by John Ringo
Suarez, almost sobbing with the butchery that had been done to his shoulder began to wriggle out from under the Rinn Fain. He was careful to avoid the gnashing, blood reddened teeth while he did.
Two more soldiers ran up, also with bayonets fixed. Seeing how ineffective a single bayonet thrust had been, they began to stab downward again and again. With each violation the Darhel's body twitched until, practically exsanguinated, with nearly every vital organ including the brain punctured, the alien finally subsided.
Breathing with relief, one of the soldiers took a long look at the Rinn Fain's face. By God, the bastard looks like he just came. Too fucking weird.
A medic came up and began to bandage Suarez's shoulder. When he also took out a syrette of Demerol, a powerful painkiller, and held it up in front of the colonel's face, Suarez waved him off. "I'll need my wits, for now, son," Suarez gasped out. "Later, perhaps, I can take the drug."
The medic shrugged, and began tying off the thick bandages that held in place a shrimp-shell-based anticoagulant. No matter to me if you want to suffer. My job is just to keep you alive. Pain's your problem.
Patiently, trying not to wince, Suarez let the medic finish with his ministrations. Then he waited a few minutes longer for the soldiers to finish separating the prisoners. He stood only with difficulty, then swayed for a few moments, light headed with pain and blood loss.
"Doc," he told the medic, "come with me . . . help me walk to the prisoners."
Wordlessly, the medic slung one of Suarez's arms—the one that led from the unshredded shoulder—over his own. The two began to move toward the new prisoners when Suarez stopped and said, "No. Take me to the prisoners we just liberated." His finger pointed at a spot where Boyd and some others sat, under a broad tree.
"Are you all right?" Suarez asked of the group.
Boyd answered for all. "Except for that one woman, Digna Miranda, we are fine."
Suarez straightened, taking his arm from across the medic's shoulder. He swayed again, but only for a brief time, before being able to stand well on his own. To Boyd he said, "We'll have to talk soon, General. For now, I have some work to do. For the moment, at least, consider yourself my prisoner. I am sorry for that, but I have my reasons."
"Take care of the woman, Doc," he ordered a medic doing triage on the "war criminals" before walking off, somewhat unsteadily, with his own.
Suarez stopped at the second group, the one composed of women and children. His eyes scanned across them, steely and unpitying. He noticed two female politicians in the group. One of them he had once thought rather well of. The fact that they were here indicated his trust had been misplaced.
A sergeant was in charge of the guards on this group. To the sergeant Suarez said, "Those two. Have them brought to the other group."
The sergeant saluted, answered, "Yes, sir," and directed a guard to do as Suarez had ordered. One of the women had a satchel, a heavy bag, that she refused to leave behind until the guard prodded her with a bayonet. Indignantly, muttering curses, she dropped it and went as the guard directed.
Suarez ordered the bag opened. When it was, and its contents dumped, he saw nothing but precious stones and Galactic seed nanites, a large fortune's worth.
The women, hustled along by the guard, reached the final group before Suarez did. Looking worried, they took seats on the ground with the others.
The company commander met Suarez near the last group, with a hand-selected guard in tow. "Are you sure about this, sir?" the captain asked. "This is a serious step."
Suarez didn't answer immediately. Instead, his eyes wandered over the angry looking group while his mind made a head count. Nineteen, he summed up. Nineteen traitors. Nineteen enemies of the Republic that I must not think of as human beings, as men and women.
He continued to think. Seventy-one in the legislature. Forty-two of them are scum. Subtract these nineteen and it is fifty-two, enough for a quorum. Any vote would be twenty-nine to twenty-three. That will work for what I have in mind.
To the captain he said, "Do it. Kill them."
The guns began to rattle and the political rats to scream at about the time Suarez reached the butchered body of the Darhel. The body had been stripped and searched. Atop a small pile of ripped, blue stained, iridescent clothing sat the alien's personal effects. Stooping, painfully, Suarez examined them. For the most part, he had no clue what any of the items meant. One item, however, did catch his interest. He had seen something just like it before, attached to the Armored Combat Suit of Captain Connors, the gringo Mobile Infantry company commander. He reached to pick the Darhel's AID up.
"Don't touch me!" screeched a disembodied voice. Suarez was startled at first, but ignored the screeching.
Turning the small black box end over end, Suarez was at a loss as to what use he could make of the thing.
"Don't touch me!" the thing screamed again. "It is not permitted."
"Fuck off, machine."
A rustling of gravel caught the colonel's attention. He looked up at a disheveled gringo officer, naval he thought.
"Can I have that?" McNair asked. "My ship has an AID, an unusual one. She might be able to get something useful out of this one."
Shrugging, Suarez tossed the AID to the gringo. "More than I am likely to get out of it," he answered.
In the distance, the automatic fire had been replaced by single shots, the screams by moans that, one by one, went silent.
Field Hospital, 1st Mechanized Division
In a tented hospital ward, Paloma sat silent in a chair next to the cot on which Julio Diaz lay. The machines next to him made gurgling and whirring sounds. The girl had no idea what they meant.
It had taken every bit of force of character she had, that and a couple of bribes, to get through the many road blocks that barred her way to the 1st Division. Just as bad, the long columns of combat vehicles moving east had forced her to pull over several times to let them pass. And then, frustration piled on frustration, she had finally arrived to find that the man she had sought, Colonel Suarez, was long gone, heading west with the very columns she had seen.
Almost the girl had sat in the dust and cried.
The men at the command post had been very polite though. Perhaps it was because she was the president's daughter. Perhaps it was because she was very young and, she knew, very pretty. Indeed, perhaps the sweat that turned her shirt and bra semi-transparent no doubt made her seem more attractive still. Then again, the men hadn't really stared, so it was at least possible that Suarez's soldiers had simply been gentlemen.
Whichever had been the cause, the men there had given her a place to sit out of the sun. They'd also given her water and something to eat. And then they'd ignored her completely.
It was only when she'd overheard some of them talking about a young pilot, a general's son, no less, who had made a perilous flight and been badly hurt on landing that she put two and two together and, only stopping to ask for sketchy directions, practically flew to the field hospital.
The medics had taken her to Julio's bedside then. She'd taken one look, then—weeping—laid her head down on his belly.
"I'm so sorry, Julio," she'd said.
Interlude
"Oh, my head," Guanamarioch moaned, sorry to be alive and gazing blearily at an empty glass container on the floor of his pyramidal hut.
In the months since that first bottle of the local "rum" that Ziramoth had introduced him to the God King had grown remarkably fond of the concoction. Sadly, the supply had grown rather short. Guano's moan was half headache and half realization that yet another of the precious bottles had been consumed.
One of Guano's superior normals was in attendance as the Kessentai awakened. The creature clucked sympathetically as it presented two nestlings, minus their heads, for its god's breakfast. The nestling corpses were so fresh their six arms and legs still twitched with misfiring nerve impulses.
Gratefully, the God King took the nestlings from the cosslain. He placed th
em down on the floor and scratched the normal, making soft cooing sounds of thanks as he did so. The superior normal shook its head and preened itself before turning to leave its god with his breakfast.
One by one Guanamarioch wrenched off the arms and legs before gulping them down. The appendages twitched delightfully as they slid down his gullet. Idly, Guanamarioch wondered if either of these had been destined to become Kessentai or doomed to remain no more than a mere normal. Well, neither he nor they would ever know now.
Already, the fresh food went a long way towards restoring the God King, mind and spirit. His hangover beginning to flee, he took pleasure in ripping the nestlings' still warm bodies into three sections each, upper and lower torsos, plus tails, before gulping them down. The delicious, nutrient rich tails he saved for last.
Thus refreshed, if still a bit bleary eyed, Guanamarioch departed his meager quarters for the daily labors.
Zira met the God King as he emerged from his quarters. "We've got trouble, Guano. The Gra'anorf to the southwest are assaulting our lines in strength we didn't know they had. We're pulling out."
The God King inhaled deeply before forcibly blowing his breath out again.
"Shit!"
Chapter 26
Then spake the elder Consul, an ancient man and wise:
"Now harken, Conscript Fathers, to that which I advise.
In seasons of great peril 'tis good that one bear sway;
Then choose we a Dictator, whom all men shall obey."
—Thomas Babington Macaulay,
"The Battle of Lake Regillus"
USS Des Moines
Dirty and disheveled as he was or not, Daisy Mae yelped with joy when she first sensed her captain approaching the ship's brow. An honor guard provided by Suarez saw McNair and Greenburg back to their ships, then stood with arms presented as they exchanged salutes with the deck officers before boarding.
The XO, the pork chop and Chief Davis met McNair on the deck. They almost fought for pride of place in welcoming back their captain. Daisy hung back, unable to shake hands, slap backs or—as she wanted to so desperately—throw her arms around her captain and kiss him into next week.
Calmly, remarkably so under the circumstances, McNair said, "Meeting in CIC in five minutes." He thought about that for half a second, realized that he stank to the heavens and that CIC was small and cramped. He amended his order to, "Make that fifteen. I'd hate to be the cause of a mutiny." Then McNair disappeared into his mostly repaired port cabin to scrub off several days of tropical jungle funk and replace his tattered, filthy uniform with a fresh one.
Daisy's avatar met him in the shower. The image was undressed for the occasion.
McNair didn't order her out. He didn't order her to project a uniform. He simply said, "I missed you, Daisy. I missed you more than I can say. I was terrified I'd never see you again."
"Do you like what you see?" the avatar asked uncertainly.
McNair laughed softly. "In whatever form, my very dear, ship or girl, yes, I like what I see."
"Soon, then," the avatar answered cryptically. "Very, very soon."
Legislative Palace, Plaza de los Mártires,
Panama City, Panama
In the event, the full remaining fifty-two legislators did not show up. Two remained in hiding, which was understandable as another two had been summarily shot.
But forty-eight is enough, Suarez mused. Forty-eight is a quorum.
Those forty-eight sat in their usual seats. In other words, there were huge and noticeable gaps in the assembly. Suarez had given some thought to that, then decided that the empty spaces might well serve to remind the captive legislators that he was as serious as cancer about what he wanted them to do. The ring of armed guards—helmeted, unsmiling and looking very businesslike in their battledress—only served to reinforce that impression.
Suarez was in battledress as well, though unhelmeted and his only weapon the pistol secured in his holster. With one arm in a sling and that shoulder bulging with bandages the pistol was more of a badge than a weapon.
He engaged in no histrionics, no banging of a fancy machete—less still the pistol—on the rostrum. Instead, Suarez merely tapped the rostrum's microphone and quietly ordered, "Your attention please."
Seeing that he had it, he launched into his talk without further ado.
"Democracy," Suarez began, "is a wonderful thing. It is a way of changing power and setting new policies without bloodshed, without tearing the state apart to its vitals."
He continued, "That is to say, democracy can be good. It isn't always. Sometimes, elections merely set their seal on one grafting and corrupt cabal after another. Sometimes, no—I take that back . . . always, here, in Panama, that is what we have seen. The only difference between one party and another is who they will steal from and what they will steal.
"In peace, this is tolerable. It is even preferable to the other way we have come to know, the rule of soldiers, who not only steal money but steal freedom as well. In peace, I would—and you would—one hundred times over prefer the corruption of a Mercedes to the corrupt tyranny of a Noriega."
Suarez still spoke softly confidently, but a tone of scorn and disgust crept into his voice. "That, however, is for peace. We have no peace."
Pointing his nose at a pair of armed guards standing in the back of the hall, Suarez ordered, "Bring in the prisoner." He continued to speak while the guards turned and left, leaving the double door open behind them. "We have no peace. We want no tyranny. We can stand no more corruption, treachery and cowardice such as the Mercedes regime showed in full measure. What are we to do?" he mused. "What are we to do?"
The colonel went silent for a moment as the guards returned and marched William Young Boyd down the central aisle. Boyd's hands were cuffed in front of him, though his legs were free. He wore no uniform, but rather an open-necked guayabera, an embroidered, short-sleeve dress shirt that served sweltering Panama in lieu of suits and ties.
The guards turned Boyd around to face the legislature, then assumed the position of parade rest to either side of him. Boyd looked unworried, but he did not look at all happy.
"We are Latins," Suarez said. "That means that our heritage comes from Spain, and through Spain from Rome. The Romans knew what to do in circumstances like ours. We must have a dictator. We must have one now. There is no time to waste. We must choose one poor bastard, and inflict on him all the power of the presidency, all the power of the judges, all your own power, too.
"There is no time to waste," Suarez repeated. "All the spare time we had was wasted by the late president. No . . . 'wasted' is too light a term. Instead of being wasted, it was sold to our enemies, the ones who want to eat our children . . . your children, and the ones who wanted to aid them in doing that. No time to waste . . . no time for debate . . . time only to choose, to choose whether our children live or die.
"I thought long and hard on this question: how do we ensure that our children live rather than die? I thought hard on who we might trust with the responsibility. He ought to be a man and—with apologies to the ladies, we are Latins still; our leader must be a man—he ought to be a man who is experienced in war. He ought to be a man who loves his country with acts, rather than with words alone. He ought to be a man who is rich enough he need not steal and honest enough that he will not.
"He is going to have enormous political power, so he too ought be a man who has always disdained political power, a man—like the original Cincinnatus—who will dump that power like a hot potato the second it is no longer needed . . ."
At this point Boyd's eyes widened. Shaking off his guards he turned around and shouted, "Suarez, you bastard, I won't do it!"
"Shut up, prisoner. You will do it. And the reason you will do it is that, if you won't, I must. And I lack your virtues. Guards, turn him back around.
"So," Suarez concluded, "That is what you are here for: to vote all the power there is to have in this country to one man for a period of . . . six
months, shall we say? To save your children, and all the children.
"No debate. Now vote."
CIC, USS Des Moines
"What's SOUTHCOM's reaction been to the coup?" McNair asked.
"Absolute silence," the XO answered. "We asked what to do, tried to, rather, and never a word."
Only Daisy, aboard ship anyway, knew that the reason Southern Command had never answered the ships' calls for instruction was that she, she and her sister, had made sure no calls went out and none were allowed in. She had been afraid that SOUTHCOM's commanding general might order the ships to wait for instructions while he consulted with Washington. And there hadn't been time.
