by John Ringo
"It means more to the boys than they'll ever let on, you know," Preiss insisted.
Boyd wordlessly nodded his head.
As the reviewing party began to break up, Pedro, Boyd's driver, "Ahem'd" to catch the soon to be ex-dictator's attention. With no further signal needed, Boyd followed Pedro to the waiting limousine.
Opening the door for himself, Boyd entered the limo and ordered his driver to take him around the post for one final look. Pedro dutifully started the engine and began to take the palm-lined route from the PX overlooking the golf course to the top of the hill on which stood a sharpened post with a crosspiece (for the 10th had removed Cortez's remains upon returning to the fort). The car passed the NCO club, then Colonel's Row, and then took a right to move along the road backing the southern side of the golf course. A final turn was made onto the back side of the PX complex.
Boyd glanced idly to his left and exclaimed, "Good God, what is that? Pull over, Pedro."
The Posleen God King looked suspiciously at the approaching Boyd through its one remaining yellow eye. Boyd could tell it was a God King, rather than a normal, from the shredded remnants of the alien's fungus-eaten crest. The God King sat on its haunches, surrounded by several score pair of boots, some mud-caked and others shined to a mirror gloss. A boot sat snugly on the Posleen's left claw while it held a black-specked white rag tightly gripped by its right. The rag's excess was twisted around the alien's right forearm.
The alien hissed and snarled at Boyd's approach. As this failed to deter the retired dictator's approach, it lowered its head. One eye, however, remained fixed on Boyd.
"I am allowed to be here," came the defiant announcement, though the major sound came from the dull silver-gray box strapped to its chest, interpreting the Posleen's incomprehensible tongue.
"You are the one who surrendered, aren't you?" asked Boyd.
"I am allowed to be here," the box repeated, the tone more defensive than defiant now.
"It's all right," Boyd said, calmly. "I am not going to send you away. You are the one who surrendered?"
Slowly, ponderously, the Posleen lifted its head nearly perpendicular to the ground and then lowered it in the sign of the affirmative.
"I am he," the box duly translated.
"Are you all right? Are you being treated well?"
More hisses and snarls, punctuated by two snaps of the jaw. "I am well," said the box.
Boyd let his eyes wander to the many pairs of boots, then to the door of the shack through which he could see many score more pair.
Without being asked the box offered, "They taught me to do this. Gave me this place to live when I had no other. I make several hundred dollars a month from being the 'boot boy' for the 10th Infantry. And a music company from the island you humans call Ireland has sent me an advance for a translation of the song we Posleen only know as 'The tale of he who farted in the enemy's general direction.' I do all right."
The Posleen looked reasonably well fed. Still Boyd asked, "Is that enough?"
"Yes, although the work never seems to end. I didn't always have to work, you know. I used to have others that did the work for me. Now I have a boss-man and I must work."
Did Boyd detect a trace of wistful sadness in the tone of the words coming from the box? Or had the alien's own snarls, hisses, clicks and grunts seemed somehow sad?
"What are you called?" No reason not to be friendly, I suppose.
"My name, among my people, was Guanamarioch, or Guano for my close friends. Here, they call me 'Apache,' perhaps because of my crest."
As if to punctuate, Guano removed the rag from his right hand and, extending a claw, began to scratch furiously at the shreds of its crest. As it did so, it—more or less doglike—turned its head giving Boyd his first clear view of the missing eye with its still weeping socket.
"It was the jungle took my eye," the box announced solemnly. "Took my eye . . . took my clan . . . took everything."
Noticing the mad glare that had crept into the Posleen's remaining eye, Boyd decided to change the subject, if he could.
"Do you have any relaxation or fun at all?" he asked. "Or do you just shine boots?"
The God King looked around furtively before answering. "Sometimes," he said, "I sneak into the jungle when I think it is asleep and cut down a tree or two. If I can find an ant tree that is even better. But most of the ant trees are pretty deep inside and I am afraid I'll awaken the jungle if I go too deep. And then, on really good days, the boss lets me sneak down to the French cut and hunt for caimen."
Guanamarioch's head lowered and his teeth bared in a half snarl. "I really hate caimen."
Boyd laughed. "The jungle never sleeps, my friend."
"Yes, it does," the Posleen insisted, its ragged crest waving wildly. "It does! It does! Like any living being it must rest. It sleeps. Besides, if it were not asleep it would have killed me as it killed so many of my brothers."
Obviously the God King thought the jungle was a living being. Boyd thought that was pretty ridiculous but saw no point in arguing about it. Besides, the alien seemed too distraught—and way too big and well clawed—to risk antagonizing it.
Suddenly, without warning, the God King picked up and rewound the rag, bent its head over the boot it held and began furiously polishing.
"It's the boss," the box whispered.
Boyd looked around and saw a half naked Chocoes Indian approaching at a leisurely walk. The Indian held a bow in his left hand, beneath a multi-striped brassard that indicated membership in one or another of the Indian Scout groups the Republic had raised in its dire need. There was nothing particularly unusual about that.
What was unusual was the Indian's retinue. Meekly behind him, in double file, walked an even half dozen of every ethnicity one could hope to find in Panama. There was a Cuna Indian girl, short like the Chocoes but wearing an appliqué blouse and a ring through her nose. Beside the Cuna walked a tall slender black woman, descendant of Antillean workers who had labored on the canal and the railroad. Behind the Antillean Boyd could see an equally tall "rubia," a white woman of pure or nearly pure European ancestry. The fourth was probably a Chocoes girl while the last two were plainly mestizas of mixed Euro and Indian blood.
If Ruiz recognized Boyd he gave no sign of it. Instead he announced, "I am chief of my tribe. This one," and a point of the Indian's nose indicated the Posleen, "is owned by us. Why are you disturbing him at his work?"
"Oh, just satisfying my curiosity," Boyd answered. No sense in standing on ceremony, after all. "I was wondering, too, if you might be willing to sell your . . . pet." What an intelligence asset he could be if . . . when we are attacked again.
"Perhaps I would," the Indian answered. "But his price would be high. He owes me and mine much."
"We could . . . negotiate," Boyd answered.
The Indian turned his attention to the Posleen. He was not unwilling to sell, in principle, but wanted the best price possible. A hard working slave is surely more valuable than a lazy one.
"You!" he demanded. "Do I need to take you back into the jungle? It is asking for you, you know."
The box remained silent but the Posleen God King, Guanamarioch of the host, flyer among the stars and leader of a war band, redoubled his efforts to make an American-owned jungle boot shine like glass.
Epilogue II
. . . the Sea shall give up her dead . . .
—1789 U.S. Book of Common Prayer,
"Order for the Burial of the Dead"
Muelle (Pier) 18, Balboa, Republic of Panama
Boyd left his newly built headquarters for the Boyd Steamship Company (though "Steamship" was something of an anachronism now that the company was more concerned with commerce between planets) and walked along the pier to where a launch waited to take him out to the USS Salem, riding at anchor in the bay. On his way, he almost passed a pair of Posleen, one larger than the other, the larger one having a fair crest. The smaller, like the larger, sat on the pier's very edge.
Its head lay softly against the shoulder of the other.
The crested Posleen stared intently at the water below. In its hands was grasped a fishing pole that it moved slowly up and down, causing the line and, presumably, the unseen baited hook to move likewise. A human wearing a Fleet Strike uniform with the insignia for Military Intelligence sat on the other side, away from the smaller Posleen. The human asked questions which the Posleen answered without looking up. The answers the human wrote down in a small notebook.
Boyd walked over and said from behind, "Hello, Guano. How are they biting?"
Still looking down, Guano answered, through its AS, "Not so bad, Dictator."
It was obvious that the Posleen had been through regeneration. Its crest was normal again, and it had both eyes. Well . . . an intelligence asset like that? You wouldn't just let it die of old age, now, would you?
Of course, regeneration didn't stop with eyes and crest. This tended to explain the other Posleen.
"This the new missus?" Boyd asked.
Guano still didn't take his eyes from the water. "Yes, Dictator. She's a cosslain. A fairly smart cosslain, too. Almost sentient. With that, and the new ways of telling which eggs will be Kessentai, we're hoping to start a small family soon."
"Where did you . . . ummm . . . ?"
Eyes still intent on his fishing, Guanamarioch answered, "It's amazing what you can find on eBay."
"She was a bigger star than I ever thought about being."
"Is she still alive down there?" Boyd asked of the Marlene Dietrich lookalike standing next to him.
Boyd was growing old again. Though he had twice been young, and though the process by which he had been made young the second time had also slowed down the aging process considerably, his hair was gray, his back a bit stooped, and every blasted joint in his body hurt.
His eyes were still bright though, staring at the featureless surface of the ocean between Isla Coiba and the Peninsula de Azuero.
He asked again, "Is she still alive?"
USS Salem's avatar shook her head in negation. "At first I sensed nothing. Then, for a very little while, I could sense a little something of her below. But that gradually weakened until it disappeared altogether. If I had never sensed anything after she went down I'd have wondered and thought that maybe it was interference from the ocean. But as it is . . ."
Boyd sighed. "Are we doing the right thing, Sally, pulling her up like this?"
Salem answered, simply, "I don't know."
Salem had insisted on coming out to see her sister's body raised. "It's a family thing," she had said, and Boyd had understood. Now, the recovery vessel standing close by off the port side, she and Boyd waited for word.
It had not been difficult to find the Des Moines. While she had drifted a few feet, and sunk into the muck more than a few, her location had never been lost.
The muck had actually been the greatest of the three major problems with the recovery. It had cost a fortune to have it vacuumed away so that the antigravity devices could be placed under the hull. On the other hand, the suction of the muck would have interfered with raising her anyway, and possibly caused the hull to break apart. Moreover, getting rid of the muck had allowed a close examination of the hull and repair of all but two of the holes shot in it by Posleen fire. These were left to allow water to drain out. Patches, pre-cut, were ready to slap and weld over them once that was done. Lastly, with no chance of the muck being replaced, it had made sense to vacuum out much of the interior of the ship. This too had reduced the strain on the hull.
Sally lifted her head up, obviously hearing something Boyd could not.
"They say they're ready to start," she announced.
Boyd nodded. "Tell them to go ahead."
There wasn't long to wait, fifteen minutes at most, before the water began to show disturbances from underneath, a billowing cloud of sea bottom, a slight rising on the surface and smoothing of the waves. Boyd bit his lower lip in anxious anticipation.
"Over there," Sally pointed.
Boyd looked a bit to port and was slightly surprised to see the point of the bow emerge first. He'd been expecting the stack.
"They canted the bow upward," Sally explained, "to reduce stress on the hull. They'll keep the bow about stationary now while they level off the rest of her."
"I'm a little surprised she didn't break up on the way down," Boyd said.
"I think she flooded herself carefully before the end to keep upright as long as possible," Sally answered. "Then too, the water was shallow. She would not have built up enough speed going down to really crash."
The two went silent then as the recovery crew deftly evened out Des Moines' keel. The next thing to appear after the point of the bow was a heavily damaged rangefinder, then the stack, then the superstructure. Two seaweed covered turrets began to show, followed by the rest of the superstructure and the remains of the number three turret. There was a wait while water drained off, running over the sides in a stinky, greenish deluge. Then slowly and, it might be said, majestically, the ship rose evenly under antigravity to her keel. The recovery ship moved in close.
Boyd continued to stare, fascinated, as diving teams from the recovery ship went over the side. He was equally fascinated by the process of lowering the two huge patches meant to seal the holes left in the hull. Once these were in place, and the crews welding, he turned his attention to the battle damage.
Boyd shook his head in wonder. "To think she was still fighting back even as she slipped under with all the damage done to her."
The face of Sally's avatar glowed with pride. "She was a good ship, a brave ship, from a good class. I was proud to have her for a sister. Then too," and the actress-avatar smiled, "she sure knew how to make an exit."
It was curiously light in the interior of the ship. While all of the human-produced light bulbs had collapsed, or the wiring rotted, the Indowy-installed emergency light plates still cast a glow strong enough to see by, if barely. Moreover, Sally's hologram, projected from the warship herself, sitting forty yards off to port, and resonating from Des Moines' mostly intact "nervous system," added still more.
In a way, it was a bit too much light. The remain of several hundred of Des Moines' crew—uniforms and shoes for the most part, sometimes bones if those had been cooked before sinking—littered the decks. Blood and flesh were gone, however, a small mercy for which Boyd gave great thanks.
Deep below decks he could hear the odd sound of underwater welding resonating through the bulkheads. The pumps he could not hear, though he knew they were working. The Galactics built well, and to fine tolerances. Their pumps were noiseless.
"This way," Sally's avatar suggested, pointing downward to a ladder leading deep below decks.
"What's down this far?" Boyd asked.
"I'm not sure. Something. There's a power source down there, and not a small one."
"The pebble bed reactors?"
"No . . . they're dead. And there's no radiation to speak of. It's something else."
Boyd shrugged his shoulders and, reluctantly, descended towards the bowels of the ship.
"Are you sure there's enough air down here?" Boyd asked.
"Does it stink?" Sally queried in response. "I suppose it must. But, yes, as the water drained, fresh air was drawn down. It would last a single man for years. Don't worry."
"I'm not worried," the human snapped. "And, yes, it stinks."
"Turn towards the stern," Sally directed. "The power source is back there."
Boyd and the avatar emerged from a long corridor into a large, mostly open space surrounding a solid looking, circular mass. Boyd looked around the open space, saw numerous tables and stools.
"Ship's mess?" he asked.
"The main mess, yes. Those were the galley, butcher shop and garbage grinder we just passed. Just ahead, to the stern, is a ladder. The power source is near the base of that."
Still reluctant, Boyd continued on and then down.
"I'm getting to
be a little old for this, you know," he complained.
"Mr. Boyd," Sally answered, formally. "You know damned well you do not have to be old. A simple form to be signed, off-world passage to be paid, and you could be seventeen again."
"Bah. And spend another lifetime going through that shit? No, thank you."
"Up to you."
"Well, at least there are no rats aboard."
"No," Sally agreed. "They all drowned. Which makes me wonder if I shouldn't have myself sunk for a bit and re-raised. They itch, you know? The rats, I mean. Nasty little feet and claws always traipsing along the decks whenever there isn't a human about.
