by John Ringo
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 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 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
An assegai had been thrust into the belly of the nation.
There are not tears enough to mourn for the dead.
—Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus
Remedios, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
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 straights. 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.
USS Des Moines
"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 a-port. 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 children."
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 curren
t 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 ships' 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 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 rights for the fallen, human and Indowy, both. After all, God will know his own.
