by John Ringo
Snyder returned the salute and quietly said, "Post." Immediately, the exec walked off.
"Company commanders will have your companies don suits and put them to sleep," Snyder ordered.
Connors and the other captains, and one senior lieutenant, saluted, faced about and ordered, "Prepare to don suits. Lie down."
Reluctant, grumbling, in a few cases even cursing, the soldiers of the First of the O-Eighth obeyed. They knew what was coming and hated the idea. Why, if the Posleen came upon them while they were hibernating there would be not a thing they could do to defend themselves as their suits were one by one hacked apart to allow the omnivorous aliens to get at the meat inside. They knew that if that happened, they would have only a single moment of stark terror once out from their suits' protection and control before the aliens rendered them into fresh dripping steaks and chops.
But they were soldiers. For that matter, they were smart soldiers. None of them knew the reason for the unusual—even bizarre—order. In the end, though, it didn't matter. They were soldiers; they obeyed orders. They'd worry about why they'd been given when . . . if . . . they ever woke up.
Connors watched as his company's platoon sergeants walked from suit to suit, from man to man, checking that each was snugly cocooned before giving the order to the AIDs, "Until awakened by superior orders, AID, soldier and Gestalt, Hibernate."
For reasons more than a little similar to Daisy Mae's hatred of waking loneliness, the AIDs protested the order bitterly. In more than a few cases reprogramming was threatened, with resultant loss of personality. Faced with that threat, sullenly, the AIDs obeyed, putting into hibernation their colloidal intelligences, the suit gestalt's and, finally, themselves.
In hibernation status, the AIDs could neither contact, access, nor be contacted by or accessed from, the Net. They remained in some sense awake; however, they remained lonely, and they hated it, one and all.
When Connors' platoon leaders turned again to face him, the clear sign that his order had been obeyed, he ordered them into their suits as well, along with his XO and first sergeant. These eight suits he saw to the hibernation of himself.
At length, Connors and the other commanders, as well as the battalions' small, suit-wearing combat staff, turned to face Snyder, reporting with a salute, "A Company . . . B Company . . ." etc., "In hibernation."
Snyder then ordered, "Commanders and staff, don suits."
The battalion's command sergeant major walked over to the staff, doing for them what the other leaders had done for their own, while Snyder walked the line, putting his commanders to sleep. That done, the CSM and the commander met again in the center.
"Into your suit, Sergeant Major."
The CSM growled, "Fuck!" then added, "Yessir."
The NCO safely put out, Snyder cursed himself yet again as he walked over and lay down into the silvery gray goop inside his own armored combat suit. As the suit wheezed closed, Snyder asked, "AID?"
"Here, sir."
"AID, on my command you and the gestalt will go into hibernation status until further orders. You will not put me into hibernation status. You will be on Net block and radio listening silence. Is this clear?"
"Without me to keep you company you may go insane, Colonel. Is that clear?" the AID grumbled.
"I'm already insane, Shirley," Snyder retorted. "Ready, hibernate."
Wreckers and cargo trucks began rolling the line, driven by headquarters company drivers and some others attached down from higher. At each suit, the wreckers stopped while a crew of enlisted men prepared the suit for slinging. Once prepared and hooked up, the wreckers lifted the sleeping men, all but Snyder who remained and would remain miserably awake, and dumped them flat in the backs of the cargo trucks. As the beds of the trucks filled, more suits were piled on until each truck carried more than a score of ACS.
One highly annoyed lieutenant colonel snarled unheard by the crew loading his ACS aboard a cargo truck. Meanwhile a sleeping Captain Connors dreamt of a long, slender girl with huge brown eyes.
Rodriguez Home, Via Argentina, Panama City, Panama
The third night they had spent together Scott had warned her that he might be called away without notice and with no chance to tell her where he was going or why . . . or when . . . or if, he would return. He had promised to write as soon as possible if . . . no, when, it happened.
A diamond sparkled on Marielena's finger now. Scott had given it to her, asked her to be his wife, only the week before, two days before he had gone incommunicado. The girl looked down at it for the thousandth time and still marveled. The bloody thing was huge, easily three carats and worth rather more than she made at her office job in about five years. Scott had said that he couldn't count on his Servicemembers' life insurance being given to her in the event of his death even though he had made her his beneficiary. He'd said something about "at the discretion of the secretary." Moreover, marriage between Panamanian girl and gringo boy took more bureaucratic hassle than his battalions' training schedule—Scott had also said something about "that prick Snyder"—permitted. Instead, using a not inconsiderable chunk of the pay the Mobile Infantry received that, despite confiscatory taxes, they never quite managed to spend, he had brought the ring on the theory that the girl could trade that to keep alive in the event he never returned.
He had been able to make his Galactic bank account a joint one, but only to the extent that it would go to Marielena in the event of his death. She couldn't access it before that; no one could. Moreover, it might well do her no good if it came to having to escape Panama to escape the Posleen. Hence, the ring.
The ring was a marvel. Still, it did absolutely nothing to warm her bed at night or fill the empty, aching void she felt in her loins. She'd gotten used to it, being filled up in body and soul, in the altogether too few nights she and Connors had managed to spend together. Marielena wasn't sorry she had waited until she had met Connors. She just wished she had met him when she was fifteen.
Alma, Marielena's sister, walked into the room quietly on stockinged feet. If she felt any jealousy at the too obvious ring it was small. Indeed she was happy for her sister that her sister had herself found happiness. Alma's gaze shifted from Marielena's transcended face downward. Was there . . . ?
Oh, yes. No doubt about it. The breasts had grown at least a cup size in the last two weeks.
"Mari, we need to talk . . . with Mama."
Santa Fe, Veraguas Province, Republic of Panama
"Mamita, what are those things?" Edilze asked of Digna as the ACS-bearing trucks, the loads of suits covered by canvas tarps forming lumpy, shapeless masses in the cargo beds, passed by under joint gringo and Panamanian military police escort.
Without turning her gaze away from the trucks, Digna inclined her head and answered, "I don't know, Granddaughter. All I was told was that we were to stay the hell away. And, no, I don't like the secrecy one little bit."
Changing the subject and tearing her attention away from the trucks, Digna asked, "How are we fixed for ammunition?"
"Over twelve hundred rockets per launcher, Mamita," Edilze answered. "They made the last, at least I am told it is the last, delivery this morning. It's enough for almost four hours continuous firing." The younger woman sounded amazed. It was one hell of a lot of ammunition.
"And the guns?"
"Rather less than that. Still, it is quite a lot, mixed high explosive and more than one hundred rounds of canister per gun. I wish it was more."
Digna ignored the stated wish. "You have the gun positions sited to fire both indirect and direct?"
"In most cases. Battery B will have to displace forward to cover its direct fire arc, but it won't have to go far."
"It is well. You have done well, Granddaughter."
"Mamita . . . ?"
Digna looked directly into Edilze's worried brown eyes and answered, "No. My children are here. Yours will be too. Our clan wins or dies together."
Hotel Central, Casco Viejo, Panama City,
Panama
"As long as we're together, Julio, it will be all right," Paloma murmured as Diaz rolled off of her.
They were married now. Diaz had taken her to the Civil Registry for a license within days after coming out of the hospital. As it happened, the man granting the license was also a Justice of the Peace. There was the little problem of Paloma being only seventeen but, what with the war and all, the JP had proven most understanding.
"We have only a couple of days to be together, love. I have a mission scheduled for the day after tomorrow."
She immediately tightened up and rolled to face him. "Will it be . . . dangerous?" she asked, in a quivering voice.
"Routine," he assured her.
"Please, Julio, for me. Please don't be killed."
He smiled. "I promise to do my best."
"We only have this couple of nights?" she asked, somewhat reassured. "Then do your best again, now, before you have to go."
SOUTHCOM, Quarry Heights, Panama
"The LRRPs report we've got movement from Colombia north and west into the Darien, sir. Not too many details."
"I need details," Page insisted.
"Sir, they're doing their best."
Page scowled. The news wasn't exactly unexpected. The timing sucked, though. Damned inconsiderate Posleen.
"Show me," the chief of Southern Command ordered.
"We've got two streams of them, Boss. One moving north and the other west," Colonel Rivera answered. "They're joining here," his pointer touched the map just southeast of where the Darien began, "before moving northwest into the Darien."
"What have we got to stop them?"
"There are Special Forces teams, a company's worth of them, scattered throughout the jungle. They've been arming and training Indians—Chocoes and Cuna Indians—for the last year or so."
Page nodded absently. He'd known about the SF and the Indians. "They can't hold the jungle against the Posleen," he judged simply.
"No, sir, not a chance," Rivera agreed. "And we have nothing much to help them with. Not that far from our bases around the Canal."
"What have we got?"
"The Tenth Infantry is committed to the passes in the Cordillera Central. We couldn't pull them out if we wanted to. The Twentieth Mechanized Infantry is committed to the counterattack. Only the Fifth Infantry Regiments is uncommitted. Plus we have about another company of SF we can send into the jungle and maybe keep supplied. Panama has nothing to give; everything is already committed to the defense and counterattack in the west. So is what's left of our First of the O-Eight Mobile Infantry. We do have a company of engineers, the Seven-Sixtieth, we can use to help dig the boys in."
"Shit," Page said.
"Shit," Rivera echoed. "Shall I prep and send the orders to move the Fifth east, plus whatever else I can scrape up?"
"One regiment to cover at least fifty miles, Rivera?" Page scowled. "What the fuck would be the point?"
Rivera tilted his head slightly, keeping the irritation he felt from his voice. "What do you know about the Fifth Infantry, sir?"
"Nothing, why?"
"Their motto is, 'I'll try, sir.' It dates from the War of 1812 when they grabbed some Brit cannon at the Battle of Lundy's Lane. They say, 'I'll try.' They do try . . . and they never, ever fail. The entire United States Marine Corps has one man who won the Medal of Honor twice, sir. The Fifth Infantry regiment alone has two along with another forty-two men who won the Medal once. I don't know of any regiment in the world that has that kind of record. And, sir . . . ?"
"Yes?"
"Little known but true: the Dictator of Panama, Bill Boyd, served for a while in the Fifth."
"Ah, fuckit, Colonel. Send your Fifth . . . and even your goddamned engineers. Maybe they can buy us some time, if nothing else."
"They will try, sir. And they won't fail . . . though they'll need every available minute to dig in."
"Any word about what's happening out west, Rivera?"
"I spoke to Panama's G-2 this morning, sir, a General Diaz. They're sending out a glider tonight and every night until the Posleen out west begin to move—clever bastards, weren't they, to figure out that a low tech glider might get through where a high tech jet fighter wouldn't?—and the G-2 assures me we'll get the word as soon as the glider returns."
Veraguas/Chiriqui Provinces, Republic of Panama
He could still scent Paloma in his mind, feel her pressed against him in his dreamings.
She's taken it hard, poor love, Diaz thought. The death of her father was a terrible blow, though what she imagined might happen if she had managed to be the first to warn Suarez . . . perhaps she'd hoped to make a deal to have her father's life spared. She won't talk about it; won't even think about it, as near as I can tell. And then when I had to leave? God, can so many tears come from just one girl?
He'd felt like a rat that morning, when he left her for the airfield to be briefed on his mission. She had cried and clung to him desperately. There'd been chance for only a short single phone call from the field to the hotel where Paloma was staying until they could work out something better. She'd cried then, too.
Diaz forced his new bride from his thoughts when the warning buzzer sounded that he was high enough. His hand reached out and a finger pushed a button to cut loose from the balloon above. He felt a sudden drop, then pulled back on the glider's stick to level out and fly.
Following the roads into Posleen-held territory was a risky proposition. More than a few gliders had been lost already doing so. Julio Diaz had his doubts whether the aliens had figured out the gliders' purpose. More likely, so he thought, they had just seen and engaged them out of general principle—the principle of he who shoots first, eats.
In any case, most of the gliders lost to date had been downed either in broad daylight or nights with high and full or nearly full moons and no rain. There was no rain expected tonight but the moon, while almost full, was fairly low on the horizon.
Small comfort that is, mused Julio. Then again, some of those gliders went down while broadcasting. Best maintain radio silence if I can.
Without fanfare and—so Julio fervently hoped—without the slightest notice at all, he crossed over the front lines along the San Pedro River and over into enemy-held territory. Though the bridge had been blown long since by the defenders, the road was still there, dimly seen by the shadow-casting low moon.
Funny that they destroy everything human except the roads and bridges, Julio thought. I suppose those help them mass forces and maneuver; that, and distribute food and arms. Bastards.
That thought, "bastards," was repeated over and over as Diaz progressed across a landscape scoured of human life and habitation. He wondered how many hundreds of thousands of sets of human bones, women's and children's bones, dotted the soil below.
From time to time he passed a spot where human construction had obviously been replaced by alien, the pyramids, large and small, of their God Kings casting shadows by the moonlight.
Idly, Diaz checked his altimeter. Time to gain a little altitude, he thought, as he pulled his stick to the right and back to move nearer to the Central Cordillera to take advantage of the updrafts. With the mountains looming ahead of him the glider shook slightly under the uplift. Having gained nearly a thousand meters Diaz swung his craft around again to head south and then west. As the bird banked, he was afforded a look at the ground from his cockpit.
Oh, oh; what's this?
Whether he had simply missed it before in the jungle fringing the mountains or whether the Posleen had just now begun to tramp, a stream of fire—torches he supposed; that, or some form of flashlight—flowed down from a valley nestled in the Cordillera. Diaz aimed for it.
Before reaching the river of fire Diaz looked left. There were more streams of fire, shorter it is true, forming and flowing north toward the Inter-American Highway. The highway itself was beginning to glow as the various streams reached it and turned west, merging into a great river of light. Above it, other
dots of light glowed more individually. Their flying sleds, Diaz supposed.
Diaz continued on to the west. Navigation was easy now; the highway was rapidly becoming a great raging torrent of torch-bearing aliens, all moving east toward the San Pedro River. He wondered whether he should risk a call to his father, waiting behind for news of the enemy. He decided not to, not until he had gathered all the information there was.
And then Diaz reached the vicinity of what had once been known as La Ciudad de San Jose and David. This was no river. A great sea of fire and light shone bright as hundreds of rivers and streams merged together. Like a flood bursting a dam the sea began to surge eastward.
