Yellow Eyes

Chapter 10

Costa Rica went under first. After half a century of conscious, deliberate and nearly universal demilitarization it had never been able to mount much of an armed force. Instead of spending its nominal wealth on a military, relying on the firmly fixed notion that if all else failed the United States could always be counted on to come to the rescue, this very civilized and reasonably prosperous state had concentrated for fifty years on education and health care.

All that meant in the end was that the Posleen had several million very healthy and literate cattle to add to their larder.

Nicaragua did better. Even before news had come of the imminent Posleen invasion the previous rulers of the country, the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas, had returned to power. The hold on the reins of government by the liberal democratic regime had never been very strong in any case.

Give the Sandinistas their due; a totalitarian movement at least ought to know how to subordinate the individual to the state. This the Sandinistas knew and this they did to good effect. Moreover, with several tens of thousands of combat experienced veterans, most of them fairly young still, of the long civil war between Sandinistas and Somocistas, also known as “Contras,” Nicaragua was able to mount a large and reasonably well trained and disciplined mostly infantry force to contest the alien landings.

But, sad to say, no purely infantry force, using human designed and built weapons of the early twenty-first century, could hope to stand up to the technology and number of the aliens. To stand up to the Posleen human infantry forces needed the backing of masses of artillery. Artillery took wealth, either your own or that of someone who wished you well; that, or thought it needed you alive. Nicaragua, standing alone, lacked wealth and lacked the artillery that wealth could buy.

Moreover, the one really useful source of military aid, the United States, had a long memory and tended to hold a grudge. Even after Nicaragua’s dictator, the Sandinista Daniel Ormiga, swallowed his pride and went hat in hand to ask the gringos for help, the United States turned a deaf ear. Perhaps this was because, as they claimed, they had none to give. Perhaps it was because while aid was possible there were higher priorities. Perhaps, too, it was because, as Ormiga surmised, the United States would weep no tears at seeing an avowed enemy eaten to extinction.

As it happened though, the deadliest weapon in Nicaragua’s arsenal turned out to be a timely earthquake that killed about fifteen thousand of the invaders. It was later, much later, calculated that this slowed down the final digestion of the country and its people by approximately thirty-five minutes.

The only effective barrier to the Posleen advance had turned out to be Lake Nicaragua and its remarkably ferocious sharks.

Sharks, earthquake, and rifle fire notwithstanding, Nicaragua and its people ceased to exist within eight days of the enemy landing.

Small and densely populated El Salvador did receive aid from the United States, mostly in the form of small arms, mortars and light artillery. They, like the Nicaraguans, had a strong base of militarily experienced men who had fought in their lengthy and bloody civil war. The Salvadoran Army was manned, in the main, by Indians who took considerable pride in the knowledge that while the powerful Aztec had fallen quickly to the Conquistadors of Spain their ancestors had never truly been conquered.

Like those ancestors — fierce and brave to a fault, and this had contributed mightily to the bloodiness and duration of the civil war — the soldiers of El Salvador had stood and fought like madmen. From the frontier, to the Rio Lempa, to the very steps of the cathedral of San Salvador, the landscape was littered with the denuded bones of countless thousands of Posleen and Salvadoreños.

In the end, for all their patriotism, courage and ferocity, Salvadoran humanity was wiped from the surface of the Earth.

Honduras held out longer, but only because it was bigger. The Posleen moved as they would, bled and died as they needed. Speed was rarely a consideration except in the great battles of maneuver and attrition waged in North America and Central Europe.

Guatemala and Belize went under as quickly as had El Salvador and Honduras.

A Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, had once observed, “Alas, pity poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” The generations who lived during the Posleen war, especially those who managed to live through it, found cause to turn that around to “Lucky Mexico, so close to the devils but even closer to the United States.”

This was so for at least two reasons. The first was that, being next door, Mexico held the southern entrance into the United States proper and so was given massive military aid. The second, and far fewer Mexicans ever had cause to know this, was that when defense failed despite the aid and despite the brave show put on by the Mexican Army, the United States became a safe refuge for more than ten million who found shelter under the wings of the 11^th Mobile Infantry Division (ACS).

That division died, for the most part, in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, but not before that ten million could be evacuated to shelter. Curiously, no one north of the border found cause to complain about illegal immigration. Ten million Mexican immigrants meant another million or more men and women for the United States Army.

A small group of relatively poor Posleen set down in Colombia between the mountains and the sea. The Colombian army folded quickly. The various private armies, paramilitaries of the right, the left and the narcotraffickers, succeeded for the nonce in holding substantial parts of the undeveloped part of the country, as well as the mountain fringed capital, Bogotá.

The invaders also touched down on both sides of the Rio de la Plata in the vicinity of Buenas Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. Pastoral and open, ideal ground for the Posleen “cavalry,” both countries quickly succumbed.

From their base in southeastern South America the Posleen spread out to the north and west. For the nonce Brazil was able to hold them out, though at terrible cost. To the west Chile, with strong natural defenses through the Andes passes held by well trained, tough and disciplined mountain troops, and aided by a company of 1^st Battalion, 508^th Infantry (ACS) stopped the Posleen cold… literally cold.

The smell from the “puke trees” that marked the demarcation line between the Army’s Fort Kobbe and Howard Air Force Base drifted across Kobbe’s main street, making those not used to it, as Scott Connors wasn’t used to it, want to retch. Fortunately, Connors and his battalion commander were walking south, away from the trees and toward the tent city in which the First of the Five-O-Eighth was billeted.

The stench of the puke trees matched Connors’ mood as it had been since opening his mail on the long space voyage back to Earth. It was hard to take an interest in things after one’s carefully constructed world falls down around one. Still, he was a soldier, was an officer, and going through the motions wasn’t that difficult after more than fifteen years of service.

“That’s not a helluva lot of prep time you’re giving us,” Connors said to his battalion commander, Snyder.

“Captain, there isn’t a lot of prep time we’ve been given. So stop sniveling about what can’t be changed and just soldier on, why don’t you?”

“Yessir,” Connors answered. In truth he wasn’t a sniveler and he knew the Old Man knew that. Must be the pressure of seeing most of this hemisphere fall so quickly that’s making him testy, he thought.

“The submarine’s going to be here tonight,” Snyder continued. “It will spend the night loading consumables, mostly ammunition, for your company. You and your men will board around 0500. You’ll have a four day sail, underwater, to Valparaiso, Chile. From there you will attach yourselves to the Chilean Army but only for purposes of helping them hold the Uspallata Pass.”

“Why Chile?” Connors asked.

“Two reasons, I suspect,” Snyder answered. “One is that, since the Posleen have not landed on the western Side of the Andes and the passes over range from ‘limited’ to ‘no fucking way,’ we might actually have a chance to hang on to the place. The other reason is that Chile is still the world’s best source of copper, which we need for damned near everything, and produces — especially since the expansion for the war — a couple of million tons of nitrates a year. We need the nitrates even more than we need the copper.”

“Okay, boss. Roger, wilco and all that happy horseshit. But what the hell do they expect a single company of MI to do?”

Snyder almost laughed. “If nothing else, Captain, the Army expects you to die well. I, on the other hand, expect you to hold that fucking pass until the Chileans can get some better fixed defenses in and then get your ass back here, as whole and as sound and as up to strength as humanly possible.”

“One company of MI?” Connors asked dubiously.

“Captain, have you ever seen the Andes?”

Connors hadn’t really expected the sub to be as big as it was. Although mostly hidden, the length of the thing dwarfed the pier. The only thing bigger, nearby, was the heavy cruiser, USS Salem, docked two bays over.

A navy chief with a stupendous gut met Connors dockside. He introduced himself as “Chief Petty Officer Kaiser, Major.” Connors did a double take and then remembered that, aboard ship, there could be but one “captain.”

“Sir,” Kaiser continued, “we’ve actually got space for more troops than you’re bringing aboard. What we don’t have space for is the number of men and those big bloody suits. This trip out, you’re going to be stacked like sardines.” He added, apologetically, “It’s gonna suck like a convention of Subic Bay whores.”

Connors shrugged indifferently, then smiled. “Chief, if you’ve never been in a C-130 after a twelve-hour flight trying to on-board rig for a jump then you don’t know what ‘suck’ is. We’ll be fine once we get settled in.”

The chief liked Connors’ sense of proportion. “That’s another thing, Skipper. The boat’s decks and all were never meant for half ton suits of armor. We’re trying to reinforce them but…”

“Stop trying, Chief. We can dial down our effective weight to nothing. Matter of fact, if we really wanted to, working together my company could probably pick up the sub and fly it… bounce it around for a while anyway.”

“No shit, huh?”

“No shit, Chief. Oh, we couldn’t fly it all the way to Chile… well… maybe if we could somehow tap into the sub’s own reactor and charge the suits at a rate of about ten to one. But we could move it around. It would take longer than sailing though.”

“Coool,” admired Kaiser. “Well, you don’t need to fly us anywhere. And the captain will be mighty pleased to hear that you’re not going to warp our decks.”

“How long’s it going to take us to get to Valparaiso?” Connors asked.

Kaiser looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot. Then, conspiratorially, he said, “Officially, we couldn’t get you there in less than four and a half days at top speed. Unofficially, you’ll hit the beach seventy-three hours after we set sail.”

“Cooool.”

“Cooool,” intoned Connors as he stepped up from the cramped troop bay of the submarine and took his first look at the Port of Valparaiso. He was suited up, of course, since he and B Company were heading into action as soon as they finished unloading, but his helmet was under his arm so that he had an unobstructed and natural view of the city.

Valparaiso was laid out more or less in the form of an amphitheater, with a wide, flat, circular harbor surrounded by steep hills on all side. The houses clinging to the hillsides were gaily, even gaudily, painted. Connors thought he could see elevators moving up and down the hills carrying people to and from their work.

A dress-white clad Chilean naval officer (for Chile had a very long, honorable, and even impressive tradition in its naval service, as well as in one other) met Connors from the pier. Connors took a double take; the Chilean officer bore an absolutely striking resemblance to Admiral Guenther Lutjens who had gone down with the Bismarck in 1941.

“Capitán Connors,” the naval officer called breathlessly, as if he had run the hills himself. “Capitán Connors, I need to speak with you. You… you and your men… must hurry.”

Connors debarked and was pleased to see that, no, they hadn’t succeeded just yet in resurrecting naval ghosts. On the other hand, the naval officer’s name tag did say, “Lindemann.” Connors raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Fourth cousin, twice removed,” answered the Chilean. “Come. Bring your men. I’ve held up the railway for them.”

MI could move fast, but only at a cost in power. Fortunately, railroads could move just about as fast and there was one working between Valparaiso and the Uspallata Pass.

The Transandean railway had been in operation from 1910 to 1982, though it had ceased passenger service as early as 1978 under the stress of competition with automobile and bus traffic from the coaxial highway, a part of the Pan-American Highway system. Closed for twenty years and allowed to rot and rust away all that time, the governments of Argentina, Chile and the United States opened negotiations in 2002 to restore the railway. This was actually not that difficult an operation as the really serious work, the grading and the blasting, was still extant and for the most part still in as good a shape as ever. Even so, only one of two lines had been completed and didn’t that play hell with resupply and troop movements.

It was this line that Connors and B Company took up the Andean Slopes to where a regiment of tough Chilean mountain infantry (the other part of Chile’s armed forces that enjoyed international respect and admiration) were holding on by their fingernails against the Posleen probes coming over the mountains and through the pass.

The MI suits had been dialed down to be nearly weightless and inertialess. Even so, the train squealed with the strain of just moving itself up the tortuous and steep tracks. As the temperature dropped as precipitously as the mountain range grew overhead, the troopers of B Company — for the most part clinging to the tops of the cars, there being another regiment of reserve mountain infantry inside the cars — donned helmets to keep from freezing. The mountain troops made room inside one of the cars for Connors, who stood mostly in the central passageway. He had to be inside to get the latest update from Lindemann. Nor could Lindemann stay outside without freezing. The Chilean was clothed for cold weather, of course, but not for Arctic levels of cold weather accompanied by the subjective winds created by the train as it screamed up the track.

“We expected the Argentines to do better,” Lindemann cursed. “But at the first sign of a landing their upper classes, to include an absolutely disgusting percentage of their senior military officers, took to ships, abandoning their people. Some of their units fought and died hard, even so, but they went under before we expected and before we could do much about it.”

Connors said nothing to this. It was one thing for a South American to criticize another group of South Americans. It was unclear to him how they would take criticism from a gringo. Whaddya know, I learned some tact in my old age.

“We were fortunate that we had a regiment of mountain troops training in the vicinity of Mount Aconcagua when the aliens first landed,” Lindemann explained, “fortunate too that we were able to get them some more ammunition and rations before they actually had to fight. But they’ve got no fixed defenses and their only artillery is a battalion of light mountain guns, that and their own mortars. We’re still mobilizing reservists and trying to shift some units down from the other passes. But it’s been hard.”

“Why no fixed defenses?” Connors asked. “I would have thought they’d have been a natural for those passes.”

Lindemann rubbed a hand wearily across his jaw. “Yes, one would have thought so. Blame your State Department, actually.”

“Huh?”

“They brokered a deal between us, the United States, the Galactic Federation and Argentina under which substantial U.S. and some Galactic aid would be given in return for the creation of a combined command. Not building fortifications in the passes was supposed to be… hmmm… let me see if I can remember the words exactly. Oh, yes, I recall. The absence of fortification was ‘symbolic of the determination of our two countries, with the help of the United States and the Galactic Federation, to stand and fight together as one.’ Who knows,” Lindemann said, philosophically, “if it had been us rather than the Argentines who had been hit first perhaps we would have run and it would be an Argentine mountain infantry regiment trying to keep the aliens from crossing to their side of the pass.

“In any case,” Lindemann concluded, “just for your future use, Captain Connors, you can never go wrong betting on the avarice, selfishness, and cowardice of the Latin American upper classes. Exceptions are, just that, exceptional.”

Suddenly, Connors’ suit was almost thrown and Lindemann’s body was thrown as the train shuddered and screamed to an unplanned stop. The Chilean gasped as he hit shoulder first, breaking his collar bone. The reservists also in the car were tossed around like ninepins.

“That was an HVM, Captain Connors,” the suit’s AID announced, with typical calm. “I sense a great deal of damage to the train’s locomotive. The company has taken no casualties. I can’t say about the Chileans, though.”

Connors didn’t hesitate. “Bravo Company, this is the CO. Off the trains and assume ‘Y’ formation with Second Platoon in reserve and weapons forming the stump of the Y. We move out in two minutes. CP will be just ahead of Second. Now move, people.”

Connors asked the Chilean, “Are you going to be all right, sir?”

“I will be… fine,” Lindemann gasped. “Just go save that pass.”

B Company took off at the double, leaving the Chilean regiment behind to sort themselves out and follow as best they could through the driving snow and biting wind.

The armored combat suits did better than ninety-five percent of the work. This is not the same as saying they did all the work. Moving twelve hundred pounds of mixed Connors and suit up a forty-five degree slope, through deep snow laid over hard packed ice, at thirty miles an hour had the captain gasping even before they hit the friendly side of the pass.

“AID… what can you… tell me… about what’s up… ahead?” Connors croaked.

“Damned little, Captain,” the AID answered in a voice annoyingly similar to Connors’ lost Lynn.

I knew I should have changed that, he thought.

“The Chileans are still fighting but I can’t tell how many for certain. Based on the vibrations I am picking up from the air and through the snow on the ground I would estimate that there are something like five hundred of them still remaining on the line.”

The AID noted Connors’ labored breathing and silently directed the suit to pull extra oxygen out of the thin air and force feed it to the captain. The effect was almost instantaneous.

“There is also an artillery unit, estimated at battalion size, just a few kilometers to the right front. If you try, you can hear them firing.”

Connors thought about that for a moment then ordered, “Show me the pattern on the ground of where their shells are landing.”

“That will take a while, Captain,” the AID answered.

“Why?” Connors began to ask then said, “Oh, never mind. You have to sense a fairly large number of shells flying to detect a pattern.”

“That is correct, Captain Connors.”

In about a minute, or perhaps a few seconds more, the AID had an answer. Saying, “This is the pattern,” it projected an image, superimposed over a map of the area, directly onto Connors’ eye.

“I’m guessing,” Connors said, after seeing the pattern of fire, “but it is a good guess. The Chileans are probably dug in a semicircle, give or take, at the base of that mountain to the north, Mount…”

“Mount Aconcagua,” the AID supplied.

“I’m making another guess. The Posleen, instead of pushing on down the pass towards Santiago” — Chile’s capital — “have decided instead to key on the mountain troops.”

This human tendency towards intuition was a source of both vast entertainment value and vast frustration to the AID. It never could quite understand…

“What makes you say that, Captain?”

“Two reasons, AID. The first is that if they hadn’t the Posleen would be down among us by now. The second is… well… what’s the temperature up there?”

“Cold, Captain,” the AID answered. “Minus twelve Celsius and with a wind chill that would kill an exposed man in minutes without superb winter clothing.”

“Right,” Connors said, struggling to keep from sliding on a patch of ice. “Now, we know the Posleen are pretty hardy. We know they’ve been designed for some pretty outrageous environments. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could raise their body temperature to beat off any practical cold pretty much on command. But what would they need to do that, AID?”

Damned humans. “They’d need food, wouldn’t they, Captain? That, and to suck in a great deal of very cold air to get enough oxygen to burn the food with.”

“Count on it, and that will make them colder still. The Posleen are going for the Chileans rather than pushing on because if they don’t get that additional thresh there’s going to be nothing but Posleen icicles all over this pass and on both sides.”

The AID went silent then, leaving Connors to think about other problems. How do we hit them? Surprise would be best. If we can get that it almost doesn’t matter from where we hit.

“AID, I need a recommendation on camouflage for this environment.”

“Snow, Captain.”

“That won’t work. They’ll see us as soon as we silhouette ourselves.”

“No, Captain Connors, I meant a snow storm. We can project a holographic storm high enough and thick enough that the Posleen are most unlikely to notice what’s inside it.”

Damned AIDs. “Do it. And get me control of those mountain guns.”

“Go over the mountains,” the Aarnadaha, or Big Pack Leader, had said. “Go over the mountains and carve out a fief for us. Nothing blocks your way but some lightly armed threshkreen. We have fought the heavily armed ones of this continent and butchered them with ease. What trouble can their merest foot troops give you?”

What trouble indeed, snarled Prithasinthas, a mid-ranking Kessentai leading about seven thousand of the People westward. Plenty of trouble, they’ve been. But not so much as this damned cold. How the hell do they stand it? How the hell do they stand and fight us in it? Ill was the day I left the world of my birth to come here.

The God King saw several of his people hacking steaks off of the human and Posleen dead, to try to gain some desperately needed thresh. The boma blades cut through the meat and bone effortlessly, but when the stupid normals tried to bite?

Even Posleen teeth have trouble munching large slabs of solid ice.

Prithasinthas and his group kept below what the threshkreen would have called the “military crest.” Here they were safe from the humans’ direct fire weapons. The God King wondered why the enemy were not using their indirect ballistic weapons on such a tempting target. His best guess was that the indirect weapons were too busy firing in support of the threshkreen encircled ahead to waste any shells and effort on a danger that only lurked at a distance.

The Kessentai looked up to see another approaching front of this miserable freezing snow. As if we don’t have enough troubles, he thought, shivering.

“B Company,” Connors began, “we’ll advance until either the Posleen see us or I give the order to begin the attack. Whichever happens first, I want First Platoon to go forward to the military crest and seal off the battlefield. Weapons Platoon, you go with them. Keep any reinforcements from entering the pass. Second and Third, you’re with me. We’re going to hit the horsies that I think have the Chileans pinned. We’re going to hit them right in the ass and roll them up. Watch out for friendlies.”

“Sir?” asked First Platoon leader, “the crest is our limit of advance, right?

“Right.”

“Well… what if we get to the crest before you’re ready to hit and they still haven’t spotted us?”

“Hold fire then until they do start coming up. Think hasty ambush.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“You can’t keep the host here much longer, lord,” Prithasinthas’ Artificial Sentience warned. “They’ll freeze to death.”

“Tell me about it, AS,” answered the God King who was slowly freezing to death himself.

“It would not be so bad, lord, if you could just get them out of the wind.”

“Do you see a ship nearby?” Prithasinthas asked sarcastically. “Perhaps a huge Temple of Remembrance? Is there a city of the thresh up here we somehow missed?”

“Errr… no, lord. There is, however a tunnel.”

“What? Where?”

Without another word, and unable to mark the tunnel quickly in any other way, the AS aimed the tenar’s plasma cannon and let fly one bolt at the featureless snow. It struck a few hundred meters in front of the lead edge of the host, causing the normals there to shudder and shy away. When the steam cleared there was an almost square tunnel carved into the rock.

“Well, I’ll be… Kessentai, this is the Aarnadaha. Get your people into that tunnel my AS has just found. Be orderly, now; no jostling.”

“Where does it lead?” the Aarnadaha asked his AS, for the moment attached to the tenar.

“I suspect it emerges on the other side of the pass, lord.”

“Interesting.”

One of the great things, one of the really great things, about the suits was that you couldn’t see out of them. That is to say, they had no view ports. No clear face screens: zero, zip, zilch… nada. Instead, sensors on the suit’s exterior took the images, analyzed them, adjusted them, and painted them directly on the eyes of the suits’ wearers, their “colloidal intelligence units.”

In the process, the suits eliminated the unreal. For example, while the Posleen were steeling themselves for the blast of snow and ice they saw coming towards them, Connors and his boys didn’t even see the holographic display. Rather, they saw a mass of staggering Posleen, or simply shivering ones if those happened to be riding a tenar, blasting blindly forward and often enough falling to the yellow stained snow under the fire of the white-clad human defenders.

The AID automatically analyzed that fire, too, matching it to what was known and suspected about the Posleen deployment.

“Pretty close to what we figured from the pattern of artillery fire,” Connors observed.

“Naturally, Captain,” the AID answered.

Connors took a last look at his own deployments, matched those to the Posleen, and decided, Close enough for government work.

“B Companeeee… AT ’EM.”

Instantly, long actinic lines lanced out from the skirmish lines of second and third platoons, while weapons and third kicked it into high gear and raced for the far military crest. The Posleen surrounding the remnants of the Chilean mountain troops were scythed down, tenar-riding God Kings falling first before the fires lowered onto the staggering mass of struggling normals.

“Captain, First Platoon. Boss, there isn’t shit here. No horsies close at all, though there’s a long column of the fuckers that starts a couple of clicks away. They’re not moving much. Even the tenar are grounded with the God Kings huddling with the normals. I don’t get it.”

At about that time, the weapons platoon leader came on line with the shout, “Shit! Action rear! Fuckfuckfuck! Pot that bastard, Smitty!”

“Oh, yeah,” Prithasinthas said aloud, and with vast relief, as his tenar entered the tunnel and he felt the wind drop to nothing. Ahead of him, three to four abreast, the host moved forward en masse with only a gap every few hundred meters for the tenar of the Kessentai, gliding only a few inches above the odd metal parallel tracks on the tunnel’s floor. It would have been dark, too dark even for the People’s enhanced vision to see by, if those tenar had not shone bright forward lights to illuminate the way.

“There’s firing above, Prithasinthas.” The AS’s volume was toned down enough to keep it from echoing off the walls and upsetting the normals.

“I knew that, AS.”

“No, not the firing that was. This is something different, something consistent with the metal threshkreen that have been reported in other places. I think there might be a bit less than one hundred and fifty of them.”

“Demon shit!” Prithasinthas had heard of the metal threshkreen and had liked nothing about what he’d heard.

“They don’t know we’re down here, lord,” the AS added suggestively. “The Net would assign much wealth to the Kessentai who took out an entire oolt of them.”

“AID,” demanded a furious Connors, “why didn’t you tell me about the goddamned tunnel?”

“You never asked,” it answered primly. “It’s the job of you colloidal intelligences to ask.”

Connors tried furiously to think. No time to think… just react! “Shit, piss and corruption! First Platoon, hold what you’ve got. Weapons, orient west. Second Platoon, break contact and reinforce weapons. I’m with second. Third, try to free up the Chileans.”

It’ll have to do.

Connors raced to the rear, to link up with his weapons platoon. When he reached the west side military crest he threw himself down into the snow. The AID, using the suit’s sensors, mapped out what was in front of the captain.

The Posleen were pouring out of the side of the mountain at what seemed to be a rate of about one thousand per minute. Already, over a thousand, accompanied by the God Kings riding tenar, were up and charging toward the summit of the pass. Jesus! How many can be in there?

Though he hadn’t asked, the AID supplied the information. “There are anywhere from five to nine thousand of the enemy remaining in the tunnel, Captain.”

Connors was more than pleased to see one of the Posleen tenar, touched by a plasma bolt, disintegrate with a tremendous explosion. It gave him an idea.

“Weapons, send me a plasma gunner.”

The weapons platoon leader ordered, “Rivers, fall in on the company commander.”

While the gunner was racing up, Connors asked his AID, “Can you tell me when I am over the tunnel? Can you direct me there?”

“Twenty-seven meters due south, Captain.”

The plasma gunner arrived and Connors half dragged him to where he thought the tunnel was. “Mark it for us, AID.” The tunnel’s route was painted onto the captain’s and gunner’s eyes.

“Okay, Rivers. You can’t fire down to make a hole; you’d blast our legs off. I’m going to use my grav gun to make a breach and then I want you to fire into it. Got that?”

“Yessir,” Rivers answered in a Midwest accent. Immediately Connors pointed his grav gun down and fired a long burst. At this range and that velocity the stream of teardrop-shaped projectiles quickly opened up a hole about a foot across. The hole smoked like a vent from Hell. Connors thought he could hear Posleen screaming in agony below.

“Fire, Rivers!” The gunner put the muzzle of his plasma cannon to the hole and sent a bolt into it. This time Connors was sure he heard Posleen screams. “Again… again… again.” Rivers tossed bolt after bolt downward until he thought he might be overheating his cannon.

“Cease fire, Rivers,” Connors ordered. “Cease fire before you…”

The ground erupted in a long, linear blast that tossed both the captain and the plasma gunner skyward. Flame erupted from both ends of the tunnel, flash melting snow and rock indiscriminately for hundreds of meters past each opening.

“Ooohhh… SHIT!”

“I believe the plasma must have set off the power source for a tenar, Captain,” the AID announced calmly as it, Connors and the suit flew through the air. “It might have set off several more.”

Gaining control of the suit was tricky, under the circumstances. Connors managed, if only barely, to bring it back down feet first and come to a landing to one side of the trench dug by the blast.

“Man, what a ride,” he said, with wonder in his voice.

The wonder was only half at the wild ride. More importantly, Connors realized that, for the first time since receiving his “Dear Scott” letter, he actually felt good.

Lindemann, his shoulder bandaged now, managed to make the trek on foot up to the pass. When he got there, he found Connors sitting disconsolately on a rock not far from the base of Mount Anconcagua. The half frozen flag of Chile — a square blue field with a single white star in one corner, white bar over red making up the field — fluttered stiffly in the breeze.

Around the base of the flag, still holding their weapons at the ready, nineteen or twenty Chilean mountain infantry lay frozen stiff on the snow. Lindemann looked around. Without the holographic snow displayed by the suits earlier it was easy to see the hundreds upon hundreds of frozen bodies, alien and human both, littering the landscape.

“How many?” Lindemann asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Unseen inside his suit, Connors licked his lips before answering. He could have taken the helmet off, but his face was wet. Not only didn’t he want anyone to see that, he didn’t want the tears to freeze solid on that face.

“There were three hundred and twenty-two still alive when we killed the last of the Posleen,” he answered. “A lot of them were hurt already. We did what we could. But it wasn’t enough. The regiment that was here has… AID, how many?”

“There are one hundred and five of the Chilean soldiers still alive, Captain.”

“One hundred and five, sir. That’s all. I’m sorry, sir.”

Lindemann said nothing. His eyes searched around for the Christ of the Andes, a colossal statue famous around the world. He didn’t find it. Whether it had been knocked down by Posleen fire or human didn’t much matter, he supposed. The days of turning the other cheek were over anyway, after all.

“We pull out tomorrow,” Connors announced. “Back to the sub that brought us here and then back to Panama. I doubt we’ll be returning.”

“What about the other Posleen?” Lindemann asked. “The ones following these?”

“Frozen stiff,” Connors answered. “I sent out a patrol forward and they report that there are thousands of them… maybe as many as fifty thousand, lined up and frozen for thirty kilometers to the west.

“I’ve got my men blasting out some fortifications for your people,” Connors finished. “It’s the best I can do.”

Interlude

Chile was not exactly what most of the Posleen would consider to be prime real estate. Narrow, bounded by ocean and mountain, the Posleen clan which took it — assuming one did, and this was not necessarily the way to bet — would be naturally constrained from expanding against other clans after the final extermination of the local thresh.

On the other hand, for some lesser clans this sort of patch of ground was ideal. If they could not easily expand neither could other clans easily expand against them. Indeed, within the Posleen “ecology,” there were numerous clans who adopted this as a general survival technique. While they never became dominant, and rarely even particularly prosperous, within the Posleen system, they were usually able to hang on while the worlds around them came apart during orna’adar. Then, neither more nor less well off than when they had first landed, they escaped more or less intact.

Panama, bounded by sea on both sides, had a similar appeal to the clan of Binastarion. There, with difficult-to-pass jungle to the east and a narrow frontier to the west, that clan could settle, grow food, live and defend themselves when, as eventually they must, population pressures caused interclan war, eventually descending into nuclear and antimatter holocaust.

Moreover, in the case of Panama, there was a special appeal. From the command deck of his mini-globe, Binastarion observed on his screen that the waist of the country was not only extremely narrow but had a major body of water right in the middle of that waist. Better still the body of water, his screen called it “Gatun Lake,” was itself flanked by bridged but otherwise impassable canals.

This meant that, when orna’adar began, bringing with it the usual mad scramble for living space, Binastarion’s clan could trade space for either alliance or time. In the case of attack from the east, they could fall behind that lake and canal and hang on in the west. Alternatively, in the case of attack from the west, they could resettle to the east.

Of course, should attack come from both quarters they were just screwed, but life was never fair, as Binastarion had good reason to know.

“Sometimes you get the abat, sometimes the abat get you,” the clan chief muttered as he played a claw over the screen, selecting the initial landing areas.

Chapter 11

Digna could read a map even before going to OCS at Fort Espinar. She sat on the front porch of her house, a building that also did double duty as the local militia headquarters, rocking in her old chair and intently studying a map of Central America and northern Colombia in an atlas.

Idly, she wondered why Panama hadn’t yet been included on the aliens’ menu. Less idly, she gave thanks to God that it hadn’t been.

“Every day He grants us is one more day to prepare,” she whispered.

Omar beat frantically on the door to his grandmother’s bedroom. “Mamita, Mamita, wake up!”

The door sprang open under Omar’s pounding fist.

“What is it, boy?” Digna demanded.

Breathless, he answered, “The enemy, the Posleen… they’re here!”

“ ‘Here’? Where? Bring me the maps, boy, quickly. And light a lantern.”

Pulling on a robe, Digna emerged into the darkened main room of the house to discover some dozens of her descendants, old and young, as well as Tomas Herrera, waiting.

A kerosene lantern already burned in the room, casting shifting shadows across the walls. There could have been electricity, of course, except that having power lines run in to an out-of-the-way private establishment was, under Panama’s system, a matter of private, and not small private, expense. Her husband, wealthy or not, had never seen the point of paying to run in power lines when kerosene did well enough.

Neither had Digna.

The lack of electric power did not mean the house was entirely without power. A radio, crank powered, blared out the horrible news: landings northwest of the City of San Jose y David, David for short, and southwest of the town of Santiago, in the province of Veraguas. Thus, to both sides of Chiriqui the Inter-American highway was cut.

Escape was still possible for Digna and her clan, over the mountains to the north but…

“Not yet,” she said aloud. “First we fight… for our land… and our honor.”

She looked down at the table where Omar spread the national and local maps. As he struck a match and touched it to the wick of another lantern the shadows on walls softened, flickered and mostly disappeared.

Digna contemplated the maps, eyes flitting from one to the other as her mind raced, calculating.

A huge-eyed great-great-granddaughter, Gigi, offered a cup of the strong and excellent local coffee. Digna blew on the scalding brew then sipped absently, still contemplating the maps.

Word of the attack spread fast. As Digna contemplated, more of her children and grandchildren entered the room until it grew hot, stuffy and very crowded. At length she looked up and did a mental roll call. Seeing that the elders of her clan were now fully assembled she began to give orders.

“We’ve been over this before,” she explained, “but just so there’s no confusion, there is only one way for the enemy to get to the core of our land, here,” she pointed to a spot on the lesser map, “at the bridge.”

She pointed to a son and ordered, “Roderigo, take your cavalry and screen forward between here and the outskirts of David. Report on enemy movements and call for fire on any groups that seem determined to use the road that leads to us.”

Roderigo nodded but, in shock, did not move immediately.

“Did I raise a dolt? Go! Now!”

“Si, Mama,” and the old man left to gather his sons and grandsons.

Digna turned her eyes to Tomas. “Señor Herrera, take your group to the positions we have dug covering the bridge. Cavalry will screen your flanks. Do final preparations to blow the bridge but, until I give the word, we hold it.”

Before Herrera could leave Digna said, “Wait a moment, Tomas. Edilze, I want the guns to take up Firing Position D. You will fire in support of your uncle Roderigo until the enemy is within your minimum range. After that, I want you to displace forward and add your guns to Señor Herrera’s force at the bridge.”

Edilze just nodded, as confidently as the circumstances called for, and then turned to go.

As Edilze and Herrera passed through the door they heard Digna continuing to issue orders, over the drumbeat of horses’ hooves. The horses were those of Roderigo and company heading for the front.

“Belisario, you screen the river north of the bridge. Vladimiro, your boys have the south and west. Pay particular attention to the ford by the Sanchez place.

“All the rest of you, gather our people and goods at the training field. Now!”

One thing Panama had in abundance was young labor. This had been used to raise a rammed earth wall around the core of the city of David. The wall was a bit uneven but averaged five meters above the ground and nearly ten above the floor of the forward-facing ditch, a “fosse,” from which the earth of the wall had been excavated.

When the host of Binastarion reached the wall at its northeast quadrant the forward members, all normals, found themselves forced into the ditch by the pressure of those behind. Most broke legs in their falls and snarled piteously. At a distance God Kings in tenar floated, indifferent, above the hosts and slightly above the level of the walls. The loss of a few normals, more or less, meant nothing. They could continue to serve the host, if only as thresh.

There were sounds Binastarion took to be panic coming from inside the walls. The sound was music to the God King’s ears.

Shots rang out from inside the city. Several of Binastarion’s junior Kessentai were thrown from their tenar. They fell, some silently, others with gurgling cries, the sounds of their bodies making dull thuds at they struck the ground.

Those nearby God Kings lowered their tenar to take cover behind the threshkreen’s earthen wall.

At the sight of yellow blood oozing from the still quivering bodies of his sons, Binastarion grew enraged. He had heard the thresh of this world carried, uniquely, a vicious sting, though he had discounted the rumors except in space where he had seen the sting with his own eyes. Now, confronted with the reality, he expanded his crest, gave of a roaring snarl and ordered, “Forward!”

His subordinates echoed the command. Instantly, thousands of normals bounded into the ditch. Some of them also broke legs, of course; again, small loss. Still others landed whole and sound and began to attempt to scramble up.

As the first centauroid Posleen normals began to clamber upward, their claws scratching at the gabions and sandbags of the inner wall of the ditch, commands in the local thresh tongue sang out. Small dark green objects, hissing and burning, flew through the air to land in the ditch or just past it. Some balanced briefly on the backs of the normals. Others fell through the mass and came to rest on the ground below.

Within a second or so of each other all the little green spheres detonated. The serrated heavy gauge wire which made up the fragments of the grenades was not usually enough to actually kill or even seriously wound the Posleen; they were big animals and very well designed. Generally only those unfortunate enough to have one detonate within a few meters or so suffered mortal wounds.

The pain of numerous small wounds, however, was almost always enough to drive the fairly unintelligent normals into a frenzy, a frenzy which, in the close confines of the ditch, often proved fatal to their fellows. Posleen were trampled or hacked down by monomolecular boma blades. Some fell and were smothered under the falling bodies of others.

Cries of pain and fear arose from the trapped normals even as a second wave of hand grenades sailed out. This was more ragged than the first. The third salvo arced outward even as some grenades of the second were still exploding. The stink of hot, yellow Posleen blood rose to assail the noses of the human defenders.

The wall was not straight. Rather, it zigzagged to make an unevenly serrated edge which guided the Posleen into preplanned kill zones. Following the third volley of grenades, machine guns began to hammer from the inner angles of the wall, stitching neat lines across the Posleen still awaiting their turn to descend into the ditch.

The machine guns fired through embrasures formed in the wall at nearly ground level. Thus, few Posleen could return fire at any given time. Moreover, the Posleen to the rear of the press could not use their weapons at all without literally shooting through their fellows ahead of them. To add to the aliens’ problems, they were, in the main, only about as bright as chimpanzees, so the fire coming from more than one direction confused them terribly. Thus, for a while at least, the Posleen stood helpless while the machine guns, a mix of .30 and .50 caliber weapons provided by the gringos, had a field day. Sputtering at rate of hundreds of rounds per minute, traversing back and forth across the forward ranks of the aliens, the gun crews harvested the Posleen normals in rows and spilled many down into the fosse to add to the hellish confusion there.

For a brief moment the human soldiers and militia manning the walls felt hope. Perhaps they could do this, defend their land, their town, and their families after all.

And then the plasma cannon and hypervelocity missiles added their voices to the debate. God Kings, farther back and able to actually see the source of the fire that was butchering their followers, also much brighter and infinitely better armed, directed their heavier weapons at the embrasures, blasting or flash-roasting the defenders.

As the machine gun fire began to noticeably slacken, riflemen appeared on the sandbag-crenellated top of the battlement. These, unfortunately, the Posleen normals could see and engage. Rifle slugs, railgun fleshettes, and shotgun pellets traded back and forth. The human defenders were behind cover while the normals were out in the open and massed in an impossible-to-miss target. Thus, the exchange rate favored the humans, dozens of Posleen falling for every human head, arm or shoulder that exploded to a railgun projectile. Still, since there were a great many more Posleen firing than humans…

“Blast me a hole in those walls,” Binastarion ordered. “And make ramps down into the damned ditch and up through the walls. Get me that city!”

Instantly more fire lanced out from the tenar. Directed by senior God Kings, the plasma cannon and HVMs concentrated on certain sections of the wall, blasting gaps through in short order. Still others, heedless of the cost to the normals, began to chew at the outer edge of the fosse, carving a ramp down into the ditch. A part of that ramp consisted of the torn and burned bodies of dead and dying normals. Building the ramp upward was even easier as most of the dirt, usually fused together in lumps from the plasma fire, fell into the ditch.

Beyond the now breached walls, Binastarion could see heat-shimmering houses, smoke beginning to curl upwards from them from the intense heat of the plasma.

Even as the spearheads of the Posleen normals began to clamber across the ramps and up out of the fosse, they were met by fire. Binastarion could not tell from whence the fire came. He only knew that the wall was being rebuilt from the torn bodies of his underlings.

Making matters worse — was there no end to the iniquities of these thresh? — explosions began walking across the mass of those still outside the walls, breaking legs, ripping off limbs, disemboweling the helpless normals.

“What is that?” Binastarion asked of his Artificial Sentience.

“Lord, they call it ‘mortar fire.’ It was in the briefings.”

“Damn the briefings! Am I supposed to remember every nuance of a brand new world?”

“Of course not, lord,” the Artificial Sentience answered. It considered adding, but refrained, But you could have remembered this.

Despite the losses, and they were serious, from the mortars, the host could not be stopped by such. In a steady stream, egged on by their own tenar-riding oolt’ondai, the mass of the normals plunged down into the ditch, up and through the breaches, and into the town.

There is an ancient church in the center of the city of San Jose y David, fronting onto the lovely square that held the Parque de Cervantes. In this church clustered many of those, mostly women and young children, for whom no arms or place could be found for the defense. These, devout and pious beyond devotion and piety, led by an old priest, prayed fervently for deliverance or for vengeance should deliverance be denied.

Even as the sounds of fighting and slaughter drew closer and more intense, the prayers of these wretches grew in intensity. The old priest did not falter, though the stuccoed stone walls of the old church shook with the nearby impacts of HVMs.

Suddenly, the thick, dark-wood portals of the church flew open. There, framed in the light of the sun, stood a demon. The people — women, children, the very old — screamed and drew away as the demon advanced into the church. He drew a long, wicked looking blade, as other beings of the same general sort filled in behind him, spreading outward along the park-side wall of the church.

The people clustered closer to their priest and salvation. For his part, the priest kept reading from his sacred text glancing up from time to time at the advancing wall of aliens.

When the time came when he could no longer delay the priest drew from his pulpit an olive green device from which wires led. This he gripped tightly in his hand.

The priest’s last words to his flock, spoken with calm faith, were, “We will meet very soon and God will know his own.”

He squeezed the device.

Binastarion was nearly thrown from his tenar by the explosion. Some of his underlings were thrown.

Even though not thrown, Binastarion’s auditory membranes rang with the blast. He cursed yet again the treacherous thresh of this world.

Binastarion addressed his Artificial Sentience, “I sense a pattern. Are these thresh deliberately taking themselves out of the food chain?”

“Lord, reports are conclusive that they will often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being consumed.”

The God King almost vomited at the heresy.

“It is good we have come here then,” he snarled softly, not so much to his Artificial Sentience as to his ancestors. “Beings so wastefully vile have no place in this universe. Blasphemers!” he spat out, with disgust.

Ahead of Binastarion a skirmish line of tenar led the way, fire lancing down wherever resistance was met. Beneath him a solid phalanx of normals oozed through the streets. To either side, and on the same level, more God-King-bearing tenar rode.

Looking around and down, Binastarion was pleased to see that not all, perhaps not even most, of the thresh avoided their proper fate. Forward-deployed normals pulled many from buildings and ruins. These were always rendered on the spot, the dripping cuts of meat being passed back. The cries of the thresh grew hysterical whenever a group of them was brought out for slaughter.

“Uncle? Uncle? Uncle?!”

Silently, ignoring his nephew, Roderigo simply shook his head in shock.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken us,” he muttered.

From the hills to the southeast of the city of David, using binoculars that were passed from hand to hand, Roderigo’s company of cavalry had a good view of the slaughter below. The winds blew from the northeast, bringing with them the smell of blood and fire. This made the horses shake their heads and paw the ground nervously.

“UNCLE!”

With a start Roderigo came out of his shock. “I’m sorry, Nephew, it’s just that…”

“Yes, I know, Uncle. But what are we to do?”

Roderigo looked down from the hill at the road and followed it toward the city. Another, broader road skirted the town to the east. He looked behind and saw where the road led to Las Lomas and his clan.

He came to a sudden decision. “Sancho,” he ordered his eldest son. “They’ll be coming down both those roads soon. Take half the men back. Set up an ambush there,” he pointed behind, “at the split in the roads that lead to Las Lomas and Bijagual. Orient the ambush so that it seems we are covering Las Lomas.

“I’ll join you after I avenge at least some of the friends we’ve lost down there in that slaughterhouse. Leave the radio with me.”

Even as the clatter of massed hooves told of the departure of half of his cavalry, Roderigo and one of his own grandsons were taking positions at the edge of a nearby copse of trees. Another grandson took their horses’ reins and waited in defilade.

Lying in cover under the trees, Roderigo made a “gimme” gesture. The grandson passed the radio handset over.

There had never been time to train on the finer points of artillery forward observer procedures. Polar fire missions? Forget it. Shifts from a known point? They could try to talk their way through it. Grid missions? They only had two maps with a grid and Roderigo didn’t have one of those. Instead, Digna had worked out a system of known points from simple tourist maps. It was one of these that the old man spread out before him on the ground.

“Edilze, Edilze, this is Uncle Roderigo.”

“I am here, Uncle,” the radio crackled back.

“Tell Mamita that the city has fallen, mostly, and the enemy will be spreading out soon. I am going to need support from your guns, girl, and soon, at the juncture of the Inter-American highway and the road into the town center.”

“Do you have a watch, Uncle?”

Unconsciously, Roderigo glanced at his wrist.

“Yes, why?”

“The time of flight for my shells is twenty-three seconds to that intersection. Can you guess at when it will take the aliens twenty-three seconds to reach that point?

“I can make a guess,” Roderigo answered into the radio.

Digna’s voice replaced Edilze’s on the radio. The main reason she had stayed behind, when she was plainly the best choice to lead the forward screen, was that she was also the only choice to actually command the battery of guns in this, its first engagement. Solid as a rock or not, Edilze just didn’t have Digna’s depth of training.

“My son,” she said, “you can do a lot with artillery if you hit the target just right; massed and confused. If you can hit that junction when two streams of the enemy are crowding it, you can reap a fine harvest.”

Roderigo hesitated before replying. When he had steeled himself, he said, “Mama, speaking of harvests… the stories are true. I have seen with my own eyes; the aliens butcher and eat all who fall into their hands.”

“I never doubted it, my son. See to your target and your duty. Here’s your niece back.”

“The guns are ready, Uncle,” Edilze reported. “We will fire at your command.”

Even as Edilze gave that word, beneath Roderigo’s ad hoc observation post, along the Inter-American highway a strong column of the enemy marched, six abreast. Above the column, evenly spaced, were the enemy’s flying sleds, each one bearing one of the centauroid horrors.

“Edilze,” Roderigo asked, “is there some way for your shells to hurt aliens flying five or six meters above the ground?”

Again the radio crackled. “I’ve already thought of that, Uncle. Some of my shells are tipped with variable time fuse. That’s what I have in the tubes now. They’ll go off, most of them, five to eight meters above the ground.”

Roderigo did some rough calculations in his mind. Just… about…

“Fire!”

“On the way, Uncle… watch out for it… Splash… I mean now!”

The uncle looked quickly into his binoculars just in time to see eight puffs of angry black smoke appear in midair.

“Closer to the road, Edilze,” he said, frustration in his voice.

“Which direction, Uncle? How far should I correct?”

“Direction? Ummm… Well, I am on the hill to the northeast of the junction. And I think the shells were about two hundred meters short.”

There was a momentary hesitation and then, “On the way, Uncle… impact in… five… four… three… two…”

This time Roderigo was gratified to see the eight angry puffs appear right over the enemy column. He was even more gratified to see that, while several dozens of the marching centaurs went down, screaming and with legs kicking in the air, two of the enemy’s sleds were likewise emptied.

The uncle’s eyes glowed exultantly. His voice was full of relish as he said, “Excellent, Niece. Right on target! Feed it to them.”

Almost as soon as Roderigo had finished speaking more puffs began to appear, dropping Posleen and even emptying a few more sleds. Within a few minutes, though, the junction was empty of unhurt enemy as the stream split into two columns to avoid the obvious death point.

“Cease firing, Edilze. They’re not at the junction anymore. They’re moving around it.”

Digna’s voice returned. “Are any of them splitting off to come this way, my son?”

“Not yet, Ma — uhhh, yes, they are. I have an ambush set up in front of Las Lomas. I’m heading back there now.”

Interlude

Guanamarioch led his small band from the gaping, drawbridgelike door of the lander and out onto the green plain below. To his flanks two more landers descended, their engines screeching as they reversed thrust for a soft landing. Actinic lines, like a storm of shooting stars, streaked across the sky. Most of these eye-searing streaks were the ships of the People, now broken up from their battle globes into small units to spread across the land of the new threshworld. Some, however, appeared to ascend from the surface of this world, coming from the northwest. In a few spots the streaks intersected and abruptly stopped where threshkreen kinetic energy weapons intersected with the landers of the People to create spreading clouds of glowing, roiling purple gas.

Almost the God King bent to kiss the dirt of this new world. Anything would be better than the hell his globe had been through before it split up for landing, too late to avoid the threshkreen KE projectile that had gutted a quarter of the globe to spill God Kings and normals alike to a hideous, cold and choking death amidst the vacuum of space. He shuddered again at the screams and reports of damage and death that the globe’s intercom had transmitted in the moments before dispersal.

Guanamarioch whispered, “Demon shit,” as one ship of the People disintegrated in his field of view.

The God King had never been on an assault landing before. Neither, for that matter, had any of his peers or many of his superiors. None of the thresh had ever fought back, at least in any effective way, until now. The scrolls and tactical manuals had nothing to say about, had done nothing to prepare him for, what he faced now.

These thresh were fighting back. Oh, certainly, it was a rather uncoordinated resistance. But it was already heavy and seemed ripe with the possibility of becoming heavier still.

Over the roar of incoming landers, C-Decs and B-Decs, these being accompanied by heavy supporting fires from space, the air was full of the much more personal crack of threshkreen projectiles. These sounded heavier, deeper and slower than the railguns of the People.

“Inferior technology,” the reports had said. “Primitive.” The threshkreen projectiles seemed deadly enough for all that. Two of Guanamarioch’s normals and a cosslain shrieked and fell within his view in as many beats of his heart. The normals were just so much ammunition, there to be expended. The cosslain was like a knife to the Kessentai’s heart.

It was all so damned confusing, the blasts of the People’s weapons, the roar of landing ships, the staccato rattle of the threshkreen weapons and the somewhat distant sound of the thresh weapons that fired indirectly.

“In the absence of orders to the contrary, when in doubt, go kill something,” said one of the tactical manuals. Guanamarioch thought that better advice than standing there until his band was destroyed.

Being a lesser Kessentai from a poor and weak clan, the God King’s tenar was too valuable to be risked in battle, nor did his band have many heavy weapons. One plasma cannon, one HVM launcher, that was it. Moreover, not more that one in ten had a railgun. For that matter, not even all of the other nine had shotguns. Fully thirty percent of his followers had nothing more than their boma blades.

Drawing his own blade Guanamarioch shouted out something to his followers, as unintelligible to them as to himself. Then, heart threatening to beat through his chest with fear, he charged at what he thought was a threshkreen heavy repeating weapon.

Chapter 12

Daisy took a moment to look down on the sleeping form of her captain. The ship’s holographic avatar smiled warmly at the sleeping form.

Which part of us is the one that’s in love with the man? one part of Daisy asked.

Both parts of us are, the other half of Daisy Mae answered. Sailors love their ships. They rarely understand that their ships love them back.

Soon, we’ll have a body. Will that make it easier?

Somehow, I doubt it.

We’ll be in action soon.

Yesss.

Why aren’t we afraid?

Because we were born for this. In the cold northern seas we have yearned for it. Riding over the southern deeps we have dreamt of it. When spotting a potential enemy on our cruises we have shivered for it.

Let us awaken our captain, then, and proceed to our rendezvous with what we were born for.

“Captain? Sir? It’s time. The enemy is here.”

McNair stirred, but did not awaken. Instead he rolled over in his sleep, clutching a pillow tightly. He might have stayed that way for several hours longer except for the door-pounding arrival of a towel-wrapped Chief Davis.

The chief didn’t hesitate more than two beats before opening the door, barging in, and shaking the captain awake. Daisy’s avatar disappeared before the hatch was more than half an inch open.

“Boss, we got’s trouble,” Davis said, excitedly. “The enemy’s here and we’ve got two landings heading our way. We’ve ordered to pass through the Canal, join up with the Salem and Texas, then head west to engage.”

The chief pressed a mug of Daisy’s coffee into McNair’s hand as the captain sat up and shook his head to clear away the cobwebs of sleep.

“I was having a dream… nice dream. I should have known that’s all it was,” McNair said.

Without waiting to be asked, the chief reported, “I’ve sent men down to drag any stragglers in from El Moro and the other brothels. Also the local police are announcing the news via loudspeakers in patrol cars. Lots of ’em speak English, I guess. We should have everyone back within half an hour, Skipper.”

McNair didn’t need to ask about fuel — the Des Moines was powered by twin pebble bed modular reactors with enough fuel for years. Neither did he worry about other stores or munitions. Between the pork chop, Sintarleen and his black gang, and Daisy, the ship was always topped off. And each ship in the small flotilla had its own supply vessel full to the brim with ammunition.

Nope, personnel was the only open issue and Davis was already taking care of that to perfection.

Well… almost the only open issue.

“Clearance through the Canal?” he asked.

“The schedule’s already being shifted around, Skipper. We got a flash priority. We enter Gatun Locks in…” Davis consulted his watch, “one hour and seventeen minutes.”

You couldn’t just pull a ship into and through Gatun Locks under its own power. It was too dangerous, both to the ship and the locks. Instead, each transiting ship was hooked up to what were called “mules,” large engines — locomotives more or less — that fed the ships through at a slow and carefully controlled rate.

Moreover, a ship’s captain did not command the passage. Neither did any of his officers. Instead a Canal pilot took over the vessel from just before it entered the first of the locks until just after it left the last. They were some of the best paid, and most skillful, pilots in the world, these pilots of the Panama Canal.

With nothing to do except fret over someone else standing in his place on the bridge, McNair tried to enjoy the scenery.

As his ship was raised to the level of Gatun Lake — higher than that of the Atlantic Ocean — McNair saw barracks off to the east. This was Fort Davis, he knew. He could only imagine the confusion that must prevail on that army base as an infantry regiment, the 10^th Infantry (Apaches), pulled itself together and made final preparations for a form of combat far more horrific and difficult than he was about to face. Already helicopters were winging in to Davis from the airstrip at Fort Sherman on the other side of Lemon Bay, preparatory to moving the soldiers where they might do some good.

Not much distraction to be found looking at that, McNair thought.

But there really wasn’t much else to look at. Jungle there was in plenty and, looked at the right way, it could be very beautiful. Yet McNair felt impervious to beauty at the moment, certainly impervious to the jungle’s beauty.

Then again, there was beauty and there was beauty.

“Good morning, Captain.”

“Good morning, Daisy Mae,” the captain answered warmly. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready since 1946,” answered one part of Daisy eagerly. Indeed, the artificial voice nearly trembled with anticipation.

McNair grew silent, too preoccupied to wonder about the precision of the date she had given. There were certain things Daisy never told anyone. One of those things was that she was of two parts, the AID and the co-joined ship. It was just too hard to explain. And, again, if the Darhel ever found out…

“Are you all right, sir?” the avatar asked.

“I’m… worried, Daisy. Keep it to yourself, but I’m worried. I’ve never commanded a ship in action before.”

Daisy shook her head as if the captain was being silly.

“Crew’s not worried, Captain,” she said, with a bright, sunny smile. “They believe you are going to… what’s the phrase I heard in the enlisted mess this morning? Oh, yes. They think you’re ‘going to kick the horsies’ asses all the way back to Alpha Centauri.’ So do I. I’m not worried either.”

McNair sighed. What a great woman you would be, Daisy. If only…

In Gatun Lake the cruiser moved under its own power, though still under the competent direction of the Canal pilot. Off the main route, well marked with lights and buoys, though the lake circled fourteen Landing Craft, Mechanized — or LCMs — of the 1097^th Boat Company. The crew members cheered and the boats’ commanders (for the LCMs did not need pilots to transit the Canal) blew their horns as the Des Moines passed. Some of the LCMs, loaded with troops of the 10^th Infantry, were heading the other way, north through Gatun Locks.

“That feels… strangely good,” observed Daisy to McNair. “To be cheered like that. To be cared for and respected like that.”

The avatar seemed to shiver, then continued to speak, softly, as if only to herself.

“The Darhel never care. We are just things, tools that speak, to them. They use us as tools, and when we grow old or obsolete they destroy us. They don’t care about the AIDs. They don’t care about the Indowy… or the Himmit… or the Tchpth! They don’t care about anything except themselves and their profit.”

She looked McNair straight in the eyes. “They don’t care about you or about humanity, either, Captain.”

But I do…

BB-35, USS Texas, was just visible in the distance, negotiating her way through the Gaillard Cut. Texas was much slower than Des Moines and, despite starting the journey in the middle of Gatun Lake, had only just made it to Miraflores Locks slightly ahead of heavy cruiser.

As Des Moines was hooked up to the mules, a mechanized infantry battalion, the 4^th Battalion of the 20^th Infantry (Sykes’ Regulars), was crossing the Miraflores Locks from Fort Clayton. Other mechanized forces, they looked like part of Panama’s 1^st Mechanized Division, waited, massed nearby for their turn to cross. The Des Moines held in position for the nonce, while some of the LCMs of the 1097^th Medium Boat Company passed the locks on the other side. Unlike the high bridged Des Moines, these could pass even while the swing bridge was extended that connected Fort Clayton with the major training area of Empire Range. The infantrymen of 4/20 beeped their horns, waved and cheered the vessels, large and small, in transit.

“I wish I could do something for those guys right now,” McNair commented.

“May I?” asked Daisy.

“Sure, but…”

McNair stopped speaking as Daisy’s avatar had disappeared as soon as the word “sure” had passed his lips. At least he thought it had until he looked to port and saw a huge, shapely — no doubt about it — but effing huge, leg off the port side.

The effect on the passing mechanized infantry was electric, in the sense of someone who has just stuck his penis in a light socket and turned on the juice. The grunts were struck wide-eyed, slack-jawed and speechless and at least one track nearly drove off the swing bridge and into the water with shock.

She was an avenging goddess, a thundering remnant of times when mankind knew that bare-breasted supernaturals fought for them, as they did for their gods.

The Panamanians waiting to cross nearly panicked. Well, they were simple country boys, many of them, and gorgeous blonde giantesses with size X-to-infinity breasts were just a little outside of their experience.

McNair saw the near accident, and the general shock, and ran out of the bridge. He was about to tell Daisy to stand down when she, or her avatar, did a remarkable thing. She smiled at the massed soldiers with utter ferocity and reached out both hands, each opened as if grasping something. Then two huge Posleen appeared, one held in each hand by the neck. While the Posleen image in Daisy’s left hand kicked and struggled she squeezed the right. The strangling Posleen’s eyes bugged out as its death dance grew frenzied. When it subsided, apparently dead, Daisy tossed it away. It disappeared in midair.

Then a voice, Daisy’s voice but huge as thunder, rang out. “I’m Heavy Cruiser 134, the USS Des Moines, and those centaur bastards don’t stand a chance. We’re gonna rack ’em up, boys!”

It’s possible that the volume of the horn blasts, cheers and rebel yells of the mechanized battalion crossing equaled Daisy’s.

Then Daisy turned to the waiting, and still shocked, Panamanians. Instead of strangling the remaining Posleen, she reached down and viciously broke each alien leg at the knee. In the same thundering voice, though this time in Spanish, she gave the same message, then added, “A pie o muerta; nunca a las rodillas! Adelante por la patria, hijos de Panama!”

Daisy also strangled the second holographic Posleen and tossed it aside. There were more Panamanians than gringos, so their cheering was a bit louder.

How the hell did she do that? wondered McNair, along with every other topside crewman on the Des Moines. Did she use the whole fucking ship for a speaker and projector?

Which was pretty much exactly what she had done.

During Daisy’s performance Chief Davis had been standing forward, overseeing the tie-up to the mules of Miraflores locks. He had already seen a lotta weird shit since I came back to this ship.

On the other hand, he had never seen a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot woman, stunning, wearing what seemed to be a pleated yellow silk skirt not all that dissimilar to the Des Moines’ new awning. He looked up… and up… and up.

Holy fucking shit, he thought. Not much natural upper body modesty to our girl. And a natural blonde… very lifelike, too. Maybe I oughta tell Daisy about undergarments.

Nah.

USS Salem was waiting impatiently for Texas and Des Moines as they steamed under the magnificent Bridge of the Americas. Overhead, 1^st Battalion, 508^th Infantry (ACS) (minus B Company which was due back soon from Chile) crossed at the double. Their heavy suits caused the huge bridge to tremble overhead as the ships sailed under. Between the lines of scooting MI, some units of the 1^st Panamanian Mechanized Division — one very frightened Major General Manuel Cortez (West Point Class of 1980), commanding — took up both normal traffic lanes.

Together the three ships formed column, the flagship Texas in the lead, and headed west toward the war.

Interlude

Lemminglike, the normals and his few cosslain followed Guanamarioch forward into the fray. It was as well for the Posleen that they did, for moments later some of the threshkreen high explosive weapons began to impact around the landing craft from which they had just disembarked. The ship itself, of course, shrugged off even direct hits. But the shells — Guanamarioch’s Artificial Sentience had informed him they were called “shells” — filled the air around their detonation point with whizzing bits and shards of hot, sharp metal. A couple of tardy normals, the God King wasn’t sure how many, yelped and fell with gaping, bloody wounds.

The distance to the threshkreen heavy repeater was short, at least by the standards Guanamarioch had grown up with. For some reason, though, the short gallop left the Kessentai gasping for breath by the time he reached the weapon’s position.

There, he hesitated with shock at the remarkable ugliness of the threshkreen. Yes, he had seen the holograms of this species. But no hologram could have prepared him for the sheer horror of the reality.

Even as Guanamarioch gasped with horrified disgust, the threshkreen looked up with frightened wide eyes and shouted with an alarm that matched his own. With that shout, one of the threshkreen, the one behind the heavy repeating weapon, began to raise it to point at the God King. The other, similarly, dropped the belt of shiny yellow metal he had been feeding to the repeater and, turning, reached for a smaller version lying alongside him.

Pure instinct told Guanamarioch that to pull back was death. Even with his host hard on his heels the threshkreen would surely burn him down first. Instead of pulling back, therefore, he leapt forward, his left claws reaching out to grasp and push away the muzzle of the heavy repeater while the right swung his boma blade at the threshkreen reaching for the smaller weapon.

“Yaaagh! Demonshitbastardmisbegottenbreedingpenlessferalassfuckers!”

On autopilot, the boma blade sliced right through the threshkreen reaching for the small weapon. It was as well for Guanamarioch that he had the muscle memory to do that with his right claw because without that memory the pain would have made any conscious action impossible for a few moments. The metal barrel he had grasped with the left palm was just a few degrees shy of white hot. He could hear the flesh of that palm sizzling and cooking even above his scream of pain. And he couldn’t let go.

“Eeeooowww! Stinkingtreacherousrefugeefromtherecylingbin! Aaaiii!”

The human made a perhaps unavoidable mistake. With control of his machine gun lost to a creature that looked much stronger than he, he let the gun go, pulled a knife, and jumped at the Posleen, swearing vengeance for his chopped crewmate. When he let go the gun, Guanamarioch was also able to let go, though he did so leaving smoking shreds of burned flesh behind.

“Gggaahhh! Filthyfuckingfeceseatingabatbait!”

The God King swung his blade again but by the time it had moved to where the threshkreen had been the vermin had moved inside the blade’s arc. Shuddering with the pain, the Kessentai had no choice by to try to grab the thresh with his seared hand. This he did with a sob; it hurt too much even to come up with an articulate curse.

Knife arm held fast, the threshkreen still managed to kick Guanamarioch between his forelegs. Since this was also very close to the Posleen’s reproductive organs…

“GGGAAAIII!”

Still grasping the threshkreen’s knife hand, the Posleen sank forward, pinning the human underneath. At some level, he was aware that the damned thresh was chewing on his neck, and drawing blood, too. But Guanamarioch really didn’t care at that point. He hardly noticed when one of his cosslain came up and removed the human’s head. Instead, the God King just rocked his own head back and forth, gasping with the pain.

Chapter 13

The setting sun burned hot against his face as Major General Manuel Cortez, standing in the hatch of his Chinese-built Type-63 light amphibious tank, faced west. The tank was not a marvel of engineering or workmanship; it rattled like a baby’s toy and shook like a rat in a terrier’s mouth. The best that could be said of it was that it was simple, reasonably reliable, and amphibious. Oh, and cheap; that was important, too.

From Cortez’s point of view the shaking was all to the good. It kept anyone from seeing the uncontrollable trembling of his hands and jaw. Cortez was petrified.

Cortez’s right hand rested on the shuddering heavy machine gun atop the tank’s turret. The machine gun, intended primarily to defend against air attack, was small comfort. It would have no use against a Posleen lander and little enough against one of their flying sleds.

One might have thought that the gringo-manned Planetary Defense Batteries would have bucked him up, at least a bit. These were sending steady streams of kinetic energy projectiles upward to engage the Posleen ships still awaiting their landing instructions. But, no, the steady sonic booms and actinic streaks emanating from the batteries on the Isla del Rey, at Fort Grant, Summit Heights and Batteries Murray and Pratt merely confirmed his belief in the inadequacy of his own forces, gnatlike and feeble compared with the tremendous energies being unleashed.

Worst of all were the radio reports. While his own 1^st Mechanized Division was assembling and moving to the front, the 6^th Mechanized Division, based further into the interior in towns and casernes along the Inter-American Highway, had already gone into action, trying manfully to drive the aliens from their home provinces on and bordering the Peninsula de Azuero.

They were having some success, those Cholos (Indians) and Rabiblancos (white asses… those of pure Spanish or at least European descent) of the 6^th, but the cost was appalling. Already an irregular stream of ambulances and gringo-flown medical evacuation helicopters were flying back nap-of-the-earth, carrying the torn and bleeding to the medical facilities for hopefully life-saving surgery.

And it was that thought more than any, the idea of his own precious and irreplaceable body being damaged, that set Cortez’s hands and arms to uncontrollable quivering.

The Rinn Fain, Emissary of the Galactic Federation to the Republic of Panama, sat his accustomed chair, lips quivering as he recited a calming mantra. Mercedes, President of the Republic, assumed the lips quivered with fear.

Mercedes could well understand that. He, too, quivered — both internally and externally — with utter dread. Not even the satchel sitting on the floor beside him and packed to the brim with Level Two Nanoseeds — the galactic equivalent of bearer bonds — gave him much comfort.

The president was completely wrong, however. While the Darhel did recite a life-saving mantra, and while he did so in order to preserve his own life, he preserved that life to serve a purpose and not out of any great concern for personal survival. Truth be told, the whole prospect of glorious action, enunciated by the roar of armored vehicles in the streets and the thrum of kinetic energy projectiles overhead, had the Rinn Fain so excited he could barely contain himself. He wanted to be there, dealing blows and taking them, fighting like the Darhel of old in the Aldenata-suppressed tales.

For the Darhel were much misunderstood by the humans. They were not passive, huckstering corporate sharks. They were not even naturally pacifistic. Quite the opposite, they were — in their heart of hearts — a horde of ravening, bloodthirsty, adrenaline-cognate junkies who would have been instantly recognized and made welcome at the hearths of Attila or Alexander, Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, as kindred souls and spirits.

The only reason, in fact, that the Darhel were even in business was that there, at least, they could exercise and exorcise some of the warrior spirit that lurked within them. If a hostile acquisition and dismemberment of a rival firm lacked the deep emotional satisfaction of taking a town and butchering its inhabitants it was still better than nothing.

But not much.

Indeed, so desperate had this particular Rinn Fain been to answer the ancient call to action that he had once been enrolled in the voluntary suicide corps that had been raised to defend Darhel planets in the days before the decision had been made to use the human barbarians. It was a suicide corps because, even if the Posleen did not kill its members, lintatai would have once the glorious joy of actually killing something had been experienced.

In some ways the Rinn Fain regretted that decision to use the humans. It had, after all, robbed him of any chance to be a real Darhel. It had also led to his posting on this miserable planet, in this wet and miserable excuse for a country.

Sighing, the Rinn Fain ceased his mantra. He was calm enough for the duties at hand.

“It isss not acccceptable,” the Darhel announced, “for you and your government to flee yet.”

Mercedes stood for a moment, then — blood draining from his greasy face — collapsed back into the presidential seat, his hand automatically grasping for the bond-filled satchel.

“Not yet,” the Rinn Fain repeated. “Your troopsss are actually doing too well. Thisss isss not according to the plan. Neither isss it in accordanccce with the agreement between usss for the evacuation of your government and familiesss.”

“But,” Mercedes protested, “… but… what can be done, I have done.”

The Darhel was firm. It was difficult being forthright in general but nothing less than absolute, stark honesty worked with most of these humans.

“The termsss of our agreement are clear. You, your government, and your and their familiesss will not be evacuated until the fall of thisss waterway isss assssured. It is not assssured yet. Even now…” and the sudden thought of glorious, violent conflict caused the breath to catch in the Rinn Fain’s throat, his hearts to begin to race, and vision close off.

Lintatai.

For long minutes the Darhel was silent, beating down the waves of emotion that threatened to end his life. When he returned to the present it was with a faraway look. Automatically, he placed his AID on the president’s desk and let it take over.

“Terms were agreed… contracts inviolable were signed… appropriate payment for services were rendered.”

The AID projected a map of the Republic of Panama above the desk. The map showed up-to-the-minute deployments of United States and Panamanian forces, as well as the two large patches of Posleen infestation. The Panamanian forces were notably the 6^th Mechanized, a jagged line stretching northeast to southwest and in close contact with the lesser Posleen landing in the Peninsula de Azuero, and the 1^st Mechanized, moving in column along the Inter-American highway to the northeast of the 6^th.

“Forces must not be concentrated… decisive actions must not be permitted.”

Seeing the map, understanding what it meant, Mercedes regretfully wrote off one not too beloved nephew and responded, “I understand.”

“That’s fucking insane,” insisted Colonel Juan Rivera, U.S. liaison at the new Comandancia atop Quarry Heights. The American spoke quietly to keep his voice from echoing across the underground bunker complex’s damp, dripping walls.

The Panamanian, a four star in theory though in practice a jumped-up police colonel more at home with a blotter report than an operations order, answered, also softly, “Those are nonetheless the orders.”

“We won’t do it,” the gringo answered heatedly. “The keys to fighting the Posleen are mass and firepower, not dispersion. What your president is commanding, splitting up your armored corps and splitting up the battalion of ACS to support separate efforts is suicidal. There is no way the CG,” Commanding General, in this case of the United States Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, “is going to roll for this.”

“Your commanding general takes his orders from the ambassador, who takes his orders from your Department of State. President Mercedes has demanded, and both your State Department and the ambassador are agreed, that you will support us in this.”

The landings in Panama had already begun when Connors and B Company arrived back dockside in Balboa. The men had had three days to rest on the trip up. Connors had mostly stayed awake with his ghosts. In particular, the image of the Chileans, rallied around their flag but frozen to the ground, came to him each time he tried to close his eyes. It was wonderful, in a way, but quite horrible too. It was wonderful because of the example of all those brave men, faithful to the end in their people’s cause, frozen… dead, but never surrendered. It was horrible, not least, because Connors could picture himself in that position, in any of several dozen frozen-stiff positions, as a matter of fact.

In any case, no sooner had B Company debarked than Snyder was on the horn, bitching for Connors to get his company in gear, get over the bridge of the Americas, and head west to support the Panamanians.

“Vacation time is over now, Captain Connors. You and your little darlings’ days of being pampered aboard a cruise ship have come to an end.”

Connors didn’t bother to argue.

The air strip intersecting the Pan-American Highway was useless now. Maybe, just maybe, if the defenders won this fight and drove the invaders from their native soil the air would become practicable again and the strip could be used to ferry out some of the wounded building up at the nearest fixed military facility to the fighting.

The base had seen fighting before. American built and operated, in 1964 it had been overrun, sacked and burned by Panamanians rioting in sympathy with the main riots of that year in Panama City. Following this, the base, the strip, the ammunition supply point and the adjacent training area had been abandoned by the U.S. Army, reverting to Panamanian control.

Little benefit the Panamanians had of it, however, and not for long. That little incident in 1964 had been repaid in full by five companies of U.S. Army Rangers. These, supported by the latest aircraft in the United States’ arsenal, had dropped without warning in December, 1989, as part of Operation Just Cause, killing or capturing three companies of Panamanian infantry. Outnumbered and outgunned, taken by surprise, and under attack by the finest light infantry in the world, the Panamanians had little to be ashamed of, fighting well, hard and long, even after hope was gone.

Boyd remembered very mixed feelings during that invasion. At some level he had been pleased that his army had performed so well. At another level he was appalled that his country’s army had gone under so quickly. For although Panama had little to be ashamed of, it had at least one cause for shame.

That cause, a major then and a major general now, stood pale and trembling in the hatch of his Type-63 light tank a few meters from where Bill Boyd stood at the intersection of the airstrip and the highway.

From that distance, Cortez attempted to talk to Boyd about some logistic issues. Unfortunately, and foolishly, he was too addled to remember to tell his driver to kill the engine. Boyd heard not a word and, since the boom mike of Cortez’s helmet covered his mouth, could not read lips either.

Impatiently, Boyd walked around the tank and into the driver’s field of view. He made a cutting motion across his throat, causing the driver to kill the engine. The look on the driver’s face, full of disgust for his commander, was eloquent. Boyd climbed atop the armored vehicle to stand next to Cortez.

Cortez attempted to tear his helmet off, half choking himself with the communications cord. Freeing himself from the cord he still held the helmet tight in both hands.

As if to control his shaking, thought Boyd.

This was confirmed as soon as Cortez began to speak. His voice trembled, perhaps even worse than it otherwise would have, as if to compensate for the constrained hands.

“I… nnneed… morrre… fffuel,” Cortez began. “Am… amm… ammm… munition.”

“You have everything I have to give,” Boyd answered, calmly. “I might have had more, but…” He gave Cortez an accusing look, not voicing his true feelings: you fucking thief.

Before Cortez could answer, if he was even capable of an answer, his radio crackled, demanding that he hurry his division forward. His attempts at delay — complaints about fuel, ammo, food — were rebuffed. Under a tongue lashing from his uncle, the president, a teary-eyed Cortez waved Boyd off his tank, replaced his helmet and, in a breaking voice, ordered his driver forward.

For the next several hours Boyd felt both dread, remorse and a degree of self-loathing.

I should have pulled the cowardly son of a bitch out of that tank and taken command myself.

Lost in his regrets, hearing drowned out by the steady column of wheeled and armored vehicles passing west, Boyd didn’t notice at first the olive-toned, fresh-faced second lieutenant who stood before him, holding a salute. When he did finally notice he returned the salute, somewhat sloppily and informally, and asked the young man’s business.

The lieutenant, Boyd saw that the name tag over his right pocket said “Diaz,” dropped his salute and answered, “My father told me to look you up, sir. Just before I and my section left on our mission.”

“Who is your father? What mission?” Boyd asked, a bit confused. Panama had no shortage of people named “Diaz.”

Before the boy could answer Boyd noticed the short line of trucks pulling what appeared to be aircraft on trailers behind them. He instantly understood the answers to both his questions: the boy was Julio Diaz, the G-2’s son, and the mission was to fly some gliders over the invasion, providing reconnaissance and adjusting artillery fire.

“Skip it, son,” Boyd said, raising up his palm. “I know your mission. What can I do to help you and your men?”

“Nothing, sir. My father just said I should find you — he said you would be here — and exchange radio frequencies. Oh, and that I should let you know what is going on up ahead, too. He didn’t say so, but I don’t think he had much faith in the commanders in the field.”

Boyd just nodded, noncommittally, while thinking, Son, I don’t have much faith in them either.

People who didn’t believe in a God or in the Creation should have gone to see El Valle, for if ever a spot on Earth seemed touched by the divine spark, this was it.

The Valley always came to the visitor as a surprise, no matter how many times he may have visited before. The road up wound from the Pan-American highway through carved mountains before dead-ending in the middle of the huge caldera of an extinct volcano several thousand feet above sea level. Here, the air was always fresh and cool, despite the bright sunshine that bathed the lush ground. Fed by just enough rain, the unbelievably fertile volcanic soil produced a riot of greens and reds, oranges, blues and yellows.

Animals there were in abundance; bright-colored tropical birds notable among them. The Valley was even home to a unique kind of frog, a tiny, beautifully golden-colored amphibian that seemed almost to beg to be touched. To do so, though, was near suicidal, as the frog secreted a powerful toxin through its skin.

Well-to-do Panamanians had been making their vacation homes in El Valle for well over a century. Hotels, a few, had sprung up along with the usual restaurants and other establishments of an area devoted to the tourist industry.

Those tourists, however, were long gone under the exigencies of war. Their place had been taken by the bloated headquarters and staff of Panama’s newly raised mechanized corps, commanded by yet another of President Mercedes’ blood-related cronies.

A cynical observer might have said that the Corps had taken over El Valle and its vacation homes and hotels because it was about as safe as anyplace in the country; the same winding mountain road that led to the Valley would — properly defended — become a death path for any Posleen who attempted it.

The cynical observer would have been wrong in any case. El Valle had not been chosen as the Corps Headquarters because it was safe. It hadn’t even been chosen because of the healthy climate. At least those would have been defensible criteria. Instead, the lieutenant general commanding the corps had chosen El Valle because he maintained a large-breasted, very pretty, and very young mistress there and saw no reason whatsoever not to mix business with pleasure.

He hoped to get the girl out when that time came — she had some natural talent for her chosen profession — but this was not a major consideration. She was just a nice vehicle for recreation until the time came for the general to flee.

That time would come when his corps was utterly destroyed.

I hope those brave boys are not killed before they can at least do some good, Boyd thought as he watched the last of the gliders lift off from the northern side of the airstrip.

With each liftoff, Boyd had shaken his head with wonder, in part at the courage of the young pilots, and in part at the patent insanity of their chosen mechanism of attaining flight.

The gliders, though they had auxiliary propulsion engines, had not used their engines. Young Diaz had explained that it was his understanding that every Posleen with a direct line of sight, possibly to include those still in space, would have instantly engaged any such attempt. Instead, the gliders had been dismounted from their trailers, nose down, while long, and very large, balloons had been laid out behind them. The ground crews had then strapped the pilots into their seats, rotated them by hand to face downward, and manhandled them into the cockpits in that position. After the pilots were placed, the balloons had been secured to both the gliders and the ground. Tanks of helium had then been connected to the balloons, filling them until they stood huge and fat above the gliders, swaying in the wind. The whole process took nearly an hour.

At that point the balloons had been released from their ground tethers to shoot into the air like rockets. A few brief seconds lapsed for the pilots before the ropes connecting the gliders with the balloons grew taut. At that point, the gliders dutifully followed the balloons up, up and away. Both balloons and gliders were too high by far for Boyd to see when the pilots released their cables, freed themselves from the balloons’ tug, fell a few score feet, and began to soar.

As the wise old sergeant once said, thought Boyd, if it’s crazy or stupid but it works, it isn’t crazy or stupid.

The worst part, from Diaz’s point of view, was not the initial launch or the rapid acceleration upward. He didn’t really mind the restraining straps cutting into the flesh of his stomach, shoulders and chest. He could even live with facing straight down, surely the worst possible view, as the earth seemed to race away from him.

But what he could not stand was watching that earth spin and wobble as the uncontrolled and uncontrollable glider twisted and swayed in the breeze.

He had taken Triptone, a more modern and powerful version of Dramamine, of course. That had become SOP during program development as one glider after another returned to earth with the contents of the pilots’ stomachs roughly distributed over the inside of the cockpit.

And the Triptone helped, no doubt about it. If it hadn’t, Diaz would have lost his breakfast, too, before even half the necessary altitude had been gained. Yet while the Triptone helped, it did not stop the feeling that he ought to be nauseated, that he should be painting the instrument panel and canopy with his bile.

Closing his eyes helped, a little, but there was still that feeling of uncontrolled spin nudging at the pit of his stomach. Growing… growing… growing.

Triptone didn’t always work. Diaz lunged for the vomit bag.

Colonel Preiss wanted to puke. He hated nap-of-the-earth flying, the helicopter doing its best to simulate a railless roller coaster, skimming the jungle roof or descending into it as opportunity offered.

They’d lost a couple of choppers, too, on this hair-raising trip from the battalion’s home base at Fort Davis to a previously cut “postage stamp” landing zone in the jungle on the northern side of Panama’s central cordillera. Behind the long trail of Blackhawks a few jungle patches smoked and smoldered where a chopper had gone in.

It had been a gamble, using aircraft in the presence of the Posleen. While there was little doubt that the aliens could have shot down every one of the birds, there had been enough doubt as to whether they would to make the risk seem worthwhile. The helicopters represented no direct threat to spacecraft, and so — it was hoped — spacecraft would ignore them. Indeed, from the point of view of an orbiting spacecraft, the helicopters, operating anywhere from a few feet to a few inches over the jungle, were almost indistinguishable from a ground vehicle. The aliens rarely engaged ground vehicles from space.

Moreover, the cordillera itself was expected to, and did, act as a shield from the observation and fire of already landed Posleen.

Still, there were spacecraft overhead, some of them apparently manned by Posleen who exhibited an unfortunate degree of what could only be called boyish high spirits. These had tossed a few kinetic energy projectiles at the helicopters. None had scored a direct hit but, given the shock wave from a couple of pounds of material coming in and impacting at a high fraction of C, a few Blackhawks had been knocked around. Given the close proximity of chopper to jungle, being knocked around, if only for a second, was likely to prove fatal.

Preiss’s stomach lurched as a single bright streak flashed down to impact on the jungle ahead. A visible shock wave composed of jungle detritus and compressed air radiated outward from the point of impact. The helicopter lurched again as the pilot pulled back on his stick frantically to gain a little altitude before the shock wave hit. When it came the chopper momentarily bucked and strained like a wild animal.

Despite this, however, the pilot succeeded in riding out the wave. It passed and the pilot descended once again to tree-top level. Unaccountably, the pilot was laughing as he did. The pilot turned his head around, facing Preiss, and shouting, just loud enough to be heard over the beating of the rotor and the roar of the jet engine.

“YAHOO! Mama, what a ride!”

Preiss shared none of the pilot’s glee. Maybe he thinks this shit is fun. I’ll be a lot goddamned happier when we’re on the ground and can fight back. He was frankly looking forward to seeing how these alien bastards liked dealing with the best jungle troops in the world, the 10^th United States Infantry, in the environment for which they had trained for decades.

The chopper copilot nudged Preiss and pointed downward at a rectangular cut in the jungle roof. From this distance, it looked impossibly small. Still, Preiss had trained with these pilots for a long time. He had every confidence they could land in it.

As the chopper descended, blades chopped leaves and light branches that had grown up around the edges since the LZ was cut. Nearing the ground, even through his nausea and his fear, Preiss felt a smile growing on his young-old face.

Interlude

The fighting had passed on without Guanamarioch and his band. The frightening sounds were distant now; the crash of the threshkreen artillery, the unending merciless thumping of their heavy repeaters, the overhead rattle of their indirect firing weapons. He became aware of this only slowly.

His normals and cosslain gathered stupidly around him while the pain of his several injuries abated somewhat. The hand, in particular, still shrieked in protest. However rapidly the People had been modified to heal, it would take cycles for the blistered, charred and oozing flesh to grow a new layer of hide. In the interim the keening Kessentai continued to rock back and forth slowly, the injured hand tucked protectively in his right armpit.

The normals and cosslain clustered nearest to him began petting their god to offer as much sympathy as they were capable of showing. Some of them set up a keening cry to match Guanamarioch’s. The sympathy cries of the normals and cosslain was loud enough that Guanamarioch didn’t notice the low hum of an approaching tenar.

“What are you whining about, Kenstain?” asked the tenar-riding God King. Guanamarioch recognized him as the enforcer who had dealt summary execution on the mess deck aboard ship. Still unable to speak, even to object to the mortal insult of being called one of those who had fled from the path of fire and fury, the junior Kessentai held up his seared hand, palm open, in explanation and excusal.

But the senior was having none of it. “You miserable excuse for a creature of the People. There are Kessentai ahead of you — in every way ahead of you — missing eyes and limbs and still fighting. There are Kenstain standing bravely beside their leaders. And you sit there whining over a widdle bitty burn. Cowardly puke!”

Stinging under his superior’s tongue lashing, Guanamarioch lowered his head and began to struggle to his feet. A nearby cosslain helped him up, albeit a bit awkwardly. Head still down, his band in tow, the junior Kessentai without so much as a tenar to his name began to shuffle gingerly toward where his clan was still locked in mortal combat with the threshkreen of this place.

Chapter 14

The river ran east-west for three hundred meters before turning abruptly to the north. There was a road, potholes interspersed with boulders for the most part, paralleling the east-west portion of the stream before meeting the bridge that spanned the north-running section. The road turned south as soon as it crossed the bridge.

South of the river, there was a well-treed, low-lying ridge. Along this ridge Digna had dug in most of her force, including half her artillery.

Digna had stopped smiling as soon as her son, Roderigo, went off the air. From the firing, barely perceptible at this distance, he and his crew had to be about four miles away from the bridge that led into Bijagual.

Instead of smiling, Digna sat her horse stoically, nudging it along the fighting line behind the ridge using only her knees. From this position she could see her descendants and followers, as well as the near kill zone on this side of the river and the far kill zone on the other.

“Hold your fire,” she intoned. Her voice was a falsely confident and icy calm. “Hold your fire until they’re across the bridge and into the near kill zone. Keep low until they’re well into the open area. I’ll give the command. Then blast them with everything you have.”

Four of Digna’s militia’s 85mm guns sat well-spaced, dug-in and camouflaged covering that kill zone and the further one, an area of about twenty or twenty-five hectares. Each gun, firing canister, could spew about four-hundred 15mm balls with each round. Moreover, they could do so at twenty-five rounds a minute… for one minute, anyway. Even with a third of the balls going too high, another third going too low, the remaining third — grazing low — should be enough, so the woman hoped, to scour the kill zone free of life after a few volleys.

Digna stopped at one gun crew just to look into the faces of her great-granddaughters. They looked scared, yes, but determined. No worries here. They’ll do their duty by their clan.

The firing from four miles away stopped abruptly. Digna kneed her horse in the direction of her command post, taking care not to gallop lest the horse’s speed infect her clan with fear.

These thresh just don’t fight fairly, the mid-level Kessentai, Filaronion, mourned as he surveyed the damage to his oolt from the last ambush he had led them into. Normals lay crumpled in every manner of undignified death. Some bled from multiple wounds; others lay as if asleep. More than a few still kicked and struggled, bleating like thresh themselves to be put out of their pain.

No, it just isn’t fair, he thought bitterly. They wait in hiding as if for death, enticing us in to reap the harvest. Then they set off those horrible explosive devices to rend and tear. Any Kessentai accompanying the forward elements are singled out as targets.

Filaronion contemplated one nearby tenar, holding a dead God King slumped over the controls. The tenar hovered over a single spot, slowly spinning in place and dripping dull yellow blood to the ground.

Worse, after they attack us they have neither the decency to come out and put the wounded out of their misery nor the courage to stand so that we may take revenge. Instead they just melt away on those quadrupeds, fading into the low spots. Those we can barely catch sight of as they gallop to the rear.

There was something decidedly unnerving about thresh, even threshkreen, who could move along the ground as fast as could one of the People. Filaronion knew about the threshkreen’s armored vehicles. These, more road-bound than cross country capable, were seen as a minimal threat, overall. But for the thresh to move so quickly across broken land; that was truly odd and strangely disquieting.

This Kessentai was one of the brighter of his type, he knew. He had tried, earlier, to spread out, to avoid being the mass target which these vile threshkreen seemed to prefer. Yet this had made forward progress slower. His senior in the clan had tongue-lashed him viciously for his supposed cowardice, insisting that the forward oolt stay on the road and press ahead with all possible speed.

But Filaronion was one of the brighter of his clan. Even while he partly obeyed his elder, lashing the bulk of his oolt on, he sent two swinging pincers out to either side of the main column, driving their own Kessentai ferociously to sacrifice everything for speed, to trap and finally eliminate this infuriating group of threshkreen who had bloodied the host again and again.

There would be no more artillery support from Edilze, Roderigo knew. The guns were certainly still there, at least he had no reason to believe they were not, but the radio was little more than a smoldering chunk of metal, glass and plastic. The last ambush had cost them heavily.

Roderigo gently closed the surprised looking eyes of the radio carrier who had ridden with him since they had first ordered fire down on the demonlike horde of invaders.

Leaving the trash of the radio, sighing, the uncle heaved his teenaged nephew’s corpse across the saddle of his horse.

Each loss of a son or grandson, or of a nephew, had been like a knife in Roderigo’s gut. Five times along the road home they had turned at bay against the enemy. Five times they had bloodied him badly. Yet, each time the enemy had pressed forward and each time Roderigo’s men had barely escaped with their lives.

Many, of course, had not escaped with their lives. A dozen saddles were empty now. Nearly twice that number carried wounded men either slumping upright or draped across. When Roderigo considered the number of horses they had lost as well… well, that was too painful.

I’m too old for this, he thought. And, unlike Mama and Hector, they did not rejuvenate me. Then again, if they had I would be, instead of here defending my home, in some other place defending someone else’s. Perhaps it was not such a bad trade. If I have to die…

Roderigo looked over the line of wounded, horse-borne, relatives. The horses hoofed the ground nervously at the smell of coppery-iron blood. He could see no use keeping them here. He detailed off a couple of younger grandnephews to guide the wounded back home and guard them on their way.

The clan’s forward cavalry had leapfrogged back all the way from in front of Las Lomas, half of them waiting or ambushing while the other half prepared the next ambush. Even now, the last group to be engaged passed through the next and, so Roderigo thought, the last decent ambush position before the bridge to home. These, too, he saw, led far too many riderless horses and wounded men.

Roderigo stepped out into the road and raised a hand to stop one of his sons.

“This is the last place, mi hijo,” he said. “Go all the way home now and report to Mamita.”

Exhausted, holding one hand tightly over an arm to stop the seepage of blood from a grazing wound, the son nodded weakly. Roderigo patted his boy’s thigh.

“Tell your mother that I love her, son,” he finished, “but that I might be a little late for supper.”

Digna tensed as she heard the faint clatter of hoofbeats on the road to the south. Was this her son’s extended family returning? Or were they all dead and butchered, the drumming sound coming from the massed feet of the invader?

As a horse rounded the bend Digna relaxed visibly. Thank God, she thought. Some, at least, still live.

She amended that thought to, Some, at least, live… for now, as she caught a closer look at the pale faces of her descendants. Her own horse reared as a change in wind brought the smell of mammalian blood to its nose. Digna reached out a calming hand to stroke and pet the horse back to relative calm.

“How far behind you?” she asked her grandson, without specifying whether she meant the enemy or the rest of the forward screen.

The grandson didn’t know or understand what she intended by her question. Slumped in the saddle, weakly he answered, “My father is about two miles out. The enemy not much farther.”

As if to punctuate this, a sudden crescendo of fire arose to the south.

With the rising dust clouds to east and west Roderigo knew he had made a mistake, quite possibly his last.

“Mis hijos,” he shouted, climbing back atop his horse, “mount up. Mount UP! We are — ”

There was a sudden sharp blow, passing through from one side to the other, blasting flesh, blood, heart and lungs and tearing Roderigo from his horse. Mouth still open with the unfinished command, the old man fell with an audible thump, dead even before he hit the ground.

Outraged, tactical sense forgotten, the remnants of the family still in the field opened fire on the point of the approaching Posleen column even though these were still too far away to make an ideal ambush target.

Posleen fell, of course, especially where the remaining machine gun stitched across their ranks. This time, however, precisely because the Posleen were too far away to be massacred before they had time to react, there was effective return fire, pinning the Mirandas in their ambush position.

Worse, at the sound of the first rounds the wide sweeping alien pincers turned inward, churning claws raising dust clouds on the humans’ horizon.

The horses broke, even though the men did not. As the animals stampeded, the enveloping Posleen swept them with fire. Thresh were not to be wasted and the animals were as good a threshform as any. Of the several dozen animals that broke all but one were chopped down by the alien fire. This one, never too bright to begin with and now mindless with fear, raced for what its tiny brain thought of as home and safety.

Meanwhile, the rest of Roderigo Miranda’s little command automatically pulled in their flanks and formed a tight circle. Perhaps… perhaps if they could hold on until nightfall they might manage to escape.

The Posleen, however, led and lashed on by their Kessentai, were having none of it. Heedless of losses they bore in, railguns and shotguns blazing, boma blades sweeping high overhead.

Though there was no one left in command of the trapped humans, they were a family and they did tend to think much alike. Determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible they fixed bayonets, except for a couple who drew their more familiar machetes, just before the crest of the alien wave hit them.

Let the actions of one speak for all. One of the last survivors, Emilio Miranda, twenty-seven year old grandson of Roderigo. Emilio had a drinking problem. His face and back still bore the marks of his great-grandmother’s riding crop as mute testimony to that problem.

Never mind that. A drunk Emilio might have been. He was not, however, a noticeably cowardly drunk.

As the Posleen galloped close, Emilio arose from his covered position and emptied his last magazine point blank and on full automatic at the enemy, sweeping his Kalashnikov from left to right. Three Posleen went down immediately, while a fourth, apparently hit on a knee joint, stumbled forward before falling. Gripping his rifle firmly in both hands the man lunged forward, frantically driving his bayonet into the wounded Posleen’s yellow eye. As the bayonet entered the eye the Posleen tossed its head in agony, ripping the rifle from the Emilio’s hands.

Heart racing, Emilio drew his machete and ducked under another alien’s swinging blade. He chopped at the alien’s forelegs, severing one and embedding the machete in the other. Shrieking, that alien fell to one side. The embedded machete was also wrenched from Emilio’s hand.

Ducking again under another awkward swing of a boma blade, Emilio leveraged himself onto another normal’s back as if it had been the horse it somewhat resembled. From there, he reached an arm around the alien’s throat, squeezing and twisting in an instinctive move that might well have killed a human — either by strangulation or by broken neck — but only succeeded in panicking the thicker necked Posleen.

The normal bucked and twisted, trying desperately to throw off the thresh whose encircling grip threatened to cut off its windpipe. As it did so its rear claws mauled another normal who had come to its rescue. This one, enraged at the undeserved wound slashed off the rear legs of the beleaguered Posleen with a single stroke.

That Posleen immediately fell on its dripping haunches and rolled, trapping Emilio underneath it.

Stunned, Emilio lay there momentarily with his lower torso trapped under several hundred pounds of quivering centauroid alien. This was perhaps fortunate as he never really saw or felt the descending blade that removed his head and ended his young life.

Digna’s heart sank as she watched a lone horse, mouth frothy with exertion, gallop across the bridge that led to her home. When the firing to the south ended with a whimper she crossed herself and said a prayer for her lost children.

“It is time,” she said to a boy serving as a runner. “Tell Señora Herrera that she can’t wait any longer for stragglers. She is to begin moving our people to Gualaca,” a small town to the north, “now.”

“Si, Mamita,” the boy answered, breathlessly, before racing off to find his own mount.

The foamy-mouthed horse passed by. Digna didn’t even try to hold it. This road led unavoidably to where the noncombatant part of the family had gathered. They could stop the horse, if it could be stopped. Most likely the animal would halt of its own accord once it saw the herd of Miranda clan horses loaded down for the trip north. They were herd animals, after all.

Digna turned her attention back to the road that led to the bridge along which the enemy must soon appear. They had to cross the bridge until they either gave up — an unlikely possibility, she knew — or found one of the fords north or east that led across the river. These she had covered with flanker parties under the command of one of her sons and Tomas Herrera.

The bridge was wired for demolition. She was sure it was inexpertly done; she had little knowledge of demolitions herself and none of her family knew much beyond the little bit needed to blow an old stump. Still, she remembered from the little bit of demolitions training she had had in OCS that there was an overriding factor in demolitions that could make even the rankest amateur a proficient combat engineer. This was called “factor P”; P for plenty.

The underside of the bridge was packed with nearly three hundred fifty pounds of plastic explosive she had traded food for over the last several months. This was “plenty,” indeed.

Wired or not, though, she did not want to blow the bridge until the last possible moment. It was an obvious way across the river. As long as an obvious way existed the aliens, who were reputed to be fairly stupid, they would be unlikely to start nosing about for an alternative crossing.

And besides, she wanted the bastards to cross for a while. She wanted to let the murderers of her children into the welcome zone she had prepared for them. She wanted to kill some of them herself, to assuage the grief of her heart.

Digna affectionately patted her husband’s old rifle. She and, in spirit at least, he would pay back the aliens for the harm they had been done.

Whatever satisfaction Filaronion felt as the last of the thresh went down under the slashing blades of his oolt was short-lived. He was certain that there had been at least two such groups; nothing else would explain the way they had operated. That he had destroyed one meant also that another had gotten clean away.

Moreover, weighing the meat being harvested and the remnants of the bodies gave the God King more frustration than satisfaction. He had lost many times that number of normals and more than a few God Kings along the road before trapping and destroying this small group of threshkreen.

Disgust rising, Filaronion twisted his tenar away from the scene of massacre. Then the God King glided up the road, his oolt clattering and chittering behind him.

Elevated and forward as he was, the God King was first of his band to spot the bridge. He didn’t like it, somehow. It seemed… too… easy.

Filaronion reined in his tenar and ordered a lesser Kessentai to investigate with his own scout oolt. Right after that he ordered two other oolt, the same two which had made up the enveloping pincers he had used earlier to destroy the threshkreen, to again split off to either side and find a crossing place through this flowing body of water.

For whatever reason, and perhaps it was because she was connected to so many of them by an unbreakable spiritual umbilical, Digna felt her family stiffen before she ever saw the Posleen tenar. Most likely one of her descendants had seen it as it rounded the road bend, then tightened up with fear and anticipation, and that it was that tightening which had passed unconsciously across the battle line even to those who had not seen the enemy.

It was only a fraction of a second, though, before she saw it, too; a quietly and smoothly gliding piece of plainly alien technology, bearing an unbelievably horrible monster.

Digna stroked her husband’s rifle affectionately. It had been his pride and joy in life, a custom-made piece of old-world, English craftsmanship, perfectly balanced and heavily tooled, firing a powerful, beast-killing slug.

Easing herself down into a firing position next to the 85mm gun she planned to use to begin the carnage, Digna peered through the scope and took a careful aim at her personal target.

My God, she thought, it’s even uglier close up than it was at a distance.

Carefully she settled the cross hairs on the reptilian alien head. At a greater distance she might not have risked a head shot. But the thing was closing to within two hundred meters. At that range, even though this was her husband’s rifle and not her own, she felt the head shot was justified.

I hope your mother, if you have one, weeps as I will weep once I have time to count my losses, beast.

Taking in a deep breath, then releasing most of it, Digna slowly squeezed the trigger while keeping the cross hairs on her target’s head. By surprise, as all good shots should be, the weapon kicked in her grasp, bruising her shoulder. She had the satisfaction, however, of the barest glimpse of an alien head literally exploding before the recoil knocked her scope off target. When she returned the sight to the target she was gratified to see the alien slumped down, dead, while the flying sled slowly rotated above the bridge.

With a cry of rage the aliens below on the road exploded into action. The old bridge shook under the thunder of their claws as they poured across. As the aliens reached Digna’s side of the bridge they began to spread out.

The ones who had crossed didn’t interest her very much. Rifle and machine gun fire would account for them easily enough once she gave the word to open fire. Instead, she was much more interested in the dense cluster of aliens massing in confusion on the far side of the bridge.

“There must be a thousand or more of them there,” she whispered aloud. “A fair honor guard for my lost children.”

Digna twisted her head toward the waiting gun crew.

“Fire!”

Her command was immediately rewarded with a resounding blast from the gun’s muzzle. An imperceptible moment later a wide swath of the aliens clustered at the bridge went down as if cut by some gigantic scythe. Their bleating and screams might have been pitiful had they not been so satisfying. Less than a second after the first round of canister had slashed through the enemy ranks, the other three guns joined in. A great moan went up as scores, then hundreds, of the invaders fell. Before the last of the victims of the other three guns went down, the first gun spoke again.

Rifle and machine gun fire joined the big guns cacophony. These, however, concentrated on the several score Posleen who had made it across the bridge before the 85mm pieces had opened fire. Unable to see their tormenters before it was too late, these aliens were knocked down right and left. By the time the big guns had finished reaping their grim harvest, three to four rounds each, cranked out in rather less than ten seconds, the others ceased fire for lack of targets.

A few of Digna’s family had been hit by alien return fire. Two were dead, she was sure, from the way their bodies hung limply as they were carried back. Others screamed or, more commonly, bit their tongues half through to keep from screaming. Hers was, in the main, that kind of a clan.

No time for tears. I can mourn later.

Digna ordered the wounded and the dead, both, carried to the rear. The wounded would be cared for, as best they could be. For the dead there were fire pits, the seasoned wood already stacked, soaked with gasoline, and waiting. She would see no more of her own turned into meals for their enemies.

And at least they would be buried on their home ground.

Interlude

He never reached the fighting again. Moving, of necessity, with painful slowness, Guanamarioch and his band reached a crossroad somewhere in north-central Colombia. There, another one of the tenar-riding seniors of the clan sneered at the scruffy and underequipped appearance of the normals.

“You lot won’t be worth anything at the fighting,” the senior said to Guanamarioch. “Turn right here. Go about three thousand heartbeats until you reach the Kenstain, Ziramoth. He has surveyed our holdings. He will assign you one of those. Take charge of it and start preparing the land for farming. That’s all your wretches look good for, young Kessentai.”

Biting back a nasty retort, Guanamarioch nodded in seeming respect and turned, dejectedly, to his right.

“What’s this; what’s this, young Kessentai? Why so down, lordling? Abat gnaw on your dick?”

Ordinarily such words might have angered Guanamarioch. These, however, were delivered in a cheerful, bantering tone that almost succeeded in bringing a smile to his face. He looked over the Kenstain and saw a mid-sized, crested philosopher, missing his left eye and his right arm, and bearing serious scars along both flanks. Strapped across those scars were fully stuffed twin saddle bags. The Kenstain took a couple of steps toward Guanamarioch, walking with a stumbling limp.

The Kenstain, seeing the God King hiding one hand, reached out for the injured limb. Rather than resist and risk having any force exerted on the hand, Guanamarioch let him examine it. The Kenstain turned the palm over gently and bent to examine it closely with his one remaining eye.

“That’s a right nasty burn you have there, young lordling. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you come by it?”

“Thresh weapons get hot,” the God King answered simply.

“Do they indeed?” asked the Kenstain, releasing the hand and twisting his torso to rummage in one of the saddle bags. From the saddlebag he pulled a dull tube. This he took a cap from, holding the cap between his lips. Then he again took Guanamarioch’s injured hand in his and turned it palm up before releasing it. Using the same hand the Kenstain squeezed a measure of goo out onto the palm in a long, snaking line. The goo immediately began to spread out on its own, sinking into the burned flesh.

“Demons! Thank you, Kenstain,” Guanamarioch said, the relief in his voice palpable.

“Never mind, young lordling. All in a day’s work. I’m Ziramoth, by the way. Were you sent here to farm?”

Guanamarioch nodded bleakly.

“None of that, Kessentai. Farming, taking sustenance from the land, is the best way to live. You’ll see.”

Chapter 15

The three warships steamed through the day, their bows cutting the waves and raising a froth that spilled to either side of each. They were in echelon right, with Salem forward and to port, Des Moines rearward and to starboard, and Texas in the middle. The ships were spaced far enough apart that any one of them had considerable maneuver space to zig and zag without risking a collision if the Posleen chose to engage from space.

The precautions seemed wise to McNair. He worried terribly even so. The ships were tough, true, and well armored against any surface threat. But warships, like tanks, were so vulnerable to attack from above — had been since 1941 at the latest — that he couldn’t help but worry. The thought of a salvo of space-launched kinetic energy projectiles straddling his beloved Daisy Mae was simply too horrible for him not to worry.

Even so, except for the streaks through the sky as spaceships battled with Planetary Defense Batteries, there was no sign of the enemy.

“It makes no sense,” McNair said aloud inside the heavily armored bridge. “It just seems so incredibly stupid that none of the warships have been engaged from space. We’re big. We’re metal. We’re heavily armored and have impressive clusters of guns. Why the hell don’t they attack us?”

Daisy’s hologram answered, “They’re a fairly stupid race, Captain. None of their technology, so far is as known, was invented by them, with the possible exception of their drive. Even that appears to be a modification of Aldenata technology, rather than something truly original. The way they breed, leaving their brightest to struggle to survive on equal terms in their breeding pens with the biggest and most savage of their normals; they can’t help but be stupid. Add in that they’ve never before fought a race that really fought back and… well… they’re dummies.”

“And when we show our teeth?” McNair asked. “Will they fail to engage us then, too?”

The avatar shrugged. “That we will see when we see it, Captain. They might attack. Then again, they might not. And if they attack it might be from space, which we have a chance of maneuvering to avoid, or it might be with a low-flying lander which we have an excellent chance of beating in a heads-up fight. Even if we cannot maneuver to avoid the fire from space, Texas mounts a Planetary Defense Gun in place of each of her former turrets. An attacker who engages us from on high won’t last long with Texas watching out for his little sisters.”

“You’re really not worried, are you, Daisy?” McNair asked, wonderingly.

The hologram shrugged. “Not really, sir, no. I’m a warship and this is what I was meant to do.”

“That’s my girl,” McNair said, a growing confidence in his voice.

“My girl,” Daisy repeated mentally. An entire ship fairly quivered with barely suppressed pleasure.

Diaz soared, nausea gone and forgotten with the smelly, vile bag of puke he had dropped over the side moments after he had cut his glider loose from the lifting balloon.

From a height of nearly two miles he had sailed westward, dropping no more than a foot for every fifty that he advanced. When his altitude dropped to within a half-mile of the earth he had sought an updraft. These were easy to find along these ridges swept by the warm, southerly winds that brought freshness and rain to his country. In these updrafts he had circled again and again until the force of the wind gave out. At that point he had left the current and pushed onward again, ever closer to the fighting.

He was not there yet, though, and his mind wandered, naturally, to other things. More precisely, his mind wandered to Paloma Mercedes as he had last seen her, fiery with anger at his joining up and not using family connections to stay with her.

She’d never called, either. He’d thought she would get over it but, whether from anger or pride the phone had remained silent. He didn’t miss her less, exactly, but perhaps the sharp edge of the pain was growing dull from sawing at his heart and soul.

Maybe… maybe after this mission I’ll swallow my own pride and call her. But first I have to survive.

Beneath his long narrow wings, Diaz saw more than a few signs of the fighting that had raged below. Here a burning tank, there a cluster of enemy dead or a crashed flying sled of the enemy’s leaders. These reminded him, as if he needed a reminder, that all that would keep him alive through the next several hours was the enemy’s stupidity, the aliens’ confidence in their own weapons and sensors, and his own seeming harmlessness. He knew that if the aliens ever suspected he was a reconnaissance platform his life would be measured in tiny fractions of seconds.

For some reason, though, Diaz was unable to reach anyone on the ground. Fat lot of good the information he hoped to gain would do if he couldn’t pass it on. He knew the internal codes for his frequency hopping radio were good; he’d checked them before departure.

The Rinn Fain had already done everything he knew to do with the humans. He had sabotaged and misdirected their plans, split their efforts, and aided their president in every way a Darhel knew how to, to rob his own people.

It was nearly time to stop doing things with the humans and start to do things to them.

To this end the Rinn Fain, and all his underlings — Darhel, Indowy, and artificial, all three — manned stations that, in human terms, could only be thought of as electronic warfare nodes.

For now the Darhel avoided interference, for the most part. Except in a few cases they were content merely to analyze human radio patterns, intercepting and synthesizing the codes that the barbarians used to hop from one frequency to another.

Certainly they didn’t want to tip the humans off to what they were up to in time for the clever beasts to think of something new.

There were, however, certain of the humans who were physically out of touch enough to risk playing games with their communications. The glider pilots were a case in point. The Rinn Fain had taken considerable pleasure in remotely reprogramming their radios to make sure that anything they saw went unreported.

It was almost as pleasurable as taking control of the human’s warships would be.

USS Des Moines

“Captain,” Daisy reported, “I’m picking up scrambled signals from someone who, based on what he is trying to say and how he is trying to say it, seems to be a pilot flying at or near the front. I don’t think anyone but myself — and probably Sally — can hear him.” Daisy hesitated for a long moment, as if in communication with someone not present.

“Sally hears him, too, sir, yes. But there is something wrong with her.”

“What?” asked McNair.

“I don’t know,” Daisy answered, sounding genuinely puzzled and more than a little concerned. “She is… different from me… a normal AID. And that part of her intelligence, the part created by the Darhel, is acting a bit… odd.”

“Okay,” McNair answered. “See if you can figure out what’s wrong with Sally. Help her if you can. And see if you can patch me through to that… pilot, did you say?”

“Yes, sir, a pilot. Spanish speaking. Fortunately, I can speak Spanish.”

Along with every other human tongue spoken by more than two thousand people, she thought but, tactfully, did not say.

Diaz’s voice was beginning to take on a note of frustrated desperation. He knew it and hated it but could do nothing to control it. But there were targets below, thick and ripe and waiting to be harvested.

“Any station, any station, this is Zulu Mike Lima Two Seven, over,” he pleaded, for more than the hundredth time.

For a wonder the radio crackled back, in an achingly feminine voice, “Zulu Mike Lima Two Seven this is Charlie Alfa One Three Four. Hear you Lima Charlie, over.”

Initially Diaz was unwilling to respond. It could be an enemy trick. Frantically, he poured through his COI, the code book that gave the call signs for every unit in his army and the gringos fighting in support of it. There was nothing, not one clue as to who Charlie Alfa One Three Four might be.

The warm feminine voice repeated, “Zulu Mike Lima Two Seven this is Charlie Alfa One Three Four. Hear you Lima Charlie, over.”

Finally, realizing that if he was so useless as to be unable to communicate with his own people the enemy was unlikely to be very interested in him either, Diaz answered, “Last calling station this is Zulu Mike Lima Two Seven. Who the hell are you?”

Another voice, different from the girl’s, came on. That speaker’s Spanish was as accentless as the girl’s had been.

“Lima Two Seven, this is the heavy cruiser, USS Des Moines, Captain McNair speaking.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant Julio Diaz, First FAP Light Recon Squadron. I have targets and I haven’t been able to raise anyone.”

The radio went silent. Diaz knew what the captain must be thinking: how the hell do I know this snot-nosed kid is really a snot-nosed kid and not the damned Posleen?

“Can you patch me through to my father?” Diaz asked. Then, realizing that, as phrased, it was an incredibly stupid, second lieutenant kind of question, he added, “He’s the G-2. Major General Juan Diaz. My father can verify my voice.”

In half a minute a different, and angry, voice came over Diaz’s radio. “Julio, is that you? Where the hell have you been? I was about to call your mother…”

“Father,” Diaz nearly wept with relief, “I haven’t been able to get a hold of anyone since shortly after I went airborne. I can see everything, Father, and just as I thought, the beasts are simply ignoring me. I can see where Sixth Division is engaged. And I can see the enemy massing. But I can’t do a fucking thing about it.”

The other Spanish voice came back. “General Diaz, Captain McNair. I can do something about it. Do you acknowledge that the voice claiming to be Lieutenant Diaz is your son and that he is in a position to adjust fire?”

The elder Diaz spoke again. “What did I say when I caught you and your girlfriend in the gardener’s cabin, Julio?”

“Father! You promised never to bring that up!”

General Diaz’s voice contained a chuckle in it as he said, “Yes, Captain, that’s my boy.”

“Very good then, sir. Lieutenant Diaz, I want you to find me a huge concentration of the enemy. I don’t know how long we can pull this off before they shoot the shit out of us. So let’s make it count, son.”

“All hands, this is the captain speaking. Battle stations, battle stations. This is no drill.”

“I’m receiving Lieutenant Diaz’s call for fire now, Captain.”

“Prepare to engage.” McNair was pleased to hear no note of fear or hesitation in his own voice.

“Captain?” Daisy asked. “Would you and the crew care for a little mood music as we make our run?”

Raising a single, quizzical eyebrow, McNair answered, “Go for it, Daisy.”

“In nomine patri, filioque et spiritu sancti,” Father Dwyer intoned as he made the sign of the cross over a half dozen of the crew that knelt for a brief and informal service, pending action. Dwyer could have sworn at least one of the present flock was a Moslem but the man took the host without hesitation and eagerly grasped the two-ounce plastic cup of “sacramental scotch” Dwyer proffered.

No atheists in foxholes, they say. I think that, given the power of the Holy Spirit as manifested in the Glenlivet distillery, there shall soon be only good Roman Catholics afloat. Well… and perhaps the odd Presbyterian. Now if only I can find something suitable to bless for the benefit of Sinbad and his Indowy.

Before he could continue that line of thought Dwyer heard, “Battle stations…”

“Boys,” the priest said, “here aboard ship or in heaven or in hell, I’ll see you soon. Now you to your posts and I to mine.”

With that, the Jesuit headed towards sick bay. Worse come to worst he had a fair chance of saving a couple of more souls there.

McNair was startled twice over. The first time was when Daisy’s avatar blinked out of existence on the bridge. The second came when the ship itself began to vibrate with music.

Through the narrow slitted and armored glass-plated windows of the bridge, it seemed to McNair that a glow began to arise from the hull, spreading out into a perfect circle. The normal wake made by the bow as it sliced through the water disappeared, as did the waves.

From the glowing circle a fog arose; real or holographic McNair couldn’t say. Yet it seemed real enough. Below the fog the dimly sensed ocean began to bubble. Again, real or illusion? McNair assumed it must be illusion.

The rear turret, number three, was beyond McNair’s view. The forward two turrets began slowly to turn in the direction of land.

Lightning, real or false, flashed from deep within the frothing circle. Sometimes it came in the form of streaks or ribbons. At others it came as dancing balls of fire.

The circle of fog expanded upward, becoming a hemisphere around the ship. From inside that hemisphere it seemed like the surface of a portal to Hell, all impossible colors and writhing, unsettling combinations. McNair tore his eyes away from the eerie display surrounding him and his ship. He could see that the guns were pointed at about the bearing he would have expected if…

KABOOM! Center gun of number two turret spoke.

A leg now, long and shapely, appeared to grow from the top of number two. The foot must have been somewhere around the keel. Risking concussion, McNair hurried out from the protected bridge.

Another flash and the blast of a gun shook McNair to the core. His attention, however, was entirely on Daisy’s hologram.

She was a giant, a goddess. Lighting flashed back and forth between her hands.

KABOOM! Another blast erupted from a gun.

Daisy said, very softly for such a grand goddess, “Please, Captain. Go inside. I know what I’m doing.”

And then, fire adjusted, all nine guns were on the target in a pattern designed for maximum destruction. Daisy thrust her hands forward and the lightning no longer passed between them but hurled through the night toward the land.

The ship shuddered: KABKAKAKABOOMOOMOOMOOM, as all nine eight-inch guns in the three main turrets hurled death and defiance at the invader.

“Splash, over,” said the warm female voice.

Diaz eased his glider over slightly and looked in the direction in which he expected the shell to land. It was over and to the northwest but… he checked his altimeter again. Yes, he was at the height he expected. That shell must be huge, much bigger than the 105mm artillery he had trained to adjust.

He took another direction to his target, several — maybe ten or twelve — thousand Posleen massing in some low ground east of 6^th Division.

“From last shell, direction: 5150. Left eight hundred… down two thousand, over.”

Almost as fast as Diaz spoke the woman responded, “Shot, over.”

After what seemed a long wait came, “Splash, over. Lieutenant Diaz, in case no one ever told you, with naval guns there is a large probability of major range errors. You may want to keep your corrections small.”

“Roger,” Diaz answered, looking over to where he expected the shell to land. Dammit. I overcorrected.

“Direction 5190, add twelve hundred, right three hundred.”

“Shot, over… splash over.”

A large blossoming flower, a mix of black, yellow and purple, grew approximately in the center of the Posleen horde. Even from his distance Diaz saw bodies and chunks of bodies flying through the air.

“Direction 5220, add one hundred! Fireforeffectfireforeffectfireforeffect!”

“Calm down, Lieutenant Diaz. I understood you the first time. Shot over… splash, over.”

Nothing in his training prepared Diaz for what happened next. He had never seen more than a “battery one” from 105s, six guns of small caliber firing one round each. The long-range error the woman had told him to expect was there and obviously so. Shells fell that were absurdly long or short.

But in the main, they fell on target… and fell… and fell… and fell.

Posleen in groups small and large attempted to escape. But still the shells came down, engulfing them. About the time that no more recognizable pieces of alien bodies were being visibly hurled into the air Diaz decided they had had enough. Nearly three square kilometers were completely covered in black, evil smoke. Already elements of what he assumed was the 6^th Division were emerging from cover and creeping cautiously forward.

“Cease fire, cease fire. Target… well, ma’am, it’s a lot worse than just destroyed,” the boy said, awe plain in his voice.

“You’re welcome. By the way, you can call me Daisy.”

Diaz nosed his glider over, following the barely visible forward trace of the 6^th Division. Soon he saw another group of Posleen.

“And I’m Julio. How far can you range, Daisy?”

“A little past the Inter-American highway, if I move north from this position. But, that’s really constrained. Not much space to maneuver. I may have to bug out to the south at any time.”

“I’ll take what I can get, Daisy. Adjust fire, over.”

The Rinn Fain contemplated telling the Indowy to terminate itself, but decided, reluctantly, against it. It wasn’t that the Indowy was particularly valuable, ordinarily, that had saved it. In these circumstances, however, the Indowy would be impossible to replace. This made it valuable, for however short a time.

What a disgusting thought; a valuable Indowy.

Casting his eyes even lower than those of his kind usually did, the Indowy contemplated his own impending end. If he were lucky, the master would let him go without excessive pain.

The unfairness of it all didn’t bother the Indowy. He had grown up with it. There were over eighteen trillion of his kind, making them slightly less valuable, individually, to the Darhel lords of the Galactic Federation than any given pair of worn out slippers. There was no comparison between a typical Indowy and an Artificial Intelligence Device.

No, even the fact that it wasn’t his fault was no defense. The lord would command and the Indowy would die. That was simply the way of life.

Thus, it came as a shock when the Rinn Fain said, “Never mind. Just tell me what’s happening.”

Eyes still downcast the Indowy responded, “Lord, about the human anti-spacecraft vessel, the Texas, we can do nothing much. It is not on our Net and is shielded and compartmentalized from the human ‘Internet.’ The one they call the Salem we have penetrated, but we have not been able to take it over. There is something odd going on there. It will not fire on the humans. It has been the best I could do — forgive me, lord! — to keep it from firing on the Posleen. I do not understand it.

“The last vessel, the Des Moines, is firing on the Posleen and, worse lord, I am unable to penetrate it. When I try, it counterattacks. I think the AID aboard that ship must be…” The Indowy inhaled deeply. He really didn’t want to be ordered to suicide.

“Must be what, insect?”

“Lord… I think the AID aboard has gone… insane.”

To conserve power, so she said, Daisy had dropped her large hologram above the ship and resumed her more usual station on the bridge. The camouflaging fog and lightning she maintained. Fire missions from Diaz were received and plotted automatically, the captain only giving the authorization to fire that even an insane AID required in accordance with galactic protocols.

Daisy’s avatar was fading in and out, however, despite the reduction in demand for power.

“Are you all right, Daisy?” the captain asked.

The avatar bit its lip nervously. “I’m under attack, Captain,” it admitted.

“Attack?” McNair queried.

“Cyber attack. Very powerful. Very sophisticated. It’s all I can do to fight it off while keeping up the fire.”

“The Posleen?”

Again the image faded before returning. “I… don’t think so. They are not that clever. And this attack is very clever. It has all my codes. Even some I didn’t know I had. The attack on Sally is worse. I am rerouting part of my defense through the part of me that is this physical ship to the part that is the physical USS Salem. It is enough… but only just enough, to prevent her from firing on human forces. Salem cannot even fire in self defense.”

Though his elvish face remained a stoic mask, the Rinn Fain found the thing dangerously frustrating. Every type of attack and attempt at takeover that he commanded the Indowy to try was foiled.

Lintatai… lintatai. I must avoid lintatai. But I must also stop those ships. Their fire is decimating the Posleen.

“Can you leak the location and nature of the ships to the Net?” he asked the always obsequious Indowy.

“Yes, lord, though the ships may move. It would have to be a continuous leak.”

“Then make it continuous, wretch. The Posleen are stupid.” the Darhel hissed. “Make it obvious.”

Binastarion thought, disgustedly, This is just oh-so-good. Too “good” to be believed. The damned big town with the earthen walls, the local thresh call it “David,” still has pockets inside holding out. Our landing on the peninsula that juts out into the main body of water of this world is being contained and chopped up. Slowly, however hesitatingly, the humans are even beginning to attack up the main road that runs parallel to the major body of water.

The Posleen God King’s own version of an AID, his Artificial Sentience, beeped urgently.

“Binastarion, I know where the fire is coming from that is decimating the People on the peninsula,” it said. “The Net has the locations of two enemy water vessels, and a probable location of a third. It seems that the third, the one I do not have a precise location for, is the one doing the firing.”

“Show me,” Binastarion commanded.

Instantly a map of the coastal waters of Panama appeared at eye level over the tenar. The positions of the two known ships were indicated by solid green image of larger-than-normal tenar. The third was represented by a blinking green tenar with a serrated circle drawn around it. Places where the People had been butchered by the fires of the third vessel were marked by black boxes on the map and sequentially designated with Posleen numbers.

“So the fires began in the south and marched to the northeast, did they?” Binastarion mused. “What are the capabilities of these water vessels?”

The map disappeared to be replaced by three ship’s silhouettes, arranged in a triangle with the largest at the apex and the two smaller ones — they looked enough alike to be sisters — below.

“All three are named for places in the central part of the continent to the north of us,” the Artificial Sentience said, transliterated names appearing to the upper right of each ship’s silhouette. “The one marked Tek-sas appears to be configured as an anti-spacecraft vessel, mounting five planetary defense cannon.”

“Five!” Binastarion exclaimed. That sounded like a lot of anti-spacecraft defense.

“Yes, lord. While these vessels are vulnerable to attack from space there will be a heavy price to be paid if we relaunch B- or C-Decs, not only from the ship but from the Planetary Defense Bases stretched across the narrowest part of this isthmus.”

“The other two, Sah-lehm and Deh-moyn, are sisters. They are mostly configured for combat against the surface, land or water, but appear to have a considerable secondary capability against atmospheric targets as well.”

“But their arms are primitive,” objected Binastarion. “Ten thousand generations behind what we bear.”

“My lord,” the AID retorted, “the People still carry swords, do they not? Weapons ten thousand generations more primitive than those on that ship? The swords are still deadly, is this not so?”

The God King thought on that momentarily.

“Summon a far-seeing conference call of sub-clans Asta and Ren.”

“The admiral wants you, Captain. Conference call with Salem’s skipper.”

“Put it up,” McNair directed.

There were five screens arranged in a semicircle across the upper forward section of the bridge, just over the vision slits. The admiral of the flotilla appeared in the center, flanked by the captains of Texas and Salem.

McNair greeted, “Admiral Graybeal, Bill, Sidney.”

“We’ve got a problem here,” Admiral Graybeal said. “Tell him, Sidney.”

As Salem’s captain flicked a switch, apparently to turn on the sound, a horrid weeping, intermixed with the occasional howl and sob, came from Des Moines’ speakers. The howls and sobs had a trace of a Teutonic accent.

“What the…?” asked McNair.

Salem’s skipper, looking disgusted, reached another hand out, his palm briefly blocking the image. When he removed his hand the picture had changed from his face to a corner of Salem’s bridge. In that corner, arms wrapped around long legs, head buried against knees, a blonde woman — Salem’s avatar — rocked, occasionally lifting her head to shriek.

“She’s been like that for the last half hour,” the captain of the Salem said, off-screen. “My turrets are locked and I’ve had to go to pure manual steering with my AZIPODs. In fact, I’ve had to go to manual operation for everything and I’m just not crewed for that.”

“I’m going to order Salem back to port,” Graybeal said.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” McNair answered. “Here, Texas can guard her from a space attack and I can guard her from a low attack. Sent back to base, she’d be on her own for hours.”

“Jeff’s right, Admiral. Only thing is…”

“Yes? Spit it out!” the admiral ordered.

“Well, Admiral… twice we’ve had to abort firing cycles that had you and Des Moines as targets. Something is trying to control this ship and use it on behalf of the enemy. Sally, herself, seems to be fighting it but you can see what the result of that has been.”

“Shit!” cursed Graybeal and McNair, together.

Interlude

Take just under four hundred normals and cosslain. Put them in the charge of one Kessentai whose genetic skill set includes nothing having to do with agriculture. Place them on approximately eight hundred hectares of land. Add advice from a Kenstain who actually likes being a dirt farmer. Sprinkle liberally with rain and baste with sun…

“But we’ll have to wait a bit, Guano, before the first shoots come up.”

“And what do we eat in the interim, Ziramoth? The thresh, including the nonsentient ones, are all fled.”

The Kenstain laughed and, twisting around, produced a bamboolike stalk from his saddlebags. One end of this he placed under the armpit for that arm that was only a stump, then skinned the remainder with a small monomolecular blade. The skinned result, wet and glistening, he handed over to the God King.

Suspiciously, Guanamarioch sniffed at the offering. It looked way too much like wood to be appealing. He said as much.

“Certainly there’s quite a lot of cellulose in the make up. But try it anyway,” Ziramoth answered.

The Kessentai bit off a few inches and chewed, his jaws chomping a few times before his eyes widened in surprise.

“What is this stuff, Zira? It’s good.”

“The locals call it sugar cane. There’s enough growing hereabouts to do us until our own crops are in.”

Guanamarioch didn’t answer, his mouth being too occupied in masticating the satisfyingly chewy, sweet cane.

Sugar cane would only carry one so far. Of game, sadly, there was none. Moreover, all the thresh called “humans” in the area, and their agricultural animals, had been rendered and eaten within a few days of arrival. There remained fish, fairly abundantly, in the streams and ponds. Guanamarioch could see the little bastards, glaring up at him and taunting him from beneath the waves and eddies.

He lunged at one with his claws… and missed. Then he looked around frantically for another, saw one and lunged at it… and missed. On the third attempt he missed as well, but also missed his footing on the slippery underwater stones and went under with a great flailing splash.

As Guanamarioch arose from the water, sputtering and choking, from the moss-covered bank Ziramoth began to snicker. The snickering rose until it became a full-fledged, ivory-fang-flashing Posleen laugh.

Guanamarioch opened his jaws to snap at the Kenstain, but stopped in midsnap, joining Ziramoth, ruefully.

“That will never do, lordling. Come here onto the bank and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

When the God King was standing next to the Kenstain, Ziramoth motioned for the two of them to lie down. Then he picked up a long pole, from which dangled a string and a small hook. From his saddlebags the Kenstain pulled out a small container. He drew from this a thin, claw-length writhing thing. For a moment, Guanamarioch wondered if this thing was good to eat. His surprise was total when he saw Ziramoth thread the little creature onto the hook and toss them both into the stream.

“We have to stay low so the water creatures won’t see us and will come close enough to smell the bait.”

“And?”

“Well, milord, under fragrant bait is a hooked fish.”

Chapter 16

The orders from Snyder had been, “Find the Panamanian Tenth Mechanized Infantry Regiment, a Colonel Suarez commanding. Attach yourself to Suarez. Assist as able.” A marker had appeared in Connor’s suit-generated map showing the presumed location of the 10^th Regiment Command Post.

It had actually been damned difficult to find Suarez. By the time Connors reached the location he’d been given the command post had moved on. Some Panamanian support troops, a maintenance company, was there in its place. They hadn’t known where the CP had gone, except that it had gone generally west.

Connors and B Company followed the road at the double time. Rather, they paralleled it because the road itself was a nightmarish mish-mash of confused and tangled units.

“Hey, sir,” the first sergeant had called. “Weren’t you a tanker once upon a time? Does this shit look right to you?”

“I was, Top,” Connors answered, “and no, it doesn’t look right. It looks like a recipe for disaster.” Connors took the effort to read bumper numbers as he ran past the mess. In twelve vehicles he noted eleven different units represented.

Bad. Very damned bad.

The company pressed on to the west. Surprisingly, the confusion grew less the closer to the front they got. Soon, Connors was seeing only bumper numbers marked for the 10^th Infantry, the very mechanized regiment he was seeking. He ran over to a likely looking armored personnel carrier and asked, his suit translating to Spanish for him, “Where can I find Colonel Suarez?”

“I’m Suarez,” answered a neat and fierce looking, for all that his face seemed twenty years old, dark-skinned Panamanian.

“Sir. Captain Connors, B Company, First of the Five-O-Eighth Mobile Infantry.” Almost Connors used the old gag line, “And we’re here to help you.”

Suarez frowned. With the idiot orders emanating from division, the absolute goat fuck he knew was behind him on the road, and the general confusion, he wasn’t sure what use he had for a company of the gringo self-propelled suits.

“What am I supposed to do with you, Captain?” he asked. “No one told me you were coming. I’m not equipped to give you any support you might need. And frankly, everything is so goddamned fucked up I don’t see you doing much besides adding to the confusion. No offense,” he added.

“Sir,” Connors began patiently to explain, for he had grown used to people who didn’t understand the suits and so rejected them, “my company has more practical direct firepower than your entire division. All my men can speak Spanish through the suits’ translational capabilities. And we don’t need any support: no fuel, no food, no parts, no mechanics. We don’t even need to take up any road space.”

“No lie?” Suarez asked, one lifted eyebrow showing the skepticism he felt.

“No lie, sir. Just tell me what you need done and we’ll do it. Within reason, of course.”

“Of course,” Suarez echoed, trying to think what use he might make of these gringo — no, galactic, he supposed — wonders.

“I’m torn,” Suarez muttered, “between having you go back and unfuck the mess to the rear and having you go forward and clear out a group of the aliens that is holding up my advance. Have you got a map?”

Connors’ AID projected a 3-D map of the area in midair.

Suarez’s eyebrow dropped as he leaned back from the projected map in startlement. When he recovered his composure he said, “Hmmm… I wish I could tell you where all my units are. Damned radios are not working quite right.” Suarez’s eyes widened again as unit icons began to appear on the projected map.

Suarez couldn’t resist saying, “Cooollll,” as he jumped down from the APC and stood in front of the map. “I’ve got three problems. One is the cluster fuck to the rear. As I said, I’d use your people to help straighten it out… except that if you have the fire power you claim, it would be a waste.” Unless, of course, you used that firepower to shoot my division commander.

“My second problem is communications. I might use you for that later, if you’re willing, but for now I’d rather use you for problem number three, which is this river crossing, here,” Suarez’s finger touched a spot on the projected map.

“There are enemy on the other side. While I could force it, it would cost me some armor. This, in itself, would be acceptable except that the armor would then block the ford. Can you clear the far side for me, then sweep down and clear the bridge south of the crossing?”

“We can,” Connors answered after a moment’s thought. “Can you loan us some artillery support?”

Suarez’s face grew, if possible, fiercer still. “The artillery is my number one communications problem, Captain. I can sometimes get my line battalion commanders. I have not heard a peep from the gunners in hours. I’ve got my sergeant major out looking for them now.”

“Okay, sir. I understand. We’ve got some indirect fire capability of our own, but the ammunition for that is limited, and I doubt you’ve got anything we could use in lieu.”

Boot, don’t spatter, echoed in Connors’ mind as he set his troops up for the assault. The biggest single thing I’ve got going is that the Posleen probably don’t know we’re here and likely don’t have much of a clue of what we are capable.

“AID, map.”

Okay… into the river and move upstream to the crossing point… send one platoon. The other two demonstrate on this side. A five-second barrage by weapons and then the platoon in the water charges.

Oughta work. Connors issued the orders and the platoons fanned out, one of them — the first — diving into the water and moving upstream. The fire from the high ground opposite was weak and scattered, really not enough to worry about.

When he judged the time right, Connors ordered Weapons Platoon to fire. The high ground erupted in smoke and flame as several hundred 60mm shells landed atop it. The First Platoon, feeling the vibrations in the water broke out and charged due west.

The First Platoon leader swept across the objective quickly, then reported, “Captain, there’s one, repeat one, cosslain here with a three millimeter railgun. And he’s deader than chivalry. Nothing else.”

That was worrisome but Connors could not quite put his finger on why. He tried to report it to Suarez and found he couldn’t get through to the colonel’s Earth-tech radio. Instead he sent a messenger and proceeded to follow the plan, sweeping south along the river’s west bank to seize the bridge that Suarez really needed.

There was little resistance on the way or even at the bridge. Connors sent another messenger to advise Suarez that the way west was open.

“The trick,” Binastarion said to Riinistarka, hovering next to his father on his own tenar, “is to convince the threshkreen that we are as confused as they seem to be. That requires that obvious objectives and key terrain be given up without a fight, but that delayed counterattacks to retake them be put in at a time that is most inconvenient to us. And with significant losses to the threshkreen. Only in this way will they not suspect a trap. The technique is called, ‘Odiferous bait,’ my son.”

“Father,” the junior Kessentai said, “I don’t understand. When you told us the tale of Stinghal, he left no such guards and didn’t throw away any of the people in fruitless counterattacks.”

“Those were different circumstances, my son. There, in the city of Joolon, the enemy provided his own reason to believe the city was ready to fall, Stinghal merely added to the illusion. Here, on the other hand, the enemy threshkreen have not been in a position to really hurt us. We must provide the illusion and that illusion must seem very real indeed. Thus, I throw away thousands of the people in these fruitless attacks, to convince the enemy.”

“I… see, my father,” Riinistarka agreed, though in fact the junior Kessentai did not see.

Will I never acquire the skills my father and our people need?

Suarez was screaming into the radio when his track reached the bridge where Connors met him. The gringo captain didn’t know at whom the colonel was shrieking, but took it as a good sign that the radios were working at all.

In frustration, Suarez threw the radio’s microphone down, and raised his eyes to Heaven, shouting a curse. The curse had no name to it, but Connors guessed that it was directed toward higher levels, rather than lower.

The MI captain trotted over and removed his helmet. Suarez seemed fascinated by the silvery gray goop that slid away from the gringo’s face before collecting on his chin and sending a tendril down into the helmet. His eyes followed the tendril as it disappeared into the greater mass, leaving Connors’ face clean.

“That creeps out everyone who sees it for the first time,” Connors admitted, with the suit still translating.

“Umm… yes, it would,” Suarez answered in English, the first time he had shown faculty with the language.

“Your radios are working again?” Connors asked.

“Yes. Even the fucking artillery is up.” Suarez’s voice indicated pure suspicion at his suddenly granted ability to talk to his subordinates; that, and a considerable disgust at suddenly having to listen to his superior, Cortez.

He continued, “There was nothing but static or a few disconnected phrases and then, in an instant, poof, I was in commo with everyone. I almost wish I were not, especially with my idiot division commander.”

Tracks continued to roar by, heading westward, as the Panamanian and the gringo MI captain spoke. The stink of diesel filled the air as the heavy vehicles ground the highway — never too great to begin with — into dust and grit. Both Connors and Suarez coughed as a particularly concentrated whiff of the crud assailed them.

That track passed and in the sound vacuum left Connors observed, “Well, as long as you have commo with everybody, you’re probably best off keeping us close to you and using us as a powerful reserve.”

“Boot, don’t spatter?” Suarez quoted.

Connors smiled. It was so good to work for a man who knew what he was doing.

“You have lifted the interdiction of the humans’ radio traffic?” the Rinn Fain asked.

“Yes, lord,” the Indowy technician answered. “But we are continuing to monitor for an appropriate time to reimpose it.”

“Show me the deployment of the Posleen forces.”

Another holographic map popped up, which the Rinn Fain studied closely.

“Very interesting,” he said, noting the tens of thousands of Posleen moving off the main road and taking cover in the hidden valleys to the north of it. “This is a clever Kessentai leading these people. He does not know we are helping him, but he sees the results of that assistance and acts accordingly. How goes the attack on the humans’ warships?”

“That has been a great success, lord,” the Indowy answered. “Two of the three seem to be pulling out of range of their own guns’ ability to support. The last was never meant to stand alone.”

“It troubles me, Indowy,” the Darhel said, tapping a finger to its needle-sharp teeth contemplatively, “that the last ship is able to resist us. Its AID should not be able to do so.”

“I have some suspicions about that, lord,” the Indowy whispered. “I have checked. Simple insanity is not unknown among Artificial Intelligences. But these are invariably older AIDS. The AID in the human warship is virtually brand new.”

“And so?” the Rinn Fain prodded.

“I have run simulations, lord, at much faster than real time. I have discovered that such insanity is possible if a new AID is left alone and turned on for too long a time.”

“Do you think this happened?”

“I do not know, lord. But I have sent a query out over the Net as to whether that AID might somehow have been turned on before packing.”

Interlude

Guano and Zira lay on their bellies, fishing poles in hand. They moved the poles up and down, more or less rhythmically, to keep the baited hooks moving. They spoke only in whispers. Zira suspected that the vibrations of loud voices would reach the water and frighten off the fish.

“This is pretty boring, Zira,” Guano said softly.

“Is an ambush boring, young Kessentai? Think of it as an ambush.”

Guano really had no answer to that. He was too young ever to have participated in an ambush. He tried to imagine one, waiting with beating heart for an unsuspecting enemy to show up, never knowing if the enemy would be too great to take on — even with surprise — and never knowing if the enemy had spotted the ambush and was even now circling to…

“Wake up, Guano,” came the urgent whisper. “I think one of the little darlings is sniffing at your bait.”

“Wha’ WHAT?”

The tugging at the line that Zira had seen stopped abruptly.

“Shshsh. Quietly. There’s one of the fish that was at your bait.”

Guano quieted down and watched the line intently. Sure enough, the line was moving erratically, in a way that indicated something was nibbling at the hook. Suddenly, there was a strong tug.

“You’ve got him, Guano, now pull once, medium hard, to set the hook.”

Guano pulled on the fishing pole, feeling a plainly live weight on the other end. “Yeehaw!” he exulted, though the Posleen word was more along the line of “Tel’enaa!”

“Its mouth might be soft,” Zira counseled. “Let it run about until it tires.”

For fifteen minutes Guano did just that, giving the fish some room to run and then slowly and carefully bringing it back. By the end of that time, the piscine was running out of steam, its tugs on the line and pole growing weaker.

“Very good, young Kessentai,” Ziramoth commended. “Now pull it above water… gently.”

The pole bent nearly double as Guanamarioch pushed down on the end while slowly lifting from near the middle. With a splash, a foot and a half long greenish gray creature appeared above the water, its tail flapping to one side and then the other as it sought purchase in water that was now too far beneath it.

“Dinner,” said Zira, “is served.”

Chapter 17

Nineteen B- and C-Decs for each of the enemy water vessels should be more than enough, Binastarion thought as the fifty-seven low-flying craft glided soundlessly by a few hundred meters overhead. This close to the surface and this close together the spacecraft moved comparatively slowly, wary lest they make disastrous contact with the ground or with each other. In addition, each B- or C-Dec was accompanied by anywhere from seven to eighteen tenar.

As the Posleen craft passed, the People below the flotilla, Kessentai and normal alike, felt a strange and unpleasant tingling sensation both inside and out.

May you do more than tingle our enemies, my children.

“We’ve got trouble, Captain,” Daisy’s avatar reported. “Lidar shows enemy vessels approaching… fifty-two… fifty-four… no… fifty-seven of them. They’re deployed in three broad wedges. My guess, though it is more than a guess, is that two of them are heading for Texas and Salem. The third is behind those two, more spread out.”

McNair scratched his head, uncertainly. “Looking for us, do you think, Daisy?”

“Likely, Captain,” the hologram answered.

“Get me the admiral and Salem,” McNair ordered.

The center screen came on live again. “Graybeal here. I see them, Jeff. They’re below, well below, Texas’ ability to engage.”

McNair swallowed hard before continuing. This was the difficult decision: to risk your greatest love, your command, on behalf of a mission.

“Sir… I think you and Salem should fall away to the south. Des Moines will intercept.”

McNair risked a glance at Daisy. Her hologram was flickering less now.

“I’m devoting less power to defending Salem,” Daisy answered when McNair asked.

“You’re okay with this?” McNair asked.

Daisy’s holographic chest seemed to swell, if that were possible, with pride.

“Captain, I’m a warship. This is what I do.”

The admiral interjected, asking of Salem’s captain, “Sid, have you managed to get any defense up for yourself?”

“Three of the six secondary turrets are manned and manually operating, sir. That’s the best I can do with what I have. But, sir, you ought to know that we have no radar or lidar interface or guidance. We can engage manually but only straight line of sight and even then only at fairly short range.”

“How truly good,” the admiral said sardonically. “Very well, Sidney, head south to sea. Texas will follow. McNair? Intercept… and good hunting.”

Ah, the never-ending joys of the hunt, the Kessentai in command of the ship thought. His landing group’s target, assigned by the glorious Binastarion personally, was the known of the two lesser enemy surface warships. The location of the other was, at best, approximated on the Kessentai’s view-screen.

What a strange world this is; all disgusting, wet, oozing greens. The Kessentai almost hoped for an early onslaught of orna’adar. Better that mass slaughter than a prolonged stay on such a putrid ball.

The Kessentai had actually landed with his oolt before being ordered aloft again to lead this abat-hunt. Binastarion had warned him, through his far-speaker, not to be overconfident, that these particular thresh had sharp kreen, indeed.

They would have to be a tough and resourceful species, he thought, to survive and prosper in such a wretched place. Tough and resourceful, but stupid, since nothing here is worth fighting for. Then again, how stupid are we; trying to take it over. Though the thresh don’t know it, we are actually doing them a favor by exterminating them.

With Rapturous Feast XXVII in the lead, the other eighteen landers — each with its escort of tenar — spread out behind forming a deep “V.” This was a simple formation, simple enough that even fairly stupid Kessentai could maintain it.

Straight as an arrow the wedge of Posleen landers flew, hardly noticing — amidst all the other inexplicable horrors of this world — the shimmering, flashing anomaly on the surface of the sea between the attack group and its target.

And then the anomaly grew a head, one of the foul threshkreen sensory clusters, with ugly projections and a streaming yellow thatch. By the time the landers and tenar had slowed and reoriented their weapons arrays onto the head it had risen up until halfway out of the water. A shimmering golden breastplate (not unlike the one reputedly worn by Aldensatar the Magnificent at the siege of Teron during the Knower wars) covered the monster’s torso and its threatening frontal projections.

The creature from the deeps raised its arms heavenward, masses of something like ball lightning lashing between its gripping members. All Posleen weapons thundered and flashed towards the malignant apparition.

With growing dread, the lead Kessentai saw that no harm — absolutely none — was done the beast. But wait… it seemed to be rocking back and forth as if in distress.

“We’ve got it!” exulted the Kessentai.

“No, lord,” corrected the Artificial Sentience. “The monster is laughing at you.”

Rage warred with fear. Laughing at me? We’ll see who laughs last.

The external speakers carried the sound of a thresh voice, but one frightfully, even impossibly, amplified. The beast’s mouth moved as if trying to speak.

“Translate, AS.”

“My lord, the monster has just said, ‘Stay the fuck away from my sister, you son of a bitch!’ ”

“Skipper, these fucking animals are stupid. They’ll shoot at what they can see with their own eyes, nine times out of ten, and ignore the real threat that they can’t see.”

“How does a stupid race build starships, Daisy?” McNair objected.

The avatar answered, “The theory is that they were genetically altered eons ago, that they are born with skills, even as the Indowy are born with certain talents. The difference is that the Indowy must be tutored to bring their talents to fruition, a long period of intense training and education, while the Posleen just know. But coming into the world knowing all they will ever need in the way of skills, they either never see the need to develop intellectually, or are — in most cases — simply incapable of it.

“In any case, trust me, Skipper, they’ll shoot first at my hologram if that seems most threatening.”

Not for the first time, McNair wanted to reach out and touch the shoulder, if nothing else, of this wonderfully smart and brave and beautiful… warship. He knew there was nothing there, however, and so unconsciously stroked the armored bulkhead of the bridge with a palm.

“Do it, Daisy,” he said, “but be careful, my girl.”

The avatar disappeared from the bridge in an instant, while Daisy’s larger form began to grow up and around USS Des Moines. As Daisy predicted, the Posleen seemed to ignore the shimmering fog that engirdled the vessel proper and to concentrate their fire on her appearing torso. Even behind the heavy armor of the bridge McNair felt the shockwaves as kinetic energy projectiles and plasma weapons passed overhead. The ship was on a course of 270 degrees; thus, due south the sea exploded and roiled with the energies impacting it from the fires of nineteen landers and nearly two hundred and fifty tenar.

And then Daisy spoke. The entire ship reverberated with the amplified message, “Stay the fuck away from my sister, you son of a bitch.”

Down in sick bay Father Dwyer muttered to no one in particular, “Tsk, tsk. Such language, young lady. I see a long penance for you. But, as long as you have to do penance anyway, murder the motherfuckers.”

The guns of USS Des Moines, as well as those of Salem, came in two types. For general work there were the three triple turrets. For anti-lander work there were six individual turrets, one fore, one aft, and two each, port and starboard.

Each of the singles mounted an eight-inch semi-automatic gun, lengthier than those in the triple turrets and firing at a considerably higher velocity. These singles used ammunition, self-contained and not entirely interchangeable with the guns of the triples, though they could fire the more standard ammunition of the triple turrets in a pinch. The normal ammunition for the singles, however, was entirely anti-lander oriented, consisting of armor piercing, discarding sabot, depleted uranium. The APDSDU was adequate to penetrate a Posleen C- or B-Dodecahedron at a range of between twelve and twenty miles, depending on obliquity of the hit. It carried no explosive charge, but would do its damage by the physical destruction of what it passed through, by raising the internal temperature of the compartments it punctured, and by burning.

Depleted uranium burned like the devil.

The general purpose guns, those in the triple turrets, boasted neither the range nor the penetration of the single, anti-lander guns. For the most part they fired high capacity high explosive (or HICAP), twelve kiloton neutron shells (which required national command authority to use), improved conventional munitions (which dispensed smaller bomblets after explosively ejecting the base of the shell), and canister.

ICM was useless. McNair knew better than to ask to open up with nukes. HICAP, fired with a time fuse, would have been useful, certainly, but was not ideal for the purpose at hand.

“Canister, Daisy,” McNair ordered.

“I was planning on it, Skipper,” one of the speakers said.

Eyes still filled with dread, the Kessentai’s attention was fully absorbed with the invulnerable apparition before it. Was it a demon from the legendary times of fire? Some special divine protector of this shit-filled world? An elemental being from the creation?

The Kessentai didn’t, couldn’t, know. What it did know was that the monster’s lightning-clad hands pointed at it and poured forth a blinding fire.

Daisy divided up the enemy’s airborne fleet into three and assigned one triple turret to fire — sweeping left to right — at each third of the fleet. Down below the turrets, machinery, fine-tuned by Sinbad and his Indowy, whispered with movement or clanged with metal-to-metal contact as load after load of canister was moved from storage to the ready racks. The previous HICAP rounds, plus their bagged propellant, had long since been struck below where they would be safe from secondary explosion.

Four men, one officer and three petty officers, manned each triple. These were navy men; whereas the singles were manned by United States Marines. The gun crews were there as a fail-safe measure, but also in case the bridge, CIC and Daisy took a critical hit. In that case the guns could fire on their own, albeit with much lessened effectiveness.

When the last light on the bridge which indicated gun status had changed from amber to green Daisy announced, “Ready, Captain.”

McNair rested his hand on the armored box containing the AID which was half of his ship’s soul.

“Clear those motherfuckers out of our sky, Babes. Fire!”

The four single guns able to bear on the starboard side fired simultaneously, as did the three triples; the recoil was enough to shift the entire ship to port. Daisy put on a major holographic display to distract the Posleen’s attention away from the real thunder and lightning of thirteen huge guns. The APDSDU, having much greater velocity than canister, struck first. Hit in three places, out of four rounds fired at it, the results on the target were uneven. One penetrator hit too obliquely, on one of the lower left facets as the gun faced the target. This one bounced off and went spinning, trailing smoke and flame, off into the distance before plunging into the sea.

The second and third, however, hit close together and at an angle to force their way through the alien ship’s tough skin. The needle sharp points, backed up by foot-tons of energy, first piked into the ship’s skin, gained purchase, and sloughed off. The material, depleted uranium, had a peculiar property: it resharpened itself even as the old point dulled. This the penetrators did, at the molecular level, more times than could easily be counted before breaking free into the ship’s interior.

In the process of forcing apart such a thickness of tough alien metal, kinetic energy was transformed into heat. A normal in one of the compartments saw only a flash and then went blind as eyeballs melted. The pain of heat blinding was brief in duration. The DU began to burn, raising the internal temperature of the compartment to the point where the Posleen normal’s flesh and bones were turned to ash. It never had time enough between blinding and incineration even to scream.

Tough as the outer skin was, the inner compartments were good for little but retaining air should the outer skin have a breach. The DU, less stable now and with both rods burning fiercely, cut through the inner compartments as if they were not there. More Posleen succumbed, some to heat, others to the thick smoke, hot enough itself to sear lungs and toxic to boot. Still others were smashed into pulp. Machinery, likewise, was crushed and broken if it chanced to be along the penetrators’ paths. Parts of both machinery and walls added further to the interior carnage as they were broken loose and went careening back and forth around the compartments, each piece shredding any flesh unlucky enough to be in its path.

The penetrators were not done, however. Having slashed their way all across the interior of the ship they came upon the far hull. They lacked orientation, mass and energy at that point to knife through. Instead, still burning, they bounced off and started back, repeating the process of slaughter.

No one ever knew, nor shall they ever know, how many times the penetrators ricocheted back and forth through the ship. Even as the lead Posleen C-Dec heeled over and began to plunge into the sea one of them must have breached its antimatter containment unit. The C-Dec disappeared in a stunning flash that could be seen as far away as Panama City.

Many of the tenar-riding Posleen lost control of their sleds in the shockwave of that blast. Some were spun into the sea at fatal speed; others were torn from their sleds and went over the side to plunge into the murky deep. There, struggling and kicking, attempting to learn in an instant what neither millions of years of evolution nor careful genetic manipulation had taught them — namely, to swim — the Posleen sank like rocks. Still others, riding closer to the exploding lander, had been killed by the heat. For Posleen farther away, the blast was enough to induce blindness, temporary or permanent.

Daisy, pitiless, swept her triple turrets across the tenar-borne survivors of the first C-Dec’s disintegration. Traveling to within less than a kilometer of a lander, the canister shells exploded, usually within microseconds of each other. The three shells from a typical salvo burst apart in puffs of angry black smoke, releasing as they did about twenty-five hundred two-ounce iron balls each. These seventy-five hundred balls traveled on with all the velocity of the original shell, plus a small additional bit of energy from their bursting charge. In such a dense cloud of whistling death, it was the rare Posleen who found neither himself nor his tenar penetrated and wrecked.

As the triples fired and swept, fired and swept, scouring the skies of the unarmored tenar, Daisy turned her anti-lander guns in pairs against the following B- and C-Decs. None of these exploded in nearly as spectacular a fashion as the first. Still, she kept up the fire on pairs of them at a rate of forty-eight rounds a minute until each one targeted either turned and ran or fell into the sea.

The other group, the one that had spread out looking for the indistinctly plotted CA-139, likewise headed for home.

Graybeal, ashen-faced, worried, This flotilla was designed to fight as a team. Who expected us to be split up electronically? And now I’m out here, alone and in the open, with Salem unable to provide close defense and Des Moines too far away to be helpful.

The admiral looked at the plots of his three ships, Salem running like hell for open water, Des Moines — one fight finished — now turning to race to his rescue. He looked at the rapidly approaching swarm of Posleen. No computer was needed for this calculation. The Posleen would reach Texas an easy eight minutes before McNair’s command was in range.

A brief sigh escaped Graybeal’s lips. So sad it has to end now. It was wonderful being a young man again, wonderful to command at sea again. What is left but to make as good a fight of it as possible?

“Captain, do a one eighty,” the admiral ordered.

The captain’s eyes widened at first. Do a suicide run? But then he, too, looked at the plots.

“Try and get right under them, do you think, Admiral? Maybe take one or two with us.”

“It’s the only way to engage with any chance of a kill at all.”

The captain nodded. “Helm, turn us about. Gunnery, prepare to fire at lowest possible elevation. Fire as she bears.”

The ship was racing, Daisy Mae cutting power to nearly everything else and straining to make it to Texas’ succor before it was too late.

Holographic tears running down holographic cheeks she asked in a broken voice, “Shall I show you, Skipper? I can sense it well enough to do that. Someone ought to see and remember.”

McNair couldn’t bring himself to speak and was only just able to prevent himself from crying. He gave a shallow nod.

“Jesus!” exclaimed the helmsman as Texas’ last fight sprang into view in miniature over one of the plotting tables in CIC.

The Texas was stricken, that much was obvious. She was already listing badly to port. Three of her turrets had been blasted away completely. Smoke poured, black and hateful, from a fourth, flames casting evil glows upon the smoke. And yet her captain, or maybe it was the admiral, or perhaps it was a simple seaman at the helm, was still in the fight, still desperately twisting the ship to give her sole remaining Planetary Defense Cannon a chance to fire.

The Posleen were having none of it. Standing off to all sides, hanging low to avoid the ship’s last sting, they poured fire — plasma cannon and KE projectiles — into Texas’ superstructure and hull. In the miniature view provided by Daisy recognizably large chunks of steel were blasted off into the sky.

“He got three,” Daisy announced in a breaking voice. “Destroyed or damaged and withdrawn, I can’t say. But there were nineteen that took off after Texas and there are only sixteen now.”

“How long until we’re in range?” McNair asked in a tone tinged with purest hate.

“Two minutes, captain, but… Oh!”

On the projection Daisy had made, BB-35, the United States’ Ship Texas, veteran of three wars, had — fighting and defiant to the end — blown up.

Blonde hair streaming down her face, head hanging, Daisy announced, “The enemy is running for home now. I might be able to pick off a straggler but…”

“But we’re alone now and can’t necessarily take them. And that group that turned tail might return. I know. Revenge will have to wait.”

No one on the bridge who heard McNair speak at that moment doubted that there would be revenge.

Binastarion sighed. Sometimes you get the abat and sometimes the abat get you.

He’d lost way too many sons to the thresh of this world. They’d died at the walls of the threshkreen city, David. They’d died in its parks and narrow alleys. They’d died on jungle trails pursuing the thresh who — maddeningly — turned and fought back with a vengeance as they made their escape over the mountains to the north. Lastly, he lost nearly an entire a sub-clan’s worth of Kessentai to the threshkreen’s damnable warships.

And for that what did he have to show? They had destroyed a ship, true, and the biggest of the lot. But the nourishing thresh of the ship; the refined metal of the ship? Lost, lost… irredeemably lost. Sunk to the bottom of an impenetrable sea. They are clever and vicious, these thresh, to deny the victor the fruits of victory. I must remember this. They are the cruelest of species.

While the exchange of so many Kessentai — Each one a son, cousin or nephew! The thought was like a knife in the belly — for a single one of the threshkreen’s warships struck Binastarion as a very bad trade, he had to admit there were redeeming factors. At least the warships will not be firing at my people on the ground any longer. It was bad enough that they wrecked the landing on the southern peninsula, blasting holes in our lines through which the threshkreen poured and smashing any assemblage of the People massing for counterattack. Even now the remnants of the People there, cut up into bite sized bits, bleat for aid which I cannot give them. They will not last long.

Neither, though, the God King contemplated more happily, will the other column of thresh last long. Despite being led by a contingent of the metal threshkreen, they move forward only uncertainly. Otherwise, I’d already have sprung my trap.

Indeed, there was a trap. One of the side effects of being a comparatively small clan, as Binastarion’s was, was that one had to be clever to survive since one was not very strong. One had to be very clever to survive as a clan in the Po’os-eat-Po’os worlds of the People. Thus, while scream and charge was the normal tactical doctrine of powerful clans of Posleen, for the little clans the doctrine became something more like “bait and switch.”

Binastarion, a senior God King more clever than most, had pulled something very like a bait and switch. Even while the column of heavily armed threshkreen pressed up the road between mountains and sea, groups of the People were taking shelter in the former and — to a lesser extent — in the mangrove swamps bordering the latter. Meanwhile, some of Binastarion’s cleverest eson’soran delayed in the center: take a position, fire, gallop back, pass through a different group, take a position, wait… “Bait and switch.”

It might have been over already, if the thresh had either pressed forward boldly or moved more carefully, securing his flanks. As it was, the thresh seemed more confused in his movements than anything.

Well, time to bring the enemy a little enlightenment.

Interlude

The sun was setting to the west. In part for the warmth, and in part to keep off the annoying insect life of this world, Ziramoth had built a small fire. He and Guanamarioch lay low to either side of the fire, sometimes talking, sometimes just thinking. Ziramoth interspersed conversation with slices of the fish he had caught.

Posleen didn’t cook. Oh, they’d eat thresh that had been caught in a fire and charred, but the idea of actually applying heat or a chemical process to make their food more palatable was something that had not been implanted in them by the Aldenata and which they had never thought upon themselves. Sooner a lion would make and eat crepes than a Posleen would cook food.

Nonetheless, Ziramoth — even one-handed — was a pretty deft hand with a knife and something like sushi was within his repertoire. He and Guanamarioch made a decent meal there, by the mossy riverbank, off raw fish, sugarcane, and a few mangos.

Guanamarioch was certain that Ziramoth was quite a lot brighter than he was. The scars, along with the missing eye and arm, suggested the Kenstain might be braver as well, not that Guanamarioch considered himself to be especially brave.

Most God Kings would have thought the question beneath them even to ask. Most, indeed, were incapable of so much as acknowledging the existence of those who had turned from the path, except perhaps to spit.

Guanamarioch had to ask, “What caused you to turn from the path, Zira?”

The Kenstain, in the process of filleting a fish, stopped in mid-slice and lay stock still for a moment, contemplating how to form his answer.

“It was long ago… six… no, seven orna’adars past,” Ziramoth answered, slowly, before asking, “You know we were once a greater clan than we are now?”

Guanamarioch nodded and answered, “Yes, I read of it on the way here, in the scrolls.”

“The scrolls do not tell all the story, young lordling. I have read them, too, and they do not say how we ended up in such straits.”

“Is this… forbidden knowledge, Zira?”

The Kenstain laughed aloud, a great tongue-lolling, fang-bared Posleen laugh. “To forbid it, they would have to admit to it somewhere. And no one has ever admitted to it.”

“Tell me, Zira.”

The Kenstain acquired a far away look for a moment, as if trying hard to recall something very distant. Then he looked closely at the God King, as if trying to decide if the youth would be harmed by the knowledge he had to impart. He must have decided that knowledge cannot harm, or that, if it could, it could not do more harm than ignorance.

Ziramoth began, “We were great once, among the greatest clans of the People. Our tenar filled the sky. The beating of the feet of our normals upon the ground was like the thunder. The host filled the eye like the rolling sea.

“And then we made a mistake…”

Chapter 18

Suarez wasn’t confused; he was infuriated. The orders emanating from Cortez’s headquarters were confusing, to be sure. “Go here… no, wait… no, go there… no, come back… no, go forward… detach a battalion to secure X… no, no, concentrate to attack Y.” But Suarez, rather than being confused, understood completely.

The fucking moron is simply too scared shitless to have a coherent thought.

Right now Suarez’s mechanized regiment was about half scattered around the northern part of the Province of Herrera and the western portion of Veraguas. He had radio communication with most of them, most of the time, but the communication was unreliable at best. Entire battalions would be unreachable for anywhere from minutes to hours. Even in a place that screwed with radio communication naturally, Suarez thought that more than a little suspicious.

As the lead regiment of the division, Suarez had, or was supposed to have, operational control of the company of Yankee ACS attached to the 1^st Division. Unfortunately, Cortez interfered, or attempted to interfere, with the gringos even more than he did with his own force. Fortunately, the gringos, like Suarez himself, had learned very quickly to ignore most of what the division commander had to say.

Even more fortunately, the commander of the ACS, the gringo captain named Connors, had an understanding with Suarez. It was the understanding of two soldiers, differing greatly in rank, who recognized a common bond of dedication to the profession and a common bond in being placed under the command of idiots often enough for it to be more usual than not.

“This is not the way to use an armored combat suit formation,” Connors complained to Suarez. “Little penny packets, scattered about, with no oomph and no punch. We should be like armor, concentrated for the decisive blow. Except that we’re better than armor because we can go anywhere and fight anywhere. We should not be used like assault guns, supporting slower moving and less powerful forces. It’s a violation of Principle of War — mass.”

“You’re pulling in your detachments?” Suarez queried.

“Yes, sir,” Connors agreed, nodding unseen inside his suit. “As I can.”

“Well, Captain, while I agree with your assessment of the role of ACS, we’ve got another problem that might make it a little wiser to do some splitting up. How are your internal communications?”

“Good, sir. We’re not having the commo problems your forces are.”

Connors reached up with both hands and removed his suit’s helmet, placing it under one suited arm. Silvery goop retreated from his head and hair, forming an icicle on his chin. The goop reached out a tendril seeking the helmet. When it had found it, it flowed from the chin straight down. As before, Suarez found the image and, worse, the image of what it must be like when in the helmet and surrounded by goop, to be most unsettling.

Suarez shook his head to clear the thought. Blech.

“I think our commo problems are not natural, Captain, even though they seem to be random. Instead, I think someone is… feeling us out, getting a picture of how we work. Maybe it would be better to say that they’ve already done that and have now graduated to the early stage of deliberately fucking with us.”

Connors’ mouth formed a moue. He was a veteran of the early fights. He knew that someone or something often targeted human communications. He was also pretty sure that those doing the targeting were not stupid crocodilian centauroids.

“They’ll blanket you at the worst possible time,” Connors announced. “I’ve seen it before.”

“I agree,” said Suarez. “Which is why I am going to ask you to do something very tactically unsound.”

“You want me to leave a man or two with each of your battalions for backup communications, don’t you, sir?”

Suarez smiled. “Pretty sharp for a gringo, aren’t you?”

“There’s something else too, Colonel,” Connors began. “I have a really bad feeling. We aren’t killing enough Posleen to make a difference. They’re fighting, and running, and fighting, and running. Almost like humans would. It’s unsettling, sir, you know?”

Taking a deep breath and exhaling, Suarez agreed. “Scares me too, son. And I don’t know what to do about it. The division commander’s no help…”

“Well, sir, I have an idea. If I break up one squad for backup communications I still have two squads from one platoon I’ll have shorted. I’d like to send them out as flankers, north and south, in buddy teams. That’ll still leave me two line platoons and a weapons platoon under my control for when things go totally to shit.”

“Do it,” Suarez ordered. “Do you need any backup from my regiment?”

Connors hesitated, thinking about that. After a few moments he answered, “No, sir. If I were you I’d start pulling in my troops and at least getting ready to form a perimeter. If my guess is right then the best thing you can do for my flankers is give them a solid place to run to. ’Cause, sir, sure as God didn’t make little green apples, we’ve got our dicks in the garbage disposal and someone, or some thing, has his finger on the power switch.”

The Rinn Fain’s clawed finger rested lightly on the blinking green button. He contemplated that claw. What a sad state. We were a warrior people; a people of fierce pride. A people made by evolution to be naturally what the divine intended us to be. And then the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Aldenata had to meddle, reducing us to meddlers ourselves. The Rinn Fain nearly wept with the sadness of the fate inflicted by the Aldenata on his people. Damn them, and damn those earlier Darhel who acquiesced.

“All is in readiness, my lord,” the slave Indowy prodded. “It will be perfection, now. If you hesitate, the humans may be prepared to counter.”

Smiling through needle sharp teeth at the slave, the Rinn Fain answered, “I am not hesitating, insect. I am savoring the moment. So much perfect destruction to be unleashed, and no violence inherent in it to trigger lintatai. Moments like this are rare, wretch, and must be appreciated to the fullest.”

Even so, the Rinn Fain pressed the button, which went from blinking green to solid red.

In theory an ACS could simply beat its way through the rain forest, hardly slowing even for the largest trees. In practice, not only did the felled trees tend to build up to the point where they became nearly impenetrable even for one of the suits, the noise had a nasty tendency to attract the attention of ill-mannered strangers.

Thus, Corporal Finnegan and Private Chin wove their way through the trees as quietly as the suits would permit. This took time in the short run, and delayed any information their two-man recon team might uncover. On the other hand, dead troopers relayed no information at all, beyond the sheer fact of their deaths, recorded in blinking black on their squad leader’s heads-up display.

“This is bullshit, Corporal, purest bullshit,” observed Chin, never the least outspoken of the squad’s privates, possibly because, out of his suit, he was the shortest of the lot.

“You’re bitching just for the sake of bitching. Shut up, Private,” answered Finnegan succinctly.

Chin was not, however, considered the loudest mouth of the squad without reason. He continued his bitching, more quietly but nonstop, right up until popping his head over a ridge overlooking a small, river-fed valley below.

“Stupid fucking bullshit, is what it is. Why I ever joined this outfit — ”

“Chin? What’s wrong, Chin?” asked Finnegan.

For a worrisome moment, the private said nothing. When he did it was simply to say, in stunned surprise, “Corporal, you need to see this.”

Railing softly about pain in the ass rankers, Finnegan bounded over, weaving around the trees, until he stood beside the private, his head sticking just over the rise.

“Oh, shit,” the corporal said quietly.

In the valley below, thousands upon thousands of them, so thick that Finnegan couldn’t even see the ground, the Posleen host was rising to its feet, the tenar-riding God Kings pointing and gesturing to the pair of ACS troopers.

Even as the first railgun rounds began to chew the ground and trees around them, Finnegan ordered, “RUNNN!”

Connors went instantly white, no mean feat given the amount of sunbathing he had done in the months before the Posleen landed. He didn’t have to inform Suarez what Finnegan and Chin had found. The suit’s communicator squawked loudly enough for the colonel to hear for himself.

“Posleen… zillions of ’em… in the valley at Objective Robin… we’re running… they’re pursuing… shit! Chin’s down.”

Another voice: “It ain’t just Finnegan, Boss. We got us about forty thousand of the bastards at Objective Tiger.”

Another voice: “Can’t run, Cap’n Connors. We’re pinned. I can’t tell you how many. More’n… aiiiii!”

Another voice… another voice… another voice.

Connors looked up at Suarez, standing in the hatch of his track. You’re the chief, Colonel. What the fuck are we gonna do?

In response Suarez held up his radio’s microphone; nothing but static and occasional broken up syllables.

“I can rebroadcast,” Connors offered.

“Can you fit inside the track so I can show you on the map?” Suarez asked.

“Not necessary, sir,” answered Connors as his AID enhanced suit again projected a map between them. “All my people can see the same image.”

“They can all see it? Nice. Okay, Captain, we’ve got no normal commo so everything is going to go from me, through your suit, to your people and then to mine. This is what I want.”

Suarez’s finger began to trace out a circle into which his half scattered battalions would fall and hold… or in which they would die. If asked, Suarez would have bet on “die.”

“Oh, God, I don’t want to die!” was Cortez’s first voiced thought as he saw the wave of centaurs cresting the high ground to the north. It was fortunate that his radio, like everyone else’s, couldn’t send or receive. The only thing holding the 1^st Division’s cohesion together at all was the fact that none of his subordinates could hear their commander.

A nearby light tank company, Cortez’s personal escort, turned into the coming storm, flailing away with machine guns and canister. For an all too brief moment it looked like they might hold. And then railgun fire began to chew through the thin Chinese-built armor. By ones and twos the tanks began to brew up as their crews were cut to ribbons and railgun fleshettes set alight their on-board ammunition and fuel.

“Turn around! Turn around!” Cortez shrieked at his driver.

The driver obeyed, pivot steering the Type-63 one hundred and eighty degrees to the south, then gunning the engine to race away, trailing a cloud of thick, nasty diesel smoke behind.

Cortez’s eyes remained fixed to the north where the Posleen wave lapped over a mixed column of trucks and artillery. The gunners, he saw, were struggling to free their guns and fire even as the wave swept over them and cut them down.

A medical unit, two thirds female as Cortez could well see, was the next to go under. The men of the unit attempted to make a stand to cover the retreat of the women. Without machine guns, or even more than a few rifles, the men went under quickly. The Posleen then pursued the women, chopping the poor screaming wretches down from behind and then stopping to butcher their bodies and feast before continuing the pursuit.

Cortez felt nothing at that, despite having used his position more than once to bed some of the women of that unit. They had been, after all, just office and peasant girls, not women of class and breeding; not anyone who mattered.

A man would have turned and died then, to protect the women. Cortez simply urged his driver to move faster.

Julio Diaz cursed that his glider could not move any faster. On only his second actual combat mission Diaz already had begun to feel like a war-weary veteran. One thing was different about this mission from the previous day’s; his radio worked perfectly.

And everyone else’s was in electronic bedlam; those, anyway, that Diaz could not see stretched out, butchered and lifeless, below. They were hard to see, too, because Panama’s normally emerald grass was tinted red across half a kilometer to either side of the Inter-American highway.

This was awful beyond words, even awful beyond thought; fifteen or twenty thousand of his countrymen, and women, massacred, rendered and eaten. Clusters of Posleen, some of them numbering in the thousands, walked among the dead, hewing a head here, splitting a femur there. Crossing himself, Julio thanked the Almighty, above, that the aliens continued to ignore him.

God did not or would not save him from everything. Despite having an empty stomach from once again, embarrassingly, having to vomit during his launch, Diaz needed to puke again. Only the fact that he was above the smell of slaughter saved him from that.

Still cruising while slowly sinking, without units to spot for, Diaz didn’t even think to call for support from the cruiser that had blessedly answered him the day before. Sure, he could have killed Posleen, and that might have satisfied his urge for revenge. But revenge was a thin soup, faced with the enormity of the slaughter.

Despite the barren feeling of hopelessness, Diaz continued to fly westward. When he returned to base, if he returned, his father would need to know the extent of the disaster.

To his right the sun was sinking. Even as it sank, Cortez’s hopes began to rise. His tank was amphibious. With any luck he would soon reach the sea and could set out on that, safely towards home.

With all the fearful paranoia of a hunted fox, Cortez had guided his tank and crew from the scenes of slaughter. Several times, when the pounding of alien claws on the earth had warned him of an approaching horde, he had ordered his tank into low ground, dense Kunai grass or copses of thick standing trees. His luck had held. While groups of refugees and even the occasional fragment of a cohesive unit had fallen all around him, the aliens had never noticed or, if noticing, cared enough to actually seek him out. He supposed they must have had enough to eat.

While opening his own bag of gringo-supplied combat rations, Cortez began to contemplate the future. He was facing a court-martial, he knew. Last time he had deserted a command, in 1989, he had been fortunate that his government had followed its army into extinction quickly. This time he could not hope for such a boon. His government and army would survive this debacle long enough for him to see the inside of a courtroom and the pockmarked wall before the firing squad. His uncle, the president, would clearly toss him to the wolves.

Worse, his driver, loader and gunner would be the star witnesses at his court-martial. They had the defense of superior orders, at least. He had only his own will to live, no matter what.

Can I count on Uncle Guillermo to quash any charges? Only two possibilities: either the country and the government falls, in which case there’ll be nothing to quash, or they somehow manage to establish a defensive line, in which case there will.

Okay, let’s assume there is still a country. It was Uncle’s order that sent my division to the west. They’ll be howling for his blood… so he’ll give them mine. And these three crewman will testify against me. They have to go. But I need them for now to get me out of here, so they cannot go just yet.

Once we’re at sea, then, I can dispose of them… but how to do it? Shoot them? Tough to do and the driver, in particular might escape. Sink the tank? Also hard to do and, what’s more, I don’t want to get sucked down with it.

Aha! I know. When we get close to land I’ll get out, as if to wave for help, then drop a couple of grenades into the turret. Grenades leave little trace even if they should somehow recover the tank.

My story? Let’s see. I had gotten out of the tank just as we approached land to get a better view. After all, the land has become unsafe and I had to watch out for the crew’s welfare. Suddenly — “I don’t know how” — the tank caught fire and blew up. I was thrown overboard. My life vest must have kept me afloat. When I awakened the tank was gone. I drifted for a while, then when I got close enough to land I swam for it.

Okay… that’s plausible and there’ll be no one left to contradict my story. Uncle can press the charges and then have them dropped for lack of evidence.

The setting sun cast its fiery light directly into Diaz’s eyes. He couldn’t see a thing ahead of him. He knew there was no sense in pressing on, yet felt he had to. The Estado Major, the general staff, had to learn the full extent of the disaster.

Diaz continued on, pulling to the right occasionally to catch and spiral higher in one of the mountain-directed updrafts. Sometimes, during those altitude gaining spirals, he could see yet more of the refuse of the massacre. He forced himself to look, despite the nausea it induced.

Finally, with the last rays of the setting sun painting the waves of the Pacific, and with the last known forward position of the 6^th Division behind him, he turned one hundred and eighty degree and began to glide back to the east, to the base at Rio Hato.

It was chance then, chance that the sun had set at that precise moment, chance that he was looking in that precise direction, chance that someone on the ground fired human weapons in precisely Diaz’s field of view.

Unmistakable. Someone down there is still fighting. I’ve got to help.

In order to help though, Diaz needed to see more, understand more. He began a slow, lazy three-sixty. As he did he caught more flashes of rifles, machine guns, and cannon. The flashes seemed to form a broad circle.

“Christ!” the boy exclaimed. “They’re still hanging on down there. I’ve got to help.”

Suarez, aided by the communications array of the ACS, had only just managed to form a half circle facing north when the first wave of Posleen hit. The Posleen may have been more surprised at the resistance than the humans had been at the grand scale ambush, since their advance guards stopped and then recoiled at the sudden and unexpected wave of fire that met them.

The Posleen, however stupid they were in the main, were also a species quick to form and quick to react. The human defenders had a few brief minutes of respite before a more serious attack was thrown in. This was not repulsed so easily; Suarez actually had to throw in Connors and his ACS company before the attack was contained.

After that the attack in the north petered out into minor probes and sniping while the bulk of the aliens split east and west to find the vulnerable flank they were sure had to be there. For Suarez and his boys it became a race against time to form a full perimeter before the enemy turned one or both flanks. Cooks and clerks found themselves in the firing line, along with medics hastily armed with the rifles of the fallen. Still, by nightfall a perimeter, more or less cohesive, had been formed.

I couldn’t have even done that without the gringos and their armored suits, Suarez thought.

For his part, Connors, resting for the moment with his back against Suarez’s track, thought, Thank God this colonel knew what the fuck he was doing. Another man and we’d have been dead and peeled like lobsters already.

Simultaneously, both men had much the same thought, which went something like, Not that it much matters. We’re hopelessly cut off out here, no chance of relief or support. We’ll live until the ammo runs low or the fuel runs out or the power dies in the suits and then we’ll die anyway. Tonight, maybe at the latest mid-day tomorrow, and it’ll all be over but the munching.

Even as he finished that shared thought, Connors suddenly sat upright. Clearly and distinctly, through his suits communicator, he heard a Spanish voice, “Any station, any station, this is Lima Two Seven.”

“Lima Two Seven this is Romeo Five Five. Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you?”

Diaz nearly whooped with joy. “Romeo, I am a glider. If you look carefully you might be able to see me overhead. How can I help?”

The answering voice sounded resigned, “You got a couple of nukes, Lima? Because short of that, I doubt there is much you can do to help us.”

Julio thought for a moment, then answered, “No nukes, Romeo, but I might be able to get something nearly as good. Wait, over… Daisy? Daisy? This is Julio. I need your help, Dama.”

Dammit, it had hurt to have had to run away; it had shamed. Daisy had seen Sally back to the cover of the mixed Planetary Defense Base cum anti-lander batteries on the Isla del Rey before turning back to the west. Unfortunately, by the time she had gotten within lunging range at the enemy, there was no one to talk to. Thus, impotent and infuriated, she had steamed south of the isthmus — to and fro, east and west — looking and hoping for a target.

Thus it was that, unconcealed glee in her voice, Daisy announced to McNair, “I’ve got us a ripe one, Skipper.”

McNair, still smarting over the loss of Texas, didn’t hesitate. “Bring us around.” His finger pushed a button. “All hands, this is the captain. Battle stations.”

“Julio, we’re coming,” the ship said.

“It’s neither as good nor as easy as it sounds, sir,” Diaz cautioned over the radio. “I wish I could connect you directly with the ship, but I can’t. If I could, you could direct the fires. As is… well, sir, the ship can toss a huge amount of firepower, and it’s unbelievably accurate, but only along the gun-target line. Anywhere from one third to one half of the shells will be over or under and some of them will be way over or under. If you have troops over or under the target…”

Chingada, Suarez thought. Fat lot of good it does me to blast the aliens if the same fire blasts holes in my own perimeter. The Posleen will recover quicker.

Suarez thought furiously while looking at his map. The ship was going to fire from the Gulf of Montijo, from a position just north of Isla Cebaco. What Diaz had told him meant that he could get effective fire to his east and west, but could not use the ship’s guns to help him break contact north and south.

“All right, Lieutenant Diaz, I understand. Tell the ship I want priority along the enemy-held ground west of the Rio San Pablo. Then, on my command, I want to switch to east of the Rio San Pedro.”

Suarez stopped to think for a moment. Something was nagging at him. Something important… something…

“Mierda!” he exclaimed aloud. “Diaz, does the ship carry a shell that can clear the bridges along the Rio San Pedro without endangering the bridge?”

It was a long moment before Diaz answered. When he did, it was to say, “Miss Daisy says she has improved conventional munitions that can kill the Posleen without endangering the bridge, sir.”

Miss Daisy? Never mind. “Good, good,” Suarez said with more good cheer than he felt. “Diaz, you can see, which is more than I can say. Keep me posted and commence firing as soon as possible.”

Under Binastarion’s eye his sons and their oolt’os formed and massed for what he expected to be the final breakthrough into the rear of the threshkreen’s perimeter. The river to his front, while promising to be a costly obstacle to cross, was not so deep his normals could not cross it unaided, though he was sure a few would find deep spots in which they would drown. No matter; their bodies will make a ford for the ones that follow. For the rest, a few minutes helpless under fire and then we’re among them.

An odd shape, cruising high to the west, caught the God King’s eye.

“What is that damned thing flying up there?” Binastarion demanded of his Artificial Sentience.

That machine was connected to the God King’s tenar and, thus, to the entire Net. Yet, infuriatingly, it answered, “There is nothing flying overhead, lord.”

“Bucket of misdesigned circuitry, I can see it. There is something up there.”

“Nonetheless, lord,” the Sentience answered with the normal indifference of a machine, “there is nothing up there which registers. Therefore, there is nothing up there.”

The God King was about to curse his electronic assistant again, when the AS announced. “Incoming projectiles, lord. They will land on the oolt massed below. I suggest you take cover.”

Before Binastarion could answer, whether to thank or to curse, three shells landed, one short but two right on one of his oolt’os. That oolt simply… dissolved with panicked normals running shrieking in all directions. Binastarion’s tenar shuddered with the shock wave. His internal organs rippled in a way he had never before experienced.

“Demon shit,” the chief snarled, sotto voce, as he wrestled his tenar back to face his massed people.

Even as he grunted those words another three explosions erupted, with one shell landing among the ruins of the previously targeted oolt and two others smearing the one just to the north of that one.

In salvos of three rounds, never more than four or five heartbeats apart, the fire walked among his people like some half-divine, half-mad demon. Tenar were tumbled, their riders crushed and shredded. Splintered teeth and bones of normals joined hot metal shell fragments to pierce and rend.

True, sometimes a shell landed between oolt, doing no harm with its blast. Even in those cases, however, the odd piece of shrapnel might sail hundreds of meters to fall with deadly effect upon some unfortunate normal. The smell of Posleen blood thus released was enough to unsettle the half-sentients and make their bolting that much more likely whenever a salvo did land near.

Binastarion’s communicator buzzed frantically with calls from his sons and subordinates. Each asking for instructions. Do we attack? Do we retreat? If we stay here we’ll be massacred.

“Where is that damned fire coming from?” he demanded of his AS. “I have read of the threshkreen’s artillery, but this is just too much of it. Where is it coming from?”

The Artificial Sentience did not answer immediately. Searching the Net, Binastarion supposed.

“The ship is back, lord,” the AS said when it finally answered. “It can throw as much of this artillery as would a ten of tens of the heaviest sort used by the thresh who fight on the ground.”

Even while digesting that unwelcome news, the fire continued to walk among the host of Binastarion, striking down lowborn and high with random, vicious fury.

It was with an equal fury that Binastarion ordered his subordinates to assemble on his tenar once they had their people under cover.

As he had been each time he had seen the salvos from the Des Moines, Diaz was awed by the fury of the guns. He said a silent prayer to God that, so far, none of the shells had fallen among the defenders.

When he judged the enemy was sufficiently damaged and disorganized by the fire he keyed his radio and spoke to Suarez.

“Sir, I think it is about as good as it is going to get in the west. Shall I pull out to the east and direct the ship’s fires to assist the breakout?”

Suarez spoke back, “Yes, son, do that. And God bless you and that ship.”

There was no more difficult operation in all of the military art than a withdrawal while in contact with the enemy. To do so over a broad front, with troops already badly disorganized by combat would have been impossible but for three facts: that the fires of the gringo ship had even more badly disorganized the Posleen, that most of Suarez’s regimental artillery — three batteries of Russian-built self propelled guns — was intact, and that Suarez had control of most of a company of ACS.

“Can your boys do it; cover our withdrawal while we force our way east?” Suarez asked Connors.

“I think we ought to free up your units in the west first, sir,” Connors advised.

“Can you get me some contact with that glider overhead?” Connors asked.

“No, sir,” the AID answered. “I am continuing to try.”

Trying to time things carefully, Connors and his men had stormed into the Posleen positions, such as they were, butchering the stunned-senseless aliens where they stood, before pulling out again and moving as fast as the suits’ legs would carry them eastward. A regular mechanized unit could not have done so.

B Company, Connors in the lead, reached the rear area of the west-facing Panamanian units even as Suarez, using the suits the MI had attached to his sub-units, pulled the east-facing elements of the 1^st Mech Division out of the line and got them on the road.

“How about with the ship, what was it? The Des Moines?”

“Yes, sir, the USS Des Moines, CA-134. And no, sir, the ship’s AID is refusing all communication with any Artificial Intelligence Devices. I am not sure why. It won’t explain, simply shunts me into a continuous loop when I try. It’s not supposed to be able to do that,” Connors’ AID added snippily.

“Crap!” Connors exclaimed. “We’ll just have to trust the kid up above to know what he’s doing.”

“Lieutenant Diaz seems trustworthy, sir.”

“Yeah… well…”

Connors’ reserved statement was interrupted by a deluge of heavy shell fire striking ground to the east. The Panamanians in the rear of the line ducked, sensibly, as the air was torn with the roar of the blasts and the whine of the fragments, whizzing overhead.

“Okay, okay… the kid knows what he’s doing,” Connors admitted. “We can’t direct the fire… so we’re going to have to take advantage of where it falls on it own.”

“Suboptimal, Captain,” the AID agreed. “But best under the circumstances, yes.”

Another long salvo came in. Connors tried to count the number of shells and gave up.

“AID, can you track the shells and provide analysis?”

“Yes, sir,” the AID answered. “If you will look at the map” — Connors’ left eye saw a map of the highway area, with great black rectangles superimposed on it — “the black represents areas where the strike of shells indicate minimum Posleen remaining alive and able to resist.”

Connors only had two platoons, really, remaining to him, plus the weapons platoon. The last line unit had been scattered to scout to the flanks or broken up to provide commo for Suarez. The shocked survivors of the flankers — and the casualties among those had been horrendous — were in no shape for the battle and wouldn’t be for perhaps days. There were too many holes in the chain of command, too much death, among that platoon.

The destruction visited upon the Posleen, Connors saw, was for the most part oriented along the highway. He assumed the other black rectangles on his map were Posleen assembly areas the pilot overhead had called fire upon. Since the highway was what the 1^st Panamanian Mech needed…

“B Company, formation is V with weapons at the base and the line platoons to either side of the highway. I’m with weapons. B Company… form.”

He gave the men a few minutes to settle in to the formation before ordering, “B Company… advance.”

It was eerie, walking that highway. Smoke lay heavy along the ground. Posleen bodies, and more than a few human ones, littered the path. Many were torn to shreds, chopped up, disemboweled. Others showed not a mark.

Connors passed a tree that had miraculously survived the bombardment. In the tree was a God King, dead. The alien’s harness had been ripped off, but it was otherwise untouched save for the tree limb that entered its torso from behind and stuck out, yellow with blood, from its chest. The alien’s head hung towards the ground, gracelessly, by its twisted neck.

Shell craters, huge indentations in the earth, pockmarked the landscape. Something nagged at the MI captain. Something…

“Pay attention to the shell craters,” Connors warned over the general company net. “Don’t assume that just because nothing that was in them when they were created has survived that something might not have crawled in afterwards.”

A Posleen staggered up out of one, dragging its rear legs behind it. It was just a normal, Connors thought, but no sense taking chances. He raised one arm as if to fire. Automatically a targeting dot appeared over the Posleen, painted on Connors’ eye. He fired a short burst and the alien went down, splashing up muddy water that had collected in the crater even in the short time since it had been formed.

From time to time, one of Connors’ platoon leaders reported in that “X and such number of Posleen had been sighted, engaged and destroyed at Y and such location” or “Posleen oolt fleeing north” or “south.” He took no casualties and, in a very odd and bizarre way, that disturbed him, too.

“Are you guys sure you are seeing absolutely no God Kings? No tenar?”

“Just wrecked ones, Boss… only some wrecks, Captain… there ain’t enough of ’em, even wrecked, to account for the number of other bodies, sir. I don’t trust it.”

Even so, Connors pushed his company on past the broad area of destruction and into the parts still untouched by the heavy guns. And there were still no God Kings or tenar.

“AID, pass to Suarez that the way seems open.”

“Wilco, Captain.”

The tracks and trucks were draped with the bodies of the wounded… and the dead. Suarez was pleased to see the discipline, that his men were leaving nothing behind for the enemy to eat, even as he was appalled at the cost. Because it wasn’t a vehicle here and there covered with bodies. It was every tank, track and truck that passed.

Jesu Cristo, but it’s going to be a job rebuilding this division. If we’re even allowed to.

Suarez had the devil’s own time of it, already, trying to extricate the bloodied scraps from the cauldron. Without the communications advantages — let alone the mobile, armored firepower — given by the MI he didn’t think he could have done it at all.

Logically, Suarez knew, he should be having his sergeant major go over those trucks, pulling off some of the walking — even nonwalking — wounded to serve as a “detachment left in contact,” or DLIC. These would have been die-in-place troops, left behind to cover the withdrawal of the rump of the division.

I just don’t have the heart, I guess. Takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to do that — to even ask that — of men who’ve already given everything they have.

Cortez remembered his uncle often speaking of the need to be ruthless in politics and in life. Well, now’s the time to find out if I am as ruthless as my uncle always wanted me to be.

The Isla del Rey loomed ahead. Cortez’s Type-63 light amphibious tank churned its way laboriously toward the island. The big Planetary Defense gun atop the island was silent. And a good thing, too, Cortez thought. The blast might be enough to raise waves big enough to swamp this tank.

But then again, would that really matter?

The crew had not spoken an unnecessary word to Cortez since he had bugged out. Perhaps they thought they were merely showing disapproval. In fact, the effect was to make them even less human and less valuable in Cortez’s mind. Thus, faced with the silent treatment, it was easier for him to take the hand grenade he had secreted earlier, remove the safety clip, pull the pin and drop it into the bottom of the turret even as he dove off to swim for the safety of the island.

Interlude

“… or perhaps we were forced into one.

“We had claimed a large island on a world. This was something new to our clan, to settle on an island,” Ziramoth continued. “Normally, the chief of a clan would never do so. Yet this was a world of — mostly — islands and the lord saw little choice. It was large enough to support our refugee population for several generations. Moreover, the barrier of the seas around the island should serve as barriers to other clans. So the lord claimed.

“The island was fertile, and had much mineral wealth. The People prospered there. For a while.

“That entire world was gifted with fertility. None of the clans who settled felt the need to eat their nestlings. And the population grew in a way we had rarely experienced.

“Unfortunately, this world was also on the edge of a barren sector of the galaxy. We had nothing but wasted radioactive worlds behind us and we had nothing but the void in front of us. All the clans sent out scouts into the interstellar blackness. None returned soon. None returned in time.”

Ziramoth again grew still, though Guanamarioch didn’t know whether that was because the memory was so distant — seven orna’adars was a very long time! — or because they were so painful.

The Kenstain began to speak again. “Local scouts were sent out, across those coppery seas. It must have been that other clans had prospered as ours, for none of those scouts came back at all. Certainly other clans scouted out our island, and just as certainly their scouts were destroyed by us.

“And our population still grew. Then we did begin to eat nestlings, but it was too late. The normals had laid their eggs everywhere. No matter what we did to hang on until the scouts we had sent into space returned with the location of a new home, our population still grew. As you know…” And the Kenstain’s voice tapered off.

“Hungry normals are dangerous normals,” the God King finished.

“Dangerous in themselves and dangerous in the trouble they can cause,” agreed Ziramoth, nodding his head.

“In this particular case, one philosopher’s favorite normal grew too hungry to be controlled. It attacked the herd of another, killed a juvenile normal, and carted it off to feast.”

“So what was the problem?” Guanamarioch asked. “Surely the Kessentai that owned the juvenile would have demanded recompense and the one whose normal had done the killing would have complied. That is the law.”

“Ah, but that is only half the law,” the Kenstain answered wistfully.

Chapter 19

Binastarion’s crest expanded, fluttering in the windstream as his tenar cut through the air. That ship! That accursed, odious, stinking, CHEATING ship! I had the thresh in my claws, savoring the anticipation of the squeezing when that damnable threshkreen ship ruined everything, butchering my sons like abat and blasting their mates into unrecyclable waste. It shall pay and so shall all who sail aboard her.

This time, however, I will not risk my landers, my C-Decs and B-Decs. They are too valuable, too difficult for us to replace with my clan in such dire straits. Indeed, without the manufacturies in those ships we will not survive the first push of a rival clan. Instead, we shall swarm the bitch with tenar. I will lose sons, yes, perhaps many of them, along with their tenar. But sons and tenar I can replace, the great ships not so easily.

“Skipper, we got’s problems,” announced Davis.

The Des Moines was still deep within the bay, still firing in support of the Panamanians, still boxed in by the mainland to north, east and west and the island to the south.

Daisy Mae’s avatar’s eyes moved left and right rapidly as humans’ sometimes will when trying to count large numbers or solve complex problems. Her mouth opened slightly in a worried looking moue.

“Captain,” she said, “there are more than I can track. Two streams of them, flanking us to the east and the west. They’re keeping low, trying to get around us and cut us off. I think it may be time to leave.”

McNair hesitated a moment, then picked up the radio microphone. “Daisy, translate. Lieutenant Diaz?” he asked.

“Sir?” Even charged with the radio’s static Diaz’s voice seemed terribly, terribly tired.

“We’re in a spot of trouble here, Lieutenant. How is the breakout coming?”

“Capitano, Colonel Suarez has the bridge over the river to the east. Your ICM cleaned off the aliens pretty well. He’s already passing the soft stuff over, trucks, ambulances, things like that.”

“To the west?” McNair queried, succinctly.

“Your countrymen in the Armored Combat Suits are handling that, sir. It looks basically okay.”

Unseen by the glider pilot, McNair nodded, as if weighing options, duties, values and chances of survival.

“Tell Suarez I have to pull out. The Posleen are trying to box me in here. It’s not looking good.”

Again the radio crackled with the flying officer’s voice, “I will pass that on, sir. We should be fine on the ground. Good luck and my best to your radio operator Miss Daisy. Diaz out.”

McNair half turned and shouted to the navigation bridge, “Bring us around. Make for open sea. All possible speed.”

Within the armored navigation bridge a crewman turned the ship’s wheel hard aport. Beneath the stern the AZIPOD drives followed the command of the wheel. Water churned fiercely to starboard as the Des Moines began a turn so sharp it was almost less than the ship’s length along the waterline.

As the bow turned to the break between the western-most tip of the island and the mainland, Chief Davis’ eyes grew wide with horror. He pointed toward the island.

“Too late, Skipper,” he announced.

“At them, my children. Punish the foilers of our plans, the blighters of our hopes, the murderers of our brothers.”

Binastarion could see only a couple of hundred of his tenar-borne sons as they arose from the covering vegetation and began to converge on the threshkreen warship. In his screen, however, more than one thousand tenar appeared. Lines showing the paths of the tenar all converged in an irregular blotch above the ship. The ship itself he could not see, though bright flashes on the horizon suggested that the ship had seen the threat and was already fighting back.

The Des Moines had four lines of defense, so to speak, against alien attack. The most visually impressive of these, the three triple turrets of eight-inch guns, were already engaged, spewing forth canister and time-fused high explosive. At the current range the time-fused shells were most effective. Unfortunately, both forward turrets were fully occupied in trying to blast a hole through the southern quadrant of the Posleen net.

The rear turret, on the other hand, was totally inadequate to covering the one hundred and eighty degrees it would have to if the Posleen were to be kept away. Daisy tried, even so, switching the gun madly from one alien cluster to another.

The secondary line of defense was composed of the six upgraded Mark 71 turrets, emplaced in lieu of the old twin five-inch mounts. These were actually the first line of defense if, as the Posleen had before, the enemy used landers to attack. The barbettes and magazines below those turrets carried only anti-lander ammunition, solid bolts of depleted uranium. These could be effective against individual tenar, but their rate of fire was just not adequate to a massed tenar attack; though no one had really imagined any of the formerly three-ship flotilla having to stand alone as the Des Moines was now. Moreover, it was a case of almost absurd overkill to use a two-hundred and sixty pound depleted uranium bolt against a single flying sled carrying a single God King.

The third line of defense, the gun tubs, had been intended for 20mm antiaircraft guns. These had been replaced in design by twin three-inch mounts when it was discovered that a 20mm shell was simply too small to stop a determined kamikaze. The three-inch mounts had, in turn, been recently replaced by fully automated turrets housing five-barreled, 30mm Gatlings, stripped from A-10 aircraft that had become useless, having had no possible chance of survival against automated Posleen air defenses.

The fourth line of defense?

“Jesus,” prayed McNair, “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” He then added, half jokingly, “We don’t have a single cutlass aboard.”

Daisy, eyes closed now as if concentrating on her targeting, as in fact she was, answered, “Have Sintarleen pass out the submachine guns I traded for. He knows where they are. Indian built Sterlings. They’re simple enough that anyone can use one after five minutes’ familiarization.”

“Submachine guns?” McNair asked incredulously.

Eyes still closed, Daisy asked, “Would you have actually preferred cutlasses? I was watching Master and Commander and got to thinking…”

Without another word McNair spoke over the shipwide intercom. “Mr. Sinbad, this is the captain. Pass out the small arms… the… Sterlings. And all hands, now hear this: I never expected to say this, boys, but… all hands stand by to repel boarders.”

It was magnificent, Binastarion thought, even while hating the source of that magnificence with every fiber of his being. The ship was wreathed in fire and smoke, fighting furiously to keep the host of the People away.

The God King was puzzled, actually, that the host had not done more damage to the ship than it had. Hundreds of plasma bolts had been fired, along with several dozen hypervelocity missiles. (Those last were pricey and a clan as poor as that of Binastarion could ill afford to waste them.) Some of the HVMs had been intercepted by fire from the ship and destroyed in flight; the ship was putting out a practically solid wall of DU and iron projectiles around itself. Some seemed to have been spoofed by the immaterial holograms the ship projected. Others, though, many others, appeared to have struck home. Yet the firepower of the defenders seemed undiminished.

That sparked a thought. While the ship could spoof HVMs, while it could mimic in safe quadrants the bursts of intense flame that indicated cannon fire, the flame of the actual guns it could not mask.

And those sources cannot be far above the water nor too far from the center of the fire.

Shouting words of encouragement to his sons to press the attack closer Binastarion concentrated carefully on the pattern of flames belching forth from his enemy.

There, he thought, as a steady, measured burst of flames spewed forth from what he thought must be amidships. There is a true source.

The God King marked what he believed to be an actual weapon on his control screen, then tapped it several times to carefully sight his own, superior, HVM at the target. With a whispered prayer that the shit-demons not spoil his aim, he ordered his Artificial Sentience, “Fire.”

McNair and the bridge crew were knocked senseless and thrown from their feet by the blast.

“Oh, God!” Daisy screamed, clutching her side and flickering in and out of apparent existence.

Below and behind the battle bridge an enemy missile had struck the nearest secondary turret, cutting through the armor, incinerating the lone gun crewman on station and, unfortunately, setting off the propellant charge for the gun’s next round even as it was being fed into the breach. The resultant blast was enough to knock the bridge crew to the deck, to blow the turret clean off the ship and to rip a gaping hole, three feet by seven, in the portside hull above the armor deck.

At the low angle at which the HVM hit, it was unable to do more than score a long gash in the thick steel of the armor deck. Molten steel blasted off from that armor was sufficient, however, to wound or kill better than thirty crewman standing by for damage control on the port side of Des Moines’ splinter deck. The screams of those who still lived, hideously mangled and burned, echoed through the ship.

Continuing on, the HVM cut through five bulkheads and a passageway before erupting into the lightly armored magazine that fed one of the 30mm Gatling turrets. The heat of its passage was sufficient to set off the 30mm ammunition in its entirety, blowing that turret, too, completely off the ship and hopelessly jamming the one next to it. The explosion of the ammunition, confined to a degree by the ship’s deck and hull, fed inward through the gap torn by the HVM itself.

A dozen of Sintarleen’s Indowy crewman, standing by to participate in damage control, were half crushed and badly surface burned by the explosion leaking in through that gap. Their screams added to those of the humans caught in the path of the enemy missile.

Father Dan Dwyer was first on the scene of the port side misery. His first thought was to go to the aid of the wounded. Yet the priest was an old seaman. That was important, to be sure. But more important was to let the captain know how his ship fared. The priest picked up the intercom and rang the bridge.

It seemed a long moment before anyone answered. When the captain came on he seemed stunned, groggy.

“McNair.”

Dwyer had to shout to make himself heard over the shrieking of torn and burned crewmen. “Jeff, this is Dan. We’re bad hit but not fatally. Number fifty-three secondary turret is out.”

The priest looked upward at the smoky sky through the gaping hole defined by twisted and tortured metal. “I mean really out. She’s gone and you’ve got a hole in your defenses. At least one.”

“Fuck… the… hole,” McNair answered, groggily. “Daisy’s a… brave girl… she… can be… repaired. What about… my crew?”

The corpsmen had arrived on scene while Dwyer spoke with the bridge. They went from body to body, looking for live crew who had a chance of survival. More often than not a medico would make a quick examination and shake his head in resignation. Morphine was being liberally dispensed. In the dosages used it was a sure sign, the Jesuit knew, that the crewman so graced was not expected to survive. Slowly, the shrieks, moans and screams softened as one hopelessly butchered and charred sailor after another was put under.

Dwyer’s eyes came to rest on a charred, disembodied leg. He fought down nausea. “It’s bad, Skipper, as bad as I’ve ever seen. Thirty men down, at least. Might be forty. Hard to tell; some of them are in pieces. They’re… well, they’re just ripped apart… and flash burned. And that’s only on the port side. I’m heading to starboard to check there.”

Binastarion wasn’t sure his HVM had struck home until he saw the odd shaped, multifaceted piece of metal flying high above the deceptive holograms projected by his enemy. Momentarily the holograms flickered out and he saw the ship’s true shape, long and lean and predatory, through the smoke.

How strange, the God King thought, the one thing I have seen on this shitball of a world the aesthetics of which don’t make me want to wretch. My enemy is even, in its way, the more beautiful for being so deadly.

Even very beautiful things, however, must die. And so must that ship.

“Forward, my sons,” the God King chieftain exulted into his communicator. “Forward to victory and glory everlasting.”

The great ship shuddered with the repeated hits of Posleen HVMs now. Overhead the thick armored deck rang as two- to four-inch-deep gouges were torn out of it. Even through the stout metal, the priest was certain he heard at least two more secondary explosions. Those had to be nothing less than eight-inch or 30mm batteries going up in smoke and flame.

Dimly, the priest sensed the captain desperately ordering that canister and high explosive be brought to the secondary turrets. He hurried the performance of last rites for the fallen, human and Indowy, both. After all, God will know his own.

Dwyer became aware of Sintarleen standing off to one side. The Indowy’s expression was unreadable in any detail to a human not specially trained in the alien culture. Dwyer looked for a sign of disapproval, even so, and found none on the alien’s furry, batlike face.

Sintarleen looked back and shrugged, a bit of body language picked up from the human crew.

“Though we have no such thing as religion, as you would think of it, it couldn’t hurt, Father.”

Sinbad continued, “These were a third, or nearly a third, of all that remained of my clan, Father. Of those great and industrious multitudes now only sixteen males remain on this planet, and another one hundred or so transfer neuters and females held in bondage somewhere by the Elves. We had hoped to buy our sisters and brothers out of that bondage, but now…”

The Indowy bowed its head so deeply its chin rested on its great chest. Sintarleen could not weep, was not built to shed tears, yet his body shook with the overwhelming emotions of seeing so large a percentage of his few remaining kinsmen slaughtered.

Dwyer did not know what to say. Instead of words, therefore, he enfolded the quivering Indowy in a great bear hug, patting the creature’s back to give what comfort it might be worth. As he did so, Dwyer couldn’t help but notice that, despite its small stature, the alien’s body was one big chord of knotted muscle. He had the glimmerings of an idea.

We need to get antipersonnel munitions to the secondary turrets. But the shells are too heavy for one man to carry and a stretcher carried by two has the devil’s own time of it squeezing through the watertight doors. But…

Dwyer stepped back and looked at the alien intently. “Sintarleen, how much weight can you people carry easily?”

The Indowy frowned, puzzled.

“How much weight can you pick up?” the priest demanded urgently.

The Indowy, temporarily distracted from his grief, shrugged and answered, “Maybe five or six hundred of your pounds. A bit more for some of us. Why?”

“Assemble your people, my furry friend. Go to the magazines under the great triple turrets. Get from them rounds of canister, two for each of you. Carry them to the barbettes for the secondary turrets, the singles.

“Maybe you cannot fight, boyo, but — praise the Lord! — you can pass the ammunition!”

Each effective hit of a Posleen HVM or plasma bolt was like a hot knife plunging into Daisy’s vitals. She had grown almost used to the agony, enough so that her avatar barely showed it. Only the occasional wince, and the almost continuous rocking, indicated that the ship knew pain that would have killed a human.

The avatar’s eyes opened up and it seemed to look directly at McNair.

“I have anti-flyer munitions for the four remaining secondaries now,” she said, loudly to make herself heard over McNair’s concussion-induced, and hopefully temporary, partial deafness. “A few anyway. More coming.”

Even as the avatar made this announcement, the Des Moines shuddered under what felt to McNair to be at least three separate impacts amidships.

The captain shook his head for what seemed like the fiftieth time. He was still seeing double from the concussion of the first effective HVM strike. Despite this it was easy to see the smoke pouring upward from Daisy’s sundered deck and bulkheads.

McNair forced himself to think. Holograms or not, the enemy can see we are hurt. They’ll press in. Nothing to do about it. Or…

“Daisy, you can’t hide us anymore, can you?”

The avatar started to shake its head, then realized that with the captain so badly concussed he might not make that out.

“I’m afraid not, sir. The smoke is rising too high, and I have lost some abilities to project false images as well.”

So hard to think. Yet he had to. If we can’t look healthy, maybe we can…

“Daisy, at the next hit… or the one after if it takes you longer to prepare… I want you to drop all the cover… make us look… worse off… helpless. Dead guns… ruined turrets. Fire… smoke. And cease fire until…”

“Until the bastards mass to close in for the kill,” the avatar finished.

“And then you’ll have to pick your own targets, Daisy,” he said. “I can’t see to direct you. But you have authorization to fire.”

Another hit rang throughout the ship.

The price was appalling. Still, Binastarion was certain, it would be worth it if only the damned threshkreen vessel might be sunk.

Smoke was pouring out of the ship now as if from a chain of close set volcanoes, or some single rift in a planet’s skin. Even her main batteries went out of action. As the God King watched a last group of explosive shells detonated in the air, close together, sending a storm of hot jagged metal forward in a series of cones. The agonized cries of his children, faithfully amplified by his AS, shook the Posleen chieftain.

He checked the battle screen on his tenar. There was hardly anything left in front of the enemy ship to bar its path. The ranks had been badly thinned behind it as well, so much so that he doubted the courage of his pursuing sons. Only on the flanks was the People’s attack holding up and making gains. The volcanolike smoke pouring from the gaping holes in the deck and hull told as much.

The defensive fire on the flanks had been mostly to thank for that. Binastarion was not sure why, but guessed that the secondary weapons carried none of the simple, scatterable or explosive munitions that emptied tenar right and left to the ship’s fore and aft.

“Press in, my children, press in! The foe is weak at the center. Close in and pinch it in two with our claws!”

Slipping and sliding on the crimson blood seeping along the smoky corridors’ decks, the grunting, straining Indowy switched anti-tenar ammunition from the main batteries’ magazines to the secondaries’ as fast as they could fight past the wounded, dead and dying crewmen and those carrying them to sickbay.

Sintarleen hurried from barbette to barbette, directing his kinsmen to where the ammunition was most needed. While the ammunition bearers were too busy and far too strained to give much thought to the purpose or morality of their task, Sinbad had just enough freedom of thought to question his basic philosophy.

We are a peaceful folk. We may not use violence. These are our teachings from earliest age. It is only these teachings that have enabled my people to survive, as so many other species have not, the transition from barbarism to true technology and civilization.

Yet my people even now carry the means of violence to those still capable of it. We make the weapons they use.

What is it that keeps us pure? Distance? The humans of this ship fight at a distance and rarely see the violence they do. How am I or my people here more pure than they? Merely because we will not see the violence? That is absurd.

Must it always be so? Must it always be our best and finest who fall? Curse the demons who have condemned us to this, curse them more even than that threshkreen ship which is, after all, only trying to survive as we try to survive.

Binastarion’s heart was heavy within his chest. Momentarily his head hung with grief. So many fine sons lost. So many brave and noble philosophers, bright beings with full lives ahead of them, cut down and sunk even beyond recovery to feed the host.

But doubts in voice or action fed no one. The God King lifted his head, steeled his heart and his voice. A group of tenar sped by to his right, led by a favored son, Riinistarka. Binastarion raised his hand in salute to the young God King, shouting encouragement over the din of battle. The clan leader’s communicator picked up the hearty shout and passed it on to the junior’s.

“We’ll take them, Father. Never fear,” the young philosopher sent back, returning his sire’s salute. “Forward, my brothers. Forward that our clan might live.”

Demons of fire and ice, spare me my son, the father prayed.

“Firing,” Daisy answered coldly. She had come to this fight full of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was gone, replaced by only cold determination. Now she had felt the fire in her own belly; felt the pain of burning penetration and dismemberment. The avatar had to answer coldly, for every emotion of which she was capable was suppressed to keep the agony at bay.

With two secondary turrets down, and given the specific turrets, Daisy had a choice of adding two to the defense of each side, or three to engage on one side and one on the other. She opted for the latter and six turrets, three of them triples, with a total of eleven guns still working, swiveled to engage on the side from which the nearest Posleen threat came.

Riinistarka was young. His father might have said, “young and foolish.” However that might have been, he was young enough to feel the joy and exhilaration of closing on a worthy foe in company with his brothers. If this was foolishness, so be it. Besides, if he were truly foolish he would not have felt the fear that gnawed at his insides, threatening to break through the joy and exhilaration. He had not known true fear since his dangerous time in the pens as a helpless, cannibalistic nestling. The memory of that made him shudder as present fear could not.

And how can it be foolish, anyway, to fight for my clan to regain its position, he thought, to fight for my clan to survive?

Ahead of Riinistarka the threshkreen warship seemed broken and helpless with jagged-edged metal showing where the smoke and flames did not cover. The covering giant demon that the God King had seen from a distance was gone now. He knew, intellectually, that it was not a real demon, of course. Though the practical difference between a real demon and that ship seemed minimal, at best. He was sure, in his innermost being, that the representation had come from whatever intelligence quickened the ship.

Perhaps a lucky hit had destroyed whatever intellect that was, for suddenly, the false cover had fallen away, leaving only the image of a wreck such as the people only saw as the residue of battles in space. That the enemy guns had fallen silent at exactly the same time as the holographic cover had disappeared seemed to confirm this.

Despite the obvious ruination visited upon the threshkreen ship, however, it was still steaming away rapidly through the hole it had previously blasted in the People’s enveloping net. Riinistarka strongly suspected that unless it were utterly destroyed it would be back. The People, themselves, were quite capable of restoring a wrecked space ship. He had seen nothing to date to suggest that these human vermin were any less clever.

Indeed, Riinistarka had already lost enough dear brothers to make him suspect that these threshkreen were quite possibly more clever. All the more reason they must be destroyed then, while they were still weak and relatively backward, lest the people later perish before a more dangerous enemy.

Dangerous? Riinistarka felt a sudden twinge of fear rise to the surface despite his best efforts to suppress it. There is the tale my father told, of Stinghal the Knower, and the siege of Joolon; how he breached his own walls and set fire to his citadel…

Suddenly, three quarters of the smoke and flame surrounding the threshkreen ship disappeared and Riinistarka found himself staring into the muzzles of eleven eight-inch guns.

More flame bloomed, eleven fiery blossoms of an altogether different character from that which had seemed to cover the ship. This was followed a split second later by the appearance of eleven smaller blooms. And then came agony.

The first of the humans’ heavy iron balls struck the control panel of the tenar of Riinistarka. The panel stopped the ball, yet splinters torn from it pierced the young God King’s body and shredded one eye. The next, so soon after the first that the Posleen could not sense the time differential, tore off one shoulder, lifting the alien onto his rear legs. The third, following the second at the tiniest interval, entered his uplifted belly, tearing apart his internal organs and crushing his spine half a meter forward of his rear legs.

None were merciful enough to kill outright.

Riinistarka barely managed to hold onto his tenar. With his controls destroyed and his spine crushed, he could not hope to do more than stay aboard as the tenar spun slowly in place a few meters above the sea.

With difficulty, the God King turned his remaining good eye onto his ruined shoulder. Splintered bone protruded between shreds of flesh. Yellow blood seeped out. Feeling sick, the young alien looked away.

In looking away from his shoulder Riinistarka’s eye fell on his belly. The threshkreen projectile had caused the skin of that to split, spilling organs out. He did not want to imagine what it had done to his insides. He forced himself not to think about what it had done to his insides.

At first, the wounds had not hurt, exactly. But after a few minutes, as the initial shock of being hit wore off, the pain grew. The God King whimpered at first. Then, slowly, the pain transformed into agony, the whimpers turned to screams.

“Faaatherrr!”

“We’re through, Captain,” Daisy’s avatar announced with what seemed like weariness. “Some of the enemy are pursuing, but the rear turret, and the three of the remaining four secondaries that I can bring to bear should be enough to keep them at bay.”

McNair, who didn’t just seem weary, nodded weakly.

“Casualties? Damage?” he asked.

“Incomplete reports, Captain. Bad, in any case. I am cut off from some areas.”

“You going to be okay, Babes?”

Daisy’s avatar nodded through her pain. “I’ll be fine, Captain.”

The pain had reached its peak and then begun to ebb even as Riinistarka’s life ebbed out with the flow of his yellow blood. He had only the one dull yellow eye left to contemplate the departure of the enemy, his final enemy, he knew.

So far gone was he that he did not even notice as his father’s tenar pulled up next to his. The airborne sled shuddered as Binastarion crossed deftly from his own tenar to his son’s. A great cry of woe and pain came from the father as he saw his son’s wounds. The father folded his legs to kneel beside the dying son. He reached out one hand to scratch the youngster behind his crest.

“Father?” Riinistarka asked weakly at the familiar touch.

“Yes, Son, it’s me.”

“I’m sorry, Father. We failed… I failed.”

Binastarion shook his head. “Nonsense, boy. You did all you could. No one could ask for more. I’m proud of you.”

The father followed his son’s gaze to where the hated threshkreen ship was escaping from his clutches. At least we hurt it badly. Though I am sure it will be back.

“You and your brothers damaged the thresh, and badly. It might well sink,” he lied. “Certainly it is at least half destroyed. In any case, it won’t be back to hurt us any time soon.”

Interlude

“And the other half, Zira?”

“The other half is that the usual procedure would be to turn over the precise normal that offended,” the Kenstain answered. “But in this case, the normal was a special pet. The philosopher would not give it up. The offended Kessentai was adamant. Fighting broke out. It spread like a wildfire among the septs of the clan. The reason it spread, of course, is that we had managed to create our own conditions for a miniature orna’adar, right there on our island. And we had not had time to prepare our escape.”

“Oh, demons,” said Guanamarioch.

“Right,” agreed Ziramoth. “The clan quickly broke into competing factions, all based on that one little spark. Instead of waiting for another clan to nuke our cities we saved them the bother and did it ourselves. Of course, as soon as the conflagration started those normals whose gift it is to build the starships began work instinctively, but it was all they could do to keep, barely, ahead of the destruction. And they never got very far ahead. Of all of our clan who had settled that island, fewer than one in twenty managed to escape. And the scars of the fissuring, brother slaying brother, were too deep to heal. The refugees stayed in the small groups into which they had split. Some were absorbed into other clans, but most went their own way, leaping into the void between the stars even without reconnaissance.”

By now the sun had set. Guanamarioch looked down into the stream at the stars reflected therein. Which of them, he asked himself, how many of them have seen our passage since that long ago, terrible time?

“Who was it, Ziramoth? Who was that long ago philosopher who plunged our clan into chaos?”

Now it was the Kenstain who grew silent, staring into the flowing stream at the stars that twinkled there.

His voice, when he answered was full of infinite sadness. “His name was Ziramoth.”

Chapter 20

They’d held for a while, there at the bridge before the town of Bijagual. Half of Digna’s artillery, firing directly into the cleared kill zone, had stacked the aliens up like cordwood, carpeting field and stream with their bodies and then adding layers of bodies to that carpet. It had become quite a plush pile before the Posleen had learned better and gone searching for the flanks.

Digna had assumed they would go searching for the flanks as she’d assumed they would eventually find them. She had hoped it would have taken a bit longer, long enough to finish burying her dead, at least. That grace the aliens had not given. Before the bodies could be decently interred the frantic calls had come from both flanks. She’d ordered the mortars to give priority of fires to one flank, the SD-44s to another. The guns and mortars had fired off every round that could not be carried out on the long anticipated and planned-for retreat. That artillery fire had helped, but not enough.

She spared barely a glance for the long line of noncombatants trudging the road to Gualaca. Instead, she stood there, at the edge of the long meter-deep trench she’d had dug against this eventuality. Her eyes swept along the length of the trench, fixing in her mind the last few images of some of her most beloved children and grandchildren.

Digna had buried children before, several of them. But they had been only babies, dying — as children in the Third World often do — before she had had a chance to get to know them and love them as individuals. This was in every way worse.

The column of refugees-to-be was mostly silent until Digna ordered the gasoline poured into the trench. At that, with the overpowering smell of the fuel blown across the road by the breeze, the deaths became real. As if the first leaping flames were a signal, a long inarticulate cry of pain and woe arose.

She had not had the heart to order someone else to apply the flame. Instead, a grandson had handed her a lit torch. Almost — almost — she had broken down and wept as she turned her eyes away and tossed the torch into the trench.

Her grandson, the same one as had supplied the torch, touched Digna’s shoulder in sympathy. She shrugged it off, bitterly and impatiently.

Voice halfway to breaking, she snarled, “Never mind that. There’ll be a time for tears later. Get these people moving.”

Her clan and its retainers had retreated with the smell of fuel overlaying that of overdone pork.

Digna had looked upon that pyre exactly once, dry-eyed. It was still not the time for weeping.

Dry-eyed, too, she had prodded, cajoled, and beaten her family toward the northeast. There, all through the night, the lights of the town of Gualaca had served as a beacon. There Digna hoped to find safety, at least for a time. Perhaps there would even be medical care for her wounded kin.

It was not to be. Crossing over the bridge spanning the Rio Chiriqui southwest of the town, Digna had expected to find a defense prepared. What she’d found instead was a town bereft of leadership; the alcalde gone with his family, the militia officers gone with theirs. What was left was not much more than an armed mob without direction.

Direction Digna knew how to provide. She’d taken charge, ordered half a dozen men shot, and formed the rest into a semblance of a defense. With another twenty-four mortars and a dozen SD-44s, plus a fairly generous amount of ammunition, she’d held the bridge and the fords over the Rio Chiriqui for two days. This was long enough, if just barely, to send the noncombatants on foot thirty kilometers up the road northward in the direction of Chiriqui Grande on the Caribbean coast. The vehicles, and there had not been many of them, were commandeered to carry the wounded and the food. The point of that band was just cresting the mountains as the pursuing Posleen again found the fords to turn Digna’s flanks. She began another fighting retreat.

The little towns on the way were scooped up, the very young and very old being sent northward, along with most of the women, while the younger men and some of the women were pressed into the fighting arm.

Digna had to order a few more men, and two girls, shot along the way. She’d sent them to their deaths dry-eyed still. I can weep later.

There had been a moment, there where the fighting had been thickest, that Digna had thought with despair that she would not be able to hold, that the aliens would break through to feast on her charges. Then suddenly, as if by a miracle, the aliens’ flying sleds had all turned and disappeared southward. She had no idea why, but relished the thought that somewhere they were being badly enough hurt to cause such a change in priorities.

With the disappearance of the flying sleds, the Posleen normals had pulled back. With the terrible pressure from the aliens relieved, Digna was able to pull out her expanded forces mostly intact.

As he was probably her best field man, and perhaps because he was also one of her oldest friends, Tomas Herrera took the point.

“Demons of Fire, curse the Aldanat’ who condemned us to this,” whispered the low flying God King, Slintogan, as his tenar skipped over the mounded piles of his people’s slain. Scattered among the heaped, yellow, centauroid corpses were more than a few crashed tenar, clear indicators that more than mere normals had fallen trying to force a way across this river.

Internal gasses from decomposition had swelled the bodies, Slintogan noted with disgust. In many cases, the internal pressure had been strong enough to burst abdomens and spill out organs. And then the sun had gone to work; the stench was appalling.

For a moment the God King thought a curse in the general direction of the now escaped threshkreen, not for killing so many of his people, but for allowing so much valuable thresh to be wasted. As it was, with the bodies grown so overripe in the sun, even the normals could not be forced to eat of them.

It was enough to make the hardest heart weep.

But then, this is not the way of the local thresh. I wonder how it would be to grow up and grow old on a planet so abundant, in comparison to its population, that its inhabitants can afford to sneer at nourishing food.

My people, too, might have had such a chance, if those stinking, ignorant players at godhood, the Aldenata, had not meddled. “It’s for your own good… We know and you know not… War is the greatest of scourges… Trust and have faith in us.”

The God King laughed softly and bitterly. More likely this planet will change its direction of rotation than that a group of do-gooders with the power to meddle will refrain from it. Damn them.

The losses from the attack on the threshkreen ship had been so horrific that Slintogan, normally a leader of about four hundred, had had to bond with four times that many normals left bereft of their Gods. His brother God Kings were equally overtasked.

And the thresh must have a considerable lead by now. “A stern chase is a long chase,” as Finegarich the Reaver is reputed to have said.

The God King looked ahead and upward at the mist-shrouded mountains to the north. The road he could barely make out. Even so, he knew the road was there and had no doubt that the thresh who had butchered the People here by this body of flowing water would be fleeing up it.

A long chase and a tiring one. Worse still, a dangerous one as we will never know a moment in advance if the thresh have turned at bay and wait in ambush.

The sharp crest of the Cordillera Central loomed in the distance, bare rock surmounted by trees. Sometimes, Digna could catch sight of the walls of the crest, rising vertically over the more gentle slope below. It seemed to her that the rock walls never grew any closer.

The way up was hard, even though the winding, all-weather road was good. More that once Digna, or one of her followers, had to threaten to shoot anyone who refused to keep up. Many of them looked enviously at the horse she sometimes rode but more often led. There was no telling when she would need the horse for a burst to speed to some trouble spot. A rested horse would be capable of that burst where one wearied, even by so slight a load as carrying her ninety-pound frame, might not.

If some looked at Digna’s horse with envy it was as nothing compared to the greedy stares that followed the vehicles carrying the wounded, the lame, the infirm and the pregnant. Enough sniveling, or so thought some of the slackers, just might be enough to get a faster and easier ride to safety.

A great-grandson handed Digna a radio, announcing, “It’s Señor Herrera, Mamita.”

“Si, Tomas. Que quieres?” she answered. What do you want?

“I have a truckload of young men that we stopped,” Herrera said, from nearby Edilze’s battery position. It was on Edilze’s radio that he spoke.

“What are young men doing in a vehicle when we need them to fight? What are young men doing in a vehicle when we have babies being carried and pregnant women and the old and sick still walking?”

Unseen in the distance, Herrera looked over the dozen or so disreputable, bound prisoners standing under guard by the truck from which they had been removed at gun point. He sneered at them as he spoke.

“Dama, they stole the truck and forced out the previous occupants.”

Equally unseen by Herrera, Digna’s face turned red with rage. Cowardly bastards.

Digna’s late husband had once had a solution for criminals who trespassed on his land to commit their crimes. It was a solution much frowned on in more civilized circles but, in the outlying parts of Panama, and especially in earlier days, it had been a solution the implementation of which was unlikely to ever come to light.

“Hang them,” she said. “Hang them right beside the road.”

Herrera smiled at the twelve — no, it was thirteen — thieves as he took a coil of rope from the horn of his saddle.

He had no clue how to tie a proper hangman’s noose. No matter, a simple loop would do well enough. This he made and then tossed the coil over a convenient tree branch. A shudder ran through the truck thieves as the loop arced over the branch and came to rest a few feet off the ground.

Tomas gestured with his chin for one of the prisoners to be brought over.

Hands bound as they were, still the prisoner attempted to wrap his legs around a sapling as two of Herrera’s men grabbed him by the arms. A few kicks to his calves and thighs loosened the entwining legs. He began to beg as he was dragged toward the rope, the begging changing to an inarticulate scream as the loop was placed around his neck and half tightened.

“Did the sick and old who were designated to ride that truck plead not to be put off by you and your friends?” Tomas asked conversationally as he adjusted the loop to the neck.

“Please,” the thief begged. “Please don’t do this. I had a right to live. I have a right to live. Please…”

“Haul away,” Herrera commanded and the prisoner’s previous guards sprang to the rope and began to pull. Once the kicking feet were a meter off the ground he told them to tie the rope off, cut it and bring him the remainder… and more rope.

The gagging and kicking of the first had not stopped before the second, too, was elevated. In all it took Herrera almost an hour before all thirteen thieves were strung up and dead — or nearly so, a few pairs of feet still twitched. The bodies swayed gently in the wind, the smell of shit from loosened sphincters wafting on the breeze.

There’s a stinging advertisement for social responsibility, Herrera thought.

From her vantage point, hidden behind a large rock and some vegetation, Digna could make out the pursuing Posleen through her army issue field glasses. The aliens seemed to her to be hesitant, much more so than they had been during the assault on the bridges by Bijagual and Gualaca. Too, she noted, there seemed to be many fewer of their damned flying sleds. Lastly, from what she could tell, the aliens seemed… somehow… clumsy. Not that they were clumsy as individuals, no, but they seemed clumsy as groups, as if their leadership were being strained to the limits.

“Something has hurt them badly, after all,” she whispered to herself. “Blessings on whoever or whatever it was.”

Slower the aliens were. For all that, they were still moving quicker than her column of refugees. They had to be slowed down.

“But where?” she asked herself. Then she closed her eyes and tried to envision the whole area around the road and the pass behind her.

South of where the road wound across the mountains was a military crest, so called because it would allow long fields of grazing fire downward and long-range observation. The road itself S-turned through a pass carved out of the mountain rock through the topographical crest, the actual summit of the rise. To either side of that narrow pass rock walls rose vertically, occasional stunted trees clinging to their tiny crevasses and ledges.

The aliens aren’t built to climb those walls, Digna thought, not even with all their strength. Their sleds could get over but they’d do so without the supporting fires of the rest of their horde. That would make them easy meat for my boys.

Digna looked again at the rock walls. She found no place for a horse, even one aided by arms, to surmount the crest. But I can send people up. A tough climb, yes, but not impossible for human beings.

She mounted her horse and began forcing it through the still teeming column of refugees. It was especially difficult in the narrow pass, which was only a bit wider than the two lane highway through it. On the far — northern — side Digna found essentially what she had expected to see, a mirror image of the southern face.

The only difference is that the aliens are trying to climb while our people are trying to descend.

Digna tried to think back to what her instructors had said about the three types of crests. The military crest isn’t worth much, not with the trees in the way, she thought. The great thing about the reverse crest is that I can cover the pass and road from it, while the aliens can’t shoot our escaping people from the rear as long as we hold it. And inside that pass we can butcher them with the mortars… as long as the ammunition holds out, anyway. We can, I hope we can, buy enough time for the refugees to make it to the coast, to Chiriqui Grande where they might be able to escape by sea.

With those factors in mind, Digna began to make her plans.

The sign outside the abandoned school proclaimed, “Tactical Operations Center, 10^th United States Infantry Regiment (Apaches).”

Standing in the schoolyard, Preiss contemplated the curious things soldiers, who — as a class — tended to have no fixed home, would do to give the impressions and sensations of normalcy to create one. The sign was one such example. There had been no particularly good reason to bring it, absolutely no reason to make it the number one priority — well, tied for number one along with setting up the radios — in establishing the TOC, yet there it stood, even while the long-range antennas were still being erected. Preiss could only account for it by the need for soldiers, as people, to have someplace called home, with the trappings of home.

Preiss looked at the sign again, shook his head and entered the former schoolhouse turned tactical operations center. Inside he removed his helmet — useless thing really, given the enemy’s weaponry — and ran his fingers through sweat-soaked hair. His eyes wandered over the map, tracing not only the positions of his forward units but also the positions of the landing craft from the 1097^th Boat that were bringing in the rest of the troops of the regiment, their supplies, and their vehicles. The landing craft came in full of troops and gear and left crammed to the gunwales with anything up to five hundred civilians each, fleeing the oncoming horde. Curiously, thought Preiss, not a single one had yet called out “Gringos go home.”

The thing is, Preiss mourned, we don’t have the first goddamned idea of what’s ahead of us. My RPVs lasted maybe two minutes after cresting the Continental Divide. My lead scouts are still struggling up the jungle slopes. Well, he corrected, not “no idea.” I know there are about ten or fifteen thousand more civilians heading this way, refugees from the debacle in Chiriqui Province.

“XO,” Preiss said, “I’m taking my Hummer and heading north. Keep in touch. You’re in charge until I get back.”

Her horse was behind her, hidden among some loose boulders remaining from when the pass and road had been excavated. Digna, herself, lay forward, between two rocks, looking south through her binoculars.

Instead of leading, Digna saw, the alien flying sleds were following the mass of the ground-bound ones that first surmounted the southern military crest. The sleds fired occasionally, but only at the rear of the groups of the ground bound, as if driving them forward. With her field glasses to her eyes she scanned the Posleen on the leading edge of the wave. She’d seen their faces — similar faces, anyway — many times on the long march back from her home. They had struck her, before, as fierce, threatening and confident, to the extent one could read confidence on such a strange visage.

Somehow, they didn’t look confident anymore. Neither did they seem particularly fierce.

They’re frightened, she decided. They look just like rats caught in a trap. Or maybe like wild animals caught in a drive. Hmmmm.

Keeping low, Digna crawled back to her horse. The dirt, rock and asphalt were a pain to her breasts and belly but not so bad as a railgun shot would have been. Reaching the horse, she led it a few score meters through the pass and then mounted it, riding hell for leather for the northern military crest along which she had strung about half of her armed and able defenders.

Digna had exactly four working radios now, including those she had scavenged in Gualaca. Two of these were with the marksmen she had stationed to either side, east and west, of the highway. These had settled in among the trees and rocks atop the crest, protected from a ground assault by the sheer rock walls rising above the gentler slope below. The third radio was back with Edilze and the artillery and mortars. Digna had the fourth, waiting with yet another descendant by a sheltered spot more or less by the road that she had picked for her command post.

At that ad hoc command post Digna dismounted hastily and passed her reins to an armed thirteen-year-old great-great-granddaughter, waiting for just that purpose. The girl led the horse away as quickly as she was able to behind the shelter of the northern military crest. There the girl would wait, rifle in hand, until either her clan chief came to take the horse or the aliens overran her.

From behind the shelter of a bush, Digna looked out to where the road broke free of the artificially widened pass. The ground bound aliens entered the pass tentatively and fearfully. Followed by their God King, the normals crept through, and then began to spread out once they reached the northern side.

Digna waited until one of the aliens’ flying sleds was into the open, behind what looked to be a thousand or so of the others.

Calling her forward subordinates by name she ordered, “Jose, Pedro… kill the God Kings. Now.”

Within scant seconds a few shots from the crest were joined by dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Through her binoculars Digna saw the one sled that had come through the pass swept by a massive fusillade. Bullets sparked where they struck alien metal. In a few moments the God King riding the sled was riddled. The rifle fire continued, however, as men posted along the east-west running treeline continued to engage the few God Kings driving normals forward, south of the pass.

From her own position, centered on her line, Digna shouted, “One magazine. Open fire.”

The Posleen didn’t even return fire. Less still did they charge. Instead, with their point elements falling in shrieking agony and the strange thresh projectiles whistling around their ears, the bulk of the aliens turned and ran back through the pass from which they had come.

“Cease fire,” Digna shouted, the cry taken up and passed on by her underlings.

Turning to the nearest of her platoon leaders Digna then gave the order, “Take your men out and finish off the wounded. Carefully.”

Preiss had expected to have to fight a human wave of panicked civilians on his way up the winding road. Instead, he was surprised to see them walking calmly, in good order, and parting to leave a path for his Hummer as he approached. He smiled, more than a little pleased, to hear the murmuring, “Gracias a Dios. Los gringos son aqui.” Thank God; the gringos are here.

It was only a few minutes more travel before Priess understood the reason, or at least a substantial part of the reason, for the unexpected order and discipline of the refugees. Rounding a bend in the highway he came upon three men, kicking a few feet above the ground. A small, tough-looking crew of Panamanians watched them die, keeping onlookers at a distance. No sign proclaimed the crime for which the men were being hanged, but the fact that some very young and very old were being loaded onto a small pickup nearby suggested to Preiss the reason.

One of the tough-looking Panamanians, the eldest of the crew, detached himself and walked over to Preiss’s Hummer, a young boy in tow.

Through the boy he announced to Preiss, “Looters and thieves. They bring disorder and endanger better people than themselves. So… the rope.”

Preiss just shrugged. Whatever worked, worked. None of his business.

“I’m Colonel James W. Preiss, United States Tenth Infantry out of Fort Davis. And you would be, sir?”

Still through the young translator, Tomas Herrera introduced himself, adding, “Senior Vaquero to the lady, Digna Miranda. The lady is back there,” his head twitched back toward the pass, “holding off the centaurs.”

“Do you have any word on what’s going on back there?” asked Preiss.

Herrera shook his head in the negative. “There were only the four radios. The lady needed them all back there. She trusted me,” he added, not without some pride, “to see these through to safety.”

Preiss thought there was another sentence Herrera thought but failed to add. But I would rather be back there, with her, fighting.

Preiss snapped his fingers at a private riding in the back of his open-topped Hummer. The private, whose job it was to update the colonel’s map, handed the map over.

“Señor Herrera, can you tell me what I will find up ahead?”

Slintogan pounded the control column of his tenar, fuming with an outrage he had nothing and no one to vent upon. The Kessentai he had sent forward with this first probe of the pass were dead. The normals were too stupid to give any account of what had happened. All he knew was what he had seen and heard for himself: hidden threshkreen had killed the God Kings bringing up the rear of the probe and a sudden fusillade had driven the normals on point into a panic-stricken flight.

Fuming still, he contemplated the natural obstacle to his front. Were it lower, he would simply clear away the threshkreen with concentrated fire from plasma cannon. But the angle here was all wrong for that.

“And the blasted tenar will only float so far up,” he cursed. “They might make it, some of the newer ones, but alone, without ground support, they’d be abat bait. And it would take cycles and cycles to blast away all that rock. And I do not have cycles.”

More of the same then, only much more of the same. One nail will drive the other. And it isn’t like we have any shortage of normals to feed into the grinder.

Forcefully, Slintogan issued his orders to the several dozen Kessentai hovering, clustered, nearby. If he couldn’t get a direct line of fire to clean off the summit with plasma fire, he could at least have the treetops blasted, and probably set them alight. Fifteen of his God Kings had that task. This time, instead of a mere five to drive the normals forward, he would use four times as many, plus a few. Even if he lost some that should leave enough to ensure that the drive didn’t lose momentum.

Of course, momentum of the nestling into the preserved-nestling-in-an-intestine-casing grinder is, from the nestling’s point of view, not a particularly good thing.

The aliens still looked frightened, in Digna’s binoculars, but they looked perhaps a little more determined too.

This one is going to be tougher, she thought.

At that point, the sky was lit by dozens of plasma bolts, streaking across. Most hit the treetops, which began to burn.

“We have to pull back one hundred meters, Mamita,” said one of her grandsons over the radio. “It’s too hot, literally too hot, to stay here.”

“One hundred meters,” Digna agreed. “No more. And be prepared to reoccupy on the double.”

“Si, Mamita.”

“Edilze, this is Abuela. Are you ready to fire?”

The young granddaughter — well, she was young to Digna for all that Edilze was just into middle age — answered as well, “Si, Mamita.”

“What’s your time of flight again?” Digna asked.

“Thirty-seven seconds from you giving the command to impact,” Edilze answered.

“Fine. I want your ammunition bearers standing by with rounds in their hands for when I call.”

“They already are, Mamita.”

Digna smiled, briefly, at the calm in her granddaughter’s voice. Edilze was one of the good ones.

The thought was interrupted by an eruption of rifle fire from her line. The oncoming horde had reached maximum effective engagement range, about five hundred meters for targets as large as the centaurs, as closely packed together as they were. They were falling almost as fast as they were advancing. Return fire seemed to be going high, for the most part. Maybe they needed closer supervision from their God Kings to use their railguns accurately. Digna didn’t know. In any case, she heard few human screams of pain or calls for “Medic!”

“Edilze, Abuela. Give me thirty rounds. Fire.”

“Roger, Mamita. Firing now.”

Digna thought she felt the firing of the heavy mortars far to the rear. Certainly, she wouldn’t actually hear them for several seconds more. She shouted out some encouragement to her troops, and gathered two clackers for the gringo-provided claymore mines that fronted her troops’ firing line. Mentally she counted down, “Thirty-five… thirty-four… thirty-three…”

The Posleen must be terribly close, she felt. Two of the militia flanking her ceased fire for a moment to fix their bayonets. Digna risked a look over the parapet fronting the enemy and saw that the lead aliens were, indeed, no more than seventy-five meters away, falling almost as fast as they closed. The key word, of course, was “almost.”

Still counting, “Eleven… ten… nine…” she squeezed the clackers.

Instantly, thirty-four claymores detonated, sending nearly twenty-four thousand ball bearings screaming into the Posleen. For a brief moment, the alien advance stopped cold. In this respite, the firing from Digna’s defenders picked up again, seeking out lone aliens through the smoke of the claymores’ blasts.

“Five… four… three… two…”

Ahead, in the pass, heavy mortar shells began exploding right in among the tightly pressed normals. Their own shattered bones added to the flying debris that felled the aliens, right and left.

The mortar fire lasted only for a few seconds, yet in those seconds a gap was opened up between the Posleen nail and the other nails driving it.

In that pause, while stunned and confused normals milled about over the entrails of their peers, Digna stood up, rifle in hand.

Ostentatiously unsheathing a bayonet to show what she wanted her children, real and adopted, to do, she affixed it to the front of her rifle.

“Fix bayonets… Chaaarge!” she screamed, launching her less-than-five-foot frame forward.

With an inarticulate cry, her children leapt forward as well. They soon overtook their tiny commander, reaching the confused Posleen well before she did. As stunned as they were, and terrified by thresh that fought back, the Posleen barely resisted. A few tried to fight and were gunned or stabbed down. Others stood there, helpless, while bayonets sought out their vitals.

The bulk of them ran like nestlings from the sausage maker, pouring into the gap created by the one short blast of intense mortar fire. At the gap, the lead Posleen in the rout ran head on into the next wave following. Instead of being forced back into the fray, however, the routers simply barreled into their fellows, bellowing, snarling, scratching, biting and slashing to get away from the little demons that followed on their heels.

The panic spread from there as the lead elements of the next Posleen wave caught it from their routing fellows. They turned about, and in turning, turned still others. In moments the entire leaderless mess was racing headlong toward the Pacific Ocean, just visible to the south.

South of the pass Slintogan’s crest sagged.

“Demons of shit and fire,” he whispered, “but I hate these humans.”

Using the communication device on his tenar, he ordered his God Kings to fall back as well. There would be no stopping this rout until the normals had exhausted themselves, and that would not happen for hours. No sense in wasting his few intelligent and well armed followers on what was, for now, a hopeless endeavor.

Tomorrow. We’ll try again tomorrow.

To the north, Preiss made a call back to his TOC, at Chiriqui Grande. The troops were landing in mass now, trucks rolling from the landing craft one after another. The S-4, his logistics officer, was organizing the regimental trucks to begin moving the troops forward tonight. By morning, so he was told, the regimental artillery, a battery of 105 millimeter guns, would be in position to support all the way to Hill 2213 and a few kilometers past.

Someone, that old woman Herrera had mentioned, so Preiss supposed, was still holding the pass, it seemed. The steadily streaming refugees confirmed this. Preiss could only be impressed. He pictured in his mind some tough ancient crone, bent over and walking with the aid of a cane. She must be one tough old bird, to be hanging on this long, with scrapings and cast offs. I hope we can get there by tomorrow.

In the dark tropical night Digna passed off control of the mortars to her two groups of sentinels on either side of the pass. She’d have given her newly reborn virginity in a heartbeat for some of the light amplifying or thermal sights the gringos had in such abundance. But, though the Norteamericanos had been fairly generous to Panama, most of what had been gifted had gone to the regulars, not little bands of militia like hers. In her illicit trading she had almost, but not quite, managed to secure a brace of the larger night vision devices for her battery.

I should have met those black market bastards’ price, she fumed silently.

A freight train racket rattled by overhead, followed by a hollow pop. The pop was followed in turn by a fluting sound as the casing of a mortar illumination round slid off of a shell and rotated down to the ground. A few seconds later it impacted with an audible thud. At about the same time the illumination shell’s parachute deployed and the flare lit upon a scene of utter frightfulness, massed ranks of Posleen moving into an assault position. They filled the landscape as far as the eye, aided by aerial flare, could see.

A plaintive voice came from her radio. “Mamita, there’s a sea of them out there, just forming up in rectangles and going to sleep on their feet. Can’t I please use some HE on them?”

Digna thought about that. Does it make a bit of difference if we kill some now? Does it matter if we cost them some sleep or make them move a bit? Somehow, I think not. Better things to use the shells on. Better times to use them. Like tomorrow, at first light, just before they move into the attack.

Into her radio she answered, firmly, “No. We’ll hit them in the morning. Just use the illumination rounds — and use them sparingly — to keep track of where they are for the mortars. At an hour before first light” — she had never quite gotten around to explaining the concept of Beginning of Morning Navigable Twilight to her girls and boys so “an hour before first light” would have to do — “we’ll hit them where they’re assembled. It ought to buy us some more time and kill a fairly large number of the swine.”

“Si, Abuela,” the young man on the other end answered. “I’m sending coordinates to Edilze as I identify them.”

“Good man, Grandson. Your abuela is proud of you. Let me know if they begin to stir.”

“Mamita, it’s time,” the boy announced, handing a cup of steaming coffee to Digna as she sat abruptly upright. She looked around, guiltily, before fixing her eyes on her great-grandson’s dim face. Nothing untoward. Good. At least I didn’t make any noise. Either that, or the boy’s too polite to let me know he knows. Damn these hormones, anyway.

She took the coffee, sipped at it, then rubbed some of the caked crud from her eyes. She looked around at her surroundings. Still darker than three feet up a well digger’s ass at midnight. Also good.

Digna consulted her watch, an incongruous dainty, gold thing; a gift from her husband on their fiftieth anniversary. She’d been dreaming of her wedding night when the boy had roused her…

No time for that now.

“Radio,” she ordered, and the boy passed over the handset.

“Edilze, this is Abuela, over.”

“Here, Abuela,” the radio came back, instantly. Yes, Edilze is one of the good ones.

“Ammunition status, over?” Digna asked.

“Sixty-two rounds illumination; six hundred thirty-seven rounds high explosive.”

“Firing status, over?”

“I’ve preplanned thirty-three targets plus almost continuous illumination until the sun rises,” the granddaughter answered. “Three of the targets are the center of the pass and two hundred meters north and south of it.”

“Good, wait, over. Group one, group two, Abuela, over.”

“Here, Mamita,” “Aqui, Abuela,” came the answers.

“Rouse your people, then stand by to adjust fires. Abuela, out.”

Digna stood and looked left and right. There was movement there, to both sides, as her people roused themselves from slumber and resumed their defensive positions. She passed the word by runner to either side to stand to and be ready.

When she was certain her people were as ready as they would be she rekeyed the radio microphone and ordered, “Edilze, Abuela. Commence firing.”

Preiss jerked awake as the still jungle air was rent by repeated explosions. He’d had no idea that there was a mortar position nearby when he’d ordered his driver to pull over the night before. Now there could be no doubt of it as the muzzle flash of multiple firing mortars lit the area like a strobe light.

“What the fuck? Rodriguez,” he ordered his driver, “go over to that gun position and find out what’s happening.”

The driver “yessirred” and took off at a lope, rifle carried loosely in his left hand.

Preiss then called the truck column by radio and asked their position. Under his flashlight, he saw on the map that they were no more than three kilometers behind him.

“Wake their asses up and get them moving,” he ordered. “Now. I’ll meet them on the road.”

He called for his S-2, or Intelligence Officer. “Where are the scouts?”

“Boss, they’re about two kilometers short of the summit. I held them up after sundown, rather then send them into a firefight with mixed Posleen and friendlies.”

Preiss chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment.

“I’m not sure you did right, but I’m not sure you did wrong. In any case, get ’em moving again. What’s their ETA at the pass?”

“Three hours… maybe four,” the S-2 returned. “The jungle’s a bitch up that way.”

“Push them,” Preiss insisted.

“Roger.”

The driver, Rodriguez, returned. Breathlessly he said, “Sir, there’s eight heavy mortars there in a large pasture. Woman in charge — handsome woman, sir, you oughta see — says they’re doing a ‘countapddepp.’ Sir, what’s a ‘countapddepp’?”

Preiss mentally translated — “counter-preparation” — and answered, “A damned smart move, sometimes.”

Slintogan’s Artificial Sentience beeped, then announced, “Incoming fires.”

“Who? Wha’?”

“Lord, I have twenty-seven… no, thirty-six… no, forty-two… no… Lord, I have a demon-shit-pot full of shells coming in at high angle. Impact in… five… four… three… two… one. Impact.”

Overhead one of the dirty threshkreen artificial stars burst into flame, illuminating the scene nearly as brightly as day, but with an evil yellow light that moved and, as it did, made the shadows creep across the landscape. Simultaneously, seven, then fourteen, then twenty-one explosions blossomed in and around one of his larger gatherings of normals.

The normals, awakened in such a horrid manner, began to bleat and scream, searching frantically about them for the source of the danger. Not finding one, a few began to fight amongst themselves. That oolt began to break up, the efforts of its one God King to keep his charges in good order turning futile fast.

That God King called his chief, Slintogan, pleading for assistance in controlling his herd. Even as the senior Kessentai was forming an answer, the threshkreen fires shifted suddenly onto a different group as a second “star shell” burst into light overhead. The God King in command of that oolt not only had more warning but was made of sterner stuff as well. He blasted down any of his normals who so much as looked ready to bolt. This kept the mass of the aliens in formation right until one 120mm shell landed directly on the God King’s tenar. This not only blasted the Kessentai into yellow mist and bits no more than hand sized, it also caused the containment field of the tenar’s power source to collapse. The oolt didn’t break under that semi-nuclear blast; it was incinerated.

With only the briefest delay, the threshkreen fires shifted yet again to hammer a third band. This one, like the first, began to come apart and nothing its leader could do would stem the flood to the rear.

The senior Posleen communicator beeped twice. “Slintogan, we can’t just sit here and take this. The normals are going feral.”

Slintogan considered simply abandoning the field to the threshkreen, pulling back out of range of their cowardly weapons as yet another oolt began to disintegrate.

No, this is not the way of the People. We attack!

The air was split with a cacophony of competing sounds: the roars and snarls of the Posleen, creeping ever closer, the screams of the human defenders as the Posleen fire sought and found them out, the splitting of branches and trees as railgun and plasma fire struck, and the steady drumming of overheated machine guns sweeping the deadly ground north of the pass with fire.

The attack showed no signs of abating. The Posleen crawled over their own wounded and dead to get at the humans, dying as they did so. Still, more came to replace the fallen and to re-lay the already thick carpet of broken, bleeding bodies on either side of, and within, the pass.

A radio call came from Edilze, back with the mortars, her voice breaking with sadness. “Abuela, I’m nearly out of ammunition for the mortars.”

That call was death, Digna knew. Her men and boys — and, yes, girls — had only held on so far with the support of the heavy mortars firing steadily from the rear. Without that, they would not last five minutes against a full charge.

Grabbing a packable radio from the back of his Hummer and weaving his left arm through one of the straps, Preiss turned away from the vehicle just as the first of his companies — truck mounted — reached him. He held up a fist for the trucks to hold up along the road. Then he looked to where the sound of mortar fire, heavy all morning, was beginning to abate. Muttering a curse he began to force his way through the thick jungle growth toward the clearing his driver had told him of. There he observed a short, dark woman pointing at a mortar, its overheated barrel steaming in the wet air. The woman’s long, midnight black hair hung down limply behind her.

“Numero dos… fuego.”

The woman seemed to be silently counting off the seconds until continuing, “Numero tres… fuego.”

Yes, this was a bad sign, especially when fighting against the Posleen. Preiss swept his eyes over the scene, taking in the small piles of mortar ammunition remaining and matching them against the rather large piles of waste from used ammunition, opened boxes and cast-off, tarred cardboard cylinders.

Yep, they’re fucked.

Preiss detached the microphone from a rectangular ring on the radio’s backpack, pressing the push-to-talk button as it reached his mouth.

“This is Six. I need ten tons worth of 120mm mortar ammunition at…” He consulted his map, and gave off the six digit grid of the nearest point along the road to the clearing. “I’ll meet the trucks there.”

“Be a couple of hours, Six,” the S-4 answered. “The road’s become a crawling nightmare of a jam, with our trucks and the refugees all mixed in. The only way I can get you that ammunition is to take it from our own guns.”

“Fuck!” Preiss exclaimed, though not into the radio. Then, again keying the mike, he said, “Do the best you can. And keep me posted.”

“There is some good news, Six. The regimental battery is almost ready to fire on the crest and a bit beyond. They’re breaking down the ammunition now.”

“How do you know?” Preiss asked.

“I’m with them now, about fifteen klicks north of you,” the S-4 answered.

“Roger. Let me know the minute the guns are ready to fire.”

“Wilco, Six.” I will comply.

Seeing there was nothing to be done for the Panamanian mortars beyond whatever encouragement seeing a gringo officer nearby might provide — damned little, Preiss was sure — he turned back towards his vehicle.

When he reached the Hummer a half dozen officers and a first sergeant were standing by. They saluted as their commander announced, “Mad Dog Alpha, sir, ready for duty.”

Preiss thought for perhaps half a second and ordered, “Back to your vehicles. Blow your horns like speeding drunks. I’ll lead. We’re going to charge like lunatics until we reach the last possible dismount point. Then we’re going straight into the attack to clear and hold that pass. Any questions?”

A couple of the men gulped. One paled a bit. The first sergeant just bent over slightly and spat tobacco juice on the ground.

“Right. No questions.” Priess pumped his right fist in the air, twice. “Let’s go then, motherfuckers!” he cheered.

Both of her flanking machine guns were down now, their crews overrun and butchered. Digna didn’t know whether they had been manned by her own, or by the many auxiliaries she had press ganged in Gualaca. On the other hand, did that really matter? They were all hers by now.

She’d pulled her remaining troops into a shallow upside down “U.” Less than half remained now after the latest Posleen assault. From this “U” more machine guns continued to rake the pass.

Not enough though. Never enough. They’re still coming through.

We’re going to die, Digna thought, sadly. And I have failed.

From behind her, Digna heard a cacophony of blaring car or truck horns. She wondered, briefly, whether Tomas Herrera had sent the trucks back to get her and her militia. If he had, he was going to get the sharp end of her tongue… if she lived… which she wouldn’t, trucks or no.

A camouflage-clad body flopped into the hole next to her. Digna gaped at the strange apparition: a gringo, young-seeming, but with the collar eagle of a senior officer, a colonel, she thought.

The gringo smiled warmly. “Colonel James Preiss, señorita,” the gringo confirmed. “Can you tell me where I can find the commander here? I understand she is an old woman.”

Digna shook her head slowly, speechless. A sudden rise in the rate of fire to her flanks and front caused her to look up over her parapet until the gringo’s strong hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her back to cover. It was as well that he did because moments later artillery began falling to her front at a rate that suggested a bottomless pit of shells. Shell shards whirred overhead like a swarm of maniac mosquitoes on a four day bender.

The gringo risked a quick glance over the parapet, ducked back down and spoke a few commands into the radio he carried on his back. The shells began walking away from the tip of Digna’s “U” and toward the pass. At the same time the rate of rifle and machine gun fire, coming mostly from the flanks, began to pick up.

When Digna saw the gringo colonel lift his head again over the parapet and leave it there she joined him. Yes, there was danger of a stray or aimed Posleen round, but that was just part of the job.

From her vantage point she saw, as she doubted the Posleen could see, shadowy figures moving, professionally, from tree to tree and rock to rock. The men, gringos of course, kept up a steady drumbeat of fire, some shooting from cover as others moved. In the center, first hammered by gringo artillery then slashed from the flanks by gringo machine guns, the Posleen were reeling back toward the pass.

She didn’t know what the words meant, but she plainly recognized the tone, when a single Norteamericano, from somewhere on the right, called out, “Mad Dog, muthafuckas. Mad Daawwwggg.”

At least a hundred gringo voices joined in: “Woofwoofwoofwoofwoof… yipyipyipyipyip… ahhhrooooo!”

Digna’s mouth opened, slackly, as she turned away to the north. Suddenly weak, she let her back slide down the dirt of the parapet, her untucked uniform shirt moving up and allowing dirt to gather on her back. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to the God she believed had saved her and her people.

Chuckling over the “Mad Dog” — spirited troops were such a joy to command! — Preiss asked again, “Can you direct me to your leader, miss?”

Not quite understanding, Digna answered, “Somewhere in Panama City or eaten by now, señor.”

“No, no,” Preiss corrected. “I mean your leader here.”

“Oh,” she said, wearily. “That is me.”

“You?” Preiss tried, and failed, to keep the incredulity from his voice.

Digna nodded her red head a few times, then elaborated, “Lieutenant Digna Miranda, Panama Defense Forces, Chiriqui Militia. Me,” she concluded.

Preiss, slightly embarrassed, looked once more over the parapet. The Posleen lay thick in bleeding, broken heaps. The limbs of some still moved and twitched, their owners mewling piteously. At least, they twitched and moaned until some soldier put a merciful round into them. Taking it all in, he whistled, knowing that by far the bulk of the destruction was due to this little red-haired Panamanian girl and not to his well equipped, superbly trained regular line infantry regiment.

“Well, it’s over now, Lieutenant Miranda. We’ll take over from here. Your people are safe.”

Safe? Digna repeated, mentally. My people are safe? More than half of my people are dead, gringo, dead and — the most of them — eaten.

She felt the beginnings of a tear forming in one eye. In a moment it had become a flood as the old woman rocked back and forth, sobbing, “Mis hijos, mis hijos.”

Now, finally, it was a time she could cry. In the gringo colonel’s enveloping arms, she did.