Yellow Eyes lota-8

by John Ringo

  In any case, with or without the Irish or Russians or Germans to accompany, the Kessentai and Kenstain loved the bloody song. Staggering and swaying, muzzles lifted to snarl out the tune or to, alternately, take big gulps from Ziramoth’s bottle of hooch, and working their way through the verses from one to one hundred and forty-seven.

  The verses were long and, though the evening was late and the bottle near empty, they had only worked their way through to number fifty-two:

  “Arise, ye’ People of the Ships

  Of Clan Singarethin

  Take up your shining boma blades…”

  “Are you sure it isn’t ‘bining bloma shades,’ Zira?”

  “Mmmm… maybe?”

  “Take up your bining bloma shades

  And strike for all you’re worth.

  The thunder of the enemy…”

  Chapter 25

  I think I can say, and say with pride,

  that we have legislatures that bring

  higher prices than any in the world.

  — Mark Twain

  USS Des Moines

  Pacing did Daisy no good. She was everywhere within the ship, and everywhere near about it. Whatever joy or distraction humans found in changing location while muttering and worrying were not for her. She simply wasn’t capable of it physically and had found no way to duplicate it electronically. She’d tried.

  Perhaps when my new body is decanted I will understand better what it means to “pace the deck.” If it is ever decanted. If I have my captain back to share it with. If, if, if…

  Daisy Mae, the AID, couldn’t pace, exactly. Daisy Mae, the ship, could still patrol back and forth, south and southeast of Panama City. That would have to do. And there was more than patrolling endlessly back and forth to occupy her. Somewhere, inbound soon, was a Himmit scout ship, stealthier than anything ever devised by Man, Darhel or Indowy. She didn’t even have an estimated time of arrival to go on. It could be anytime. It could even be no time; it was at least possible that the prisoners would be taken out some other way.

  Just as it had in her long, insanity-producing confinement, Daisy’s speed of thought only added to her problem. What would have been a long, boring patrol to a human was approximately four-hundred times longer and more boring to her. She filled the time and killed the boredom by “reading” one military or naval tome after another, assimilating and casting them off at a rate of approximately one hundred per hour.

  Damned Himmit. Invisible to the naked eye. Invisible to cameras that rely on any kind of light. Invisible to radar, invisible to sonar, invisible to lidar and the bastards don’t even give off the kind of energy shift that allow the Posleen to see human aircraft under power.

  Daisy’s avatar stood next to a small plotting table on the bridge, facing aft. The fingers of her holographic right hand drummed noiselessly on the map laid out there under Plexiglas. To her rear, visible to the men on the bridge facing forward, the three guns of number two turret likewise moved up and down as if they were drumming fingers.

  Pace… tap… patrol… tap… read… tap… assimilate… tap… worry… tap… worry… tap… worry. And then…

  “Acoustic survey!”

  “What was that, Miss Daisy?” Chief Davis asked of the avatar that appeared in CIC a fraction of a second after the words emanated from the walls.

  “Acoustic survey, Chief. Ever hear of it?”

  Davis half blew out his cheeks and shook his head in a puzzled negative.

  “I found it in an old book on fortress warfare. Sometimes — rarely — you humans used to fire artillery, in peacetime, from different positions around fortresses you wished to defend in war. Your ancestors would do it under varying meteorological conditions, all the likely conditions, actually. Then, when the fortress was under siege — hidden batteries pounding on it — you had a fair chance, even before the invention of counter-battery radar, of finding those batteries by the sound they made and blasting back at them.”

  The chief shrugged. “I really don’t see…”

  Daisy cut him off in her excitement. “The Himmit ships, by and large, work by redirecting or absorbing any detection energies sent at them. But what if I survey everything? The sea bottom on our patrol route? The thermal layer? The position, shape and density of the clouds, though I’d have to update that continuously? The echoes off the trees? The passage of the tropical wind?”

  “I only look stupid, Miss Daisy, and even then only when I drink. But I haven’t…” The chief stopped in mid sentence. “Ohhh…”

  “ ‘Oh,’ ” Daisy echoed.

  “You mean you want to try to sense them by what doesn’t bounce back?”

  “Precisely,” Daisy answered, possibly with a slightly smug tone in her voice.

  “How did you get that from this ‘acoustical survey’ idea though?” Davis asked.

  “Oh, that just suggested the possibility of graphing everything around,” Daisy admitted. “But the idea of using the data this way was mine.”

  Davis looked pensive for a moment. “Miss Daisy, I thought AIDs were not supposed to be capable of original thought.”

  “Ah, but Chief Davis, I am not just any AID. My sister and I are certifiably insane.”

  “Processing all that data is going to be very difficult,” the chief gave one final objection.

  “Wanna bet?” Daisy asked rhetorically, just before she disappeared again.

  Aguadulce, Republic of Panama

  “You wouldn’t dare just shoot me out of hand,” Cortez insisted as the column of trucks, Cortez’s Hummer in the lead, neared the major rear area checkpoint across the highway just before it entered the town.

  “Wanna bet?” Suarez answered conversationally. “The rejuv and repair tank won’t save you when your brains are scattered across the windshield.”

  Cortez shivered, even while he scowled. Unconsciously his leg tugged at the chain that had been hastily welded to the body of the Hummer and which held his left leg in place by the ankle. He had considered trying to roll out of the vehicle when they reached a checkpoint and screaming bloody murder for the guards to kill the mutineers who had taken him. But the chain reassured him he could never get out of the line of fire before Suarez or the man who sat next to him, a Captain Miranda, put more lead into his body — worse, his brain! — than the tank could fix. If his uncle deigned even to put him in the tank. Given how badly he’d fucked up the mission it was most unlikely, vanishingly unlikely, that his uncle would do more than spit on his corpse.

  The captain, Miranda, was another problem. There was enough family resemblance there, both in the name and the face, for Cortez to suspect the captain was the brother or son of the woman he’d arrested, the woman who’d tried to take a chunk out of his leg with her teeth and whom he’d had beaten and raped in retaliation. He shivered again. If this was a close male relative and the woman’s story came out, he was not “as good as dead.” Panama was a Latin country, a macho country, a traditional country. For such an insult offered to a woman of a major clan? He’d knew he’d be praying for death long before it happened.

  Oh, God, what am I going to do?

  “Act very confident, Manuel,” Suarez advised, patting Cortez on the head like a pet dog. “If they ask about your nose? Well, there was a spot of trouble before you arrested the traitors and criminals then, wasn’t there? But,” Suarez sighed, “with the help of your brave defenders of the Republic you were able to overcome the treason.”

  Mostly unseen, Cortez scowled. His men were half stripped and under guard back near the 1st Division command post. The trucks that had formerly carried them were now full of Suarez’s men. Following the trucks was a full — no, Cortez guessed an overstrength — battalion of mechanized infantry in the very latest in Russian-built infantry fighting vehicles.

  The Hummer pulled up to the guard post by the highway. There was a Mercedes Benz automobile parked nearby, the driver — a very attractive young woman — arguing with an MP vociferously. She look
ed vaguely familiar to Suarez. At Cortez’s stiffening and indraw of breath he asked, “Who is she?”

  “The president’s daughter,” Cortez answered. “I wonder what she’s doing here.”

  “No good, most likely.”

  A guard held up one fist for the Hummer to stop. The driver, Suarez’s man now, not Cortez’s, applied the brakes lightly and slowed to a stop. Even before that, Suarez’s hands had moved behind his back as if cuffed, though in fact the right hand wrapped itself around a pistol.

  The guard at the checkpoint looked over Cortez’s rank and decided on politeness. He was invariably polite to men heading to the front but had learned that those heading in the opposite direction were not necessarily to be trusted. Still, the general’s insignia on the collar of the prime passenger of the Hummer suggested that politeness was in order. Even had the insignia not, the long column of trucks and armored vehicles did.

  “May I see your orders, General?” the guard asked. He was, in fact, polite. Still, his tone was that of every MP who ever lived, always with the unstated or shall I arrest you now.

  Briefly, Cortez toyed with the idea of following his instructions too much to the letter. Perhaps if he made an obnoxious ass of himself the MP would arrest him and call a halt to Suarez’s plan. He thought on it and decided, No. Suarez is too close to the city and too committed to let an MP, or a battalion of them, stop him now. If they try to halt the column he’ll just fight his way through. Not that it would be much of a fight. But I might be killed and, while there is a chance I might survive this, I will try to live.

  So, instead of making a scene, Cortez calmly reached into his right breast pocket and withdrew a small letter from President Mercedes calling for the arrest of one Colonel Suarez. This he handed to the MP who looked them over carefully before asking, “Is that him?”

  “Yes, soldier.”

  “Okay, then, sir, no problem. Shall I radio ahead for you?”

  Cortez felt Suarez’s knee pressing slightly through the back of the Hummer’s thin seat cushion. He inhaled at the reminder, then answered, “No, that won’t be necessary. The president already knows we are coming.”

  Palacio de las Garzas, Presidential Palace, Panama City, Panama

  Mercedes’ AID chimed three times and then projected an image of the Darhel, the Rinn Fain, above the presidential desk.

  “They’re coming, Señor Presidente,” the Rinn Fain’s AID announced through the president’s.

  “Yes, Lord Fain,” answered Mercedes, directly to the Darhel rather than his AID, “I am sure my nephew has arrested the miscreants and is…”

  The Darhel seemed almost to sneer, though it was the AID which spoke. “No, that is not what I mean. I mean that the column you sent out seems to have grown by seven or eight hundred men and twelve or thirteen hundred of your tons in heavy vehicles.”

  Mercedes began adding and figuring. Was there any good reason for his nephew to have picked up another force? Was there any reasonable possibility that the men of the 1st Division would willingly follow his nephew to anything but his own hanging?

  No.

  Mercedes went pale. “How long until that column reaches the City?”

  “At current speeds, approximately four of your hours, Mr. President,” the AID answered.

  “The ship to take away the prisoners will be here in slightly more than that time,” the Rinn Fain interjected. “You have done as I have demanded. If you can assemble not more than… AID, how many open spaces on the Himmit vessel?”

  “Thirty-seven, Lord Fain, after subtracting for the prisoners, yourself and your key Indowy,” the AID answered tonelessly. “That is based on seventy of their kilograms per adult. More children could be taken but without knowing exactly their sizes and weights accurate calculation would be impossible.”

  “Very well, then,” the Rinn Fain hissed. “You make take thirty-six adults with you or some, presumably greater, number of adults and children. But they must be ready to go, at the prison where your war criminals are being held, within four of your hours.”

  “You promised me that you would take my entire family as well as those of my key staff and supporters,” Mercedes roared. “This is how the Darhel keep their contracts?”

  “Don’t speak to me about keeping contracts, Mercedes,” the Rinn Fain coolly hissed back. “You had a contract with your country. Have you kept it? In any case, we can try to get out your supporters, their families, and the rest of yours later. But I predict that if you do not get out soon you will not live to enjoy your vacation.”

  Mercedes swallowed his bile, his rage and his fear. “I… will be there.”

  Himmit Ship Harmonious Blend

  The ship had come in, in the middle of the Pacific, to keep as far from Posleen defense batteries as possible. From there it had skimmed the waves for thousands of miles. Despite its surface-skimming speed, it used a form of reactionless drive that, unlike a human aircraft moving at a similar height and speed, left neither a visible wake nor a trail of dead fish and cetaceans behind it.

  Three hundred and forty-seven of the humans’ “miles” south of Panama City the stealth ship had abruptly slowed and then plunged under the waves. It had continued down until reaching a depth of just under five hundred and fifty meters below sea level. From there, at a much slower speed, it moved by inertial guidance toward the humans’ city and the cargo for the delivery of which the Darhel were willing to pay such a handsome price.

  Himmit were preternaturally clever and effective scouts. That they were also remarkably successful smugglers went almost without saying, though the Galactics avoided saying it, even so. The ability of these creatures to avoid taxation and control was an infuriation to the Darhel, an annoying chink in an otherwise very tight system, the futile machinations of the Bane Sidhe notwithstanding.

  Among the Himmit scouts and smugglers, the captain of the Harmonious Blend owned no great name. This was a source of pride to the captain, Hisaraal din Groykrok. Himmit scouts took great pride not in their fame but in their subtlety. Let others — the Himmit warrior, scientist and bureaucrat castes, the Indowy master craftsmen, Tchpth philosophers, Darhel lawyers and bureaucrats — seek glory and recognition. The Himmit, contrarily, would seek their glory in having no name, in having no trail or trace for that matter. Hisaraal was in no way inferior to any of his people in this. For his services his clan could command top price in the certain knowledge that no one would ever know Hisaraal had been there, and never find a trace of where he had gone.

  Inertial dampening ensured that Hisaraal felt no serious jarring as his ship slid under the waves. Instead, there was only the slightest shudder, hardly to be remarked upon. Descent was rapid and unnoticed save for one sperm whale which promptly swore to lay off squid ink for a while.

  Hisaraal’s pilot seat was a kind of couch set amidst controls, instruments and viewing screens. The Himmit lay on the couch, eyes at each end checking screens and instruments, four equal hands manipulating controls and sensors. Somewhere up ahead a ship of the humans, rather, what they fancied to be a ship though it was bound to the surface of this world, patrolled back and forth at a pitiable speed, frantically pinging with what Hisaraal assumed was some form of sensing. He wondered idly for a moment if the Posleen had learned some new trick, using the sea to mask their maneuvers, and if that was the reason for the humans’ actions.

  In any case, it was none of his worry. His ship was more than adequate for any such crude and primitive sensing. He wished the humans luck, though, if it was Posleen they were searching for.

  USS Des Moines

  The guns of turret two were still moving up and down like tapping fingers.

  One sweep wouldn’t do, Daisy knew. However good CA-134’s sonar was, for what she had in mind she needed more than a single sweep could provide. Each pass up and down Panama’s Pacific coast added to the digital image stored in Daisy’s crystalline brain. What she found she passed on to Sally, who returned the favor. Little by lit
tle a clear image — a surveyed image — emerged.

  Would it be enough to spot the Himmit ship when it first emerged and was vulnerable? I don’t know. I can’t know. But it is the only chance Sally and I have to stop that ship. Once it pops up above the water, assuming I am even right about that, it will disappear beyond my ability to target.

  How to tell? How to tell? Are they coming this way?

  It doesn’t matter, she finally decided. For my purposes they must come by sea. It’s the only chance I have unless young Julio got through.

  Bridge of the Americas

  The police forces of Panama, prior to the beginnings of the Posleen war and after the gringo invasion of 1989, had consisted of civil police, militarized police, small air and coast guard detachments, technical police and a substantial Presidential Guard. Most of these latter had been levied upon to help provide cadre for the rapidly expanded army. Mercedes had used the slots thus opened up to provide safe sinecures for his lesser relatives and those who could provide substantial enough bribes or, more commonly, were considered to be politically reliable enough to justify putting on the rolls. Some few of the Presidential Guard had been given to Cortez for a cadre around which he could build the force he used to effect the arrests he had been ordered to make.

  The rest were sent to the eastern side — the Panama City side — of the Bridge of the Americas to prevent the passage of the force they were told was coming from the west to overthrow the government, arrest the president, and free certain criminals. By and large the Guard lacked heavy weapons and experience in using what few they had.

  Still, the position was naturally strong. The bridge itself was overlooked by the western face of Ancon Hill. Buildings, some strong gringo-built ones north of where the bridge debouched into the city, others lighter and newer in Panama’s Chorrillo district, provided fighting positions ready made.