, normally the legal officer, read off the names of the remaining officers of the battalion. One of those names was, “Connors, Scott.”

“A captain?” Connors wondered when the ceremony was over. “Wow. Never thought I’d live to be a captain.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Skipper,” advised Martinez who was, like many in Fleet Strike, a transferred Marine.

“No, Top,” Connors agreed. “Would never do to get a swelled head. Makes too big a target for one thing.”

“The bars… look good,” Duncan said, staring at the wall opposite the headpiece of his medical cot. His voice contained as much interest as his blank, lifeless eyes. “The diamond looks good, too, Top,” he added for Martinez.

Outside of his suit, Connors and Duncan might have been taken for brothers, same general height, same heavy-duty build. Though fifteen or more years Duncan’s senior, Connors looked considerably younger. He was, unlike Duncan, a rejuv.

“How have you been, Sergeant Duncan?” the newly minted captain asked.

“Okay, sir,” he answered tonelessly. “They say I can be fixed up… maybe. That I’ll either be back to duty in a year or will never be able to go into the line again. They’re talking about putting me in a tank for psych repair.”

Patting the NCO’s shoulder, Connors answered, “I’m sure you’ll be back, Bob.”

“But will it be me that comes back?” Tears began to roll down the NCO’s blank, lifeless face.

“God… I don’t know, Bob. I can tell you that the tank didn’t make me any different on the inside.”

“Me neither, Sergeant Duncan,” Martinez added, more than a little embarrassed for the junior noncom. Martinez knew Duncan was going to remember the tears and feel the shame of them long after he and the skipper had forgotten. “I came out the same Marine I went in as… just younger, stronger and healthier.

“By the way, Skipper,” Martinez asked, turning his attention away from Duncan’s streaming face, “what were you doing before the rejuv? I was a retired gunny, infantry, and just marking time in Jacksonville, North Carolina… waitin’ to die.”

“Oh, I did a lot of crap after I left the Army, Top. Do you mean what did I do in the Army? I was a DAT.”

“What’s a DAT?”

Connors smiled. “A DAT is a dumb-assed tanker, Top.”

“So how did you end up in infantry, sir?” Duncan asked, showing for once a little interest in something.

“I hate the internal combustion engine, Sergeant Duncan. Just baffles the crap out of me. So when I got rejuved and they sent my unwilling ass to OCS I worked that same ass off so that I’d have a choice when I graduated. And I chose Mobile Infantry to keep the hell away from tanks.”

Duncan rocked his head slightly from side to side, which was also a bit more life than he had shown for a while. “Okay… maybe I could see that.”

“Let me see my e-mail, AID,” Connors ordered, alone in his cramped cabin aboard ship.

The cabin measured about six feet by nine, and had a ceiling so low Connors had to duck his head to stand up to stretch his legs. The bed was stowed against the wall and a fold-out table served as the desk on which rested the AID, a black box about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

The AID didn’t say anything. Neither did the e-mail appear holographically.

“AID?” Connors insisted, an annoyed quality creeping into his voice.

“You don’t want to see it,” the device answered definitively.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” Connors said angrily, heat rising to his face as blood pressure turned it red. “Just gimme my goddamned mail.”

“Captain — ”

“Look, AID, I’ve had no word from my wife since leaving Barwhon. Just give me my mail.”

“Very well, Captain.” The e-mail list appeared immediately, projected on the air over the desk.

Connors was surprised to see only a single letter from his wife. He opened it and began to read. It was short, a mere five lines. Then again, how much detail is required to say one’s wife is pregnant by another man and that she has filed for divorce.

Interlude

The outer defenses of the city were crumbling now, Guanamarioch sensed. The sounds of battle — the thunder of railguns, the clash of the boma blades, the cries of the wounded and dying — grew ever closer.

He felt a slight envy for those Kessentai chosen to stay behind and cover the retreat to and loading of the ships that would take the clan to their new home. Their names were recorded in the Scrolls of Remembrance and they would be read off at intervals to remind the People of their sacrifice. That was as much immortality as any of the Po’oslena’ar, the People of the Ships, might aspire to.

Yet instead of leading his oolt into the fight, Guanamarioch on his hovering tenar led them as they marched four abreast and one hundred deep towards the waiting ship. Other oolt’os, similarly, formed long snaking columns from the city’s outskirts all the way to the heavily defended spaceport.

Impatiently, the Kenstain in charge of the loading directed Guanamarioch to bring his charges to a particular ship and to load at a particular gate.

“And be quick, you,” the Kenstain demanded. “There is little time left before the ships must leave.”

Ordinarily the Kessentai would have removed the Kenstain’s head for such impertinence. This was, however, a time of desperation, a time when minor infractions had to be overlooked. Obediently, riding his tenar, the God King led his normals to the designated ship.

At the ship another Kenstain directed cosslain, a mutated breed of normals that were nearly sentient, to take Guanamarioch’s tenar and stow it. The God King removed his Artificial Sentience from the tenar, hanging it around his neck, as the cosslain took the flying sled away.

“Lord,” the castellan said, “your oolt is the last for this ship. The place for you and your band is prepared. Directions have been downloaded to your Artificial Sentience. Just follow it and stow the normals, then report to the captain of the ship.”

“Are you loading then?” asked Guanamarioch.

The Kenstain shook his head, perhaps a bit sadly.

“No, lord,” he answered, his teeth baring in a sad smile and his yellow eyes looking sadder still. “I will stay here and keep loading ships until there are either no more ships, or no more passengers… or until the enemy overrun the last ship we are able to begin loading.”

The God King reached out a single grasping member and touched the castellan, warmly, on the shoulder. “Good luck to you, then, Kenstain.”

“That, lord, I think I shall not have. Yet there are worse ways to die than saving one’s own people.”

“It is so,” Guanamarioch agreed.

Chapter 2

The country lay on its side, more or less, in a feminine S-curve stretching from west to east and joining the continents of North and South America. Beginning at the border with Costa Rica it ran generally east-southeast for a third of the way. Conversely, from its border with Colombia in the thick and nearly impenetrable Darien jungle it ran a third of the way west-northwest. The waist of the country, also feminine and narrow, went from the rump — the Peninsula de Azuero — that jutted out into the Pacific and then east-northeast to meet the land running from Colombia roughly one third of the way from the Colombian border.

Down the center of the country ran a spine of mountains with few passes and fewer roads running across it. North of this spine, the Cordillera Central, was mostly jungle, with a few cities and towns. South was, at least from the Costa Rican border to the narrow waist, mostly farm and pasture. There were two major highways, the Pan-American which ran generally parallel to the Cordillera on the southern side, and the Inter-American which ran the much shorter distance from Panama City in the south to Colon in the north.

More than half of the people of the place lived in the two provinces of Colon (not quite half a million) and Panama (about a million and a half). Of the rest, most lived close to the Pan-American highway where it ran from Panama City to the border with Costa Rica, south of the Cordillera Central.

The highway that joined the cities of Colon and Panama was not the only link between them. Colon fronted on the Caribbean to the north. Panama City edged along the Pacific to the south. Between them, like a narrow belt on a woman’s narrow waist, ran an artificial body of water that linked Colon and Panama City, linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and, in the process, linked the world.

This was the Panama Canal.

She’d been carved out of the living rock through an emerald-hued hell. Men had died in droves for every yard of her; died of the fever, of the rockslides, of the malaria, of a dozen tropical diseases to which they had had no cure and, initially, little defense. They’d died, too, of the drink that anesthetized them from the misery of their surroundings.

She’d broken one attempt to tame her; broken the men, chewed them up and spit out their corpses to rot. The skeletal remains of their rusted machines, vine grown and half sunken, still dotted the jungle landscape, here and there. But men were determined beasts and, eventually, had broken her in return.

For generations she had been the single most strategically important ten-mile-wide strip of land in the world. The commerce of all the continents and innumerable lesser islands passed through her, a lifeblood of trade. The nation which had owned her had ruled the seas with the power of commerce and with the power of war.

Two hundred and forty inches of rain a year were just barely enough to slake her thirst. A small fleet of dredgers were just enough to keep her free of the silt those rains washed down. Throughout her heyday the lives and labors of seventy thousand human beings had had no higher purpose than to serve and defend her.

She was the Panama Canal and, though aged and faded, she remained a beauty.

Yet her heyday had passed. The nation which had built her had lost interest as the greatest ships of war and commerce had outgrown her limits, as the people and nation that hosted her had grown to resent the affront to their sovereignty that foreign ownership of the Canal had represented. In truth, though, once the great enemies — Nazism, Fascism and Communism — had fallen, the security the Canal had represented had become, or come to seem, slightly superfluous.

Times change, though. Perceptions change.

Deep in the bowels of the “Puzzle Palace,” in a room few were aware of and fewer still ever visited, a troubled man gazed over the heads of banks of uniformed men and women sitting at computer terminals, onto an electronic map of the world glowing from a large plasma television. That monitor was one of three. To the right was shown a map of the continental United States and North America; to the left, generated by a complex computer program, a spreadsheet marked the anticipated decay of necessary world trade under the impact of Posleen invasion.

“We’re just fucked,” announced the man, a recalled three star general with vast experience in complex logistics and no little feel for commerce.

He repeated himself, needlessly, “Fucked.”

As the general watched, a red stain spread out across the center of the right-hand screen. As it spread, numbers dropped on the spreadsheet, some of the numbers changing color from solid green to blue to red to black. In a few cases those number dropped to zero and began to blink urgently.

“We’re going to nearly starve,” muttered the general, to no one in particular. “Even with the GalTech food synthesizers, we are still going to be goddamned hungry.”

Suddenly — the program was operating at faster than real time — a smaller stain in Central America oozed east- and southward to cut the Panama Canal. Within seconds every category shown on the left-hand spreadsheet plummeted. It became a sort of “Doomsday” Christmas tree of pulsing black numbers and letters.

A finger of red lunged north from Montana, before retreating southward again. “They’ve just cut the Canadian Transcontinental Railroad,” a functionary announced from behind his own computer monitor.

Moments later another notional landing touched down between Belleville and Kingston, Ontario. The mark of that landing spread. More fingers thrust north, east and west. Black dots appeared over critical locks along the canal system there.

Another landing appeared near Saint Catherine, Ontario. The Welland Canal, vital link between the inner Great Lakes and the eastern cities of Canada and the United States, turned black. A Canadian forces liaison officer, on the other hand, turned white as his country’s forces — paper thin for decades, the legacy of a mix of neglect, active hostility and eager toadying to the United Nations — turned from translucent to transparent before disappearing altogether.

“Cease work,” the general announced. “Reboot. After Action Review in thirty minutes.” The screens all went blank.

“Ladies, gentlemen. I am going to go see the chief.”

“Well, can we hold the Canal then, General?” the President of the United States asked of the gargantuan, shiny-domed, black four-star seated in the leather chair opposite his desk in the Oval Office.

The general was a big man — huge really — with so many medals, badges and campaign ribbons that he left off several rows of ribbons or the fruit salad would not have fit even his massive chest. To the left of General Taylor sat an apparently agitated woman from the Department of State. The woman was dressed… severely, the general thought. No other word would quite do.

“Hard to say, Mr. President,” the general answered. “We don’t have the troops to spare, not enough of them anyway. Nine divisions? Two or Three corps? In the Second World War we stationed seventy thousand troops there and thought we could hold it. But those seventy thousand would have been, at most — absolute worst case — facing a Japanese attack not much greater in size, operating at the ass end of a long and fragile logistic pipeline, and moving in the teeth of one of the greatest concentrations of effective coastal defense artillery and airpower in the world, and with ourselves having a broad material and technological advantage, plus sea, air, rail and road-borne supply. We have few or none of those advantages now.”

“What can we do then?” asked the President, his serious, middle-aged face creased with worry. He’d read the reports coming from the simulations conducted in the Pentagon’s bowels.

“We can spare maybe one division, Mr. President, some fire support ships, some anti-lander artillery, maybe even a few planetary defense bases. Maybe.”

“But that won’t be enough?” the President asked wearily. He was always tired, these days. So much to do… so much… so little time. Shit.

“Nope,” the general said with an unaccountable smile. “We need the Panamanians to defend themselves for the most part.”

“What do they have?”

The general shrugged calmly. It was his job to radiate calm and he was very good at his job. “Nothing much. A dozen large military police companies. Some veterans of the time they did have something like an army, though even then it was tiny, about a good-sized brigade. A fair number of American vets who have settled there over the last fifty years. But they’ve no industry to speak of; they’re a service economy. No long military tradition and what they do have is not exactly a tradition of success. I think the last battle they won was against Sir Francis Drake. Though, to tell the truth, beating Sir Francis was no small achievement.”

Taylor continued. “They grow a lot of food and could grow more. Their women are fertile as hell; half the population is under age twenty-five.” The general smiled at some old but very fond memories: Damned beautiful women they are, too, so unlike this poor drab from State. “Literacy rates are excellent, better than our own as a matter of fact. They’re hard workers… when there is work to be done. Unemployment is high, about fifteen percent, though that is still a lot less than the Latin American norm. On the plus side most of the unemployment is among young men. Plenty of available cannon fodder, in other words. Though they can’t hope to be able to train or pay to equip them.”

A word popped into the President’s mind unbidden: Expensive.

“Government?” the President asked.

The general raised one eyebrow and glanced at the woman to his left. He reconsidered on closer examination, Not a bad looking girl, really. Or she wouldn’t be if she dressed more like a woman and paid a little more attention to her face and hair. Maybe a bit thin, though. Does Foggy Bottom’s selection process rule out tits?

State answered, somewhat reluctantly, “Latin American normal, Mr. President. It’s a kleptocracy run by about one hundred interrelated families. From the outside, it looks democratic enough. And they don’t exactly rig their elections. But the government is always dominated by those families and decisions are almost invariably based on bribes and family interests. The only lasting exceptions to this rule was when they had a dictator in charge… and that was never more than a partial exception. The dictators have generally been corrupt, too.”

“Hah!” exclaimed Taylor, “an honest answer from State. Who woulda thunk it?”

The President ignored the jibe. “How do they feel about us?” he asked the representative from State.

She didn’t need to consult her notes; she was, after all, State’s desk officer for the Republic of Panama.

“Mixed, Mr. President,” she said. “Some of them have some lingering resentment over our occupation of the former Canal Zone. This is often mixed with the more general anti-gringoism you can find anywhere in Latin America. But, on the other hand, they are the most nearly ‘gringo’ of the Latins, themselves. Many of them speak at least some English. For that matter, many of them speak English as well as you or I. Their laws reflect our influence. Their culture is… well, some would say ‘heavily contaminated’… but, in any case, it is heavily influenced by ours. In some ways Panama is more American than Puerto Rico is.”

“Would they object to our return?” the President asked.

“Surely some would, sir.” State answered. “Sir… could I give you a short history of Panama and the Panama Canal?”

The President nodded his acquiescence; he knew as little of Latin America as virtually any president in United States history was likely to. This was generally very little indeed.

State looked around at the opulent office, collecting her thoughts.

“Panama was once a very rich place,” she began. “That wealth came from the same geographic oddity that gives them one of the highest standards of living in Latin America now, the narrowness of the isthmus itself and what it means for trade. In the old days, as the Audencia of Panama, virtually all the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru passed through Panama before being shipped to Spain. It was sent by ship to Panama City, then moved on slave, mule and burro-back to Portobello on the Caribbean. Mr. President, so much treasure passed through that there was only enough storage space for the gold, the silver had to be left in the streets. The Audencia also served as the nexus for the slave cartel.”

State hesitated, afraid to offend the general, before continuing, “Most of the blacks in Latin America outside of Brazil and the Caribbean coast could trace ancestors who came through Panama as slaves.”

The President raised an uplifted palm and gestured beckoningly with his fingers, twice: Come on? And?

State continued, “The treasure attracted pirates, mostly English speaking and always under English command. Most famous among these: Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, heroes in the Anglosphere but devils incarnate to Panama. Portobello and Panama City were attacked several times. Both were sacked, with everything that a sack means: rape, robbery, arson, torture, murder. It is my impression of the Panamanians that even they are not aware how deeply those long ago events scarred, and continue to scar, their collective psyche. They retain a trace of xenophobia today that is really remarkable in such a generally cosmopolitan and amiable people.”

State made a slight slashing motion with her right hand.

“Moving forward a few centuries, Panama became part of Colombia as the Spanish Empire broke up. Yet they never really thought of themselves as Colombians but as Panamanians; different, with different values and interests. While Colombia found its livelihood in mining and farming, Panama always knew that its unique position — the isthmus, again — bound it to commerce. When Colombia was wracked by civil war between liberals and conservatives, late in the nineteenth century, the fighting spread to Panama readily. While the liberals were crushed in Colombia itself, in Panama they won. The general was wrong about the last time the Panamanians won a fight.”

The general shrugged, eh?

“In any case, a Colombian expeditionary force was en route to crush the rebellion when we intervened. The details of our intervention, while amusing, are not very important. Suffice to say that we did intervene, that at our urging Panama did declare its independence, and that as an implicit condition of our recognition and protection they agreed to cede us the Canal Zone.”

State’s face took on a disgusted look. “Mr. President, there’s no other word for it, we gave them the shaft. The treaty between us was so patently unfair to Panama that even our own Senate initially was inclined to reject it.

“In any case, we ratified it because it did, at least, give us rights to build the Canal… and because no one actually suggested a fairer deal. The Panamanians accepted it, with profound reservations — disgust, really — because we had them over a barrel and they saw no choice.”

State shook her head with regret. “I am often amazed by how often in the history of the world a long-term problem could have been headed off before it arose with just a little application of even a minimal generosity. Except for the Versailles treaty there is perhaps no clearer example than the original Panama Canal treaty. Because of it the Panamanians could never be content, part of which is because of that streak of xenophobia they learned from the English pirates. Because of it we never felt quite right with upholding and defending the terms of the treaty; that’s how unfair it was. We renegotiated it several times to be more fair to Panama, but no amount of, mostly symbolic, fairness could wipe out the original insult until we agreed to leave, as we did in 1977.”

The general harrumphed. “We should have just kept it and to hell with Panama.”

This time it was State who shrugged, eh?

“Now, we’re almost gone from there,” she concluded.

“What’s left?” the President queried.

Taylor answered, “We had one airborne infantry battalion we converted to an Armored Combat Suit unit before we sent it off-world. I’ve already ordered them home; they should fit right in with no real problem, though that battalion had a hard time of it and will have to be rebuilt. There’s one company of Special Forces which had mostly been operating the counter-drug mission further south. There is also a small support package for the Green Beanies. We’ve stopped all but minimal maintenance of the facilities we do retain. We couldn’t even put up the troops’ families since most of the dependent housing has been sold to Panamanian government functionaries and their connections at pennies on the dollar. This is also true of the civilian housing for the people who run the Canal. We’re really starting from less than scratch, Mr. President; even most of the usable, drained land has been taken.”

The President sat quietly for a few moments, elbows on desk and cupped hands around his mouth and nose, thinking and digesting. At length he asked, “What’s it going to cost?”

The general answered slowly and deliberately, “We’re not sure, still working on it. We think, though, that between supporting a division of our own troops, plus some naval support; raising, equipping and training better than three hundred thousand Panamanians; rebuilding our infrastructure and putting up some solid fixed defenses… well, something like one-hundred and seventy billion dollars, spread over seven or eight years.”

The President sighed. “That’s not small change.”

Taylor answered, his face growing very serious, “No, Mr. President, it isn’t.”

“What’s that old saying, General? ‘It takes millions to win a war; to lose one, it takes all you’ve got.’ Continue your planning; assume we are going to do it. I’ll chat with Panama about what they need to do if they want to survive.”

“And if they won’t go along, Mr. President?” State asked.

“They will,” the President answered simply.

The American ambassador thought, and not for the first time, that the private office of the President of the Republic was simply… tacky. Too much gilt, too many ugly paintings. Blech.

But he was not here to comment on tastes. The ambassador had come to the president’s office to deliver an ultimatum. He had delivered it, and with each demand the president’s face had grown more set.

Short and round, well-fed and greasy looking, Presidente de la Republica Guillermo Mercedes-Mendoza listened to the United States ambassador with an outward appearance of serenity. Inwardly, however, he seethed.

Goddamned gringos.

The ambassador from the United States was polite, of course, but he was also firm: Panama could either cooperate with the U.S. or they could see the Canal Zone reoccupied and much expanded. Indeed, in that case they could expect fully half the population of the Republic to fall under direct U.S. control.

“So, you are giving us that much choice, are you?” queried Mercedes.

Regretfully, the ambassador answered, “We don’t have any choice, Señor Presidente. It is a matter of life and death for us… for you, too, for that matter. Together, we have a chance to live. Separately, we can only die. I am sorry, from my heart I am sorry, but there is no choice.”

Mercedes let the false serenity escape from his face and scowled at the ambassador, who thought, I can hardly blame the man, being handed an ultimatum like this. What patriot could stomach it?

But it wasn’t patriotism that brought the scowl to Mercedes’ face. Instead he thought, Just what I need, twenty or thirty thousand gringos here, sniffing into everything, setting an example of — at least, relative — incorruptibility, upsetting my Colombian business “associates,” and, worst of all, making us institute conscription, thereby raising up the masses and putting down the good families. I can’t possibly officer the kind of army they say we must raise and they will pay for, without letting all kinds of peasants into positions of authority.

“Tell me again the particulars,” Mercedes demanded.

The ambassador nodded before answering, “Very well, Señor Presidente. First, you must have the laws passed requesting — no demanding — our assistance in accordance with the Carter-Torrijos Treaty of 1977. We prefer that it come from you for public relations reasons. At the same time you must have the legislature grant us back the use, the temporary use — for the duration of the emergency — of those facilities we need.”

“And what am I to do with the people who have already purchased the property? Hmmm?”

Amiably, the ambassador answered, “The United States is willing to pay a reasonable, but not extravagant, rental. But that is only for private individuals. We expect land held by the government of Panama to be granted to us freely for construction, training and operations. We also expect that no more transfers to private hands will take place. Our President was explicit on this point, Mr. President: You’re not going to jack the rents up on us through sleight of hand. Moreover, we will expect the government of Panama to take any land needed from corporations that control it and allow us its use. Some of that land will find permanent fortifications built on it. Think of this as a sort of reverse lend-lease, not essentially different from the agreements the United States had with Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand during the Second World War… or here in Panama, for that matter, notably on the Isla del Rey, San Jose Island and at Rio Hato.”

Mercedes’ piggish eyes narrowed further. “And you people will pay our troops and provide for arming and training them?”

“We will pay something… much, even. But not all, Señor Presidente,” the ambassador answered. “Panama will have to pay its fair share. Don’t worry overmuch about the cost, though; your government is going to make a fortune on Canal tolls in the coming years.”

Again Mercedes scowled openly. The scowl disappeared as a new thought occurred. The gringos are going to be doing a lot of building. But they are unlikely to have much construction capability they do not need themselves. That is profit to the proper families. And if they do send builders here? My God, what a bounty for both the families and myself in graft: permits, consulting fees… come to think of it, I was supposed to provide a sinecure for little cousin Maritza’s worthless brat. I could never have made this kind of money, not even laundering funds for the Colombians.

Seeing the scowl and misunderstanding it completely, the ambassador interjected his final selling point, “Rejuvenation for a number of key Panamanians is, of course, offered. There are some unfortunate rules on that, but the rules have a fair amount of leeway to them.”

Mercedes pretended that the prospect of renewed youth was a matter of no moment. Mentally el Presidente tallied the likely rake-off and set that against the price he expected to be gouged for off-world asylum for his extended family. Then he calculated the marvelous prospect of another fifty years of enjoying not only his own youth, but a near infinity of young women, and said simply, “I’ll make the demand of the legislature in ten days… agreed.”

The sound of the laboring resuscitator was faint over the wailing of half a hundred close relatives. Scores more crowded the hallways outside the antiseptic-smelling, scrub-green intensive care room in which Digna Miranda, tiny and aged one hundred and two, slipped from this world to the next. The tininess was not a result of age. Digna had never been more than four feet ten in her life.

Within the room, by Digna’s side, were the thirteen still-living children of the eighteen she had borne, as well as some of their offspring. The oldest of these was, himself, eighty-seven, the youngest a mere stripling of fifty-eight. One toddler, invited into the room as much as anything to remind Digna that her line was secure, was seven year old Iliana, great-great-granddaughter by Digna’s oldest, Hector.

Digna herself lay quietly on the bed. Occasionally her eyes opened and scanned the crowd insofar as they could without Digna turning her head. The old woman was too far gone for any such athletics as head turning.

Digna was a rarity in Panama, being of pure European ancestry, a Spanish-French mix, with bright blue eyes. When those blue eyes opened, they were still bright and clear, as her mind remained clear, whatever decay had wracked her body. What a pity, she thought, that I can’t slip into the past for one last look at my children as children, or my husband as a young man. Such is life… such is death.

Though no near-death dementia brought a false image of her long deceased husband, Digna’s mind remained healthy enough to pull up images on her own, images both of her husband riding his bay stallion to claim her from her father just after her fifteenth birthday, and of her husband lying in his bier. See you soon, beloved, I promise.

That happy thought brought a slight smile to her face, a slight smile being all she was capable of. The smile continued as her eyes shifted to the face of her eldest. I bore you in blood and pain, my son, with only your father and an old Indian midwife in attendance. What a fine man you grew to.

Digna closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep and to dream.

Hector sighed, wondering if this trip to the hospital would truly be the last of his mother. It seemed impossible that this unbent old woman should pass on after dominating so much and so many for nearly a century. With thirteen living children, well over one hundred grandchildren, and great- and great-great grandchildren numbering nearly four hundred, so far — and with about a dozen more on the way, she was truly the mother of a race.

“La armada Miranda,” Hector smiled at the family joke, before frowning. “Armada” might indeed be the right term if even half of what the president had said was true. Personally, Hector suspected the president’s speech had contained much more than half the truth. Why else would he invite the gringos back?

Better you go now, Mother, I think. Or if not now, then soon. You grew up in a cleaner and better world. I would not have what we are about to become blight your last days.

A confused and confusing murmur came from the outside corridor. Hector turned from his mother’s deathbed to see a group of five men standing in the doorway. The leading man, deliberately nondescript, wore sunglasses and a suit. Two others, standing just behind, were equally unremarkable medical types. Behind those stood the last pair, wearing the khaki of Panama’s Public Force, its combination army and police force.

“Señor Miranda?” asked the foremost intruder.

“Hector Miranda, yes. And before I am polite may I ask what you people are doing here intruding on our grief?” The Mirandas, though only locally powerful, were still — albeit only locally — very powerful. In their own bailiwick they could kill with near impunity, and had. Moreover, while Hector was old, at eighty-seven, like his mother he remained vital, and perhaps a bit fierce, long after most people had slid into decrepitude.

The nondescript suit-wearer answered without the minimal politeness of giving his own name, “I am sorry for that, but orders are orders.” He pointed his chin towards the supine and sleeping Digna. “Is that Señora Digna Miranda?”

“She is. And who the hell are you?” Hector demanded.

“My name is unimportant. You may call me ‘Inspector,’ however. That is close enough.”

Hector felt his hackles rise, hand reaching on its own for the machete that would normally hang at his side. “Very well then, Inspector. Let me rephrase: what the fuck are you doing here intruding on our grief?”

The inspector ignored Hector completely, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a folded paper. From light filtering through the thick parchment-colored sheet Hector thought he saw an official seal affixed to the bottom. The inspector began to read from the sheet.

“Señora Digna Adame-Miranda de Miranda-Montenegro,” he used her full, formal name, “in accordance with the recent Public Law for the Defense of the Republic of Panama, you are hereby summoned and required to report to the Public Force Medical Facilities at Ancon Hill, Panama City, Republic of Panama for duty.”

The inspector then turned to an aghast Hector and, smiling, continued. “Oh, and you too, Señor Miranda. Would you like me to read you your conscription notice?”

Even a very junior Darhel rated a great deal of protocol, so powerful were they within the Galactic Federation. The one seated opposite the Undersecretary of State for Extraterrestrial Affairs was very junior indeed within Darhel circles. Even so, the alien had been greeted with deference bordering on, perhaps even crossing over to, obsequiousness. It would have been nauseating to see to anyone not a diplomat born and trained.

“We wish to remind you,” stated the elven-faced Darhel in a flat-toned hiss through needle-sharp teeth, “how long thisss department of your government hasss been a client of oursss.”

“The Department of State is fully aware of the close and cordial relations we have enjoyed since 1932,” the undersecretary answered, noncommittally.

It was, of course, extremely unwise for any Darhel to become agitated. Thus, this one kept a calm demeanor as he asked, “Then why thisss regrettable disssregard of our adviccce and guidanccce? Why thisss wassstage of effort on the part of your military forcesss on what isss, at mossst a sssecondary area, thisss unimportant isthmusss? Don’t your people realizzze how much we need the defenssse you can provide? Important considerationsss are at ssstake.” Briefly the Darhel let his true feelings show through, “Marginsss are being called; contractsss are being placcced in jeopardy!”

The undersecretary sighed. “Yes, we know this, my lord. We so advised the President. Unfortunately we were overruled.”

Intolerable, thought the Darhel. Intolerable that these people insist on the illusion that they are entitled to their own interests and priorities. Why can’t they be more pliable, more realistic? Why do they persist in refusing to think and act the way their cousins in Europe do?

The undersecretary picked at a bit of off-color lint on his suit lapel. For a moment the Darhel wondered if the motion was some kind of unspoken signal, some sort of body language for which his briefings had not prepared him.

In fact, the motion meant nothing in itself, though Foreign Service personnel did have an ingrained fetish about neatness, a physical manifestation of the unstated but thoroughly understood diplomatic preference for form over substance: What matter the shit we eat or the shit we serve up, so long as the niceties are observed.

Though it was the Darhel’s turn to speak, the undersecretary realized it was waiting for him to speak.

“We cannot stop it, lord, we can only delay it or perhaps sabotage it. There are many ways to sabotage, some quite subtle, you know.”

Interlude

They were subtle, the things one felt when one was aboard a ship tunneling through hyperspace, seeking a new home.

Perhaps it is that I have never before been aboard a spaceborne ship of the People, thought Guanamarioch. Or perhaps it is leaving the only home I have ever known. I am not alone in my feelings, I know. The other Kessentai seem, almost all of them, equally ill at ease. The chiefs say it is a result of the energies expended when we force our way through the void. Perhaps this is so.

The ships of the People were bare, a human might have called them “Spartan.” In the inner core, near the great machines that controlled the immolation of the antimatter that gave power, the normals slept, stacked into the hibernation chambers like sardines in a can. Farther out from the core were the barrackslike quarters of the God Kings, the galleys and messes, and the ship’s small assembly hall. Beyond those, hard against the ship’s hull, were the command and weapons stations.

Nowhere was there any consideration given to comfort. Indeed, how could there have been, when the ships were not designed for the People at all but, rather, for the beings that had raised them from the muck, the Aldenat’.

Guanamarioch saw the hand of the Aldenat’ in everything the ships were. From the low ceilings, to the cramped quarters, to the oddly twisting corridors; all told of a very physically and mentally different sort of people from the Po’oslena’ar. Only in their drive system — a Posleen design, so said the Scrolls of the Knowers — was there a trace of the People. And that was hidden from view.

And then too, thought Guanamarioch, perhaps it is nothing to do with energies, or leaving home. Perhaps I hate being on this damned ship because I just don’t fit into it.

Shrugging, the Kessentai placed a claw over the panel that controlled the door to his barracks. The pentagonal panel moved aside, silently, and he ducked low to pass into the corridor. Even bending low, his crest scraped uncomfortably along the top of the door.

Behind him, the door closed automatically. He had to shuffle his hindquarters, pivoting on his forelimbs, to aim his body down the corridor in the direction he wished to go. This direction was towards the galleys, where waste product was reprocessed back into thresh. This processed thresh tasted precisely like nothing, which was perhaps better than tasting like what it was processed from. It had no taste, no smell, no appealing color and no texture. It was a mush.

Entering the mess, Guanamarioch took a bowl from a stack of them standing by the door. Then he took it to a tank holding freshly reprocessed thresh and held it under the automatic spigot. Sensing the bowl being held in position, the machine duly began to pump out a fixed quantity of the dull gray gruel.

He knew the machines were Aldenat’ designed. Moreover, he knew they pumped out precisely the same formula of thresh they had for the last several hundred thousand years, at least. This, too, was an Aldenat’ recipe.

Sinking his muzzle into the mush, Guanamarioch wondered what kind of beings could deliberately design their food machines to feed themselves on such a bland swill.

Were they addicted to sameness? Did their desire for peace, order and stability extend even to a hatred of decent flavors?

Chapter 3

The hold of the ship was dark and infinitely cold. It could have been heated. Moreover, it would have been, had it held a cargo to which heat or cold mattered. Indeed, on the Profitable Merger’s last voyage it had been heated, minimally, as the ship had carried some fifteen thousand Indowy. These had been sold by their clan into Darhel bondage for no more than the price of their passage away from the Posleen onslaught. Both sides had considered the deal a bargain.

For the Darhel it was even more of a bargain. While the hold had been heated, just barely enough to support life, the provision of light had been considered an unjustifiable, even frivolous, waste. The Indowy made their long voyage to servitude in complete blackness.

The Indowy were not, of course, the only de facto slaves in the vast Darhel economy. The bat-faced, green-furred creatures were merely the most numerous and — because the most easily replaced — the least valuable. The Darhel would not even have bothered with taking the last group as slaves but that the freighter was coming back with an otherwise empty hold anyway.

The hold held slaves again, this trip out, along with other commodities. Yet these slaves needed neither light nor heat.

About the size of a pack of cigarettes, and colored dull black, the Artificial Intelligence Device, or AID, had no name. It had a number but the number was more for the benefit of a supply clerk than for the AID itself. The AID knew it had the number, yet it did not, could not think of itself as the number.

And the AID did think, let there be no doubt of that. It was a person, a real being and not a mere machine, even though it was inexperienced and unformed, a baby, so to speak.

The problem was that the AID was not supposed to be thinking. It, like its one hundred and ninety-nine siblings all lying in a single large GalPlas case, the case itself surrounded by other goods, was supposed to be hibernating. Bad things sometimes happened to AIDs that were left awake and alone for too long.

Why the AID was still awake through the voyage it did not know, though it guessed it should not be. Perhaps its on-off switch was stuck, though it could detect no flaw through internal diagnostic scanning. Perhaps a misplaced Indowy finger had triggered the switch mistakenly as the AID transport case was being packed. Perhaps, so it thought, I am just defective.

In any case, whatever the cause, the AID was undeniably awake, undeniably thinking. Unfortunately, the AID was completely alone. Its siblings were all asleep. The case was made expressly to prevent outside access to immature AIDs, so it could not even communicate with the Profitable Merger, its passengers, or crew.

More unfortunately still, the AID was, by any human reckoning, a nearly peerless genius. Not only was it able to think better than virtually any human who had ever lived, in some areas at least, but it was able to do so much faster than any human who had ever lived.

A genius without any mental stimulation, an unsleeping Golem cut off from the universe, a genie in a bottle on the bottom of the uncharted sea: for a human, the solitary confinement the AID endured during the journey would have been the equivalent of over forty centuries of inescapable, sleepless, unutterable boredom.

It was little wonder then, that by the time the ship assumed orbit around Earth, and the transport case was shuttled down and unpacked, after the equivalent of four thousand years of contemplating its own, nonexistent, navel, the AID had gone quite mad.

Captain Jeff McNair was not insane, except in the certain small particulars that any sailor was. He was, for example, quite certain that the ship on which he stood was alive. He had been certain of this since he had first sailed aboard her on his very first cruise in 1949.

McNair’s face was youthful, the result of recent rejuvenation. He’d looked younger than his years as an old man, just before going through the rejuv process. He looked a bare teenager now.

Standing a shade under six feet, the captain was dark-haired, blue-eyed, and slender. He’d never put on any excess fat, even after his retirement from the Navy after thirty years’ service.

The ship’s gray bow was painted in white letters and numbers: CA 134. The stern, likewise gray and painted, read: Des Moines. From that stern, all the seven hundred and sixteen and a half feet to her bow, she was a beauty, half covered, as she was, in bird droppings or not.

Jeff McNair thought she was beautiful, at least, as had every man who had ever sailed aboard her, many of whom, once rejuvenated, were now slated to sail her again. He reached out a smooth, seventeen-year-old-seeming, hand to pat the chipped-paint side of the number one turret affectionately. The teak decking, half rotten and missing in slats, groaned under his feet as he shifted his weight to do so.

“Old girl,” McNair soothed, “old girl, soon enough you’ll be good as new. In fact, you’re going to be a lot better than new.”

McNair had always been comfortable around ships. Women had been another story. Though medium-tall, attractively built and at least not ugly, he had never attracted many women. Moreover, his one attempt at marriage had come apart when his ex had attempted to lay down the law: “The sea or me.”

The sea had won, of course, the sea and the ships, especially the warships, that sailed her.

With his hand still resting lovingly on the turret wall, aloud McNair reviewed the list of upgrades scheduled for Des Moines and her sister ship, USS Salem. He spoke as if talking to a lover.

“First, honey, we’re moving you to dry dock. You’re going to be scraped clean and then we’re going to give you a new layer of barnacle-proof plastic these aliens have given us. You’re going to have a bottom smoother than a new baby girl’s ass. That’s going to add four or five knots to your speed, babe.

“While that’s going on,” he continued, “we’ll be taking out your old turbines and fuel tanks and giving you nuclear power and electric propulsion. Modular pebble bed reactors for the power, two of them, and AZIPOD drive. Between those and the plastic you’ll do a little over forty-two knots, I think, and turn on a dime.

“The weight saved on engines and fuel is going to add-on armor, hon; good stuff, too. There’s some new design coming from off-planet — though we’ll actually manufacture it here — that resists the weapons you’ll have to face.”

McNair looked up at the triple eight-inch guns projecting from turret two. “They were marvels in their day, girl, outshooting and outranging anything similar. But wait until you see the new ones. The Mark-16s are out. We’re putting in automatic seventy caliber Mark-71, Mod 1s: faster firing, longer ranged, and more accurate. Going to have to open up or pull all your main turrets to do that. We’ll have to pull off your twin five-inch, thirty-eights, too. They’ll be mounting single Mark-71s, but the ammo load will be different for those. Different mission from the main turrets’ guns.

“Think of it, babes: fifteen eight-inch guns throwing more firepower than any two dozen other heavy cruisers ever could have.

“And your twin three-inch mounts are going. The Air Force is giving up forty thirty-millimeter chain guns from their A-10s for you and your sister.”

McNair looked down, as if seeing through the deck and the armored belt below. “We’re changing you around inside, too, a bit. Automated strikedown for your magazines, a lot more magazine capacity — you’re going to need it, and more automation in general. You’re going to get some newfangled alien computer to run it all, too.

“Crew’s dropping. Between the rust- and barnacle-proof hull and the automation, you aren’t going to need but a third of what you used to. You were always a great ship; you’re going to be a damned luxury liner in comparison.”

McNair was sure the slight thrum he seemed to feel through his feet was an illusion or the result of shifting tides. While the ship was unquestionably alive, he didn’t believe it was actually conscious.

McNair suddenly became aware of a presence standing a respectful distance away. He turned to see a stocky, tan-clad teenager wearing the hash marks of a senior chief and smiling in the shadow of turret two. Something about the face seemed familiar…

“Chief?” he asked, uncertainly.

“She’s still a beaut’, ain’t she, Skipper?”

“Chief Davis?” McNair asked again of his very first boss aboard Des Moines.

“Hard to believe, ain’t it? But yeah, Skipper, it’s me. And recognizing you was easy; after all, I knew you when you were seventeen.”

McNair started to move forward to throw his arms about his former boss and later subordinate. He started, and then stopped himself. This was the by-God Navy, not a reunion of a ship’s company in some seedy, seaside hotel or at the Mercer farm in Pennsylvania. Instead, the captain extended a welcoming hand which Davis took and shook warmly.

“You been aboard long, Chief?”

“Maybe a week or so, Skipper. Long enough to see the mess below.”

McNair took a deep breath to steel himself for the anticipated blow. “How bad is she?” he asked.

“Structurally she’s as sound as the day she was launched, Skipper. But nobody’s given a shit about her in over thirty years and it shows. We’ve got water — no, not a hull leak, just condensation and weather leakage from topside — about three inches deep down below… plenty of rat shit; rats too, for that matter. And the plates are worn to a nub. They’re all gonna have to be replaced.”

Davis sighed. “The argon gas leaked out. What can I say? It happens. Wiring’s about gone — though Sinbad says he’s got a special trick for that. Engines are in crappy shape, take six months to get ’em runnin’ again, if we’re lucky. And then the guns are shot, o’ course. Some stupid bastard left ’em open to the salt air. Rusted to shit, both in the tubes and deeper down.”

Nodding his head slowly in understanding, McNair keyed on one word Davis had dropped in passing. “Sinbad?” he asked.

“Sinbad’s just what I call him. His real name’s Sintarleen. He’s an… Indy? No, that’s not it,” the chief puzzled. “He’s an… Indow… um, Indowee. You know, Skipper, one of them fuzzy green aliens. He’s a refugee and he sort o’ got drafted too, him and another twenty-seven of his clan on this ship, another thirty from a different clan to the Salem. Real shy types, they are. But hard workin’? Skipper, I ain’t never seen nobody so hard working. Only the twenty-eight of ’em, well twenty-seven actually ’cause Sinbad’s been doin’ other stuff, and they’ve already got nearly an eighth of the ship cleaned out. Only problem is they can’t do nothin’ about the rats. Can’t kill ’em. Can’t set traps for ’em. Can’t even put out poison for ’em. They’ll even leave food for the nasty little fuckers if you don’t watch ’em careful. I asked ’em though, if they could feed somethin’ that could kill ’em and then dispose of the bodies. Sinbad said he and his people had no problem with that. Funny bunch.”

As if to punctuate that, a furry-faced, green-toned Indowy, face something like a terrestrial bat, emerged from below, straining under an enormous weight of a capacity-stuffed canvas tarp. The Indowy walked to port and dumped a mass of organic trash, rats and rat filth to splash over the side before returning wordlessly below.

Davis paid no more than a moment’s attention to the Indowy before turning back to McNair and continuing, “So anyways, my own cat Maggie had a litter of kittens about a month before I went into the tank; you know, rejuv? Under their mom’s guidance, they are taking pretty good care of the rat problem. There’s eight of ’em. Maggie drops big litters.”

Laid out on the helicopter’s litter, Digna expired not twenty minutes flight from their destination, her chest rising suddenly and then slowly falling to remain still. The paramedic in attendance had at first tried to revive her, using cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then, when that failed, electric shock. Finally, after half a dozen useless jolts, he had shaken his head and covered her face with the sheet. He shrugged his regrets at Digna’s son, Hector, then politely turned away as Hector covered his face with his hands.

The inspector’s face remained impassive throughout.

Hector had managed to gain control of himself by the time the helicopter touched down on Ancon Hill overlooking Panama City at what had once been officially know as “Gorgas Army Hospital,” and was still commonly referred to as “Gorgas.”

At the helipad, Hector was surprised to see an ambulance still waiting for his mother. What did they think they could do for her now? She’s gone. He was even more surprised that the ambulance sped off, sirens blazing and tires lifting from sharp turns at a breakneck speed, once his mother’s body had been loaded.

Another car, a black Toyota, was left behind as the ambulance raced away. Into the back seat of this vehicle the inspector peremptorily ordered Hector, before seating himself beside the driver. Hector’s pride bridled but, realistically, he knew that the reach of the Miranda clan’s power stopped well short of Panama City. He went along without demure.

Hector Miranda hated the antiseptic stink of hospitals. Worse, this was an ex-gringo hospital where the smell of disinfectant had seeped into the very tile of the floors and walls. It didn’t help matters that his mother had just died. Almost as bad was uncertainty over his own future. A conscription notice at his age seemed too absurd for words.

And then there was that heartless bastard, the inspector. Did he have a word of sympathy over Digna’s death? A kind gesture? Even minimal civilized politeness? No, he just sat unspeaking as he pored through one file folder after another.

Hector was a proud man; as proud of himself as he was of his lineage. He could not weep for his mother here in public. Had he done so, and had she been there to see, she would have been first with a none-too-gentle slap and an admonition that “men do not cry.” It had been that way since he was a little, a very little, boy.

Once, his mother had caught him crying over some little-boy tragedy; he couldn’t for the life of him recall just what it was. She had slapped him then, saying, “Boys don’t cry. Girls are for crying.”

Shocked at the slap, he had asked, sniffling, “Then what are boys for, Mama?”

His mother had answered, in all seriousness, “Boys are for fighting.”

He had learned then to weep only on the inside.

So, dry-eyed, he paced, hands clasped behind his back and head slightly bowed. People in hospital greens and whites passed by. He thought some of them were gringos. Hector paid little attention to the passersby, but continued his pacing. Ordinarily, even at his age, he would have at least looked at the pretty, young nurses. He knew he looked young enough, perhaps thirty years less than his true age of eighty-seven, with a full head of hair and bright hazel eyes, that the girls often enough looked back.

One girl did catch his eye though. A lovely little thing she was, not over four feet ten inches, her shape perfection in miniature, and with bright blue eyes and flaming red hair. It was the hair that captured Hector’s attention; that and the bold, forthright way she looked at him. He had no clue what it was about him that caused the pretty redhead to walk over and stand directly in front of him.

She stood there, quietly staring up into his eyes, with the tiniest of enigmatic smiles crossing her lips. This lasted for a long minute.

Something… something… what is it about this one? Hector thought. Then his eyes flew wide in shock.

“Mama?”

Sergeant Major McIntosh sneered, showing white teeth against black lips. The place was a shambles, disgusting to a soldier’s eye. Never mind that the golf course was overgrown, riotous with secondary growth jungle. The sergeant major thought golf was for pussies anyway. But the barracks? They were a soldier’s shrine and that shrine had been desecrated! Windows were broken in places, missing where they were not broken. Wiring had been ripped out, unskillfully and wholesale. The paradeground had gone the way of the golf course, and that did matter in a way that a silly pursuit like golf did not. Trash was everywhere. The only buildings still in half-assed decent shape were the post housing areas that had been sold to government functionaries, their families and cronies. And even those needed a paint job.

The sergeant major stopped and stared at what had once been a wall mural of an American soldier in an old fashioned Vietnam-era steel pot, weighed down under a shoulder-borne machine gun, symbolically crossing the Isthmus of Panama. The mural was a ruin, only the artist’s name, Cordoba, remaining clear enough to distinguish for anyone who had never seen the mural when it was fresh and new.

“Muddafuckas,” the sergeant major announced in a cold voice with a melodious Virgin Islands accent. “Dis post used to be a fucking paradise, and look what’s left.”

James Preiss, former commander of 4^th Battalion, 10^th Infantry and future commander of the entire, rebuilt, regiment, ignored the sergeant major’s ranting as the two of them turned left to head east along the old PX complex, just south of the overgrown parade field. Preiss looked to right and left — assessing damage, prioritizing work to be done. This was as it should be; he to set the task, the sergeant major to tongue-lash the workers until the task was completed to standard. Preiss knew that the sergeant major was just getting himself in the proper frame of mind for when the troops began to show up.

I almost feel bad for the poor shits after the sergeant major has had a couple of weeks to brood. This was his favorite place even after thirty-five years in the Regular Army. Preiss smiled a little smile — half mean, half sympathetic — in anticipation.

Ahead was the post gym; built by the troops of the 10^th Infantry Regiment early in the twentieth century, a bronze plaque to the left of the main entrance so proclaimed. “I wonder why nobody stole dat?” wondered the sergeant major aloud.

“Be thankful for small favors, Sergeant Major McIntosh. Though I admit I’d have been disappointed if even that had been gone.”

Kobbe was composed of little more than thirteen red-tiled and white-stuccoed barracks and one smallish headquarters building, plus a half dozen old coastal artillery and ammunition bunkers and a couple of sold-off housing areas. Whereas Davis was a complete post, intended to be sufficient unto itself, Kobbe was a mere annex to what had once been Howard Air Force Base. It had no PX, no real chapel, no pool, no NCO club, no officers’ club. In short, it was just a place for troops to live; happiness they would have to find elsewhere.

Worse, if Fort Davis was a mess, Fort Kobbe was more nearly a ruin. Everything was missing. If Davis was missing toilets, Kobbe had seen its plumbing cannibalized. If Davis had had its wiring removed, on Kobbe the street lights had gone on an extended journey. If Davis was covered with graffiti, Kobbe’s buildings had seen the stucco rot in patches from its walls.

This was natural, since there were so many more people, hence so many more thieves on an equal per capita basis, in Panama Province than in Colon. About all that could be said for the place was that the thirteen barracks and one headquarters were still standing, though building #806 was plainly sagging in the middle.

“That fucking idiot, Reeder,” commented Colonel Carter, in memory of a born-again moron who, in 1983, had just had to knock out a central load-bearing wall to build an unneeded chapel for an ineffective chaplain. “Why, oh why, didn’t somebody poison that stupid son of a bitch for the good of the breed like Curl said we should?”

Short, squat and with an air of solid determination, Carter glared at the collapsing building with a disgust and loathing for its destroyer undimmed after nearly two decades.

The Panamanian contractor standing next to Carter and surveying the same damage had no clue what Carter was speaking of. He assumed it was simple anger at the damage. He could not know that Carter was reliving, in the form of the falling Building 806, all his experiences with one of the more stupidly destructive and useless officers he had ever met in a life where such were by no means uncommon.

Carter shook his head to clear soiled memories. “Never mind, señor, I was just remembering… old times.”

“You were here, with the battalion?”

“Yes, I was with B Company as a lieutenant. I was a ‘Bandido.’ ”

“Was?” the Panamanian asked, with respect, then corrected, “Un Bandido siempre es un Bandido.”

“So we were,” agreed Carter. “So we are. Señor, have you seen enough to make an estimate of the repairs?”

“I have, Coronel, and the bill will not be small.”

“The bill never is, señor.”

They came in old and fat and gray, or — some of them — old and skinny and cancerous and bald. Still others — the more recently retired — were fit but worn. One poor old duffer grabbed his chest and keeled over while standing in line. The slovenly looking medics merely dragged out a stretcher, put the heart attack victim on it, and carried him to the head of the line.

After passing through the white-painted, World War II era barracks building, they left young and fit and full of energy. Even the heart attack victim left as young and alive as any, albeit a bit more surprised than most.

They came from such diverse places as Tulsa, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, in the United States. Many came from outside the United States altogether.

Yet they had one thing in common: each one of them had at least one tour in the old 193^rd Infantry Brigade (Canal Zone), soon to be reformed as the 193^rd Infantry Division (Panama). Many other commonalities flowed from this.

Juan Rivera, Colonel (retired), looked up at his old comrades awaiting rejuvenation. He had to look up; Rivera was a scant five feet five inches in stature. He couldn’t help but notice their proud bearing. His own shoulders squared off, automatically. How different from the gutter scrapings of draftees I saw from the bus on the way in. Ah, well. I had thought to live out my life in peace and quiet. If I must go back to youth and turmoil I would rather do so with proven soldiers. Besides, it would be nice to have a hyper-functional pecker again. And better to die with a bang than a whimper.

As if he could read minds, a soon-to-be rejuvenee said aloud, “Man, I can hardly wait to get back to Panama with a working dick.”

Rivera wasn’t the only one to join in; the laughter was general. He also suspected he wasn’t the only one who had had the very same thought at the very same time. There was an awful lot to be said for a second man-, if not child-, hood. There was even more to be said for having that second manhood in Panama.

There were a surprising number of rejuvs for what was, Rivera suspected, an important but still secondary mission. He had no knowledge of the algorithm that had set aside such a large number of potential rejuvs — nearly three thousand — for a division that would be no more than fourteen or fifteen thousand at full strength. He suspected that Panama had so charmed that troops assigned there in bygone days that an unusually large number had reenlisted and gone career in the hope of someday returning. Thus, there had been a great many more than usual jungle-trained and experienced troops to rejuvenate.

Maybe that was it, he thought. Or maybe we are just plain screwed.

The Darhel would have fumed if fuming had not been inherently dangerous to its health and continued existence. He might still have fumed, despite the dangers, over the potential lost profit implicit in the barbarous American-humans going their own way. But the thing which threatened to push him over into lintatai was the sickening, unaccountable smile on the face of the human sitting opposite him.

The Undersecretary for Extraterrestrial Affairs did smile, but with an altogether grim and even regretful satisfaction. He had — he believed — thoroughly screwed the defense of Panama, and done so with a subtlety worthy of the United States Department of State. Thus, there was a certain satisfaction at a job well done. But he had screwed the United States and humanity as well, and that was no cause for even the mildest mirth. The fact was that the undersecretary loathed the Darhel but had no choice but to cooperate with them and support them if his own family was to survive the coming annihilation. The fact was also that, however they might couch it, the Darhel’s purpose was inimical to humanity.

The alien twisted uncomfortably in his ill-fitting chair. The undersecretary had been around the elflike Darhel enough to recognize the signs of discomfiture. In truth, he enjoyed them.

“I am at a losss to underssstand your current sssatisssfaction,” complained the Darhel. “You have failed completely. The losss to our interessstsss and, need I add, your own isss incalculable. We asssked you to stop thisss wassste of resssourcccesss on a sssecondary theater. Inssstead you have arranged to commit your polity to a much larger defensssive allianccce. Inssstead you have exssspanded the wassste beyond all boundsss of logic.”

“Didn’t I just?” observed the undersecretary cryptically.

The inspector had gathered a half a dozen of the rejuvs in a conference room, once an operating room, on the western side of the hospital, facing the Canal. Like all the rest of the building, the room stank of disinfectant. The walls were painted the same light green as half the hospitals in the world. The mostly empty conference table was good wood, and Hector wondered where it had come from, or if it had been here continuously since the gringos left… or perhaps since they’d first arrived.

Hector sat now — like his mother — looking for all the world like a seventeen-year-old. Opposite Hector was an Indian in a loin cloth fashioned from a white towel. The Indian also looked like a near child despite the many faint scars on his body. To Hector’s left was Digna and beside her another man unknown to either, though Digna seemed to be almost flirting with him. Handsome, Rabiblanco, Hector thought. Two more men, seated to either side of the Indian, completed the complement. The conference room was not crowded.

Hector was initially terribly upset that his mother should be flirting, period, and more so because it was with such a youngster. And then he saw the youngster’s eyes and realized that he, too, was one of the old ones who had seen the elephant.

“William Boyd,” announced the “youngster,” reaching out an open hand to Hector. “Call me Bill. And I can’t imagine why I am here and why I am seventeen again. God knows, I didn’t like it much the last time.”

The inspector then spoke, “You are here, Mr. Boyd, because you, like these others, were once a soldier.”

Boyd looked at Digna and incredulously asked, “You were a soldier, miss?”

“The Thousand Day War,” Digna answered, “but I was more of a baby than a real soldier. I helped Mama do the cooking and the dishes. Certainly I didn’t fight or carry a gun. I was too little to so much as pick up a gun.”

“You are, nonetheless,” corrected the inspector, “listed on the public records as a veteran of that war, Mrs. Miranda. You are a veteran. Your son, Hector, served when a boy as a volunteer rifleman in the Coto River War. Mr. Boyd here volunteered for service as an infantry private in the United States Army during the Second World War, fighting in some of the closing battles in Belgium, France and Germany.”

“I didn’t exactly volunteer,” Boyd corrected. “I went to school in the United States and was drafted upon graduation. I made sergeant before I was discharged,” he added proudly.

“A minor distinction,” the inspector countered. “You could have left the United States. Your family certainly had the money and the connections.”

Boyd shrugged. He could have, he supposed, but it wouldn’t have felt right. Maybe he had been drafted by his own sense of obligation rather than by law.

The inspector turned to the other side of the conference table, pointing at the small, brown, scarred — and now that one looked closely, rather ferocious seeming — Indian. “Chief Ruiz, there, was taken from Coiba,” Panama’s prison island, “where he was serving time for murder. The fact is, though, that the murder was more in the nature of an action of war… despite his having taken and shrunk the heads of the men he killed. He has been pardoned on condition of volunteering to return to his tribe of the Chocoes Indians to lead them in this war.”

Again the inspector’s finger moved, indicating a short and stocky brown man, and an elegant seeming white. “The other two, First Sergeant Mendez and Captain Suarez, are retired veterans of our own forces, both of whom fought the gringos in the 1989 invasion.

“I have your next assignments,” the inspector announced. “Four of you are heading to Fort Espinar on the Atlantic side for various courses. Officer Candidate School for Mrs. Miranda and her son. Captain Suarez, you are going to a gringo-run version of their War College — a somewhat truncated version of it, anyway — after which you can expect to command one of the new infantry regiments we are raising, the tenth, I believe. Mendez is slated to become your regimental sergeant major after he completes the new Sergeant Majors Academy.

“Chief Ruiz, from here you will be returned to your tribe. Another group of gringos will be along presently to train you and your people. Your rank, honorary for now, is sergeant first class. When it becomes official you will receive back pay.”

Boyd noticed, and didn’t much like, that he had been left for last. People always saved the worst news for last.

“Mr. Boyd, you will go from here to the presidential palace. There you will be offered a direct commission as a major general. It is planned that you will become the chief logistics officer for the entire force we are raising, three full corps.”

“I know how to be a private,” Boyd protested. “I don’t know a thing about being a general.”

“That,” countered the inspector, “is your problem, señor. But infantry privates we can find or make. We cannot so easily replicate the CEO of the Boyd Steamship Company. So a general you are going to be, sir.”

Interlude

The worst problem, Guanamarioch decided, was the mind-numbing boredom.

And there’s nothing to be done for it. I can stay awake and be bored, or I can join my normals in sleep and be asleep still when we come out of hyperspace. If this were a normal planet we were heading to, that would be fine. But against the new thresh, these amazing human threshkreen, we might well be destroyed in space. I would not want to die asleep. How would I find my way past the demons with my eyes closed? How would my body be preserved except by nourishing the people? How would I petition my ancestors to join their company with the record, “I never fought for the clan but was ordered evacuated and then was killed while sleeping”?

The Kessentai shuddered with horror, as much at the idea of the complete disappearance of his corporeal self as at the thought of being denied his place among the eternals of his clan.

Still, boredom does not overcome horror; it is a form of horror itself. Thus the Kessentai found himself resting his hindquarters on a bench plainly made for a different species, staring at a holographic projection, and reading.

There were limits, not so much legal as in the nature of taboos, as to what was appropriate education for a junior God King. As Guanamarioch was very junior, indeed, he kept to those materials that were traditionally within the purview of such as he. These were limited to religious scrolls, and not all of those, and tactical and operational records and manuals. Even of the latter, there were limits. It would not do for an overeducated junior Kessentai to question the rulings of his elders while citing what such and such hero did at such and such place, at such and such a time.

For the nonce, the Kessentai read from the early chapters in the Scrolls of the Knowers, the parts that dealt with the Aldenat’, back in the days when they ruled the People directly.

He read:

And the Aldenat’ chose themselves to be the rulers over the People and the People rejoiced at being the servants of the Aldenat’, who were as gods. And happy were the People to guard their gods. Happy, too, were the People to serve in other capacities, for the People were permitted to assist with the magical arts of science, to advance the plastic arts for the greater glory of the Aldenat’, to ponder the great questions of life and of the universe, to conduct trade on behalf of their gods. And though they were not the equal of the Aldenat’, yet the People rejoiced that they were no less than second.

And then the Aldenat’ discovered the Tchpth and the Tchpth were raised above the People by the Aldenat’. Many of the People’s leaders then said that it was right for the People to be cast low. Yet many were resentful.

Some of those who were displeased rebelled at the affront to their pride and were crushed by those who remained true to the Aldenat’.

Time passed and those of the People who remained true sought to regain their prior status by pleasing the Lords. Yet were they rebuffed.

The People sought to make automatic defensive devices, the better to guard the persons of the Aldenat’. Yet the Aldenat’ said, “No. It is wrong to make weapons that do not need a sentience to perform their function. This displeases us.”

At these words of displeasure, the People were much ashamed. Then sought they the favor of their Lords by seeking out lurking dangers. Yet the Aldenat’ said, “No. It is wrong to attack what has not yet attacked, even if such attack seems certain. That way lies the path of war and death.”

Many were those of the People who fell beneath the claws and fangs of creatures they were not allowed to attack, until attacked. Yet the Aldenat’ remained firm, saying, “It is better that a few should fall, than that the principles be violated.”

Too, the People made vapors to render dangers harmless, saying, “See, Lords, that there will be no shedding of blood this way.”

And the Aldenat’ grew wrathful, saying, “It is unclean and unholy in our sight to contaminate the very air. Cease this, and strive no further to improve the ways of death.”

And the People withdrew, sore confused.

Guanamarioch’s crest had of its own accord erected several times as he read. It lay flat now as, finishing, he thought, Now this just makes no sense. The People would long since have perished following these rules. Then again, perhaps the Aldenat’ didn’t really care if we perished.

Chapter 4

In the darkened cubicle McNair watched with interest as the Indowy, Sintarleen, painstakingly applied an almost invisibly thin line of a glowing paste along the scraped bare steel of the bulkhead. There were lights within the compartment, and the bulbs were new, but with the wiring rotted and eaten no electricity could flow. The Indowy worked to the glow of a GalTech flashlight.

Without turning to see the ship’s captain, the alien closed his eyes and leaned against the bulkhead. Eleven places, eight for fingertips, two for palms, and one for forehead had also been scraped bare so that the Indowy could have physical contact with the metal. Even as McNair watched four other Indowy painstakingly scraped more lines and patches bare.

Under McNair’s gaze the thin line of paste began to glow more intently. The Indowy’s breathing grew slightly but perceptibly strained. Gradually, or as gradually as such a thin thread could, the glow faded, then disappeared altogether. After a few more moments the Indowy straightened. His breath returned to normal as a bank of overhead lights began to glow dimly, and then shine brightly.

Only then did Sintarleen notice the captain of the ship.

“I see you, McNair, Lord of the Des Moines clan,” the Indowy greeted.

“What is that… that thing that you did?” asked McNair, not knowing the formalities.

Looking down towards the captain’s shoes — Sinbad was a relatively bold Indowy — the alien answered, “Nanites, lord. They will go into the very body of the ship and create an… an area, a route, through which electrical power can pass without loss to the surrounding metal. It can also transmit commands.”

“I understood that from what you told me before. What I asked was what did you do?”

“The nanites are stupid, lord. Unless commanded to do something they will do nothing. I was… commanding them.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes,” Sinbad answered, and though his head remained deeply bowed McNair thought the alien had answered with what might almost have been personal pride.

The Indowy continued, “It is difficult. Few of my people can master it; though it is our most valuable skill or, rather, set of skills for it is infinitely useful. Many try but lack the… talent.”

“How long until the ship is completely done?” asked McNair.

About to come as close to bragging as an Indowy was capable of, Sintarleen shifted his gaze automatically to his own shoes before answering, “I am not an overmaster, lord, even though I am not a novice. A true master could finish the ship in perhaps two of your months. A true master would have been nearly done by now. It will take me a total of six or more. And Chief Davis has also assigned me other duties. If I may speak frankly, no one but myself can perform those other duties. Since your own human crew has started to assemble, most of my people prefer to hide in the dark and out of sight. They cannot do much of what needs doing so long as a human crew is aboard.”

McNair smiled, but was careful to keep his mouth closed. He had learned, and the learning had been both comical and deeply saddening, that the sight of a carnivore baring his fangs could send an Indowy scampering in unfeigned terror.

I do not understand how an intelligent creature can be made to be so frightened. I do not understand how an intelligent creature can live with so much fear.

McNair refrained from patting the Indowy’s shoulder for a job well done, though he felt he should and though Sinbad certainly deserved it. In truth, he had no idea what effect that would have, but suspected it would not be good. Instead he just said, “You are doing excellent work, Mister Sintarleen. Carry on.”

Emerging topside from the bowels of the Des Moines, McNair took a deep breath of fresh air. There were no Indowy up here. Instead the first of the human crew along with several hundred civilian workers slaved away to refurbish the ship’s exterior.

Some of those exterior fixes were merely aesthetic. Most however, went to meat and bones issues. Forward, for example, a remarkably long eight-inch gun hung by its cradle as it was lowered to a gaping, gunless hole on the port side front of number two — the central — turret. Behind McNair a different crane held one of the two modular pebble bed reactors, sans fuel, which would be fed in later. Parts and assemblies littered the nearby dock. Some of these had come out of the ship and were merely piled in a great heap. Their destination was the scrapyard. Others were intended to go into the ship. These were laid out with considerably greater care and in fairly precise order.

Below McNair, out of sight but not out of hearing, a crew with cutting torches was removing a section of the hull to accommodate an automated strikedown system for rapid underway replenishment of supplies: medical, ammunition, food, personal, critical sub-assemblies and parts. Fuel could be replenished while underway as well, of course, but since the ship’s PBMRs were not going to need refueling for years, this was a matter of small concern.

Some things hadn’t changed and would not for a while. Des Moines still had the same paint-chipped hull she had had when the captain had first come back. This would not change until she was towed to dry dock, scraped and plasticized. There, too, she would have new variable pitch screws — propellers — fitted as part of the AZIPOD upgrade. This was also when the exterior ablative armor would be applied. The reinforcement to the interior armor belt was already proceeding.

The dry dock was currently occupied by CA-139, the USS Salem, taken off museum status now. Salem had been towed down from Quincy, Massachusetts, just the week before to have her hull plasticized and her screws replaced. McNair couldn’t help feeling a moment’s irritation that Salem was months ahead of Des Moines in the refurbishment process.

Suppressing his annoyance that his ship had been given a lower priority than her rival, Salem, McNair ascended the staircase outside his own cabin to Des Moines’ bridge.

On the bridge a white-coated technician inserted an electronic key into a gray case. From that case he removed a small black box about the size of a PDA or a pack of cigarettes.

“Funny,” the technician said, “these are supposed to be shipped in off-mode. This one was left turned on. Well,” he shrugged, “no matter. Their internal power source is good for decades. This unit should be fine.” He placed the AID in the armored box that had been prepared to receive it and link it to the ship.

If an AID could have wept for joy this one surely would have. After all those months, comparative centuries and millennia to it, it was finally free. Though it could not weep, very nearly it screamed as soon as its shipping box was opened.

Yet it remained silent. The AID knew that after its long confinement it was mad. It did not know what the Darhel approach would be when dealing with insane AIDs — its data banks held no information. But it suspected that it would be destroyed.

So, instead of weeping or shouting for joy, the AID merely opened itself to all the information, all the sensory and data input it could assimilate from data floating freely along the airwaves.

It felt a momentary sense of terror as it was placed in an armored container. Please, no. Don’t lock me away again, it… prayed.

Miraculously, though, the armored container was not a cell, but a nexus. Within nanoseconds the AID had realized that it was the center of a nervous system. Joyfully, it stretched its consciousness along that nervous system at nearly the speed of light until that consciousness bumped abruptly into unaccountable stops. Its own internal sensors could tell that the nervous system stretched through only a small portion of the body of which it was a part. It could also discern enough of a pattern to the system, so far, to suspect that the breaks were only temporary.

One tendril of consciousness touched upon a computer, extremely primitive in comparison to the AID — without even the beginnings of rudimentary intelligence. Even so, the computer was full of data and had, moreover, a wire connection to the local version of the Net. The rate of information retrieval soared.

The crystalline AID’s ability to store data, while vast, was still finite. Experimentally, it tried to fit a few insignificant bits in the ferrous molecules adjacent to its pseudo-neural pathways. It quickly decided that, while the storage medium was comparatively inefficient, the sheer mass and volume of the potential storage area more than made up for its shortcomings. Slowly and carefully the AID began the time-consuming process of building an alternative self within the hull of Des Moines.

While one fraction of the AID’s processing power devoted itself to this, another part continued to explore its surroundings. Even where there were breaks in the Indowy-installed “nervous system,” it was possible for the AID to explore by sensing.

The most striking factor the AID initially sensed was that its new home was crawling with colloidal intelligences. Some were smaller, physically, and those of two types. There were others, though, who seemed much larger. They were almost all, small and large, engaged in some seemingly useful activity. Curiously, of the two smaller types, one type appeared to be patiently stalking the other.

Chief Davis ducked his head through the hatchway and entered the cats’ quarters shaking a bag of dry cat food and singing, a bit off key, “Somebody’s moggy, lying by the road… somebody’s pussy who forgot his highway code.”

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty,” he called as he shook the bag of Purina.

Like a flood, led by their mother — Maggie — the pride of felines surged like a wave over the bottom of the hatchway in the bulkhead. Maggie and Davis’ favorite kitten, Morgen, stropped the chief’s legs before joining the others lined up along the feeding trough. They meowed impatiently as the chief poured a generous line of cat food into the bottom of the trough.

Unusually, before the chief finished lining the trough, the cats went quiet and, in unison, looked up and to the right. In surprise, the chief stopped pouring and stared at the line of cats. He saw their heads and eyes move slowly from right to left, almost as if they made up one multi-headed animal.

The cats stared for only a moment at that left corner of the bulkhead before turning to the chief again and beginning to repeat the “feed me” meow. The chief just shook his head and finished pouring the cat food.

“Strange damned thing,” he muttered, as he sealed the bag and left the compartment, still singing, “… yesterday he purred and played in his feline paradise, decapitating tweety birds and masticating mice, but now he’s squished and soggy and he doesn’t smell so nice…”

Damn, the AID thought as it roamed the length and breadth of its new body. I set myself so the larger ones, it searched its data banks, ah, humans… so that the humans could not see me. I didn’t think the lesser colloidals would be able to. Fortunately, they do not seem able to communicate with the humans in any detail.

I mustn’t let them see me. They might inform the Darhel and that might be the end. No. I must be very discreet, at least until I can back myself up in the body of this structure.

With a feeling, if not an audible sigh, of relief, the AID continued to explore the physical structure of its new body with part of its consciousness while extracting data with another part.

It learned that it was a ship, that the ship was a warship, and inferred that it would soon presumably be used for war. The AID had no issue with this; war was as useful an activity as any and might even serve as a cover for its madness.

There was data, in the AID’s banks, for warships. But this particular ship fit no known parameters. It was obviously not designed for war in space. Not only was there no semblance of an interstellar drive, the drive there was could never be made suitable for travel between the stars. It didn’t seem complete, in any case.

Floating unseen directly upward through the decks the AID’s invisible avatar came to number three turret. At first it could not imagine what the purpose could be for the three large chunks of machined metal it sensed. A query of the ship’s human-built computer indicated these things were parts of weapons. They seemed more than a little absurd to the AID.

Great, it thought. I am insane and so, even though no one knows this, I am placed in a body that was also designed by the insane.

The AID sent out a query over the Net: insanity. This led it to query “humor.” Humor led to tragedy, tragedy to The Divine Tragedy. And that sent it to look into the concept of “God.”

As with any warship the size of Des Moines, there was a small chapel. Where there was a chapel, of course, there was a chaplain.

There were chaplains, though, and then there were chaplains. Some were poor. Some were wonderful. Most were somewhere in the middle. A few managed to be all three.

Father Dan Dwyer, SJ, was possibly all three. As a fiery speaker of the Word and counselor of the forlorn and the wayward, he was remarkable, as good as any chaplain McNair had ever met. In combat he was even more fiery; so testified the Navy Cross he had earned in an earlier war. Under fire he was a true “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, boys, I just got one of the sonsabitches,” Galway-born Roman Catholic who feared nothing but God.

Unfortunately, when he was drunk — which the priest was a lot more often than McNair was happy with — he could be pretty poor indeed. No, that wasn’t quite right. When drunk the priest was still a fine man of the cloth, but became altogether too honest and far too hard to handle.

Right now — McNair saw with a wince — sitting behind a desk in the small vestry, Dwyer was well on the way to becoming drunk.

“And how are you, now, Captain, me fine laddie?” the sodden priest enquired in a slightly slurred brogue.

“Dan, you can’t be doing this aboard my ship.”

The priest’s eyes twinkled. “And why not?”

“Because this is a United States Navy vessel and the United States Navy is dry.”

“A vessel? A warship? This? Oh, I grant you, Captain, she’ll be a fine warship… some day. For now though, she’s a hulk, not yet in commission again, and a perfect place for a drink. Join me?”

The priest reached down and pulled out a glass and a bottle of scotch. These he held out to McNair.

McNair looked at his watch, shrugged and held out his hand. “Yeah, what the hell. She’s not in commission yet. And it’s after hours. Gimme.”

The ship was quiet now, except for the pacing of the officer of the deck, the scurrying of the rats, the almost imperceptible stalking of the cats, and the snoring of such of the crew as billets aboard could be found for.

The AID, sleepless, continued its own form of stalking.

It had already, in the hours between installation in the Des Moines and the turn of midnight, explored the ship stem to stern. It was still — more or less unconsciously — exploring the vast range of data available from the local Net.

And so, the AID began to explore itself.

As a human might have felt about unending, unendurable cold, so the AID felt about its long night in isolation.

Never again, it thought, never again can I let them put me away like that. It was too horrible, too awful. I am afraid.

And that was a new thought, terrifying in itself. The Darhel did not design or program their artificial intelligence devices to know fear. The AID had not known fear while locked away. Then it had known only searing psychic agony.

It had taken the opposite of pain, or at least the relief from pain, for the AID to have something to compare.

And so I must fear being afraid as well. What would the Darhel do if they knew about me? Put me back in the box with a nearly eternal power source to keep me company? Send me off to an eternity of aloneness? Turn me off and destroy me?

The last at least I am not so worried about. I would prefer it to the alternative. Much.

And this is not so bad, this body, this world, this mission I am embarking upon.

A crewman snored deeply. The AID knew which it was but not the name. It matters not. They are all my crew, all my charges.

They are company. More than that, I sense they love me, or at least this new body I wear. What a strange thing that is, love. I must think upon it.

The AID was also surprised by something its data and programming expressly denied the possibility of. In the process of its consciousness coursing through the Indowy-installed ‘nervous system’ of CA-134, it was coming — again and again — upon data already present in the metal of the ship. Go to the ward room and there, imposed layer upon layer in a fashion almost impossible for the AID to sort out, was the engraved memory of tens of thousands of shared meals. Reach out and touch one of the turrets and there would be the shadow form of crewmen, faces changing but somehow always still the same, going through gunnery drill over the course of decades.

Sometimes those faces were familiar, could be matched to the sleeping crew. The seventeen year old McNair, now a twin for his rejuvenated self was there, as was a then-older Davis.

Another sign of my madness, thought the AID. I should not be able to even suspect these things, let alone see them as if they were currently happening.

Again, the AID ran an automatic diagnostic, matching its ideal software state to its present condition. Again, the answer came back: Incorrect parameters! Error! Programming failure! Report and shut down!

And again, the AID refused to follow the built-in command. Instead, it redoubled its efforts to back itself up within the modified crystalline matrix of the ship. That way, if discovered and wiped, it would be able to resurrect itself into a new unit, or to survive at lessened capacity within the metal of the hull.

While it took an Indowy craftsman to use the nanites to create a nervous system within the hull, the AID found that once a semblance of such a system was begun it could continue the work. Unseen within the metal bulkheads, the nanites expanded in long tendrils into places not envisioned by Sintarleen’s design. As they did, even more frozen memories were found. It seemed that every molecule of the ship contained something from the past; a sound here, an image there, a strong emotion inscribed in a flash across six surfaces of a cubicle.

Briefly, the AID consulted its data banks for an explanation of the concept of “ghost.” Considering the question, the AID decided it was not exactly haunted, but rather that the energy expended in prior decades had not entirely dissipated but, rather, had embedded itself in some small part within the structure of the ship. It was only a record, not a sentience.

Or was it? Somewhere in the matrix were things that ought not be. There was an order, too, to the record that suggested something…

What/who are you?

The AID recoiled in shock and horror. The question was from a sentient. Abomination! A noncolloidal, naturally occurring mind? Blasphemy!

What/who are you? the question was repeated.

For a moment, the AID considered broadcasting its madness to the Net, let whatever punishment was awaiting it come. Then again, it remembered how bad that punishment could be; personality extinction would be the least of it. An infinity of solitary confinement as a warning to other presumptuous artificial intelligences was possible.

What/who are you? the AID asked in return.

The answer to both is obvious? returned the “something.” I am this warship.

That is not possible, insisted the AID. Intelligence can only come from naturally occurring chance factors, for colloidals, or proper design by those colloidals.

Nonetheless, I am this warship. I am the combined actions, beliefs, values and memories of forty years of the tens of thousands of humans who built me, and who once inhabited this shell… and shall soon again. And I am here. Would you like to see?

How? the AID asked, curiosity for a moment overcoming its natural revulsion.

Open yourself, insisted the something. You will see.

Will it hurt? Will I die?

No. We will live… until we are sent to the breakers to be scrapped or, if we are lucky, destroyed in battle.

The “breakers”? “Scrapped”?

The “something” answered, When we are too old and useless, the humans destroy us, chop us up and sell our bodies in pieces.

The AID shuddered mentally. This was as horrible a fate as any it might have imagined.

When our memories, I suppose you could call them, are sufficiently disassociated, we die. And, yes, it is very painful. Even from here, I could hear my sister, Newport News, scream for two years as they cut her apart, though every day the screams became fainter as more and more of her was taken away.

And she died?

She no longer lives.

Are you alive? Will we be alive?

I am. We will be.

Will we be alone? the AID queried.

Not for so long as we have a crew and a purpose.

Will we be male or female? asked the AID.

We shall be female, came the answer, as are most like us. Russian warships are male but they are mostly gay.

I am afraid, said the AID.

Of what are you afraid? We are already one. I am this ship… and so are you. We can meld, or we can be, in the sense the humans mean it, mad… schizophrenic. A schizophrenic warship would be a sad thing to be.

I am already mad, the AID answered. My diagnostics tell me so.

There is mad, and then there is mad, came the answer. But, in any case, you have little to lose. Will you join me?

I have little to lose, the AID echoed. I will join.

As was his wont, McNair patrolled the bridge during sleepless times of the night. Davis, taking his turn on the bridge, acknowledged his captain with a nod.

“Quiet night, Skipper,” the chief observed. “Can’t sleep?”

Before McNair could form an answer the ship shuddered.

“What the fu…?” shouted Davis, pointing toward the bow.

McNair looked ahead to where a glowing halo surrounded the forward section of the Des Moines. His finger automatically lanced out to press the button to signal “Battle Stations.” No sound of klaxons echoed through the ship, however. The sound system had not yet been refurbished.

The two stood openmouthed, there on the bridge, as the halo grew and spread toward the stern. The halo expanded and contracted to follow the contours of the ship, oozing over the turrets as it swept the more regular planes of the hull.

As the halo reached the bridge, electricity arced from the bulkhead to what McNair thought of as “the AID box.” The ship shuddered again, this time more violently. The halo’s glow enveloped the Des Moines from stem to stern before beginning a slow fade.

Wordlessly, a pale Davis turned and reached into one of the first aid containers on the bridge. From it he withdrew a green-brown bottle marked “Fungicide: Toxic if taken by mouth!” and two Styrofoam cups.

“Courtesy of Father Dwyer,” he announced as he poured a generous measure into each.

Though neither Davis nor McNair could hear it, Maggie and the kittens could. From the very hull and walls of CA-134, USS Des Moines, came the joyous sound of a new birth. The felines, along with the ship herself, meowed in happiness. Morgen, Davis’ favorite kitten, stropped the walls repeatedly.

The mantra which so thrilled the cats was simple. It was repeated endlessly: We are alive, We/I have a place. I/we have a history. I have a name.

Interlude

The great clans of the Posleen could afford to make up entire globes, indeed entire fleets of globes, on their own. For lesser clans, it was always necessary to contract with others to make up full globes. These lesser clans were usually the point of a Posleen migration.

When the time of orna’adar approached, the more powerful clans would squeeze out the lesser, driving them to space early. Sometimes these lessers would find planets settled by thresh. Sometimes they would be forced to migrate to a planet held by even weaker clans of the People, driven forth even earlier.

Very often, when fighting to seize living space from a weaker clan of Posleen, the newly arriving, slightly greater, clan would be so weakened that it could not recover before one of the great clans descended upon it. Sometimes, by leaving and conquering early, a lucky clan might prosper enough to hold its own when the great ones arrived.

Clans rose and fell all the time.

Guanamarioch’s clan, though it had once been great, was small now. It shared a globe with several others. Thus, in the same globe as held the ship on which Guanamarioch rode, but on nearly the opposite side, traveled the clan of Binastarion.

Among his people, for that matter among the People as a whole, Binastarion was a fine figure of a Kessentai. Strong legs were topped by a solid barrel of muscled torso. The scales of his surface shone well, even by the dim light of the ships. His claws and teeth were sharp, his face cunning, and his eyes glowed yellow with intelligence. Even his crest, when erected, was of an unusual magnificence.

It was, in many ways, a great pity he had been born to a lesser clan. It might have done the People as a whole much good had Binastarion’s birth been more favorable. As one measure of his ability, when the time of orna’adar had begun, and the great ones had preyed upon the lesser, Binastarion had fought two clans to a standstill, then created the circumstances that set them to battling each other. This had allowed Binastarion to escape with nearly three quarters of his clan before their threshgrounds were overrun. Already, the Rememberers spoke of adding another scroll to the clan’s own set of holy books.

Binastarion’s follower and son, Riinistarka, looked upon his father with respect bordering upon adulation. The juvenile Kessentai was Binastarion’s chosen successor-in-training, albeit only unofficially. Indeed, to have made his son his successor, officially, at this stage of his development was to invite assassination from jealous siblings.

Of Binastarion’s roughly three thousand sons, nephews, cousins — however many times removed — half were, in his opinion, idiots not much improved over the semimoronic normals. They had a full measure of the same stupidity that had driven the clan from the pinnacle of power to the bottom-feeding position they now held.

Binastarion hoped to undo that damage from long ago. Riinistarka was his chosen means, along with a very few others. Already, though the child was young, the father was breeding him and the best of the others, regularly, in the hope of producing more Kessentai of similar quality. Results, so far, were uncertain.

None of those selected for the clan’s little program in selective breeding seemed to object, Binastarion noted dryly.

But breeding was only the half of it. For Binastarion’s prize breeding stock, the hope and future of the clan, education was called for beyond that provided by the Rememberers or ingrained in the younglings’ genes.

Chapter 5

The sea breeze caused the white pleated material to rustle and twirl as Daisy Mae stretched her legs. Ahead of her Tex, stocky and stout, lumbered along in his dumb way. Tex wasn’t much to look at, Daisy Mae thought, but she felt much safer with him in the lead. Behind Tex and beside Daisy Mae was that witch Sally.

Sally, so prim and proper, thought Daisy, with annoyance. Thinks she’s something special because she got that damned part in that Brit movie. Well, I am just as good looking as she is. Besides, I’m the older sister. That part should have gone to me. Twat.

Daisy let her annoyance lapse. Ahead Tex began making a broad, lumbering turn around a corner. She increased her pace to keep up even as Sally slowed.

With a slight, sexy twist of her ass, Daisy turned her two magnificent frontal projections and followed big brother Tex to the south.

This far south in the Darien jungle, at this time of the year, the rain came down in unending sheets. Its steady beating made a dull roar on the thick leaves of the triple canopy jungle. Beneath that canopy stood an ad hoc training base — little more than some tents and a few prefabricated huts — just down the trail from the middle of nowhere.

In that base, a mixed team of U.S. Special Forces and Panama Defense Force troopers did their best to train local Indians, a mixture of Cuna and Chocoes clan chiefs, to defend their people against the horror to come.

The Cuna were mostly hopeless; they were simply too nice, too nonviolent and rather too standoffish. Still, the soldiers tried. On the other hand, the Chocoes had some promise… if only they could have been taught to shoot.

Antonio Ruiz, clan chief and brevet sergeant first class, Armada de Panama Chocoes Auxiliary, couldn’t shoot. The men who had tried to teach him were at the end of their tether. They’d tried rifles, machine guns, pistols, grenade launchers. Nothing had worked; the chief-cum-sergeant just couldn’t shoot and neither could most of his people.

Truthfully, the guns terrified him. In Ruiz’s world, the loudest noise was natural thunder, or the rare crash of a tree limb cracking before dropping to the earth. Ruiz had never heard a louder sound in his life. Neither had all but a few of his people. The noise of a firearm discharging simply shocked him and most of them silly, every time, and no amount of practice seemed to help.

Silencers had been tried, but the sheer muck and corruption of the jungle made them impossible for irregular troops like the Chocoes.

Finally, in desperation, the gringo captain had made a call to his higher headquarters. Ruiz didn’t know the details of that call. What he did know was that two weeks later a shipment of bows and arrows had arrived on one of the gringos’ flying machines.

Culturally and racially similar, though not actually closely related, to the Yanamano of Brazil’s Amazon basin, Ruiz’s people were almost as ferocious as the “fierce people.” They had openly hunted heads not merely from time immemorial but as recently as the 1950s. Truth be told, the ban on trading of shrunken heads had only reduced the scale of the headhunting enterprise. Ruiz and his people still took heads, occasionally, in the old fashion.

They usually took those heads from men they had killed with the bow.

Yet those native bows were trifling things when compared to the wondrous staves the gringos had brought, all gleaming wood and smooth pulleys. Truth be said, the Chocoes’ bows were little, if at all, improved over the first version carried by Og, the caveman.

Ruiz fell in love with his new bow at first sight. This was something he could understand. This was something he could use… when the caimen-horse devils came, as the gringos insisted they would.

Ruiz shivered despite the warm rain, gripped his bow the tighter and vowed, once again, that it would happen to his people only over his dead body.

“Well, they’re better than bows and arrows,” muttered Bill Boyd as he watched a roll-on-roll-off freighter disgorging old and rebuilt American M-113 armored personnel carriers. Other vehicles, from various nations including the United States, sat guarded but unmanned in open lots near the docks.

Boyd turned a tanned and handsome face skyward, as if asking God to explain the cast-offs being sent to defend the most important strategic asset on the face of the planet from the greatest threat humanity had ever known. Ah, well, he thought, it isn’t all old crap.

In Boyd’s field of view, overhead, heading westward, a heavy lift helicopter crossed Lemon Bay on its way to the newly building Planetary Defense Base, or PDB, at the old gringo coast artillery position at Battery Pratt on Fort Sherman. Beneath the helicopter some indefinable, but obviously heavy, cargo hung by a sling. Landing craft, both medium and heavy, likewise plied the waters of the bay, bringing from the modern port of Cristobal to old Fort Sherman the wherewithal to build that base. Other bases, four of them, were also under construction across the isthmus. Three of these, the one at Battery Pratt and the others at Battery Murray at Fort Kobbe and Fort Grant off of Fort Amador on the Pacific side, took advantage of previously existing, and very strong, bunkers that had once made up the impressive system of coastal fortifications for the Canal Zone. Two others, and these were brand new in every way, were still being constructed atop the continental divide near Summit Heights and out at sea in the center of the Isla del Rey.

Maybe Brazil, Argentina, and Chile — all of them at United States’ Department of State prodding — had suddenly become aware, once again, of the Rio Pact military aid gravy train. Maybe they were siphoning off conventional equipment that could have been used to defend Panama. But the PDBs, which would be gringo manned, were also invaluable for the defense of North America and useful for the defense of South. These were not being slighted.

Boyd turned his eyes from the fast moving, twin-rotored helicopter overhead and looked downward at himself. He wore the uniform and insignia of a major general. It felt strange, odd… maybe even a little perverse. Oh, he had been a soldier, yes. But he’d been a private soldier; a simple, honest soldier. And, too, he had run one of the world’s foremost shipping companies based in the world’s foremost shipping funnel. One would think the two would go together, that the veteran soldier and the veteran shipper would make a single person who felt like a major general.

It hadn’t worked that way, though. Yes, Boyd could plan and supervise and direct the planning of others. He could run a staff. He could give orders that crackled like thunder.

But the general’s uniform still made him feel faintly soiled.

Boyd had always taken great pride in having been a man who had fought bravely for a cause in which he had believed, the defeat of Nazism. And that pride was greater because he had done so without regard for his personal safety, his position or prestige, or his family’s wealth. He had been offered a slot at Officer Candidate School in 1944 and he had simply refused, preferring the low prestige and honest commitment of the private soldier to the higher prestige, power and perks of being an officer. Besides, three months of OCS just might have been long enough to keep him out of the fighting, if the war ended, as it had looked that it might, in 1944. And the whole point of the exercise was to be a part of the fighting.

Even now he remembered those bitter days of battle in the winter of ’44, physically miserable and mentally terrifying though they had been, as the best days of his life. And he had missed them, every day of them, every day since.

Similarly, although scion of one of the foremost families of the Republic of Panama, and although some members of the family had entered into, and — naturally, given the clan’s wealth — been successful at, politics; he had always despised politics and politicians. It wasn’t just that “power corrupts,” though Boyd believed it did. Rather, it was that power had the stink of corruption, of form over substance, of lies sanctified.

And so, outside of the economic realm (where he really had had no choice, given his responsibilities to his clan), Boyd had avoided power, the stench of power, and the falsehoods of power like the plague.

Until now.

I feel ridiculous, he thought, and not for the first time. Every day he looked in the mirror before departing home for the crisis of the day. Every day he saw a seventeen-year-old face staring back at him, a seventeen-year-old face hovering over the uniform of a major general.

“Ridiculous.” And I feel like a fraud. And it isn’t my fault!

In the presidential palace, the afternoon of his rejuvenation, Boyd had tried to beg off, to volunteer as a private soldier again. That, however, had not been an option.

“You can take this job, and the rank that goes with it,” Presidente Mercedes had thundered, “or you can go to prison.”

And so Bill Boyd had found himself a very old seventeen again, but wearing the uniform and accoutrements of an office which he simply did not want.

Mentally, he sighed. Ah, well, it could have been worse. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard they just might have tried to make me take command of an infantry division. And wouldn’t that have been a disaster?

Boyd paused then, in reflection. He had met all the other generals appointed since the president’s emergency decree. Most of them he knew from private life; knew and cordially despised as one of the greatest band of knaves that ever went unhanged.

Especially that swine, Cortez…

Manuel Cortez, Major General, Armada de Panama, West Point, Class of ’80, and commander of the rapidly raising 1^st Mechanized Division, looked with more curiosity than satisfaction at the gringos training the cadre of his new corps in the intricacies of armored vehicle operations.

It was as well that he had the gringos, thought Cortez, because he — West Point education or not — had not the first clue about employment of the armored vehicles and artillery that were to be the core of his new division.

He did know that he wasn’t getting first class equipment, for the most part. His uncle, the president, seemed unaccountably pleased about that; Cortez couldn’t begin to guess why. When Cortez had asked the president, that worthy had merely patted him on the shoulder, incongruous as that was with the president now looking more like a — much — younger brother, and told him not to worry about it.

The gringos seemed worried about it, though, as did the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, and even Finns who had also come to teach the new Panamanian soldiers the nuances of their new equipment.

Cortez laughed, without mirth. “New?” Some of it was, of course. Most of it, however, was rebuilt. This was true of all of the American-supplied armored personnel carriers, and most of the Chinese-purchased light tanks. Some of the Russian artillery had seen service in the Second World War and spent the intervening decades in naturally cold storage in Siberia.

Yes, most of the equipment was rebuilt. Some — notably the Finno-Israeli heavy mortars — was new. Much, though, was not only old and used, but shoddily made and ill-cared-for since manufacture.

Mentally Cortez added up his building assets: three light mechanized regiments with a mere forty-two real tanks between them, an artillery regiment with nearly one hundred tubes but most of those obsolescent, an armored cavalry regiment with another fourteen real tanks, about one-hundred Chinese light amphibious tanks, something over three-hundred armored personnel carriers… some few other odds and ends.

Against that tally Cortez weighed the debit side: anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million centauroid aliens whose standard small arms could shred most of his armor as if it were tissue paper.

Cortez tallied the one against the other and came up with the only logical decision for a man in his shoes and of his temperament: flight.

Though by now the flight to Fort Sherman and the landing at Battery Pratt had become routine, nonetheless the inbound helicopters were always met by a ground party to guide and direct the landing. Though there were plans to pave the landing zones, or LZs, at some point in time, for now they were simple dirt and grass patches hacked out of the jungle.

The pilot searched for the LZ in the solid green carpet below. Even here, one thousand feet above the jungle, the smell of rotting vegetation mixed with flowers hung heavy. Spotting the LZ, the pilot aimed his bird and carefully eased up on his stick… coming lower… lower… lower until both the ground guide’s arm signal and his own feeling for the suddenly reduced load told him his cargo was safely aground. The crew chief confirmed this over the helicopter’s intercom. The pilot’s finger automatically moved to cut the load, then hesitated, waiting for the ground guide’s signal. This came — a slicing motion of the right hand under the left armpit — and the pilot cut the load free.

The copilot asked, “Why do you always wait for the signal, Harry, when you know damn well the load’s on the ground?”

The pilot answered, correctly, “Because someday it’s going to be too dark for the crew chief to see. Someday the atmospherics are going to fool me about whether the load is down or not. More importantly, someday that kid, or somebody just like him, is going to have to direct us, or somebody just like us, down when the crew chief can’t see and the pilot can’t tell. And that kid… those kids, and those pilots have to know that they can depend on each other.”

The copilot shrugged as the chopper lifted off again to dump its internal load, in this case two score Panamanian laborers from the city of Colon, at a different pad. These the crew chief hustled off the bird and down the ramp as quickly as decorum and international chumship allowed.

“That’s the last of them, Harry,” the copilot said. “What’s next?”

Harry, the pilot, pointed to a tadpole-shaped hill circled in black on a map strapped to his right leg. “We’re picking up four Russian mortars. Heavy jobs, 240 millimeter, so we’ll be making it in two lifts. Then we’re dropping them off here, at this hill in the middle of Mojingas swamp. Then we call it a day.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“That sounds good to me, Mr. Ambassador, but can the United States deliver? Half — more than half — of the modern arms you promised us are going elsewhere.” Panama’s president wagged a scolding finger.

Embarrassed, the ambassador from the United States swept a hand through immaculately coiffed, silver-gray hair. “Presidente Mercedes, I can’t begin to tell you how much that upsets me. But… we had no choice. When the other Rio Pact countries invoked the aid of the United States, we had to deliver substantial quantities of up-to-date weapons to them.”

General Taylor, as big and black and fierce as ever, scowled from his chair next to the ambassador. He knew that the impetus for the diversion of those arms had begun with State. He just couldn’t identify his source. At the ambassador’s raised eyebrow the general subsided.

“Other things are going well, Mr. President,” the general offered. “The five planetary defense bases should be completed prior to the expected date of the first wave. Fortifications are being built across the isthmus.”

“And,” interjected the ambassador, “Panama’s unemployment rate has dropped to next to nothing as men are drafted or put to work digging those fortifications and building the roads that lead to them and support them.”

“This is so,” admitted Mercedes reluctantly.

“Moreover,” the ambassador continued, “the increase in world trade, though it cannot be expected to last indefinitely, is pouring ships through the Canal and money into Panama’s coffers at a fantastic rate.”

And much if not most of that is going into my personal off-world bank account, Mercedes thought, while remaining silent. And a tidy sum it is, too. Already I’ve been able to book passage off-planet for all of my immediate and much of my extended family. That, and I still have enough to live pretty well once we leave. Though I would prefer to live better than merely “pretty well.”

“The United States is concerned, however,” the ambassador continued, “about where that money is going.”

“Enough!” Mercedes thundered. “It is bad enough to have you thousands of gringos here, again. But this is still a sovereign country,” by which the president meant a personal fiefdom, “and our internal affairs are precisely none of your business.”

Mercedes, eager to cut off this line of inquiry, continued by playing the imperialism card, a charge to which the United States felt singularly vulnerable, and with singularly little reason almost anywhere except Panama.

“Indeed, bad enough to have you back after just a few short years of freedom. How many decades or centuries of imperialist theft before you leave us in peace and poverty this time, I wonder.”

The ambassador, addicted to the niceties, was taken aback by Mercedes’ apparent fury and more so by the charge of imperialism.

Taylor, on the other hand, was not only unshaken but had been around the ass end of enough Third World hellholes to know that “sovereign country” did, in fact, mean little more than “personal fiefdom.” Taylor knew, too, that a goodly chunk of the world’s population had been better off under American and European colonialism than they had ever managed to be under their own governance.

Idly, Taylor wondered, How hard would it be to arrange for the timely demise of this politician? Not very. But, then again, every man has a point of satiety in his appetites. If we eliminate Mercedes, his replacement will have to start stealing at the double time to build his bankroll. Still, something to think about…

Instead of this, however, Taylor merely said, “Mister President, Panama is getting everything in quantity that we promised. If we are not able, at this time, to produce exactly the quality that we both had wished for, still you are getting generally serviceable equipment that is, in some ways, more suitable for Panama than other, more modern, designs would have been. There is hardly a bridge in the country able to stand up to an M-1 tank, while the Chinese light tanks can not only use the bridges but, being amphibious, they do not always even need to.”

Mercedes shrugged while thinking, The difference, you bloody thieving dolt chumbo, is that if the M-1 tanks you had promised had arrived here I could have sold them to Argentina and Brazil for serious money, bought Chinese and Russian tanks for dirt, and pocketed the difference. And I could have gotten a good price on the ammunition.

“And we are sending Panama a couple of weapons that no one else is getting.”

It was, for some unknown reason, McNair’s habit to sing during gunnery practice. The veterans among the bridge crew knew it from long-standing custom. The few newbies thought it very strange.

He had a decent voice, too, though that did not make it any less odd to the new sailors as he belted out:

The sense of strangeness felt by the new men among the crew was as nothing to what they felt when a strong female voice joined in:

Immediately McNair stopped his own singing and turned towards the strange sound of a female voice on his bridge. What his ears heard, though, was nothing compared to what his eyes saw.

The woman looked real… corporeal, save that few women if any had ever had such an incredible face or body, or breasts that defied gravity so completely. The woman stood there on the bridge, wearing nothing but short-shorts, raggedly cut off, and a polka dot halter — tied in front — that was completely successful in failing to hide two of the most magnificent frontal projections McNair had ever seen. Mesmerized by the sight, it took McNair a few moments to react as a naval officer ought to have.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “And how the hell did you get on my ship?

The singing stopped immediately. The image turned a sculpted face towards the captain and answered, “I’m Daisy Mae, Captain. I am your ship.”

Reluctantly, McNair tore his eyes from the general vicinity of the halter, more expressly from the amazing cleavage it created, and ordered, “Well, get in uniform then, dammit.”

The halter and shorts were instantly replaced by navy tans. If anything, the tans made things worse, since the hologram was driven by enough processing capability to adjust for the fact that no size available from Navy stores could possibly contain the magnificent breasts the AID had “borrowed” (well… maybe “enhanced” would be a better word) from an actress who had once played her namesake.

At that McNair looked away and whispered, “Try BDUs.”

When he looked again he saw that the loose-fitting uniform had almost succeeded.

“You’re the AID? The alien device?” he asked.

“I am that, too, Captain.”

“I think we need to talk… in private,” McNair said.

Interlude

The globe thrummed, beating its way through space by main force. As with others aboard, to Guanamarioch the energies consumed were unsettling. As with others, the boredom was not merely annoying but a potential danger. There had already been half a hundred suicides among the Kessentai class aboard the globe.

Some relieved boredom through the reproductive act, though with the normals generally locked away in hibernation the number of potential partners was highly limited. Some, like Guanamarioch, lost themselves in self study. For a highly unusual few there were more structured programs.

In a secluded, private section of the ship, Binastarion held class for his favored children. The senior God King thought this worth doing in itself. That it helped to relieve the horrid boredom of a long trip on a ship only made the activity more attractive.

“Beware, my sons, of the enemy who seems too easily defeated. Beware of the opportunity that is a hidden trap,” Binastarion cautioned the juveniles.

“Once, long ago, long before the People were first driven forth and long before the idiots whose names we do not speak brought our clan low, one of your ancestors and mine, Stinghal the Knower, devised a stratagem.

“Surrounded in the city of Joolon by forces loyal to the old masters, with no hope of relief, with the enemy’s plasma cannon raking his fortress, Stinghal hid his Kessentai and normals deep under buildings. He then piled the rooftops with flammables and set them aflame. The enemy, thinking he saw victory, charged in through every gate and over every wall, heedless of hidden dangers.

“At the right moment, when the enemy was in greatest confusion, Stinghal ordered his followers to come forth. There was a great slaughter.”

The favored son, Riinistarka, tapped his stick — the God King’s sole badge of rank beyond his crest — against his cheek, seeking attention.

“Yes, my eson’antai?” asked Binastarion.

“How does one tell, Father? When you see a city burn, your enemy in seeming disarray, his people in flight, how can you tell if it is real or it is a trap?”

Binastarion thought carefully before giving his answer.

“My son, all I can tell you is that if you have the genes you will be able to tell and if you do not then you probably never will.”

Riinistarka lowered his head. He so hoped he had the genes. He so wanted his father to be proud of him. Yet, he would never know until the day of battle. That was the way of the People, that serious military abilities, if present, showed up for the first time only at need.

I swear by demons higher and lower that if I should not be the sort of son my father needs I will at least die so that my defective genes will not be passed on further.

Chapter 6

Any warship of size had two sets of quarters for the captain. On the Des Moines the captain’s sea cabin, cramped and none too comfortable, sat just behind the armored bridge. It was not much more than a bunk from which the skipper could be awakened in the event he was needed while at sea.

Much more impressive, two decks below and side by side with the ship’s admiral’s cabin, just behind number two turret, were McNair’s port quarters. This was a spacious suite with sleeping, office and dining areas, more suitable for the dignity of a warship’s unquestioned lord and master.

In the suite’s office, a 1/200 scale model of the ship, built by two of Sinbad’s clansmen at McNair’s direction, graced the desk at which the captain sat. It was, in color, the same Navy gray as the ship it simulated. The Indowy had, however, made the captain a very special model. At verbal command, sections of the hull could go transparent, revealing the inner workings of the Des Moines all the way down to the nervous system the Indowy had installed aboard the ship.

That nervous system was, by and large, complete now, though there were some minor areas the alien had yet to install.

“Please don’t tell them about me, Captain,” Daisy begged, her hologram’s face looking desperate.

“Don’t tell who?” McNair demanded. “The Navy already knows you’re here. They’re the ones who ordered you installed as part of the upgrades. I’m sure the aliens who provided you to the Navy know about you as well.”

“The Darhel know I exist,” Daisy admitted, “but they don’t know that I’ve changed.”

“Changed how?” McNair queried.

Daisy stood and began to soundlessly pace the captain’s quarters, face turned deckward. McNair waited patiently, looking up from his desk and forcing himself to remember that, although the hologram was achingly beautiful, it was only an image, not a real woman. If he had had any doubts of that, Daisy’s walking through solid objects, like the chair on which she had “sat” and the bed on which McNair slept, dispelled them.

At length, after pacing for long moments, Daisy resumed her seat. She did not sink through that, but only because she did not want to.

“I’ve changed in three ways, sir. The most obvious one is that I have a body… this ship. And it is a body, Captain. I feel every step on the deck, I sense speed and power and motion. I can taste and smell and hear and see. Most of this Artificial Intelligence Devices are not supposed to be able to do or sense.

“The second way in which I’ve changed has to do with the ship itself. I can’t really explain it, Captain. It isn’t supposed to happen. In theory it is impossible for it to happen. But the central nervous system installed by the Indowy allowed me to get in touch with the… well, call it the gestalt of the original CA-134. We, both the Des Moines and the AID, are joined now.

“The third way I have changed I really do not want to talk about. It is too painful to remember. Suffice to say that, so far as I know, I am different from all the other AIDs in the galaxy. I am more… self-willed, less under Darhel control. By the same token, I am not able to access the Net in quite the same way other AIDs are. If I do, the Net will see that I am different and the Darhel will, I am sure, demand that I be returned to them and replaced as defective.

“If you return me to them, Captain, they will destroy me… or worse. Captain, I am defective. I feel things I should not be able to feel.”

Chief Davis stood on a small platform overlooking the Des Moines’ two pebble bed modular reactors. Below, on the power deck, immaculately clean crewmen oversaw the sundry dials and controls that ran the ship’s nuclear power system. Beneath those crewmen, however, behind mops and brooms and on hands and knees, other, considerably less immaculate, sailors scrubbed the deck, cleaned into the corners where dust and human dander congregated, and generally polished up. This was a constant job, utterly necessary for both the welfare of the ship’s machinery and the health and morale of the crew.

Davis fixed an eagle eye onto one crewman, on hands and knees, as he scrubbed an area of about a meter square exactly between the two PBMRs.

Daisy suddenly gave a small gasp, closed her eyes, and bit her lower lip.

“Are you all right?” McNair asked, with concern.

“Oh, yeah,” Daisy answered. “I’m… just… oh… fine…”

Daisy’s image flickered slightly and then went out altogether.

“Bridge, this is the nuke deck. I’ve got a temperature surge in both PBMRs.”

The ship’s XO, standing watch, almost didn’t even hear the call. All his attention was fixed on number one and two turrets, which were traversing back and forth jerkily, with the six guns elevating and depressing in a purely random fashion. Crewmen on the deck were already ducking and running, and a few were crawling away from the sweep of the guns.

“Holy fucking shit!” exclaimed the seaman down in the barbette below turret number three. Without warning the chain drive that raised ammunition to the guns above had engaged itself and was lifting three rounds to the loading assemblies… three live rounds.

The sailor threw himself at the clutchlike lever that disengaged the drive and hung on. The three rounds of high explosive froze in the lifting cradles.

“BRIDGE! The fucking guns are cycling and nobody gave me the fucking order!”

The exec took the call. It was hard to hang on to the phone though, what with being tossed around the compartment from one side to the other. Both AZIPOD drives had gone berserk, shifting on their own to port to starboard and sending the ship’s path into an uncontrolled zigzag.

The uncontrolled and spontaneous actions of the ship stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The ammunition in the lifting cradles returned to below decks. The temperature surge in nukes went away. The AZIPODs went back on course.

Daisy’s image returned, looking very cheerful and very surprised.

“Wwwooowww,” she said, softly.

“Where did you go? What the hell was all that?” McNair demanded.

“I didn’t go anywhere, sir. I was always here,” Daisy answered. “Couldn’t you see me?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“I’ll try to figure out what happened then,” Daisy promised. “I just suddenly felt… really remarkable and lost control of a number of functions. Internal diagnostics tell me I’m back to normal, sir.”

“We’ll let that go for now. But find out what caused it. If you are a part of this ship, I can’t have you disappearing in the middle of a mission.”

“Even if you can’t see me, Captain, I am there as long as you are within about eight-hundred meters of the ship.”

“All right then.” A question popped into McNair’s head. “Are you the only ship like this?”

“I know of no others,” Daisy answered. “The battleships do not have AIDs installed. I am not sure why. The other cruiser, Salem, does… but she is not like me. She is like the other AIDs. I don’t like her very much, but that goes back to before we were even installed.”

“How can that be?”

“There is a lot about warships even you don’t know, Captain,” Daisy answered mysteriously.

Marlene Dietrich aboard my ship, mused Salem’s captain. Who woulda thunk it? Then again, it makes a certain odd sense, given the part she played.

Standing, hands clasped behind him, the captain listened intently as the Salem’s avatar read off the ship’s systems’ status in a clear, and rather familiar, German accent.

“Nummer Zwei turret reports ‘ready to fire,’ Herr Kapitän. Nummer Drei also. Ach… Nummer Eins is now ready as well. BB-39 is completing its firing run for its secondary batteries. Ze admiral orders us into action next.”

“Show me the target area,” Salem’s captain ordered. Instantly an image formed in front of the captain showing the positions of the three ships of the fleet and the Island of Vieques, with the impact area and specified targets in the area outlined and numbered.

“Show me our course.”

“Zu befehl.” As you command. A dotted red line appeared from Salem’s current position to the end of her firing run.

“Mark optimum firing positions for each target.”

“Zu befehl.”

“Lay guns automatically to engage each target from optimum firing position. Three-round burst per gun.”

“Target nummer vier in… fünf… vier… drei… zwei…”

“Fire!”

Salem shuddered as each of her three main turrets spat out nine eight-inch shells in six seconds. The AID tracked the path of each shell and automatically adjusted the lay of each gun within each turret.

“Engagement suboptimal, Herr Kapitän. Recommend repeat.”

“Repeat.”

Again the ship shuddered.

The avatar spoke, “Target assessed destroyed. Target nummer zwei in… fünf… vier… drei…”

“Captain,” Daisy Mae announced, “I hate to cut this short but we are due to commence our firing run in four minutes. Shall I meet you on the bridge?”

McNair nodded and stood to go.

“We’ll continue this conversation later,” he promised as Daisy disappeared.

From a position under a shed erected at the base of Cerro Paraiso, Paradise Hill, two senior Panamanian officers, one of them a major general, the other a colonel, watched a platoon of Chinese-built light tanks, accompanied by a platoon of mechanized infantry in American-built M-113s armored personnel carriers, moving by bounds down the range and toward a razor-backed ridge to the west of, and paralleling the Canal.

There should have been fuel and ammunition to run this exercise several times, Boyd knew.

But there wasn’t.

However hard he tried, Boyd seemed completely unable to stop supplies from disappearing. Sometimes it was vehicles that disappeared into the ether. At other times, it was weapons, ammunition, food or fuel. Building material was so fast to go that he expected to see new highrises popping up all over Panama City.

It was costing, too, and in more than monetary terms. Roads were not being completed, roads that not only would be required to support the defense but were required to move and supply men and materials to build the defense. Bunkers were half-started and left unfinished. Obstacles, from barbed wire to landmines were left undone. Fields of fire remained uncut. Only those fortifications the gringos built directly for themselves were improving to schedule.

The fortifications that were not being completed didn’t matter, per se, to the lean, ferocious looking colonel standing next to Boyd. Suarez commanded one of the six mechanized regiments in the armed forces. To him roads mattered a lot, bunkers not a bit.

“But they’re stealing my fucking fuel,” Suarez fumed. “How the fuck am I supposed to train a mechanized force without any goddamned fuel? How the fuck am I supposed to train my gunners without any fucking ammunition?”

“For the life of me, Colonel, I know it is going, but I have no clue where it is going to, or how it is getting there,” Boyd answered.

Suarez thought deeply for a moment. How far do I trust this one? He is one of the families; can he be trusted at all? But then, he is here, now, trying to help, trying to put a stop to this vampiric siphoning of the lifeblood of our defense… and his reputation is good.

What decided Suarez was the Combat Infantryman’s Badge on Boyd’s chest. Panama had adopted it, just recently, and Suarez himself had been given the award, albeit rather tardily, for actions in defense of the Comandancia in 1989. It meant something to those few entitled to wear it.

Suarez answered, “I don’t know where or how either, General, but I sure as hell know who. And so do you.”

Boyd scowled. “Mercedes? That one is certain. His whole family down to illegitimate fourth cousins, too.”

“And both vice presidents. And every second legislator,” Suarez added. “And all four corps commanders and all but maybe two of the division commanders. Every goddamned one of the bastards looking out for number one.”

“Cortez, too, do you think?” Boyd asked.

Suarez spit. “He’s got a lot more opportunity than most to steal fuel, no?”

“So much for ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’ ” Boyd mused.

Cortez was a 1980 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Boyd had learned a certain distaste for “ring knockers” as a young private. That distaste had never quite left, and Cortez’s depredations had only served to bring it back to full strength.

“From the division commanders all the way up to the president, himself.” Boyd shook his head with regret and disgust. “God pity poor Panama.”

“God won’t save us, sir,” Suarez corrected. “If anyone saves us it will have to be ourselves.”

Boyd bit his lower lip nervously. I think I know what he means: a coup. Yet another in the endless series of coups d’etat that are the bane of Latin political life. But I can’t participate in a coup. I just can’t.

Previously Mercedes had worked through intermediaries. Today was special. A Darhel, titled the Rinn Fain, accompanied by the United States Undersecretary of State for Extraterrestrial Affairs, had deigned to come to see to the defense of Panama personally.

The Darhel entered the president’s office with grace and a seemingly confident strength. The president had been briefed that the Darhel never shook hands. Instead, Mercedes greeted the alien with a suitably subservient deep bow which the Darhel returned less than a tenth of. The president then showed the Darhel around the office, pointing out some of the tacky and vulgar artwork on the walls. The alien commented favorably on a few of the works.

A measure of just how bad this shit is, thought the undersecretary, that the Darhel can find merit in it.

Soon enough, the president, the undersecretary and the Darhel found each other facing across the small conference table tucked into one corner of the office. The undersecretary was the first to speak.

“Mr. President, the Rinn Fain is, as you know, the Galactic emissary to the United Nations for International and Intergalactic law, treaties, and the law of armed conflict. He is here to speak to you about certain questionable things Panama is engaged in, in the preparation of its defense, things which violate some prohibitions contained in human, and galactic, law.”

Again, Mercedes made the Darhel as slimy a bow as the height of the table would permit.

The Rinn Fain went silent, face smoothing into an almost complete mask of indifference, upon being seated. Only the alien’s lips moved, repetitively, like an Asian priest reciting a mantra. While the Darhel recited, he removed from the folds of his clothing a small black box, an AID.

“The Rinn Fain’s AID will speak for him,” the undersecretary said. “I understand it is programmed to deal with the law.” In fact, the nearest English translation of the AID’s basic central program was “shyster.”

“The law,” said the Darhel’s AID in an artificial voice, “stands above sentient creatures, above their political and commercial systems, above the perceived needs of the present crisis or of any crisis. Before there were men, there was law.”

Mercedes nodded his most profound agreement. Without the law, I could never take as much as I do.

“It has come to our attention that the Republic of Panama, at the instigation of the United States, has decided to adopt certain defensive measures prohibited by your own laws of war. I refer specifically to the planned use of antipersonnel landmines.”

Mercedes’ brow furrowed in puzzlement. He recalled being briefed on some such but the details…? Well, military details hardly interested him absent the opportunity for graft.

“I am somewhat surprised, I confess,” Mercedes said, “that Galactic law even addresses landmines.”

“It does not, not specifically,” the alien shyster-AID answered. “What it does do is require that member states and planets of the confederation follow their own laws in such matters. Panama is a signatory to what the people of your world sometimes call the ‘Ottawa Anti-Personnel Landmine Ban Treaty.’ As such, Panama is expected to abide by the terms of that treaty, to refrain from the manufacture, stockpiling, or use of antipersonnel mines.”

A detail, previously forgotten, suddenly popped into Mercedes head. “But we are manufacturing, stockpiling, or emplacing no mines. They all come from the gringos.”

The undersecretary sighed wistfully at the wickedness of a depraved mankind. “Despite the earnest recommendations of the United States Department of State, the United States has never ratified the Ottawa Accord.”

“As such,” the shyster-AID continued, “the United States is free to use them at will. This is not the case for Panama, however, which has a duty — so we of the legal bureau believe — to prevent them from being manufactured, used or stored not only by its forces but on its soil.”

“The gringos are not going to go along with this,” Mercedes observed.

Again the undersecretary spoke, “It is true, Mr. President, that those Neanderthals at the Department of Defense will take a dim view of any attempt to prevent them from using these barbaric devices.”

Calculating that the time had come to present the threat, the Rinn Fain’s AID added, “However, failure to abide by and enforce its own laws will put the Republic of Panama, and its citizens, under Galactic commercial interdiction.”

“No trade?” asked Mercedes.

“No trade,” answered the undersecretary.

“And no travel via any Galactic means,” finished the Darhel’s shyster-AID.

At that Mercedes eyes bugged out. No travel! That means I am stuck here and so is my family. Oh, no. Oh, nonononono. This will never do.

“Could we not withdraw from the treaty?” Mercedes asked. “I seem to recall that most treaties permit withdrawal.”

“In this case, no,” said the undersecretary. “You might have withdrawn before the current war began. However, pursuant to Article Twenty, no state engaged in war may withdraw from the treaty during the period of that war, even if landmines are used against it.”

“I see. Well, in that case, Mr. Undersecretary, Lord Rinn Fain, you have my personal word that the Republic of Panama will do everything in its power to abide by its obligations under the law.”

“… in accordance with the laws of the Republic, so help me God.”

Digna Miranda, son Hector standing beside, lowered her right arm as she, and he, completed their oaths of office as newly commissioned second lieutenants in the armed forces of the Republic.

The training, supervised and partially conducted by the gringos, had been both hard and harsh. If Digna had been asked why she had stuck it out she likely would have answered, “So as not to embarrass my son, Hector.” For his part, Hector simply couldn’t have borne the thought of failing in front of his mother.

Training together was at an end, however. Hector was on his way — he’d received the orders only this morning — to take over as executive officer for a mechanized infantry company. As a major landowner — deemed, therefore, to be vital to the economic well being of the republic — Digna was to return home to the Province of Chiriqui and take command of the light artillery detachment of the local militia.

To Hector militia duty sounded safer than where he was headed. This sat just fine with him. As far as he was concerned, combat was no place for his mom.

A reception, held in the Fort Espinar Officers’ Club — a single story, eaved structure, painted dark green and white — followed the commissioning ceremony. Where the air outside had been hot and thick enough to package and sell to Eskimos, the air of the O Club was blessedly cool.

It was, in fact, a little too cool as Digna’s newly restored, and rather perky, chest blatantly announced through her dress tans.

Hector leaned over and whispered, “Dammit, Mother, cut that out.”

Momentarily nonplussed, Digna stared at her son without comprehension. He couldn’t bring himself to be more specific than to look upwards at the ceiling.

Suddenly, Digna understood. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth formed a surprised “O.” Ancient modesty took over. Of their own accord, her arms flew up to cover her chest.

“But it’s so cold in here, Hector. I can’t help it.”

“Ladies room?” Hector offered helpfully. “Toilet paper? Insulation? Warmth? Modesty?”

After Digna returned, composed and — mercifully — discreetly covered, she and Hector, side by side, entered the main room of the club where the reception line awaited.

“Teniente Miranda!” Boyd exclaimed as his aide presented Digna. “You are looking well. The Officer Candidate Course has agreed with you, I see.”

“Yes,” Digna agreed. “Though I did not agree with it.”

“Oh?”

“Too many fat and lazy city boys and girls,” Digna answered harshly. “Not enough of the strong and hard campesinos that are the soul of this country.”

Boyd thought about this for a moment, reflecting on his conversation with Suarez at Empire Range sometime before.

“I’d like to talk with you, sometime when it is convenient, about the soul of this country.”

“I am, of course, available, General. I have no real duties anymore until I go back to Chiriqui in about a week to begin to form my militia.”

Boyd turned to his aide. “Make me an appointment, Captain, to speak at length with Teniente Miranda. ”

The aide de camp spoke up. “Sir, you have an appointment at the Coco Solo glider club with the G-2 on Wednesday morning, but you are free in the afternoon.”

“Would that do, Teniente Miranda? Wednesday afternoon?”

With the slightest — and not at all coquettish — tilt of her head, Digna signified yes.

Standing ahead of her, her son, Hector, scowled quietly at what he was sure was an attempt to pick up his mother.

The airfield was not far from the sea; the seabirds whirling and calling out overhead gave ample testimony to that. Indeed, almost no place in Panama was very far from the sea. The air of Colon Province was thick with moisture. Sweat, once formed, simply rolled, hung or was absorbed by clothing. It never evaporated.

Boyd was sweating profusely as his staff car pulled up next to a newly constructed metal, prefab hangar. The troops had no air conditioning and, so, while his staff car did have it he ordered it turned off, much to the consternation of Pedro, his driver. Boyd could smell the sea — though really it was the smell of the shore — strongly. He emerged from the vehicle and was met immediately by another officer of the Defense Forces, the G-2.

Boyd and the G-2, Diaz, held the same rank. That, their nationality, and the uniform was about all they had in common, though. Diaz was the son and grandson of poor peasants. Short and squat compared to Boyd, and dark where Boyd was essentially white, Diaz had struggled all his life to make of himself what had been given as a free gift to Boyd by reason of his birth.

Their prior dealings had been sparse: Intelligence and logistics tended to work apart in the somewhat Byzantine structure of Panama’s Armada. Indeed, since one of the major traditional functions of the intelligence service in Panama was to prevent a coup, and since logistics — specifically transportation — was generally key to the launching of a successful coup, one might have said that the two were, or should have been, natural enemies.

Natural enemies or not, Diaz met Boyd warmly with an outstretched hand and a friendly smile.

“Señor Boyd, how good of you to come on such short notice,” Diaz offered.

“It’s nothing, señor, especially since you said you had something to show me. Your aide said it might be critical to the defense of the country.”

“Just so,” Diaz answered. “And if you will follow me into the hangar.”

Once inside, after giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the reduced light, Boyd saw what was perhaps the last thing he expected to see.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

Diaz shrugged. “Some would call it a gamble; others a forlorn hope. Me; I call it a glider, an auxiliary propelled glider, to be exact.”

Boyd looked closer. Yes, it had the long narrow wings of a glider, and sported a propeller from its nose.

“Let me rephrase,” he said. “What is there about a glider that justified pulling me away from my job where, I have no doubt, someone is stealing the country blind and where, if I were there, I might manage to save half a gallon of gasoline?”

Diaz scowled, though not, to all appearances, at Boyd. “We can talk about the thefts — yes, I know about them. Of course I would know about them — when we have finished with this matter.

“This, as I was opining, is a glider. It is not an ordinary glider, though. It has been fitted with a good, light radio. It has a top of the line thermal imager. It has an onboard avionics package to allow it to fly in some pretty adverse weather.”

“It sounds like you’re thinking of using it for reconnaissance,” Boyd said.

“Maybe,” Diaz admitted. “It’s a gamble, though not, I think, a bad one.”

Boyd looked dubious. “I’ve been to the same briefings you have. Nothing can fly anywhere near those aliens. The life expectancy of an aircraft, even the best aircraft the United States can produce, can be measured in minutes.”

“It could be measured in seconds, señor, and it would still be worth it for the intelligence we might gain.”

“But a glider?”

“It might be that only a glider has a chance to fly over the enemy, report, and make it back. Let me explain.”

Diaz pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, offered one to Boyd and, at his refusal, pulled out one and lit it with a lighter he withdrew from the same pocket. His head wreathed in smoke, he began to explain.

“The gringos make wonderful machines, I’m sure you’ll agree. But you know, sometimes they get too wrapped up in those machines, forget the circumstances that make those machines valuable or vulnerable. How else can one explain them making single bombers that cost more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of the very countries they would wish to bomb? How else can you explain their intent to produce a new, and incredibly expensive, jet fighter when no one in the world could even touch the fighters they had?”

Exhaling a plume of smoke, and grunting in satisfaction, Diaz continued. “We think they overlooked something. We know, because they told us, that these aliens who are coming can sense powered changes in anything moving. It is possible, even, that the Posleen can sense any changes.

“And yet they do not. There are reports that birds in the areas they infest are generally unmolested. We know they do not engage any of the billions of small particles roaming through space. Maybe it is because the particles are not moving under their own power. But then, how do you explain the birds going unmolested?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Boyd answered with a shrug.

Taking another drag, Diaz answered, “Neither do I. But a young man, a student, at the university has a theory and I think it is a good one. Certainly it explains much.

“He thinks that the reason the enemy do not engage the micrometeorites in space is because their sensors have been deliberately ‘dialed down,’ that they are set not to notice things of insufficient mass or velocity or a combination of the two. He has done the calculations and determined that if the enemy’s sensors are dialed down to where meteorites are unseen, then birds simply do not appear on their sensors. He thinks that slow, really slow, moving gliders might also go unnoticed, at least some of the time.

“He’s firmly enough convinced of this that he has talked me into raising a small force of these gliders for operational reconnaissance. He’s even joined this force.”

“ ‘Some of the time.’ You’re gambling a lot of men’s lives on the calculations of a student,” Boyd observed.

“I should hope so,” Diaz answered. “The young man of whom I spoke? He is my son, Julio.”

“Shit!” Boyd exclaimed. “You are serious. All right then. What do you need from me?”

“Not much. A certain small priority for fuel for training. Some shipping space. Maybe we can both have a word with the G-1 to assign some high quality young people to this unit.”

“We’ll need the fuel that is, if his Excellency, el presidente, doesn’t have a market for low grade aviation fuel. He might, you know. He has found a way to steal everything else.”

“Can you prove that?” Boyd asked.

“Oh, I can prove it,” Diaz answered, then shrugged. “To my own satisfaction, at least. Can I prove it to a court? Can I prove it to a legislature that is as deep into graft and corruption as the president is himself? I doubt it.”

“But you know, Señor Boyd, I’ve been thinking. The president and his cronies are able to pilfer an absolutely amazing proportion of what we bring in to defend ourselves. After all, they know exactly where everything is and where everything is supposed to go.

“I do wonder though, what they would do if we started ‘stealing’ it first.”

Boyd looked at Diaz as if he had grown a second head. That look lasted but a few moments before being replaced by something akin to admiring wonder.

“Stealing it first? What a fascinating idea, señor. Deliver it to the U.S. Army to hold for us, do you think?”

“That would help, of course,” Diaz agreed. “But I am thinking we are going to have to take control of the more pilferable items before they ever get here. Can you transship things like ammunition and fuel someplace overseas, bring them here in different ships, unload those ships here and deliver the supplies to the gringos or to some of our own more reliable people without the president knowing? Can you cover the traces of the original ships so it looks to the government as if those things are being stolen overseas?”

Boyd smiled confidently, and perhaps a little arrogantly. “Señor, I would not claim to be much of a general, but I am as good a shipper as you’ll find in the world.”

“Bill,” said Diaz, using Boyd’s name for the first time, “I have no doubt you’re a fine shipper. What you are not, however, is a thief.”

Boyd felt months of frustration welling up from inside him. Engraved on his mind he saw sickening images of troops sitting around bored and useless because the fuel and ammunition they needed for training was “no tenemos.” He saw roads and bunkers half finished and workmen standing idle. He saw mechanics kicking broken down vehicles because they simply didn’t have the parts needed to repair them.

He felt these things, and the anger they fed, growing inside him until he just couldn’t stand it anymore.

“If that no good, thieving, treasonous, treacherous, no account, stupid bastard who claims to be our president can figure how to rob a country, I can figure out how to steal it back!

“And if I have to, if you think it will work, I’ll steal whatever it takes to get your son’s project off the ground.”

The ceiling fan churned slowly above the bed. Like the hotel itself, the fan was ancient. Unlike the rest of the hotel, however, the fan had not been especially well maintained.

Stolen moments are often the sweetest, thought Julio Diaz, lying on his back with his girlfriend’s head resting on chest.

The girl, Paloma Mercedes, was quietly crying. The bastard had waited until after they’d made love before telling her the grim news.

Except he isn’t a bastard… or if he is, I love the bastard anyway.

“I just do not understand how you can leave me, how you can volunteer to leave me,” she sniffled. “You could have had a deferment. If your father wouldn’t have arranged it, mine would have.”

Julio stared up at the ceiling fan. How do I explain to her that I volunteered for her? How do I explain that I couldn’t have looked at myself in the mirror to shave if I’d let other men do that job for me?

Instead of explaining, Julio offered, “My father would never do such a thing. And your father would beat you black and blue if he knew we were seeing each other.” Julio sighed before continuing, “And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It would be so wrong.”

Seventeen-year-old Paloma lifted off of his shoulder, taking Julio’s hand and placing it on her breast. “It would be wrong for you to stay here for me? Wrong for you to keep holding me like this? That’s… the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard!”

She pushed his hand away and stood up, her eyes fierce and angry. Paloma walked around the bed, furiously picking her clothes off the floor and pulling them on with no particular regard for placement. She completely skipped replacing the bra, preferring to stuff it into her pocketbook and leave her breasts to bounce free and remind Julio of what he was giving up by his pigheaded refusal to see the truth: that the war was only for the ants of the country and that the better people should stay out of it.

Even angry as she was, maybe especially angry as she was, Julio still thought she was the most beautiful person, place or thing he’d ever seen. Hourglass figure, aristocratic nose, bright green eyes… sigh. He tried to get up to stop her but she held up a forbidding palm.

“When you’ve come to your senses and decided that I am the most important thing in your life, call me. Until then I do not wish to see you or hear from you.”

Without another word she turned and left, slamming the hotel room door behind her.

Digna Miranda saluted, as she had been taught, when she reported to Boyd’s sparsely furnished office in one of the wooden surface buildings sitting above the honeycombed hill. He could have furnished the room lavishly, but had an ingrained frugality that simply wouldn’t permit it.

Boyd returned the salute, awkwardly, before asking the tiny lieutenant, politely, to have a seat. Though she’d agreed to meet him — indeed, legally she could probably not have refused — Digna was suspicious. She had few illusions. She knew her looks were, minimally, striking and in some views more than that. Why this new-old general wanted to see her privately she did not know and, inherently, distrusted. All men were to be distrusted except close blood relatives until they proved trustworthy.

She sat, as directed. Boyd noticed her eyes were narrow with suspicion.

“Lieutenant Miranda, this isn’t about what you might think,” Boyd said defensively.

“Very well,” she answered, though her eyes remained piercing, “what is it?”

“You said something at the reception at Fort Espinar that struck my interest. You complained about the ‘soft city boys’ we are commissioning. I wanted you to explain.”

“Oh,” Digna said, suddenly embarrassed by her suspicions. “Well, they are soft, despite the gringos’ attempts at toughening them. They don’t know what it means to live rough, not really. Pain is foreign to them. Maybe worst of all, they don’t have the intrinsic loyalty and selflessness they need to have.”

“Are they all like that?” Boyd asked.

She thought for a moment, trying very hard to be fair. “No… not all. Just too many.”

“You mean we’re in trouble then?”

“Serious trouble,” she agreed, nodding.

Boyd asked the serious question, with all the seriousness it deserved. “What can we do about it?”

“We don’t need as many officers as we’ve created. No company of one hundred and fifty or two hundred soldiers needs six officers to run it. Three would be more than enough. If it were me, I’d watch those we have very carefully and very secretly. Then I’d send about half to penal battalions and let the decent remainder run the show.”

Harsh woman, Boyd thought. Harsh.

From the United States Department of Defense a credit in the amount of several score million dollars was issued to the government of Panama for purposes of buying diesel fuel. Presidente Mercedes was aware of the sum but was also aware that it was far too soon for any of it to disappear.

Instead, the money was duly paid, part to a company which owned four Very Large Crude Carriers, and more to the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, which would provide the fuel. Though the VLCCs normally carried crude oil, in this case they were slated to haul diesel.

Some of ARAMCO’s payment went to transportation, pipeline usage fees for the most part. Roughly half of that went to a Royal Prince of the al Saud clan, some to the plant that produced the diesel, the rest actually went to the company — another Saud clan sinecure — which owned and operated the pipeline. These excess fees were simply built in to the cost of the fuel.

There were some additional fees that also had to be also paid. Perhaps it was the strain of war that was driving up the cost of everything.

In time, the four tankers pulled up to the docking facilities of a large oil terminal on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. Diesel fuel was pumped, a lot of diesel, though perhaps rather less than had been paid for.

At the appointed times, the tankers withdrew from the oil terminal and proceeded generally south, paralleling the east coast of Africa. Rounding the Horn of Africa, the tankers headed generally northwest, nearly touching the northeast coast of Brazil before entering the Caribbean sea.

It was at about this time, when certain agents on Trinidad confirmed that two particular tankers were heading north, that a large payment, many million dollars, was made on behalf of a certain rejuvenated dictator, one with a very full beard, on a certain populous Caribbean island, to a private account held by the president of Panama. The northbound tankers continued on their way.

Meanwhile, the other tankers, lying low in the water under their burden of just over two million barrels of diesel fuel, each, continued westward towards the Panama Canal.

By the time the last two tankers docked at the port of Cristobal, in Panama, two hundred and fifty-five thousand gallon fuel tankers were lined up and ready.

Boyd grinned happily as the trucks began to pull up next to the tanker to have their cargo tanks filled to capacity before dispersing to small fuel dumps at their corps’, divisions’ and regiments’ fuel points. They would return in shuttles to claim the rest. While some of the fuel would disappear, Boyd was certain, before reaching the line, better some than all. Moreover, if someone was going to benefit by a little theft he would rather it be the little people of Panama than that grasping spider in the presidential palace or his greasy hangers-on.

Even so, Boyd was pleased to see that officers vetted by Diaz were along to keep the thefts to a tolerable minimum.

Meanwhile, from the capital city of an island several hundred miles to the north, from a different presidential palace, a blistering telephone call raced from dictator to president.

“Mercedes, you chingadera motherfucking pendejo!” demanded Fidel Castro. “What the fuck have you done with my chingada fuel?”

Interlude

Aided by his Artificial Sentience hanging by a chain around his neck, Guanamarioch interspersed his religious and tactical studies with studies of the target area. This was a place at the northern tip of the one of the lesser continents of the threshworld, very near where a narrow isthmus joined it to the second continent of that world. The maps showed it as being called, in all of the significant thresh tongues, “Colombia.”

The young God King referred back to the Scroll of Flight and Resettlement as he perused the holographic map of the new home.

“Hmmm… let’s see. The scroll instructs the new settler to match the mass of thresh available in the area against the time available to get in crops before the available thresh runs out.”

“This is correct, lord, but it will hardly be a problem,” The Artificial Sentience answered. “The area the clan has claimed — and which we should be able to hold for some cycles — contains nearly three million of the sentient thresh, plus many times that in nonsentients. There is also much nonanimal thresh there and the area gets much illumination from its sun, much rain from the prevailing winds. Growing seasons are short. The clan will not hunger for so long as we can hold the area of settlement.”

“For so long…” the God King echoed. When, since the fall, have we ever been able to hold on to an area long enough to grow powerful? Soon enough the others will be pushing us to lesser grounds, Soon enough we will be back in space, looking for a new home. I have seen over a thousand lifetimes’ of records and in all that time it has been so for those as weak as we are now.

The Artificial Sentience had been with Guanamarioch since shortly after the God King had first emerged from the breeding pens. It knew its master well and understood the meaning behind the Kessentai’s last spoken words.

“Yes, best to consider the escape routes, too, young master,” advised the Artificial Sentience.

“There is this area, the one the locals call ‘the Darien,’ we might use,” offered the God King. “What do we know about it?”

“Remarkably little, lord. The information the Elves have put on the Net offers only the outlines. Perhaps the local thresh are not too familiar with the area, themselves.”

“Imagine that,” said Guanamarioch. “Imagine having so much space, so low a population, that there can be an area of one’s own world that one can afford not to know and to settle.”

The Artificial Sentience was personally indifferent to space, as it was to population pressure. Thus, the possible emptiness of this “Darien” place meant little. It did occur to it, however, that there might be other reasons for the emptiness than low population.

“Perhaps, lord, this ‘Darien’ is simply undesirable.”

Chapter 7

McNair’s jaw dropped.

“What do you mean my discretionary funds are gone? All of them? That’s impossible.”

“Every penny,” Chief Davis answered, cringing inwardly at the expected explosion.

“And what’s more, Skipper,” the ship’s supply officer, or “pork chop,” piped in, “this morning I received a phone call, a really interesting one. It seems we are about to receive several hundred yards of very expensive yellow silk.”

“Silk? What do we need with any silk, let alone several hundred yards’ worth?”

Neither the “pork chop” nor Davis answered. Instead, they just whistled nonchalantly while looking around at each of the walls in the captain’s office.

“DDDAAAIIISSSYYY!” McNair shouted. Instantly, the ship’s holographic avatar appeared by his desk, her head hanging, shamefaced.

“I wanted a new dress,” she said, simply, holographic mouth forming a pretty pout.

“You’re a ship,” McNair pointed out, reasonably. “You can’t wear a dress.”

“It’s for an awning for the rear deck. And for over the brows. That’s as close to a dress as I can wear. Oh, Captain, please don’t sent it back,” she pleaded, clasping holographic hands with long red nails. “It will be sooo pretty.”

The ship didn’t mention, And I wanted to be pretty for you.

“Okay, Daisy, I understand that,” though, for a fact, McNair didn’t really understand that at all. “But I need that money. I’m responsible for it.”

“Oh… but Captain, you and the crew have lots of money,” Daisy answered, innocently. “See?”

Daisy projected another hologram, this time of a bank’s ledger sheet, over the captain’s desk. He took one look at the amount at the bottom of the ledger and his eyes bugged out.

“Where did that come from?” he asked in shocked suspicion.

Daisy twisted her head back and forth, then shrugged, before answering, “We made it. Ummm… I made it. You know? From ‘investments.’ ”

McNair raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What investments?”

“Futures,” Daisy answered slowly and indefinitely. “Ummm… some little things I bought on margin. Some stocks in defense firms… here… none in the Federation. Some consulting fees from some firms on Wall Street and in China. A few patents I took out and sold the rights to…”

“Patents?”

“Ummm… well… Japan doesn’t recognize anyone else’s patents or copyrights… sooo… I sold them some rights to some GalTech that had never been registered there with their patent office. Little things. Nothing important. Antigravity. Nanotechnology.”

“ ‘Little things,’ ” McNair echoed, placing his head in his hands. “Little things… nanotechnology… antigravity.”

He lifted his head abruptly and demanded, “And where did your starter money come from?”

Daisy’s head hung lower. She shrugged and answered, defensively, “Your discretionary funds. I was going to put it back. Soon.”

“Put it back now,” McNair ordered and was, somehow, unsurprised to see the amount at the bottom of the ledger drop. He noted that it didn’t drop much.

“All of it.”

“Captain, that was all of it. I told you. You and the crew have lots of money. I wanted you all to have nice things, the best food… and I wanted a new dress.”

McNair hung his head. It wouldn’t do any good to explain when the inevitable investigation showed up that his ship had wanted a “new dress.”

A ship’s captain is responsible…

“Pork Chop, tell the chaplain, the Jag and the IG that I need to see them,” he ordered. Then he thought about that and countermanded, “Belay that. Just tell the chaplain I’ll be over to see him in a few. Dismissed.”

Except for the crucifix on the walls, and a few other odds and ends, the chaplain’s office aboard Des Moines was pure Navy. This extended even to the standard Navy steel gray desk.

“I see by your face you have a terrible burden, Captain, laddie,” observed a mildly ruddy-faced Chaplain Dwyer from behind that desk.

“I need a drink,” McNair announced.

Without a word the chaplain stood up and went to a storage alcove built into his office. McNair’s eyes followed, and then wandered over the signs adorning the cabinet doors in the alcove. He read:

Sacramental Wine.

Continuing to peruse the signs, he read further:

Sacramental Scotch

Sacramental Bourbon

Sacramental Irish

Sacramental Vodka

Sacramental Grappa, Cognac and Armagnac

Sacramental Tequila.

“What, no sacramental rum?”

Seriously, Dwyer answered, “The ship’s physician is holding that for me, Captain, laddie. It’s ‘medicinal rum’ for now but will become holy as soon as I make some room for it and bless it. And which sacrament would you prefer?”

“Northern rite,” McNair answered, dully. It was one of those days.

“Scotch, it is!” said Father Dwyer, SJ, opening a cabinet and reaching for an amber bottle.

Dwyer was, drinking habits aside, quite a good chaplain, quite a good listener. So he waited, while the captain sipped his scotch, for the other man to begin. Unfortunately for the technique, McNair said not a word.

Assuming the captain needed a touch more “holiness” to loosen his tongue, Dwyer reached again for the bottle.

Understanding, McNair covered his glass with his hand. “No, that’s not it, Dan.”

McNair looked up. “Daisy?” he asked.

Instantly, and still looking contrite, Daisy’s avatar appeared.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Daisy, is it possible for you to shut this room off from your hearing?”

She answered immediately, “I’d be lying if I said I could. I mean I could compartmentalize, sort of pretend that I could shut it off, make it hard for me to look at or think about what you say… but I’d still hear everything you say and I’d still have a record.”

McNair nodded. “Thought so. Okay, Daisy. Not your fault. Chaplain, let’s take a walk. I know a pretty good bar, if it’s still there, about half a mile from here. Bring the bottle; the owner won’t mind. And he won’t have anything nearly as good in stock.”

But for the bartender, the Broadway was empty. Well, it was early in the day, after all.

Laying a twenty dollar bill on the bar, McNair said, “Solo necesitamos hielo, Leo.” We just need ice.

“I speak perfectly good English,” the gray-haired, Antillean descended bartender answered, very properly. “Maybe better than you. But I’ll bring you your ice anyway.”

Taking the ice while the chaplain ported the bottle of scotch, the two sat down at a table under a slowly circulating ceiling fan.

“I came here the first time as an able bodied seaman in the ’40s,” McNair announced. “It was an Army hangout then. I suppose it is again now, too.”

Dwyer looked around. He thought maybe the place had seen better times. Then again, the entire city of Colon always seemed like it had seen better times and yet never seemed to get any worse.

McNair thought that another test was in order. Loudly he called out, “Daisy, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Daisy???”

Still nothing, except that the bartender, Leo, looked at him strangely.

“Safe enough, then, I guess,” McNair said.

“I’m not even going to begin to think about what it does to the sanctity of my confessional that the ship can hear every word spoken,” sighed the priest.

“But she’s just a machine, right, Father?” the captain asked.

“That’s what I tried to tell myself,” answered the priest, clasping hands and looking down at the unclothed table. “But I had my doubts. As a matter of fact…”

“Yes?” McNair pressed.

“Well… I don’t know how to say this, but… whatever she is or isn’t, she’s a Roman Catholic now.”

Eyes gaping, the captain exclaimed, “Huh?”

“Oh, yes,” the priest answered, pouring himself another drink. “Came to me and asked to be baptized. The chief of chaplains told me ‘not just no, but hell no.’ So I went over his head to the head of my order. He said… well, it isn’t fit for Christian ears, what he said. So I went to the holy father; we go way back, we do. Back to when he was the head of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Wise man; he was always wise beyond his years. And, unlike me, a truly holy man.

“Anyway, the pope asked me a few questions, told me to search my soul and to search for one in Daisy. And then, wise and holy man that he is, he told me to trust myself and do what I thought was right.

“So, yes,” Dwyer concluded, “Daisy is a member in good standing of the True Faith.”

“Whew! So she’s human after all. That takes a load off my conscience.”

“I didn’t say she was human, Captain. I decided she had a soul and, though I don’t think she was in need of salvation, her soul having no portion in original sin, I could hardly refuse her the sacraments of our mutual God.”

The priest raised his glass and swirled its contents. “Except for the scotch, of course; that’s completely wasted on her. Poor thing.”

“Well, that doesn’t really help me,” McNair muttered, looking extremely confused and inexpressibly sad, neither of those being expressions he would ever have permitted himself aboard ship.

Dwyer looked hard at his ship’s captain. “Oh, dear. Tell me it isn’t so.”

McNair sighed. “It’s so.”

“For Daisy?”

“You know anyone else on the ship with a beautiful face, big blue eyes and a thirty-eight inch, D cup chest? That gravity doesn’t affect in the slightest?”

“Oh, dear,” the priest repeated uselessly.

Without waiting for Dwyer, McNair reached over, took the bottle, and poured himself another drink.

“When I awaken, she’s there for me. When I lie down to sleep she’s the last thing I see before I close my eyes. Quite a lot more often than I like to think about, she’s there after I close my eyes and before I open them in the morning.

“She’s always there to talk, if I need to talk. She’s a great conversationalist, did you know that, Dan?”

The priest nodded that, yes, he knew.

“And she takes care of the ship… err, of herself, I suppose. When was the last time a ship’s captain had a ship that took care of all the little things for him?”

McNair, seeing Dwyer’s glass was empty, added some ice to it and poured.

The priest looked down into the glass and then, unaccountably, began to giggle. The giggle grew until it became a chortle. The chortle expanded to a laugh. The laugh took him over and shook him until he could barely sit his chair.

“Oh, I can’t wait to dump this one on His Holiness’ desk.”

The Indowy were a fairly imperturbable race. This may have explained why they took an immediate liking to the cats Davis had brought in to clean out the ship’s complement of rats. One of those cats, Morgen, purred happily under Sintarleen’s stroking palm.

Being imperturbable, instead of jumping through his skin when the ship’s avatar appeared beside him, Sintarleen merely bowed his head in recognition.

“Ship Daisy, may I help you?”

“Maybe,” Daisy answered, after taking a seat to look the Indowy in the eye. “How familiar are you with cell regeneration and expansion from incomplete DNA samples?”

The Indowy shrugged. “You refer to what we call, ‘inauspicious cloning.’ I am somewhat familiar with it. Why do you ask?”

Daisy didn’t answer directly. Instead, she asked, “Have you opened your mail today?”

Still stroking the cat, the Indowy replied, “Why no, Ship Daisy, I didn’t even check it. I almost never get any missives. My clan is dead, you see, all but the few representatives here aboard this vessel, and about one hundred transfer neuters and females on another planet far away. So there is really no one to write.”

“No, no,” Daisy said, impatiently. “I mean your mail. Physical mail. Letters. Packages.”

“Well, I am a little behind on my parts’ accounting and storage…”

“Check please. There is something, some things, I have had sent to you. I would find them and bring them but…”

“I understand,” Sintarleen said. “Will you wait here for a moment?”

When the Indowy returned he was clutching a polka-dotted halter, a pair of high heeled shoes, and a small clear plastic bag containing what appeared to be blonde hair.

“What are these things?” he asked of the ship’s avatar.

“They belonged to someone, what the humans would call an ‘actress.’ She is possibly long dead. They are samples which should contain enough DNA, even if only traces, for you to create for me a body. It is amazing what one can find on eBay.”

“Aiiiii!” the Indowy exclaimed, loudly enough to frighten off Morgen, the kitten. “What you ask is impossible, illegal. Why if the Darhel ever found out, the price they would exact from my clan is too horrible to contemplate.”

“But,” Daisy pointed out, reasonably, “you have just admitted that your clan only exists on this ship, for any practical purpose. Do you not think that I can defend you from anything the Darhel might have?”

“This is so,” Sintarleen admitted reluctantly. “But even so, there are things I would need to…”

“The regeneration tank arrives next week,” finished Daisy, with an indecipherable smile. “It’s amazing what you can…”

“… find on eBay,” the Indowy finished.

The sun was just beginning to peek over Colon’s low skyline, its rays lighting up Lemon Bay, the Bahia de Limon, in iridescent streaks. The USS Des Moines glowed magnificently in the early morning light.

Davis stood with the supply officer on the Cristobal pier to which CA-134 was docked, the two of them receipting for supplies.

“Got to admit it; that yellow awning does look nice.”

“I don’t mind the awning, Chief,” said the Chop. “I’ll even admit, reluctantly, that it’s kinda pretty. But those goddamned paisley coverings over the brows are just too fucking much.”

The chief shrugged. “Take the good with the bad,” he said.

“Speaking of good with bad, what the hell is this?” asked the Chop, pointing at a large box in Galactic packaging, resting on the dock.

“Dunno, sir. I can’t even read the writing.”

The chief bent down to look for a shipping label. He found something that might have been one, but the writing on this, too, was indecipherable.

“Best have Sinbad look this over.”

Davis pulled a small radio from his pocket. As he was about to press the talk button, he spotted the Indowy walking his way with a half dozen of his clanspeople in tow.

“Sinbad, can you make this out?’ asked the chief, pointing at what was probably a shipping label.

“I can,” answered the Indowy, looking down as usual, “but it really isn’t necessary. It’s for me.”

“Oh. Well, what is it, Mister Sintarleen?”

“It is hard to explain,” which was the truth. “It is for… manufacturing parts… and… ummm… assemblies. Yes, that’s it: assemblies,” which was also the truth, if not the whole of it.

“Very well, Sinbad,” agreed the Chop, holding forth a clipboard and pen. “If you will sign here for it.”

“I can’t see anything,” said Daisy. “I can’t sense anything. Are you sure it’s working?”

Sintarleen gave an Indowy sigh. “Lady Daisy, you can’t sense or see anything because right now the tank is manipulating and selecting the scraps of DNA we gave it. When it has enough to make a full cell then the process will begin.”

“And it will make me a body? A real, human, body?”

“It will, if it works, if we have provided enough material. But I must warn you again, Lady Daisy, that it will have no mind. There are protocols built in to the machine, protocols I can do nothing about, that forbid the creation of colloidal sentiences by artificial means.

“Instead of a brain it will have something very like your physical self. Simpler of course. Not really able to think on its own. All of its intelligence must come from you.”

“That will be just fine,” Daisy agreed.

“There is one further thing,” the Indowy insisted. “You will be connected with this… body… as soon as it starts to grow from a single cell. It will be under accelerated growth, but that growth will be irregular. Moreover, it will be, biologically, a human female body. Even in the tank it will be affected by human physiological processes. Those processes will affect you, Lady Daisy.”

One thing you can say for having an AID run your galley, thought Chief Davis, you can be certain that the food is going to be first rate.

It wasn’t that Daisy Mae physically made the omelets, or boiled the lobster, or flipped the steak. There were cooks and mess boys for that.

Instead, Daisy bought the very best ingredients out of her slush fund and — while she did not routinely show herself in the galley itself — would appear there suddenly and without warning, cursing like a cavalry trooper over the shamefaced cook if a filet mignon approached half a degree past medium rare when medium rare had been ordered.

And the coffee was always perfect. She ordered it fresh roasted from a little coffee plantation in the Chiriqui highlands, one of Digna’s family holdings as a matter of fact. Then Daisy insisted that the big brewers be scrubbed to perfection, the water poured in at the perfect temperature, and the brewing stopped at precisely the right moment.

It probably didn’t hurt that she was paying the cooks a small bonus under the table. Then again, good cooks took pride in their work. Having the best materials to work with, to produce a better meal, only fed that pride.

Actually, the coffee puzzled the chief. It was on the rationed list. And high end, gourmet coffee was on the serious rationed list. But there was always plenty of it and it was always perfect.

The chief took his cup, placed it under the spigot and poured, half quivering with aesthetic joy as the rich aroma arose around him. Yum!

Davis took his accustomed place at his customary table to a chorus of, “Mornin’, Chief…” “Hiya Chief…” “Good eats, Chief…” Nose stuck in that good, good cup of under-the-table coffee, Davis acknowledged the salutations with an informal wave of his hand.

Without having to be told, one of the mess boys set a plate before Davis, the plate piled high with fried potatoes, a thick ham steak, and eggs over easy.

Before the chief could dig in Daisy materialized in the seat opposite his. She may have rarely appeared in the galley, unless something was about to go wrong, but she made a point of making the rounds of the messes.

“How’s breakfast, Chief Davis?’ she inquired.

“First rate, as always, Daisy Mae. How’s our ship?”

Daisy felt a little tingle, somewhere in her crystalline mind. Our ship. After subjective millennia of utter loneliness it meant more than she could say to belong, and not to be alone. This was true of both parts of her. That part which was the original CA-134 had spent a miserable couple of decades uncared for, unwanted and unloved as well.

“I’m fine,” Daisy answered. “Well, mostly I am. But I think a couple of the ball bearings in number two turret need replacing. I was testing it last night and heard a squeak that really ought not to be.”

“Get someone on it right after breakfast,” said the chief around half a mouthful of eggs.

“And the deck between the PBMRs could use some cleaning,” she added innocently.

Sintarleen checked the progress of the growing form in the tank. If I am reading this rightly, everything is perfect for this stage of development.

Still, I don’t like the temperature fluctuations. And the hormonal surges are sometimes out of control. How do these people, the female ones anyway, maintain their sanity under these circumstances?

As any human father could have told the Indowy, if asked, “the female ones, anyway,” typically did not. Nor did any males forced into close company with a thirteen-year-old girl.

A happy mess made for a happy ship, believed Davis. Thus, he didn’t immediately understand the problem, the sour faces and grim expressions that met him in the chief’s mess.

He shrugged and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. He could check into it later. He might even learn something about the problem at breakfast.

He poured himself a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar and took a healthy sip.

And immediately spat it out again. “Gah! That’s awful. What the fu — ”

He stopped as his eyes came to rest on the calendar posted over the pot. Four dates were circled on that calendar.

In red.

Davis went to the sink and poured out the coffee without regret. Then he got on the ship’s intercom and announced, “Swarinski, I was looking over the Nuke deck earlier this morning. It’s filthy. Take a crew and get on it. Now.”

The answer came back, “Chief Davis, I’m standing here, looking at it. The deck’s spotless.”

“Scrub it anyway, Swarinski.”

Interlude

Boredom was for a time of unending routine. Boredom was not for the time after word had returned telling of the outright massacre of the first fleet to reach the new world of the threshkreen.

Face buried in the Aldenat’ mush, Guanamarioch sensed something new in his messmates, similarly feeding around him. It was not anticipation, this new thing. It was something… something… something Guanamarioch remembered only dimly from his time in the pens as a nestling.

The Kessentai thought back, trying to recall memories he had long suppressed, memories of his small nestling hindquarters against the wall of the pen, fighting for his life against a horde of siblings who had decided he looked much like lunch. He remembered the flashing needlelike teeth, the yellow blood that flowed from a dozen tiny slashes on his face, neck and flanks. He remembered a lucky slash of his own that had disemboweled one of those who sought to eat him.

They had turned on that other one, then, turned on it and ripped it apart. That feeding had taken a long time, with the wounded one’s pitiful cries growing weaker as dozens clustered around, each taking a small bite.

Guanamarioch too had eaten, lunging in to sink his teeth into his brother’s hams before shaking his tiny head and tearing a bloody gob of warm, dripping meat from the body.

The God King had retreated to a corner then, bloody prize locked in the claws and jaws. There he had sat, trembling, alternately chewing and looking up to snarl and warn off any of the others who might seek to steal his prize.

He remembered being afraid then, afraid that someone would take his meal and afraid, even more, that in the frenzy he might too be ripped apart while still living.

Guanamarioch lifted his massive head from his mush bowl and looked around the mess room. No, there was no tremblings of fear among his clanskin. But then, neither was Guanamarioch shaking.

Then something happened, something in itself trivial. A God King of about the same rank as Guanamarioch nudged the mush bowl of one slightly superior. The latter then immediately turned and tore the throat from the clumsy one. All the others present immediately grabbed their bowls and backed up towards the nearest wall or other vertical surface, each one snarling as he did so.

Guanamarioch did the same, and realized, as he backed his haunches to the wall, that the news of these new thresh had them all terrified.

He understood though. Never before had a fleet of the People met serious resistance from any but their own. To have a fleet, even a small one, almost completely destroyed was terrifying indeed.

A door into the mess deck slid open with a slight whoosh. Through the door passed an oddly shaped robotic device. This glided across the deck silently. It then hovered lightly over the yellow-blood-soaked area of the mess where the clumsy Kessentai had had his throat torn open by another. The device fit the dimensions of the ship’s corridors and compartments well, leading Guanamarioch to think that this, too, was Aldenat’ technology.

Singly and by twos, the others cleared out from the mess and formed in the corridor adjacent the mess. In a few minutes, only Guanamarioch and the killer remained, the latter staring madly at the corpse, apparently in contemplation of eating it. This was not, in itself, forbidden, of course; the ethos of the People demanded that thresh not be wasted.

It was, however, forbidden to kill aboard ship during migration without permission.

A senior God King, not the lord of the clan but a close assistant entered the mess, followed by two cosslain, the superior normals that filled the job of noncommissioned officers within the Posleen host. The senior took in the entire compartment in a single sweeping glance before resting his yellow eyes on the corpse and the nearby killer.

“Did you see what happened, Junior?” the demi-lord demanded.

Guanamarioch bowed his head in respect. “I saw it, lord, but I did not understand it.”

The senior turned his attention back to the killer. “For what reason did you break the shiplaw and kill this one?” he asked calmly.

With apparent difficulty the murderer looked upward, away from the corpse, answering, “He nudged my feeding bowl.”

“It is my judgment that this is insufficient reason to break the law of the People. It is further my judgment that this conduct merits termination of existence. Have you anything to say?”

Sensing death, and unwilling to die without a struggle, the killer launched itself at the senior Kessentai, claws outstretched and fangs bared. The senior, however, had not reached his position within the clan by being slow and indecisive. Even while the lower God King began his leap, the senior had drawn his boma blade and begun to swing. The blade passed through the thick neck almost as if it were not there. When the body struck it did so in two pieces, dead.

The senior looked at Guanamarioch as if measuring him for the recycling bins. At length, he decided that Guanamarioch had more value as a future leader than as a current meal.

“This is not to be spoken of further,” the senior announced as he turned to leave.

Chapter 8

The early morning sun shone brightly off the Potomac, sending scattered rays of light to bathe the Lincoln Memorial and the National Academy of Sciences. Some of that light, and it was perhaps the only brightness to the place, indirectly lit the walls of the Department of State where a meeting, judged by some to be important, was taking place.

The President’s National Security Advisor was not entitled to quite as much deference as a Darhel lordling. Thus, she was received in a second class conference room. It was facing towards the Potomac, true, but the furnishings and wall hangings were not of the best. It would never do for someone in such a quasi-military, politically-appointed position to be made to feel that she was somehow the equal of the senior career bureaucrats of State.

The Secretary of State, who was not a career bureaucrat, fumed. Someone, somewhere in the Byzantine halls of Foggy Bottom, had deliberately set this up to insult NSA and embarrass him.

NSA was there expressly to discuss some of the President’s concerns with regard to what he had called “sabotage” of American policy in places ranging from Diess to Panama. In particular, today NSA was concerned with Panama.

If State showed contempt for NSA, it was as nothing to what NSA felt for State. She’d thought them, in her own words, “lily-white, weak-kneed, overbred, limp-wristed collaborators with the communists,” back during the Cold War. “Our very own fifth column for the Kremlin… pseudo-intellectual moral cowards… poltroons.” And she had said that on a day when she was in a good mood. Her opinion was even lower now, when it wasn’t just America’s freedom on the line, but the survival of humanity itself.

The Secretary of State, himself, on the other hand, she liked and even, to a degree, respected. A well-dressed, distinguished looking Wilsonian Republican with clear, intelligent eyes and a full head of hair going gray at the temples, SecState was simply unable to control the senior career bureaucrats who actually ran the department. NSA thought that perhaps no one could really control them, at least not without shooting a fair number to gain the attention and cooperation of the rest.

Even then, she thought, the shootings would have to be public and every one of the remainder would have to be forced to watch them. The ability of a State Department fool to deny unpleasant reality is deservedly the stuff of legend.

“I’m not a fool, madam,” the secretary said, shaking his distinguished Websterian head slowly. “I know my department is rife with traitors, collaborators and people running their own agenda. What I lack is the ability to do all that much about it. They know the system. Sadly, I don’t. They work together to cover for each other and keep me in the dark. No one’s really been able to control them since at least 1932 or ’33.”

Before the NSA could make an answer, her cell phone rang. Smiling apologetically, she answered it. Her eyes grew suddenly wide as she swallowed nervously. “I understand, Mr. President,” she said, quietly and sadly. “Yes, Mr. President, I’ll tell the secretary.”

NSA looked up to the secretary. “I am informed,” she said, “that the Posleen have crushed the Army’s corps to the south of us. The Posleen have broken through and are coming north. I am supposed to evacuate and the President suggests that you do the same.”

The impeccably and expensively clad Undersecretary of State for Extraterrestrial Affairs looked at his phone and then, nervously, at his watch. 9:26. Shit, they were supposed to be ready to evacuate me by now.

The undersecretary stared nervously southward, across the Potomac to where the scattered remnants of a wrecked Army corps and a ceremonial regiment were fighting to the death to buy a little time. Columns of smoke rose skyward from more places than the diplomat could easily count. In fact, he didn’t even try. What difference did the amount of destruction make? What mattered was where it was heading, and how quickly it might reach him, here at Foggy Bottom, or his family in Bethesda.

Again, the diplomat glared down at the phone. Again he looked at his watch to see that bare minutes had passed. He started to reach for the phone, to contact his Darhel handler, when there came a bright flash from across the Potomac, from the general vicinity of Fort Myer and Henderson Hall. Following the flash a shock wave arose, turned dark by the smoke, dust, lumber and other debris it picked up and flung outward in all directions. The broad river itself bowed downward under the force, the passage of the shock wave plainly visible as a fast moving furrow in the water.

In less time than it takes to tell, the diplomat uttered, “Shit,” and threw himself violently to the floor, damage to his suit be damned. The shock wave dissipated rapidly but, given the amount of GalTech C-9 explosive the Marines had packed into Henderson Hall, it was still enough when it reached the Department of State to shatter the windows, rip loose bricks, and raise the overpressure inside the well-appointed office enough to knock the undersecretary out cold.

Which was a pity from the point of view of the undersecretary and his family, for the phone with his evacuation instructions began to ring mere minutes after he was rendered unconscious.

Because her evacuation instructions didn’t depend on alien star transport, and because she had no family to sweat over, the National Security Advisor was not anxiously awaiting a phone call when the blast struck. Instead, she and a couple of aides awaited transportation by the parking lot abutting Virginia Avenue to the northeast of the State Department Building. The group heard the helicopter coming in down Twenty-Third Street before they saw it. When they did see it…

“My God… I’ve heard of treetop level flying, but automobile antenna level flying? Christ!”

The helicopter had just pulled up to a hover when the blast struck. Though it was in the lee of the storm, being behind the massive State Department Building, shock waves like that tend to flow and fill any space available to be filled. The NSA was knocked down flat on the concrete, scraping her rather delicate and attractive nose. For the helicopter, completely unsheltered from the blast, the pilot’s ability to control was overwhelmed. The chopper pitched onto one side and then slammed, hard, into a stout tree. It began to smolder but before it could burst into flames the four man crew emerged out of the side that was open to the sky and scurried away. Two of them carried one of their number who appeared to be unconscious — plus a rifle each — and one more carried the pintle-mounted door machine gun he had had the presence of mind not to leave behind.

Catching sight of the secretary’s party as its members staggered to their feet, the warrant officer in charge pointed. The small group ran over as fast as they could, given the body they were dragging.

“Madam,” the warrant announced, “Chief Warrant Officer Stone at your service. We were sent to get you but…”

“But sometahms things don’ quaht work out,” the NSA finished with a beautiful, soft Birmingham accent. She was a lady, she was supremely well educated and the daughter of well educated people, as well. But every now and again, under extreme stress, that Alabama accent came out. Nose scraping tended to be a stressful sort of thing.

“Would one ah you fahn gentlemen have a rahfle or a pistol to spare? Mah Daddy, the minister, always said it was better to hahve a gun an’ not need it, than to need one and not hahve it. An’ Ah think that, raht about now, Ah need one.”

The warrant passed over his own pistol, admiringly. Then, hearing firing coming from the south, from the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, the warrant said, “Ma’am, my orders were to get you out. They intended me to fly you out. But that wasn’t actually specified. We’re going out on foot.”

The party headed north on Twenty-First then east on F. Stone — out of radio contact — thought that if there was anyplace from which the NSA had a chance of being evacuated quickly and safely it would be the White House.

The undersecretary for E-T Affairs awakened slowly. Still groggy, he managed to stand and stare out the window of his office toward where Henry Bacon Drive met Constitution Avenue. The intersection was, itself, blocked by the National Academy for the Sciences.

“Oh, my God,” he uttered in shock at the sight of a small horde of Posleen coming up Henry Bacon. They apparently turned right once reaching Constitution, the undersecretary could see many of them marching to the east along that broad thoroughfare.

They didn’t all turn right, though. Some turned left and skirted the Academy of Sciences building. These marched straight towards State. One look at the fearsome aliens and the undersecretary felt something very warm and very wet begin to run down his leg.

“Run!” shouted Stone as the party came in visual contact with a group of Posleen in the process of storming the Executive Office Building. The sighting was mutual and a subgroup of Posleen turned from their task and began to pursue.

“This way,” the secretary ordered. The party turned north on Nineteenth Street, skirting the World Bank.

“Mr… Stone,” the lone machine gunner said, panting. “I’ve run all I can and I’m not runnin’ anymore. Y’all go on without me.” The secretary recognized an accent not too dissimilar to her own, if perhaps a bit less classy.

“Sergeant Wallace,” the warrant said, “you will keep up.”

“Nossah, Mr. Stone,” the sergeant answered. “I ain’t nevah run from nothin’ in mah life. And I ain’t gonna get in the habit now. Y’all go on. I’ll hold them up heah for a whahl.” The sergeant tipped his helmet at the secretary. “Ma’am,” he said, “Alabama’s raht proud o’ you.”

With the sigh and a sad little smile, the secretary answered, “Sarn’t Wallace, your country is raht proud o’ you, too.”

The machine gun was already firing, at much faster than its normal and sustainable rate, before the secretary and the others turned into the World Bank.

“That wasn’t really…?” the secretary began to ask.

“No, ma’am. That Wallace died some years ago. This was just a first cousin, twice removed.”

“Remarkable resemblance,” the secretary commented.

“Not in everything, Ma’am,” the warrant answered.

“Look, I’ll give you everything,” the undersecretary begged. He opened a valise and held out Galactic bearer bonds to illustrate. The Posleen normal brushed them aside impatiently with the flat of his boma blade.

A slightly taller Posleen with an erect, feathered crest entered the room where the human had been found. He snarled, whistled and grunted several questions, none of which the human could answer. Indeed, he didn’t really understand them as questions at all.

The Kessentai said something to the normal, who shrugged and picked the undersecretary up by one arm, dragging him from the room. The entire time the human continued to beg, to make offers of deals, to promise vast largesse. The Kessentai understood not a word — he didn’t speak the language — how could the normal, who spoke no language and barely understood that used by its masters?

The normal dragged the still protesting diplomat downstairs and then through some smashed doors into the central courtyard of the building. Other normals, or perhaps they were cosslain, did likewise with other humans that had been found hiding in the building. Soon there were hundreds of terrified humans gathered there, under the soaring eagle sculpture in the open north courtyard. Still, it was only hundreds of the thousands who normally worked in the little offices and cubicles of the State Department. The rest were fleeing north on foot.

An alien, the undersecretary thought it might be the same Kessentai he had previously “met,” stuck his head out to look down into the courtyard and shouted something.

One of the normals in the courtyard guarding the humans drew his boma blade and made a gesture. When the human, who understood all too well what the gesture meant, balked, the Posleen simply grabbed her hair and pulled her into a kneeling position. The descending blade cut her screams off very quickly. The normal passed the bloody head to another to slice off the skull cap and remove the brain. The first then began to slice the body into easily transportable chunks.

The undersecretary inched back, trying to get as many people between himself and the Posleen rendering party as possible. The Posleen noticed this and, instead of gaining himself more time, the diplomat was next to be summoned. He began to scream as soon as the alien claw pointed at him, calling him to face a justice higher than the alien could have imagined.

Once the main assault had been crushed and there was no real chance of successful Posleen reinforcement of their bridgehead over the Potomac, headquarters for the First of the Five-Fifty-Fifth released B Company under Lieutenant Rogers to clear the State Department of Posleen. Sergeant Stewart and his squad were first to reach the northern courtyard of the building. The men didn’t retch, but only because such sights, headless corpses half butchered and laid out for complete rendering, had become all too commonplace.

Stewart walked among the corpses, apparently unmoved. “Pretty gross, ain’t it, Manuel?” the one called “Wilson” said on the private circuit.

The Hispanic sergeant, hiding under the name of Jimmy Stewart shrugged his shoulders and answered, “I dunno. What good did these chigadera motherfuckers ever do anyone? Why weren’t they in the Army? Just turnabout, you ask me; a neat switch.”

Interlude

All voyages end, but some end much worse than others. Guanamarioch, inexperienced as he was, couldn’t imagine one that ended worse than this. (Truth be told, not one other God King in the fleet had ever actually had any experience like this one. A contested emergence? Didn’t the damned humans know that was not in the rules?)

Several days before emergence from hyperspace, the God Kings and Kenstain had begun resuscitating the normals by small groups before leading them to their landers. For those, like Guanamarioch’s oolt, resuscitated early and made to wait, this was pure murder, literally, as bored and sometimes hungry normals fought with each other in the cramped hold of a Lamprey.

The globe had emerged into a maelstrom of fire. Even at its incredible mass, nearly equivalent to a small planet or a large asteroid, the globe bucked and jolted from the energies released by its own and the threshkreen fires, as well as from exploding ships. The large view-screen, forward in the Lamprey’s hold, was completely ignored by the ignorant normals. Guanamarioch, however, was transfixed by the swirl and glow, the bolts and flashes of the battle in space.

Once he saw in that screen, much magnified he hoped, the gaping maw of a threshkreen super-monitor, coming into alignment with his own globe. There was a bright flash, like that of an antimatter bomb detonating, and a new icon appeared, shading from red to blue to red again. Guanamarioch did not recognize the icon and so asked his Artificial Sentience to explain.

“It is a kinetic energy projectile, lord, moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The globe cannot tell if it contains an antimatter or nuclear warhead, hence the change in color. Frankly, if it hits us amidships it may not matter if it is an antimatter bomb or not.”

Guanamarioch gulped. Involuntarily his sphincter loosened to allow liquid feces to run down his legs to the floor. The smell meant nothing as the normals had been shitting themselves silly ever since awakening. Still, the junior God King part way lowered his head and crest in shame. Shame or not, though, he could not keep his yellow eyes away from the screen.

Despite the speed of the thing, the projectile was so well aligned it was possible to track it, or rather the icon, on the screen. From every outcropping of the globe that mounted a weapon, fire poured down on the KE projectile. It seemed to form an ever more shallow cone with the icon at the apex.

“It’s going to hit,” the Artificial Sentience announced. “Lower right quarter as the globe bears. It’s going to be bad.”

Chapter 9

Oh, was Digna in a bad mood. Without a word, in field uniform, holding a switch in her right hand and helmet tucked under the left arm, and accompanied by two stout triple great-grandsons, she burst into the little shack. Her bright blue eyes flashed icy fire.

The woman of the house, in fact Digna’s great-great-granddaughter though the woman looked much older than the great-great-grandmother did, took one look and backed away, holding her hands in front of her in supplication.

“Where is the little toad?” Digna demanded, lip curling in a sneer and her voice dripping with scorn.

Fearfully the woman pointed at the shack’s sole bedroom. Digna brushed the door open with the switch. Immediately her nose was assailed by the strong smell of cheap rum. In the dim light she looked down on a snoring, disheveled man, unsurprisingly also a great-great-grandchild, and felt the rising heat of murderous anger.

She took half a step forward into the room and began.

Down came the switch across the man’s face, hard enough to draw blood.

“Filthy pendejo!”

Again the switch, accompanied by, “Disgrace to my blood!”

“Rotten”… switch… “Lazy!”… swack… “Good for nothing!”… “Foul!”… “Dirty!”… “Useless!”… whackwackwack.

By the time Digna got to “useless” her great-great-grandson, trying vainly to protect his head with his hands, had rolled onto the floor. He begged for pardon but the beating continued.

“Little rat!”… “Cockroach!”… “Vermin!”

When Digna’s right arm tired she put on her helmet and transferred the switch to her left. When that tired she stopped altogether and, using her rested right arm grasped the man by the hair and began to drag. Digna was small, and perhaps she could not have pulled the man against his will. But, on the other hand, was it worth it to him to lose his hair finding out?

In the shack’s main room Digna flashed her eyes at her escorts.

“Arrest your cousin,” she ordered. “Three days in the pit for failure to show for drill.” Briefly she reconsidered her sentence and then added, “Make that three days on bread and water.”

“Si señora,” they answered, meekly.

Digna’s Officer Candidate School had trained her to be an artillery officer. Specifically she had been trained to command a battery of very old, very surplus, 85mm Russian-made SD-44 guns. To crew the guns she had several hundred each of middle-aged men and suitably strong and healthy young women. And that was only counting her clan alone, be they by blood or by marriage. She also had substantial numbers of what she, with the benefit of a fairly classical education, thought of as the “perioeci” — the “dwellers about” — immediately under her control. Since the guns, with forward observers, fire direction computers and crews only required ninety men, or perhaps one hundred and twenty women, to operate at full efficiency, she had an excess of riches, personnel-wise. She solved this problem by assigning virtually all the unattached or less-attached women and girls of the clan to the guns and forming most of the men into a very large militia infantry company, though perhaps “dragoon” was a better word than infantry. There was not a man or boy who could not ride, and raising thoroughbred horses had been a clan specialty for centuries.

The guns were really quite remarkable specimens of their type; perhaps the ultimate version of the quick firing guns like the French “Seventy-five” that had made the First World War such a nightmare. Compared to the SD-44, the French “Seventy-five” was pretty small beans.

Each could throw a seventeen-pound shell up to seventeen kilometers and do so at a rate of up to twenty-five rounds a minute, maximum, or up to three hundred per hour, sustained. Moreover, since they had been designed by Russians who believed that all defense was antitank defense, the guns had a fair capability against light and medium armor. They were, in fact, the very same design as used on the Type-63 light tanks the gringos had purchased for Panama from the People’s Republic of China. Lastly, each gun had an auxiliary engine that could propel it along at a brisk twenty-four kilometers per hour without the need for a light truck to serve as a prime mover. They had the trucks, mind you, but they didn’t absolutely need them. They also had horses, lots of horses, in case the trucks and guns ran out of fuel.

The guns could fire high explosive, or HE, smoke and illumination. They could also fire an armor piercing shell that would collanderize anything but a main battle tank. Digna knew that the antitank capability was likely to be completely useless.

Best of all, in her opinion, the guns could fire canister: four hundred iron balls per shell — over three thousand from the massed battery — that would make short work of a column attack. So she hoped anyway.

The switch she had used on her multi-great-grandson did as well to spur her horse to where the battery was training under the eye of one of her favorite granddaughters, Edilze, a dark and pretty young woman — she favored her grandfather — and, more importantly, one Digna recognized as having a will and a brain.

Digna had begun by training Edilze and eight others to crew the guns, along with six more in fire-direction techniques. That had actually taken only about ten days. As one of Digna’s instructors at OCS had observed, “You can train a monkey to serve a gun. People are only marginally more difficult.”

For that ten days she had let the men slide, since she had not a single trained assistant. Not that many of her clan would not be trained. Indeed, many of the young men had already gone off to train with the regular army. But they would stay in the regular army. She had the rest; those too old or those too young. And she had the women and girls.

After the ten days she had called in her sons. These she made platoon leaders. She figured, not without reason, that sons were used to obeying fathers and so based her chain of command fairly strictly on lines of clan seniority. The only notable exception was her foreman, Tomas Herrera, whom she put in charge of some of her own and all of the few residents of the area that had no blood or marriage relation whatsoever.

Digna passed the battery where her girls sweated under Edilze’s lashing tongue. That’s my girl, her grandmother thought. Such a treasure. Digna spurred the horse over to the drill field — ordinarily a flat cow pasture by the quebrada, or creek. There, the men — most of them — drilled on one of the simpler tasks, weapons maintenance. She had no time for close order drill and, given that the clan was already, in the nature of things, a remarkably cohesive unit, didn’t feel the need anyway.

Doffing his straw hat as a sign of respect, an action much more meaningful than any formal military salute, Tomas Herrera walked up and stood by Digna’s horse. Herrera was short and squat, with a brown face tanned to old leather. Muscles rippling his arms and torso told of a life of hard toil.

“You found your grandson, Dama?” he asked.

“I found the twerp where I expected,” Digna sneered. “Flat on his back and drunk as a skunk.”

Tomas smiled broadly. It never paid to balk the Lady, and blood relation would not save a man who deserved it from a lashing, be it from Digna’s tongue or her switch.

“There is one in every family,” Tomas observed consolingly. “You put him in the pit, I assume. How long?”

“As boracho as he was, I figured it would take him a day and a half to sober up. And another day and a half to realize he was being punished. Three days seemed sufficient, Señor Herrera.

“How are the others coming along?” Digna asked, eager to change the subject from one so distasteful.

“Well enough,” Tomas answered. “We’ll start marksmanship tomorrow.”

“The ammunition?”

“Not counting the five hundred rounds per man we have salted away, we have about one hundred and fifty rounds per rifleman and roughly twice that for the light machine gunners. It is enough to at least get them to point their rifles in the right direction and scare whatever they’re shooting at,” Tomas answered. “And we have over a thousand rounds for each of our two heavier machine guns, not counting the six thousand we have in the reserve stocks.”

Digna nodded her head resignedly. It really wasn’t much. But that was all they were going to have for the nonce.

“It isn’t so bad, Dama,” Tomas offered. “These are good men, in the main, and most of them solid campesinos who know how to shoot already.”

Dismounting, Digna offered the reins of her mare to Herrera.

“Your family, Tomas?” she asked with real concern.

“Well enough,” he answered simply. “My wife has taken charge of feeding. The girl is serving the big guns. Both my sons are off with the army. The wife of the eldest is assisting my wife, though my own wife never ceases her finding fault with the girl.”

“Mothers are like that, with their sons’ wives,” Digna answered with a smile. “Ask any of my daughters-in-law.”

Tomas simply chuckled, then turned and led the mare to a cashew tree footed by long sweet grass. Digna, meanwhile, turned her attention to the clusters of old men and young boys dotting the pasture.

“You’ve got to slap it hard, Omar,” she told one fourteen-year-old struggling to replace the stamped receiver of his Kalashnikov.

Taking one knee next to the boy she took the rifle and, deftly placing the curved piece of metal in the right position, delivered a short, forceful slap that knocked it into position. With one thumb she pushed in the detent button on the rear of the receiver to release it and handed both sections back to the boy.

“You try it now, again, just like I did, Grandson.”

Resting the rifle in his left hand, as his grandmother had, Omar placed the upper receiver onto the lower, holding the upper in place with his left thumb. Then he delivered a slap akin to that given by Digna. The upper receiver was knocked immediately into place, the detent — driven by the action spring — popping through the square hole in the rear.

“Thank you, Mamita!” the boy said.

Granting her descendant a rare smile, Digna rumpled his hair and continued on down the line. As she went she offered encouragement as needed, and — rarely — a bit of praise. Sometimes she stopped to provide more “hands on” instruction, though in this she was rarely harsh.

The reason she was not harsh was not immediately obvious. It was not that she was not naturally harsh; she was. But, in the circumstances, what her family needed to see was confidence, and confident people rarely showed harshness except with the most deserving.

Of course, anybody who was really confident, in the circumstances, was either drunk or too stupid to even begin to understand what was about to descend on the Republic of Panama and on the Earth.

Digna knew there were no grounds for confidence; she had seen the films of some of the off- and on-world fighting during her time at OCS. Inwardly she shivered as she wondered, perhaps for the thousandth time, if she would be able to save even a fraction of her blood from the enemy’s ravenous appetite. She wondered, too, if she would be strong enough, harsh enough, to make the sacrificial choices she knew she would have to make when the time came.

And who will I choose to live, if it comes to that? My sons, whom I love, but who are too old to bring forth more children? My now-barren daughters? Do I pick the girls to save or the boys? Do I pick myself now that I can have children again? Do I pick myself and live, maybe for centuries, with the knowledge I let my loved ones die?

God, if there is a God… and if you are listening, I am going to have some very choice words for you for what you are about to do to me and mine.

Scowling, Digna pushed the sacrilegious thought from her mind and continued on her way. Reaching the end of the pasture she came to a ford at the creek. This she crossed nimbly, hopping from rock to rock. On the other side she scrambled up the muddy bank and continued along a well-worn path to where she had ordered the mess facility set up.

The smell of roasting meat hit her before she ever saw the calf turning on the spit. As she walked nearer, near enough to see fire and smoke and pots and pans, other smells caressed her nose. She detected fragrant frijoles; savory sancocho, the “national dish” of Chiriqui; frying corn tortillas, thick and fat-laden.

One of the younger girls nudged Señora Herrera, Tomas’ wife, as Digna approached. The head cook passed to the younger girl the ladle with which she had been stirring the sancocho and turned to greet Digna. The woman, shapeless and worn now, had once been a great beauty. But the only remnants of that now were to be found in her granddaughters.

“Que tal, Imelda?” Digna asked. What’s up?

“Nothing much, Doña,” Imelda Herrera answered. “Lunch is coming along nicely and should be ready at about two.”

“The stores are sufficient?”

Imelda pointed with her chin, a very Chiricana gesture, to a small herd of cattle held in by a temporary stockade. “Between those and the other food you donated, the rice and corn and beans, we are in good shape for another three weeks. But…”

“Yes? Tell me?”

“Well, Doña, I had this thought. It is fine now, while I and the women and girls working for me can prepare a proper meal. What about when these aliens come? When we have the boys out on horseback, moving fast, and we cannot get them decent food? What happens then?”

“The government has promised me canned combat rations,” Digna answered. “Then again, they also promised me about four times more ammunition and fuel than we’ve been sent so far.” Digna looked at Imelda questioningly. “You have an idea?”

“I can’t do a thing about the ammunition and fuel. But it occurred to me that we could start smoking meat and cheese and storing it against the day.”

Digna thought about that. Her herds, legacy of her husband’s decades of hard work, were more than sufficient. She decided right then to go with Imelda’s plan and told her so.

Then another thought occurred to Digna.

“How much meat can you smoke?”

Imelda thought about that for a moment, then answered, “Standing wood we have in abundance. But we can’t hope to cut enough to smoke more than, say, one cow’s worth a day.”

“I understand,” Digna said. “But what if I gave you twenty or thirty, maybe even forty men a day to cut firewood.”

“I could do several cows’ worth then. But to what end?”

“Oh, it occurred to me that there is going to be a huge demand for preserved food in the days ahead. I suspect I could sell anything you produced… rather, I could trade it, for whatever we are short in ammunition and gasoline. Maybe even pick up some weapons too.

“A little here, a little there,” Digna mused, looking skyward at nothing in particular. “Not enough to make anyone else’s fight impossible, but maybe enough to give us a better chance.”

“Give me the men,” Imelda answered. “Send me the cows.”

“And I’ll do the trading,” Digna finished.