by John Ringo
Partly from the smoke but more from something else entirely, Daisy the woman began to weep as she stumbled along the narrow passageways. My crew, my boys, oh, my brave boys.
"The ship is plainly sinking, Binastarion. Might I suggest we save our cannon and HVM fire for more suitable targets?"
"I've seen that demon-bitch 'ruined' before, AS. I'll believe she is down for good when I can see her bubbles coming up through the water. Even so, you're right. Switch fire to railguns to clear the enemy decks. Order Tenar Group Jarn in to drop the assault detachment on the ship. Let's see them get the fires and leakage under control while they battle our boarders."
The worst was Morgen, the cat. Daisy almost didn't notice her, lying in a tangled heap on the fourth—or splinter—deck where a shard of sharp metal had nearly severed the kitten in two. Tears flowed afresh as she bent down and picked up the bloody scrap, pressing it to her breasts instinctively while twisting her head and touching her chin to it head and pointed, furry ears. Her one free hand stroked the kitten's fur, ignoring the blood.
Then she heard the clang of something large landing on the deck above.
The normal hated water, deep water anyway. Posleen couldn't swim and the creature knew instinctively that if it fell or was cast from the hurtling tenar it would have sunk so deep none could have harvested it. Inwardly it shuddered at the . . . no, not thought. It shuddered at the feeling of being forever cut off from its People.
Thus, when its newfound god's tenar had touched upon the blazing metal construction that, mercifully, floated on the water, the normal had felt nothing but relief. Moreover, it soon had company as other tenar landed, these also disgorging single normals or in one case a pair of them. The orders of the Kessentai driving those tenar were apparently the same as those this normal received through signs and body language. There is thresh in this ship. Cut through the metal and harvest it.
Then, as one, all the tenar lifted off, leaving the normals—with but a single Kessentai, Xenotraghal—in charge, to the work they understood so well.
* * *
Daisy, still holding the kitten, lifted her head out of the hatch to topside. A quick glance told her all she needed to know. The Posleen were on deck, amidships, cutting their way through with their monomolecular swords. Marines and Cazadors shot them down, and were shot down in turn.
But none of them were watching her. Risking the chance of a stray shot, she leapt out of the hatch and raced to the ladder that led to the bridge. She scrambled up the ladder, emerging onto the abattoir the Posleen HVM had made of both the navigation and the armored bridges. She had to step over the body of a burnt and dismembered thing to enter.
And there was her captain and her love, hurt, dying . . . maybe dead.
The ship was armored on its main turrets and over its armored belt and deck. The top deck, however, was still teak and light metal. With others of its kind trading shots with the threshkreen who popped out to fire a burst before retiring behind protecting metal, the normal used its monomolecular boma blade to hack through wood and steel. Two of those helping it fell, yellow blood gushing to run over the decks and drip below through where the cuts had been made.
The sole Kessentai afloat was bellowing. The normals didn't understand one word in ten, but they did understand the urgency in the voice. Redoubling their efforts they soon had a great gaping hole in the top deck. Part of the hole led to what seemed a closed room. Next to that, the gap revealed a long corridor, narrow but not so narrow as those of the Aldenata-designed ships.
The God King pointed to two of the normals and then down into the compartment. Bearing shotguns, the normals pointed down and fired. Metallic pellets careened off the bulkheads with the sound of hail hitting a tin roof. Confident that any threshkreen that might have been hiding below could not have avoided being wounded, at the least, the God King ordered two normals to leap. This they did, somewhat clumsily. One broke its foreleg in the jump. The other killed it and waited until a third had joined.
With two hale normals in the compartment, they used their bomas to cut around the obvious hatchway. This fell outward leaving a hole suitable for passage of beings the size of the People. Alarmed cries of the threshkreen echoed in the narrow passageway. Human bullets pinged off of steel bulkheads. The normals answered with shotgun fire.
Commending his soul to the ancestors, Xenotraghal the Kessentai jumped below, using the body of the broken-legged normal to cushion his fall. He carried a railgun which he used to fire first in one direction, then in the other. The threshkreen cries changed to screams and gurgles.
Sending the normals out first, the Kessentai beckoned for others to follow. Then, inch by inch, they began clearing the ship.
Daisy looked out from the bridge sternward to where the Posleen had landed in some mass. They were lining up to port as if to plunge below. To starboard, however, was clear.
She felt for a pulse on her captain's neck. It was there, fast and faint and seemingly fading. Still holding the kitten in place atop her breasts with her right hand, she bent and took McNair's right wrist in her left. Dropping to one knee she wound the captain's torso around her neck, plugging his right armpit into her own left shoulder. Then, thinking Damn, but my captain is heavy. I would have felt his weight first in a different way, she straightened. Still, tank-born, she was much stronger than any woman born of woman. Truth be told, she was stronger than many men. She held the weight easily enough.
The load was unbalanced. Daisy the woman bent her knees, pushed upward suddenly, and shifted her body underneath. That's better. The captain's right arm and leg hung down limply in front. She gathered them up in the crook of her left arm, using the hand of that arm to hold the kitten in place. This freed her right arm. Bending one last time, she took hold of the Sterling. Bracing it on the deck, she jacked the bolt, loading the weapon.
Then, heading to the side of the ship, port, where the Posleen were not entering, she left the bridge, scaled down the ladder and—tight squeeze—brought herself, McNair and the kitten below. McNair's naval officer's sword, hanging down from his belt, paddled her rump lightly with each step downward.
And I might have enjoyed that, too, under different circumstances . . .
* * *
Father Dwyer felt the ship listing as it took on water unevenly. There was a shock and a vibration felt through the deck and the listing stopped and began to reverse itself.
The priest looked heavenward. "I don't know whether that's the exec in CIC ordering counterflooding, or my own dear convert Daisy Mae doing it on her own. In either case, Father, bless their efforts. And strike down the enemies of your people."
The priest had a Sterling in his hands. Two Marines and three Panamanian Cazadors clustered around him. Ahead he could hear the clatter of alien claws on the steel deck. The clattering grew closer.
"Wait for it, me boys," the priest whispered, calmly. "Wait for it . . . wait for it." Then, with a great cry of "Deus vult," the Jesuit stuck the Sterling around the corner and pulled the trigger.
The God King caught the barest glimpse of a threshkreen in a funny collar, firing one of their small but large bore repeating weapons. Before the thing even flashed Xeno threw himself to one side to take cover in an open area filled with dead and dying thresh lying atop long tables.
Food, however, was the last thing on the Kessentai's mind. Instead, it simply breathed a sigh of relief that the fire which had struck down the two normals preceding him had not gathered him—just yet, mission unfulfilled—to his ancestors.
Not that it makes any difference. This is a suicide mission and I have no chance either at mortal life or even as thresh consumed to become part of the host. Still, I have my duty and perhaps the ancestors will gather me to them and grant me a high place if I have completed it well.
The Kessentai was one of those who might have grown into what humans called "a five-percenter," one of those God Kings whose intelligence made them more dangerous than the other ninety-five in on
e hundred put together. Still, he had been obscure, a very junior scout leader. Perhaps he had been chosen for this mission because of his obscurity, perhaps because of his potential. He didn't know.
He did know, however, that his mission was to interrupt repairs so that this ship would sink beneath the waves. Sinking required taking on enough water to produce negative buoyancy. Water was below and, if anywhere, was coming into the ship from below. Thus, it was into the bowels of the ship that he had to proceed.
There is a hatchway. I can't squeeze through it, though, without expanding it some. But there I will complete my mission.
Pointing for two more normals to enlarge the opening, the God King kept watch as they sliced away the hatch and began paring away the sides. He heard the sound of thresh voices and the pitter-patter of thresh feet on the deck. He braced for a counterattack which didn't come.
With the hatch enlarged and four more normals in tow, the Kessentai and his party started down.
Daisy could just make it through the hatch through the armor deck if she turned sideways to descend. Unfortunately, that was a very awkward way to go down a steep, narrow ship's ladder. She tried and having once almost lost her balance, she hung the Sterling around her neck, thus freeing her hand to hold on for balance.
If I can get my captain to the tank he might yet live. If I can't, I would rather die with him, here where we have spent so much time together.
There was a series of explosions topside, which was felt throughout the ship. The klaxons began to sound and the ship's intercom crackled to life. "All hands, now hear this. Abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship."
"Aye," Dwyer muttered, "I suppose it's time and past time. And I don't think the counterflooding's been enough. The ship rides differently. It feels lower in the water, somehow."
The Marines understood the call well enough. The Jesuit translated for the Cazadors with his party, instructing them to grab and don one of the life vests, should they find any. Then, with no more sounds of the aliens nearby, he led them to a stern hatchway. I suppose if we're to have a chance we'll need a lifeboat. If any survived.
"Kessentai, there is a power source ahead," the AS whispered.
"This entire ship is one big power source, AS," Xeno answered.
"This one is different. The Net tells me it is from one of the Elves' regeneration tanks."
"So?"
"So, it occurs to me that you might survive, after all, if you can make it to that tank before the ship sinks. There wouldn't be room for the normals, of course."
"Indeed?"
"Indeed."
The God King's heart began to beat a bit faster. He might live after all and rejoin his clan on some future day when this ship was recovered to scavenge its refined metal. If his People could do so in space surely they could do so underwater, though the Kessentai was not sure exactly how they would proceed.
Heart beating fast (for she was sure she heard Posleen speech ahead as she proceeded down the under-armor passageway) Daisy stopped for a moment, uncertain as to what exactly to do. Her ship-body was beginning to go down by the bow. It could not be much longer now before it went completely under.
She, too, had heard the call to abandon ship. Even if her ears had not heard it, the ship-body had. And, of course, whatever the ship body knew the AID knew. Since the AID was the brain . . .
The AID stopped the body for a moment. It knew well what it was like to be left alone. The idea of leaving that part of it which was the ship alone for however long, if ever, it might take to recover it was simply impossible. At something analogous to light speed, it began copying the "files" that were embedded in the very structure of the ship, erasing them as soon as the copying was done. The hull might rest below, but the essence of the ship would live in the AID.
Perhaps in time, with luck, I might return everything to as it was; to be the trinity of ship and AID and woman, all of us, together, loving our captain and crew. For now, this is best.
Daisy tapped in to the ship's nervous system and used it to measure her enemy. Five of them, though how many are normals and how many God Kings I cannot tell. They stand between me and life for my captain, though, and for this crime they must die.
As quietly as possible, she set her burdens, cat and captain, down in a small, semi-sheltered spot behind an open hatchway. She had never actually used one of the Sterlings she had acquired on the black market. Even so, the tank had programmed her with full battle reflexes, almost as an afterthought. She knew how to use it despite never having actually touched one before this grim day. Also quietly, she removed the captain's sword from its sheath.
How am I going to do this? she wondered. I can't leave the AID part of me awake while the human bodies sleep in the tank. It will go completely mad. Ah . . . I know, though it will take some timing and concentration. If I can make it to the tank, I can put my captain in and lie beside him. The kitten will fit easily enough over my breasts. Just as the tank closes I will shut off the AID. That would kill my woman's body but the tank won't let me die. Then all will sleep together until the resurrection. My last thought as the tank claims us must be, "Click on the AID's power switch."
Opposite the captain and a little to the stern, she found another half sheltered spot, took her own position and waited.
The lights were still working, which the God King found rather odd. After the damage the ship had taken from fire and whatever else his own boarding party had been able to destroy he would not have expected the convenience. Most of the light came from the threshkreen glowing balls. Some of it came from flat plates attached to the walls by no method he could see.
There was a dangerous spot ahead, one where passageways met and where there was no cover. The Kessentai stepped into the middle of his normals and grunted for the party to advance.
She had never seen them personally except as distant black spots, targets to be serviced. Thus, when the party of Posleen stepped out into the junction, Daisy gasped and nearly shat herself with terror.
The terror itself was her spur to action. Sighting down the suppressed submachine gun, with its metal folding stock against her shoulder, she fired. The thing was loaded with frangible ammunition. She knew it was because she had seen to it that there was no other kind of 9mm ammunition aboard. These broke apart and dispersed—yet another "war crime" to her record—when they hit flesh. For these purposes Posleen flesh was no different from human. The bullets flew and virtually exploded within the alien bodies, dumping all their not inconsiderable energy instantaneously.
Brrrp. A Posleen fell, splay legged. Brrrp. Another was bowled over, bleating like a camel. Brrrp. A third, just turning to face her, took two to the head and, going limp, fell in a heap. Brrrp. The fourth she missed. Brrrp. It went down with three in the torso—yellow flesh and blood exploded outward—and one in the throat. Br . . . fuck, empty.
Daisy dropped the weapon, picked up the sword and stood. An animal growl began to build in her throat. The Posleen answered the growl with its own war cry. It, too, sense of honor implicated, dropped its railgun and drew a blade.
Mindless, enraged howls echoing through the passages of the lower deck, the two charged.
Dwyer saw the lone tenar slowly approaching, rather than charging and firing. Surrounded by ninety or so survivors—there hadn't been time to do a full headcount—in the one serviceable lifeboat they had found topside, he called out, "Boys, it's been good to serve with you. Now stand ready to take one last one with us."
But the tenar had not opened fire. Instead, the rider had pulled a metal stick from his harness, stood fully erect in the flying sled, and called out with both arms raised above it. Other circling tenar had stopped then, their God Kings looking curiously at the tiny band of humans bobbing on the ocean waves.
The tenar came closer, closer until finally it was not more than ten feet from the edge of the lifeboat. The rider then cocked its head and said something in its own language. That something had sounded unaccountably gentle. Th
en the God King raised its crest, shouted once again, and tossed Dwyer the stick it held. Dwyer caught it, fumblingly at first. He looked up to see that the alien had raised one palm, holding it open and towards the humans. The priest returned the gesture and added one of his own. He didn't understand the why's of it, but he knew he and the rest had just been spared. The priest made the sign of the cross at the Posleen.
"That was damned odd thing to do, Binastarion," the AS said as the tenar glided above the waves.
The Kessentai smiled very slightly. "Was it really, AS? Think about it. We could only have taken that little craft full of threshkreen by firing on them. That would have sunk them and so we could not have taken them anyway."
