by John Ringo
“Gunner… Target… dismounts in the open.”
The gunner answered, “Target,” fine-tuned the aim, and fired a long burst. Aliens were bowled over as the bullets passed through them. One, obviously wounded, attempted to rise. Perhaps its spinal column had been cut. It was able to get its torso up on its front legs, but its rear quarter dragged behind it.
“Repeating,” announced the gunner. Another burst went out, this one shorter. The alien went down this time and stayed down.
“Almost doesn’t seem right, Sergeant,” the gunner said through the intercom. “They aren’t even fighting back.”
“Then let them figure out how to surrender and try to,” Quijana answered. “It’s not our job to teach them. Until they make it plain they want to give up, they are just targets.” Deguello.
At some level Quijana was sure that the aliens couldn’t give up, that it just wasn’t in them. Fuck ’em. They shouldn’t have come to my planet, to my home. They’re all goddamned targets now.
Santiago, Veraguas, Republic of Panama
Was it only a few days ago that my clan, in all its strength and glory, passed this way? Can so much horror happen in just a few days?
What was it Stinghal the Knower said? “Count yourself no leader of the People in war until you have led a retreat”? Yes, that was it. The old Kessentai knew what he was talking about, too.
The retreat had so far been a nightmare beyond anything of Binastarion’s experience in the breeding pens. While the tenar were faster than the humans’ fighting machines, they were fewer now, too. And as for the normals that had to be left behind by the fast-fleeing tenar… his AS had showed him pictures of the humans just running them down and crushing them beneath the horrifying rolling roads their vehicles moved on. Even those who asked for acceptance into the clan of the victor by adopting the posture of supplication and serenity were killed like abat.
Don’t these vile creatures understand anything of the law of the Path of Fire and Fury? Surely they can kill and thresh those who ask for assimilation, but they are required to judge their worth to live first. But the humans want only to kill.
Binastarion sighed. Then again, I suppose from their point of view they have their reasons. After all, they can hardly use us for breeding stock.
As retreats went, the God King knew, this one had been less disastrous than most, especially considering the disaster that had caused it. Who would have suspected that this little place could have amassed so much of their “artillery”? I know they had help, the demon-shits. Perhaps I chose badly in deciding to claim and settle this part of the planet. And yet, but for that miserable waterway it seemed so safe, so nearly irrelevant. What forgiveness for a clan leader who chooses badly? The great crested head hung in despair.
“It isn’t your fault, Binastarion,” the AS said.
“Reading my thoughts again, are you, o’ bucket of bolts?”
“No, Kessentai, not your thoughts. But I am in tune with your physiological responses and the last time I sensed what I am sensing now was when we had to abandon our former home during orna’adar. That, by the way, was not your fault either.”
Binastarion raised his head and shrugged. “Perhaps it was not my ‘fault,’ AS. But it was still my responsibility.”
The AS went silent. It was true. Command took responsibility.
“What of our delaying forces?” the God King asked.
“It goes well enough. The humans’ artillery is mostly left behind, though I sense that they carry some artillery, and mortars too, I suppose, with them. They can move the rest up again, easily enough. But I surmise, based on what I sense of the weight of the ammunition, that it would be a matter of much time, perhaps many lunar cycles, before they could amass enough to give us such a pounding again. Still, their armored vehicles advance. We kill some, of course, and lose many more in the killing. Without adequate leadership from the Kessentai, the normals are not worth much.”
“Yes… about what I had expected. And the blocking force ahead?”
“We have probed it, from both sides. It seems to be composed of about two thousand of their armored vehicle soldiers and perhaps a fifth or sixth of that in metal threshkreen. They have considerable fire support from the ships-that-will-not-die to the south, and a large group of artillery to the northwest… Binastarion?”
“Yes?”
“The threshkreen planned this well. The positions they have chosen to block our escape from have mines to both sides. Yes, these are the same minefields we broke through many days ago. But the gaps we made were narrow and the thresh have closed them again.”
“Show me a projection of our forces on a map, AS.”
Binastarion, despite recent disasters, had not risen to lordship of the clan for nothing. He saw, he weighed, he decided.
“Twenty brigades with nothing but dismounted Kessentai strike the northern artillery group on my command. The remaining thirty-seven brigades, also without tenar, strike west. All the force… what is the force to the west anyway?”
“The People there muster twenty-four brigades, but with few tenar, Kessentai.”
“Fine. They attack east to link up with our forces striking west. Work out the details and control measures. Don’t forget to schedule time for the dismounted God Kings to bond with their commands.
“All the other tenar accompany me to the southwest. I will see these ships die. Give the orders, AS. On my command we strike… for our lives.”
Darien Province, Republic of Panama
Gingerly, Ruiz stepped over the skeleton of the dead alien. Though he suspected the thing was fairly fresh, the ants had made short work of it, stripping the meat down to the bones. A few of them still worked, though if there were any meat left to the thing Ruiz couldn’t see it. Then again, ants looked in closer detail than even the Chocoes did.
Idly, he wondered what had killed it. He knew he had not. He suspected that it might have been hunger that did the demon in. He’d been watching them for a long time now. They’d been fairly fresh and vigorous in the beginning. But, as time had passed, he had seen them grow thinner and thinner. Their ranks had grown thinner, too, not just in the band that he followed primarily but generally, as well. The Chocoes took some small personal pride in that, though he knew the jungle itself had done more than he had and the demons themselves had killed many to keep the rest going.
The river was still channeling the demons. It was also what allowed him to track and pursue and even, sometimes, get ahead to lay a nasty surprise. He was setting such a surprise now.
Ruiz looked over the ground. Black palm to the north. They’ll avoid that. River to the south. I’ve seen them drown in shallower. They’ll avoid that too.
He measured the area through which the demons would pass with a keen eye. He didn’t have the math, didn’t have even basic arithmetic really, to do fine calculations. He did, however, had a superb ability to envision fairly large stretches of ground in his mind. On this image, he mentally ticked off the places he would set the devices the gringos had called “claymores.”
Twelve should be enough, he thought. Then he returned to his canoe to pick up two cases and a large roll of det cord. The Indian might have been small; he was still very strong. He ported the claymores easily, a case on each shoulder, and carried the det cord by his teeth.
At the ambush site, Ruiz opened the first case. He pulled a bag out, removed the mine and slung the bag over his shoulder. Then he placed the mine, sighting it as he had been taught. He tested the firing wire and found it good. Then he armed the claymore.
From that mine, Ruiz went and set up another, some distance away. Between the two he measured and strung a length of det cord. He was very careful, again as he had been taught, not to let the det cord loop over itself. It would, in such a case, almost certainly cut itself in two and put a stop to the fun he planned.
He laid the twelve mines. Then, for safety’s sake he returned to the canoe to pick up a roll of communications wire
. From the last claymore of the twelve he stripped the plastic from the firing wire, connecting it to the commo wire. The commo wire he then laid out, back to where the end piece of the first fire wire sat. There he laid the firing devices by both. Thus, if one claymore failed, or somehow the det cord cut itself, he still had a good chance of all twelve going off.
Lastly, the Chocoes camouflaged the mines, the det cord, and the wires and connected the firing wires to the devices. Suffice to say, that if growing up in the jungle lent one a sense of what looked right there, it was all hidden flawlessly.
That done, Ruiz took his bow, nocked an arrow, and began stealthily creeping forward to where his enemy awaited.
Interlude
The arrow came sailing out of nowhere, fast, free and true. A normal squawked, then sank slowly to the ground. Then a dastardly little thresh jumped out from behind a tree waving some arrows in one grasping member and what Guanamarioch presumed to be their launcher in the other.
The small brown alien shouted something that sounded a lot like “oogaboogabooga” to Guano’s untrained ear before darting off.
In an instant, Guano’s pack was in full bay, with Ziramoth limpingly taking up the rear, waving their boma blades, firing shotguns and occasionally railguns (for the jungle muck and various unaccountable growths had rendered most of the railguns inoperable). The cry was “Meat! Meat! Meat!” as the pack galloped forward. Even normals could articulate that much, although they tended to mispronounce it.
The little thresh — no, better said, threshkreen — was fast; you had to give him that. Several times the pack almost lost him. And then another arrow would fly, as often as not bringing a normal down, and the nasty little demon would show himself. Oogaboogabooga.
“Meat! Meat! Meat!”
Guano had trouble keeping the lead. Between the wounded reproductive member, beating itself against his legs and sending pain shooting to his brain, and the still fresh and sore wounds of that damnable pack of hunter-killer trees, it was just too hard. In time, the lead normals took over and Guano fell back towards the middle of the pack.
And then the little brown threshkreen was there, just standing beside a tree. It had something grasped in each hand. Smiling, it ducked down and…
Kakakabooboobooboom.
And Guano was standing there, almost alone. Some of the normals stood, as well, but they stood stock still, in shock. The rest were down, some plainly dead and others still thrashing. Of the brown alien there was no sign.
Zira, with some of the slower moving normals (for many had jungle-inflicted wounds of various types), came up.
“What the…?” The Kenstain stopped for horror at what he saw had been done to the pack. “Guano, are you hurt?”
Distantly, the God King answered, “They were there and then… gone. Just gone.”
“On the plus side,” Ziramoth observed reasonably, “tonight, at least, we eat.”
“I suppose so,” Guano answered slowly. “But…”
A small feathered shaft appeared in Ziramoth’s chest. Slowly, he looked down at it, then up at Guanamarioch. “Oh, my young friend. Eat well tonight. I am sorry…”
Ziramoth sank to his knees, then rested his chest on the ground. For a moment he seemed to be looking around. His eyes lost focus. The great crested head sank, the muzzle touching the ground. Zira’s body shuddered twice. Then he died.
Chapter 34
I see storms on the horizon
I see the tempest at the gates
I see storms on the horizon,
and a citadel alone
Clinging brave, defying fate
— Crüxshadows, “Citadel”
San Pedro Line, Republic of Panama
Alpha company and the rest of the battalion’s “ash and trash” had started passing through almost immediately after Connors had reported the way was clear. The MI had no trouble fording, but the bottom of the river was so churned to muck by the artillery barrage that preceded the attack that Connors had to detail two squads from his reserve platoon for the sole purpose of physically man- or suit-handling even the tracked vehicles across. For the wheels, there was essentially no possibility of getting a single one over until a bridge could be built. Since there were no engineers to build that bridge…
It’s always the little things that get you, Connors thought. I can’t bitch that no one thought about the effect of the artillery on the river bottom. I didn’t think of it, after all.
Besides, it’s not as bad as all that. Everybody, MI included, has weighted themselves down with enough ammo for couple of days’ fighting. That oughta do… for now, anyway.
* * *
Sometimes mechanized infantry could actually move faster than MI. This was not one of those times. Between the difficulty of the river crossing, the fact that the ground was pockmarked like the surface of the moon, and the mud that filled the bottom of every unavoidable shell crater, the move for the mech was slow and unsteady.
B Company, playing tail-end Charlie, still was forced to stop its own progress every ten minutes or so to unstick a track from the muck. The mechanized troopers were grateful, or at least as grateful as men can be when you help them get a little closer to their impending demise, but gratitude didn’t get the MI to its blocking position any sooner.
Connors listened, idly, to the chatter on the company Net as he helped a squad from the weapons platoon lift an M-113 armored personnel carrier out of the hole in which it had been stuck, churning the mud to froth with its spinning tracks.
We’ve got to move faster than this, he thought, but we can’t leave the mech behind either.
Still, despite the frustrations of the delay, Connors found himself strangely happy; happier, certainly, than he had been since being pulled out of the line on Barwhon and given a chance to read the mail that told him the woman he’d thought loved him thought no more about him than she would of a pile of dog crap she’d inadvertently stepped in.
And that’s when it hit, somewhere between physically lifting the track and losing his balance to fall faceshield first into the muck. My God, I actually feel good. Wahoo! I feel great! God bless you, Marielena and your long legs and your just admirable ass! Connors rolled over on his back and began to laugh.
“Ahem… hem.” That was the first sergeant, speaking over the private channel he shared with Connors and the exec. “Ahem… sir. While the whole fucking company is no doubt very happy to hear about your girlfriend’s rear end, I think maybe you don’t want them to be hearing all about Marielena’s ‘long legs and admirable ass’… sir.”
“Fuck! Did I say that out loud, Top?” Connors asked after cutting out the general command circuit.
“Very out loud, sir. Very.”
“Ah, fuckit, Top. I don’t care.”
* * *
The AID muffled the “speakers” inside Connors’ helmet. It had to. If it had let loose, at full volume, with the sheer wall of sound created when one of the two cruisers on station to the south let loose with a soul-jarring barrage it would have deafened the captain; that, or simply knocked him out.
For that matter, the sound of metal shards from the eight-inch shells was noticeable enough to worry about, even though deadened by the silvery goop that filled almost all the space between man and armor.
Kind of like rain on a tin roof. I wonder how the mech is taking it.
The volume control was an odd thing, too. While it tuned out most of the blast, it let smaller sounds come through perfectly well. Thus, when a twelve or fifteen pound shard struck Connors’ armored chest, he heard it bounce off and heard the plop of it falling into a nearby small mud hole. He even heard it sizzle as it turned the mud to dirt and steam.
Connors consulted the map. His objective lay only a few kilometers ahead.
“Heads up, Bravo Company. We’ll clear this thing as if it’s occupied.”
This is battle position? Connors had never seen anything like it, not on Barwhon, not in Chile, not in the earlier fighting
in Panama.
The battle position was oval in shape and overlooked one of the major fords to the river to the east. Though well entrenched initially, the walls of many of the trench bays had caved in under the artillery fire tossed around some days prior before the Panamanian Mechanized Corps had pulled back to Nata, under the scouring given the whole area by Digna’s group of multiple rocket launchers this morning, and by the pasting from the naval gunfire still being supplied by the twin cruisers… and, it must be said, by the Posleen hypervelocity missiles and plasma cannon blasting it when they’d begun their offensive.
It’s like the moon… but more desolate.
The boys of B Company went over the area with a fine-tooth comb.
“First Platoon here, Captain. Nothing but bits and pieces of Posleen…” “Third Platoon, Boss. All dead…” “Second. One wounded Posleen. Firing one shot…”
Connors nodded to himself with satisfaction. “All right, boys, get the Bouncing Barbies out.”
Along with their ammunition, each man of B Company had trudged in with two dozen of the nasty little flat cylinders that projected force fields to all sides when triggered by the presence of a life form. It had been a hard decision for Snyder to order the things carried, possibly a harder one for Connors to enforce. The suits’ armor would not stop the force fields. Just as the Barbies chopped legs and torsos off the Posleen, so too would they have sliced the MI troopers in two had one of them been inadvertently activated.
Each platoon took a quarter of the perimeter. There was no real trick to using the Barbies; the men simply armed them and tossed them more or less straight to the front. Powered by the suits, the mines were scattered from one hundred to six hundred meters out.
The things normally activated after striking the ground. From that point on, any Posleen (or human, be he so foolish) that entered their effective radius would find himself shorter by a couple of feet… or a head. Thereafter, the Barbies would scoot to one side or the other. Since they were colored yellow, like Posleen blood, they tended to mix in very well with the terrain once it had been fought over for a bit. A field of scooting Barbies — bouncing, chopping, moving, bouncing, chopping, moving, with a Posleen horde trying to get through them — was a thing of beauty to behold… for certain values of “beauty.”
