Yellow Eyes-ARC

by John Ringo

  "Holy shit!" Diaz exclaimed into the radio, not thinking for the moment of proper procedures. "Any station this frequency, this is Harpy Five Nine. Get word to the Army! Get word to the G-2. For Christ's sake call my father! They're coming!"

  Whether it was the low moon glinting from the smooth fiberglass of his wings, or whether some Posleen Five-percenter had wised to the fact that there were no birds the size of gliders and certainly none which emanated radio energy, Diaz suddenly saw streaking flashes, thousands of them, rising in front of his glider. Shit! Railgun rounds.

  He pulled his stick to swerve right, out of the line of fire, and saw as many actinic streaks in that direction. Frantic now, diving and turning even while he continued to broadcast his warning—" Call my father! Call my wi—"—Second Lieutenant Julio Diaz, Fuerza Aeria de Panama, flew directly into the fires of a number of alien railguns. He never noticed as his glider came apart around him. By that time, he was dead.

  Muelle (Pier) 18, Balboa, Republic of Panama

  "I'm coming, Chief," McNair muttered in answer to the urgent knock on his port cabin's hatch. He reached over and flicked on a light affixed to a small night table next to his bunk. He heard a constrained sobbing coming from the area of his desk. Once his eyes adjusted to the light he saw Daisy, or rather, her avatar, rocking back and forth, an arm across her chest and a hand placed over her mouth as holographic tears poured down her face.

  McNair stood without covering himself. All things considered, modesty was silly in a ship that saw every motion.

  "What's wrong Daisy?"

  "Lieutenant Diaz is missing . . . presumed dead," she sobbed. "Somewhere over David."

  "Oh," McNair said, suddenly downcast. "Oh . . . damn. He was a good kid, too."

  McNair thought about reaching out one comforting hand to the avatar, realized once again that that was futile, and instead rested the hand on the bulkhead near his bunk, lightly stroking the painted steel wall.

  "Daisy, I am sorry, too. Sorry for Diaz, for his father, for you who were his friend. But that's what war means: good young kids die. At least we can say this one is being fought for a good reason."

  The avatar nodded, tears beginning to slow to a trickle. "I know that. But it still hurts."

  "Yes, it hurts now and it will hurt for a long time to come. But we have to continue the war, and win it, or Diaz's death will mean nothing."

  Daisy lifted bright blue eyes, all the brighter for the holographic tears. "I never actually hated the Posleen before. I killed them, yes, but that was my job. Now I hate them and want to wipe them out of the universe."

  "Just as well," McNair agreed. "Though somehow I doubt they are entirely to blame for what they do. No creatures—no higher creatures, anyway—could evolve naturally the way the Posleen have. When I think of the Posleen and how they have turned out, I smell a do-gooder, a Galactic do-gooder."

  Interlude

  Picture, if you will, a lone insect, flying aimlessly through a primordial jungle in search of food. . . .

  The grat operated off of instinct. Instinct had carried its ancestors, distant in both time and space, across half a galaxy. Instinct had brought it aboard the Posleen ship fleeing orna'adar. Instinct now carried it in search of the communal abat, the agouti-like, hive-building creatures that were its sole source of food. Where there might be abat, there would be grat. Briefly the grat hovered in his search before landing on a nearby tree.

  But this is not just any jungle. Watch out! There's a signpost ahead. This grat has just taken a wrong turn and entered into . . . The Darien Zone. (Insert appropriate music here . . . )

  The tree ant popped its head out before rapidly drawing it back into its hive tree. Pheromones were released, only to be picked up by others of the colony. From ant to ant the pheromones spread. The pheromones spoke of "invader"; they spoke of food. In a short time the message reached the queen who redoubled them, adding in the chemicals that said, "Feed me; I hunger."

  From deep inside the hive, which extended well below the tree's base, the ants began to mass at the exits. The mass of ants grew and grew until the level of concentration of the pheromones reached a certain critical level. Then the ants swarmed out.

  The grat was stupid; not so stupid that it didn't notice the beginning of the ant swarm, but stupid enough not to recognize that the swarm might pose a threat. Absently, the grat flexed its stinger and flicked it at a convenient ant. The stinger connected and pulsed a tiny dose of its venom. The targeted ant twisted itself into a C and began to writhe in a death dance.

  Before that ant died, a hundred more swarmed over the grat—over its abdomen, up it jointed legs, onto its thorax.

  Snip, snip, and a grat wing fluttered groundward. Now in pain itself, the unbalanced grat tried to ascend but only managed to flip itself off the tree and onto the ground. A hundred ants managed to hang on during its fall, their mandibles imbedded in the grat's chitin, cutting through to the soft meat below.

  Once on the ground the grat knew a brief moments' respite from fresh wounds. Its remaining wing beat the ground futilely. In a circle about it the ants collected. The grat's tiny brain, though foggy with the burning pain of the formic acid injected by the ants' mandibles, still registered the looming harvesting machine surrounding it. It tried to right itself and rise to its feet to fight.

  Before the grat could arise the ant pheromones reached critical mass again. With the grat still half on one side the circle of tree ants swarmed again and buried the grat completely from view. A hissing scream emerged from somewhere under the pile. Soon, the scream was followed by pieces of grat, being carried in an orderly fashion, single file, up the tree and down to the queen.

  The Posleen normal's genetically engineered ears picked up the scream of the grat. This was a common enough sound on Posleen worlds. Grat often went into abat nests in search of food. There was a saying among the Kessentai that the normal could not have articulated but at some basic level understood: "Sometimes you get the abat, sometimes the abat get you."

  The normal, scouting forward for the main host, continued deeper into the dank, dark, wet and miserable Darien jungle.

  Picture, if you will, a lone Posleen, scouting through the jungle in advance of its clan. But this is not just any jungle. Watch out! There's a signpost ahead. . . .

  (Insert appropriate music here . . . )

  Chapter 28

  Hear the wind blow, hear the wind blow;

  It is calling for him.

  See the grass grow, see the grass grow;

  It whispers his name.

  See the fire glow, see the fire glow;

  His heart is aflame.

  Bayede Nkhosi!

  Bayede Nkhosi!

  —Margaret Singana,

  "We Are Growing"

  David (erased), Chiriqui, Republic of Panama

  The setting sun washed the great step pyramid of the clan leader Binastarion in pale red light. In that light, the pyramid rose high over the area once known as the Parque de Cervantes. Of the park, the stores and hotels that had once encircled, the ancient church which a priest had detonated to prevent the Posleen from eating his flock, not a single trace remained. The very stones and blocks had gone into the pyramid. Only the metalled square of road indicated that here had once stood human habitation.

  The time was very soon, Binastarion knew, the time when population pressures would have built to the point the People began spontaneously to march, to seek his leadership in acquiring new lands.

  Walking up an interior ramp to the platform just below the summit of the pyramid, the God King looked over the normals, cosslain and few Kenstain that ran and maintained his palace. The others scrambled to get out of their leader's way as he made his way upward. Are they looking thinner than they should? he wondered.

  At the head of the ramp was a small landing. Binastarion surmounted this, then turned to walk outward to the platform that engirdled the pyramid's square summit. Even before passing the sound-deadening electr
onic barrier that also served to keep the voracious local insect life at bay, the God King heard the snarling and grunting of masses of the People. He asked himself, Is it the Time, already? It is so soon.

  A great cry went up from the People massed about the pyramid's base. Thousands of boma blades were drawn in salute, hundred of railguns brought to Present Arms.

  "Haiaiailll, Chief!" thundered the God Kings, hundreds of whom hovered in their tenar above the mass. The normals inarticulately snarled welcome and praise.

  Binastarion looked above the masses, to where even at this distance he could perceive columns of the People descending from the hills surrounding what had once been the major human town of the area.

  "Is it time, old companion?" he asked his Artificial Sentience.

  "Lord, it is not the best time. Too many Kessentai ride their own feet rather than tenar. Not all the normals have even shotguns. That said, and despite whatever these humans could do; moreover, despite much sun and rain and a fertile land, the People have grown quickly. Nestlingcide has done little to help. Incidents among the normals are up. They hunger."

  Deeply, solemnly, the God King nodded. "Sound amplification," he ordered his Artificial Sentience.

  Binastarion reached around to place his own grasping member on the heavy metal hilt of his own, hereditary, boma blade. This his drew, the scraping sound echoing across the masses. His People shouted and thundered his acclaim from below.

  "We march!" the God King said.

  San Pedro Line, Republic of Panama

  The first sign came well before dawn, a glowing line drawn in the sky above the Inter-American Highway. The glow spread outward to become a fan the nearer it came to the edge of human resistance to the Posleen infestation. To the human soldiers, watching and waiting in their trenches and armored vehicles, the glowing fan spreading above them seemed like the warning that the gates of Hell had broken loose and a swarm of Satan's own were coming to drag their souls down to damnation.

  The defenders weren't very far wrong either.

  To Sergeant Quijana, standing in a trench line two hundred meters east of the river, it wasn't the glow that frightened. Indeed, that was all to the good as it would give his men clearer targets, presupposing the light lasted until dawn and—as seemed likely—the enemy showed up before then.

  No, the glow was good. What bothered Quijana, and apparently most of his men, was the sound. Even at this distance the sound struck at the soul: the whine of the aliens' massed tenar, the clatter of their claws on the hard surface of the highway, their growls and snarls, even the sound of branches of trees breaking as the Posleen horde forced its way through woods—and all the sound, all the time, growing . . .

  Quijana shivered. He sensed his men doing the same. God, I feel so alone.

  From overhead came the freight train rumble of a few score shells being lobbed in the enemy's direction. For a moment, the flight of the shells downed out the Posleen cacophony. Moreover, when the shells—122mm Russians, Quijana thought—impacted, the flash of their explosions, sensed even in the distance, briefly overwhelmed the glow in the sky. Somehow, the sergeant felt instantly better. He looked around at the soldiers lining the trench with him, and saw that they, too, had relaxed—if only a bit—once they'd heard the screaming friendly shells.

  Hmmm. If the aliens' noise frightens me and the men, and our own calms us . . .

  Announcing, "I'll be back in a few minutes, Boys. I need to call the commander," Quijana turned and scrambled up a few steps cut into the back of the main trench, then followed a narrower one to where his own squad's BMP awaited in a hull-down fighting position. He placed one foot on the track of the vehicle and hoisted himself halfway up.

  "Hand me your helmet," the sergeant ordered a corporal standing in the hatch of the BMP. When he had the helmet on his head, Quijana made a call to his platoon leader.

  "Sir, I think we ought to start our engines."

  "Why, Sergeant?" the lieutenant queried back.

  "I think it will have a good effect on the men, sir."

  "Wait, out."

  The lieutenant never answered. Instead, after a couple of minutes and from about five hundred meters back, the sergeant heard one heavy duty engine, and then another, rumble into life. He handed the helmet back to the BMP's track commander. In few minutes more his own track gave off a roar as the driver started it, as did the BMPs to either side.

  As Quijana reached his dismounted squad, back in the trench, the entire San Pedro Line had come to life, better than one thousand heavy and medium armored vehicles, growling their defiance and making the ground for thirty miles shake. More artillery in the rear—mortars, too, now—began to speak. The landscape lit up, to the front from the bursting shells, to the rear with the muzzle flashes of hundreds of heavy guns. The sound of the Posleen horde was lost amidst the roar.

  Confidently, more confidently than he had felt since spotting the first sign of the approaching enemy drawn in the sky, Quijana said to his squad, "Boys, we're just gonna murder the bastards."

  From somewhere off to the left flank came the call, repeated from point to point, "Here they cooommme!"

  Posleen normals were stupid, even moronic, but they could be taught if one used the right tools. When the first wave of the first scout oolt hit the leading edge of a minefield the dismounted junior God King in command and a dozen of his people tripped off an even half dozen Bouncing Betty mines. The Kessentai went down, eviscerated and screaming in agony as did over a score of the normals. Seeing legs blown off, flesh oozing yellow blood where ball bearings had imbedded themselves, and entrails draping the ground and entangling such limbs as remained, the bulk of that scout oolt stopped, frozen in their tracks.

  Two BMP gunners, seeing the freeze, had the same thought at the same time. Within seconds, and milliseconds of each other, two 100mm high explosive antipersonnel rounds went off above the oolt. The rounds were auto-loaded and detonated by a laser beam range finder precisely above the spot picked by the gunners. (Where the United States had made a 25mm rifleman's grenade launcher to do the same thing, the Russians had never thought the effect of such a grenade justified the expense. A 100mm shell, on the other hand, did.)

  Packed as they were, without a God King for leadership, with shrieking almost-corpses rolling on the blood-stained ground ahead of them, clear space behind, and with two large shells exploding overhead, the normals of the scout oolt broke.

  Quijana's company's first sergeant, El Primero, risked a look over the lip of the trench, saw the enemy running and did a quick count. "Hmmm. With sixty of the bastards down, that leaves only about five-million, nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and forty to go."

  The primero shrugged, "Piece o' cake." Then he lowered his head, and walked on down the trench.

  The trench was camouflaged and each of the men had several obliquely oriented firing positions from it, dug into the western wall. Quijana walked along the duckboarded floor, stopping at each man to pass a few words of encouragement, check on ammunition, or ensure they were drinking water as they ought. Spent ammunition casings, steel with a brass wash for the most part, littered and smoked on the duckboards. Idly, Quijana brushed some of them aside with his boot to let them fall through the spaces in the flooring. Some of the freshly fired casings made a slight, almost imperceptible hiss as they hit the mud under the duckboards.

  The enemy were still coming and the riflemen and machine gunners were still killing those who managed to make it through the thick minefield. The BMPs were donating shells at any cohesive looking groups that seemed about to make it past the mines or which were held up by the wire to the front. The air above was thick with lightning-fast railgun fleshettes.

  Quijana reached an arm up to tap a shoulder. "Let me up there, Gonzo," he told a scared looking, sixteen-year-old private named, appropriately enough, Gonzalez. The young private sighed audibly, then withdrew his long rifle—one of countless thousands of Dragunovs purchased from Russia to
give the defenders extra reach and a heavier bullet—and stepped down into the greater safety of the main trench.

  Carefully, Quijana's face searched out the young soldier's face. Scared; but then who wouldn't be? Briefly, he reviewed what he knew about the kid. Gonzalez, Angel F., sixteen, drafted six months ago. Father and mother live in the City. Some brothers and sisters, all younger. Good kid; did well in training.

  "You're doing fine, Gonzo," Quijana said as he slapped the kid's shoulder. Then, to emphasize that the danger wasn't that great, Quijana himself took Gonzalez's previous position and—keeping as much of his head under cover as possible—looked out over the battlefield.

  The first and most noticeable things Quijana saw were eight—no nine, one was crashed and smoking amidst a pile of Posleen bodies—tenar. He ducked down again and looked behind him. The trench was competently laid out, which is to say that the rear berm was higher than the front, or firing, berm to prevent the heads of the defenders from being silhouetted against the sky. Still, he saw about as many smoke trails from his own side's armor as he had seen tenar crashed or hovering lifeless.