by John Ringo
She pushed his hand away and stood up, her eyes fierce and angry. Paloma walked around the bed, furiously picking her clothes off the floor and pulling them on with no particular regard for placement. She completely skipped replacing the bra, preferring to stuff it into her pocketbook and leave her breasts to bounce free and remind Julio of what he was giving up by his pigheaded refusal to see the truth: that the war was only for the ants of the country and that the better people should stay out of it.
Even angry as she was, maybe especially angry as she was, Julio still thought she was the most beautiful person, place or thing he’d ever seen. Hourglass figure, aristocratic nose, bright green eyes… sigh. He tried to get up to stop her but she held up a forbidding palm.
“When you’ve come to your senses and decided that I am the most important thing in your life, call me. Until then I do not wish to see you or hear from you.”
Without another word she turned and left, slamming the hotel room door behind her.
Quarry Heights, Panama City, Panama
Digna Miranda saluted, as she had been taught, when she reported to Boyd’s sparsely furnished office in one of the wooden surface buildings sitting above the honeycombed hill. He could have furnished the room lavishly, but had an ingrained frugality that simply wouldn’t permit it.
Boyd returned the salute, awkwardly, before asking the tiny lieutenant, politely, to have a seat. Though she’d agreed to meet him — indeed, legally she could probably not have refused — Digna was suspicious. She had few illusions. She knew her looks were, minimally, striking and in some views more than that. Why this new-old general wanted to see her privately she did not know and, inherently, distrusted. All men were to be distrusted except close blood relatives until they proved trustworthy.
She sat, as directed. Boyd noticed her eyes were narrow with suspicion.
“Lieutenant Miranda, this isn’t about what you might think,” Boyd said defensively.
“Very well,” she answered, though her eyes remained piercing, “what is it?”
“You said something at the reception at Fort Espinar that struck my interest. You complained about the ‘soft city boys’ we are commissioning. I wanted you to explain.”
“Oh,” Digna said, suddenly embarrassed by her suspicions. “Well, they are soft, despite the gringos’ attempts at toughening them. They don’t know what it means to live rough, not really. Pain is foreign to them. Maybe worst of all, they don’t have the intrinsic loyalty and selflessness they need to have.”
“Are they all like that?” Boyd asked.
She thought for a moment, trying very hard to be fair. “No… not all. Just too many.”
“You mean we’re in trouble then?”
“Serious trouble,” she agreed, nodding.
Boyd asked the serious question, with all the seriousness it deserved. “What can we do about it?”
“We don’t need as many officers as we’ve created. No company of one hundred and fifty or two hundred soldiers needs six officers to run it. Three would be more than enough. If it were me, I’d watch those we have very carefully and very secretly. Then I’d send about half to penal battalions and let the decent remainder run the show.”
Harsh woman, Boyd thought. Harsh.
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
From the United States Department of Defense a credit in the amount of several score million dollars was issued to the government of Panama for purposes of buying diesel fuel. Presidente Mercedes was aware of the sum but was also aware that it was far too soon for any of it to disappear.
Instead, the money was duly paid, part to a company which owned four Very Large Crude Carriers, and more to the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, which would provide the fuel. Though the VLCCs normally carried crude oil, in this case they were slated to haul diesel.
Some of ARAMCO’s payment went to transportation, pipeline usage fees for the most part. Roughly half of that went to a Royal Prince of the al Saud clan, some to the plant that produced the diesel, the rest actually went to the company — another Saud clan sinecure — which owned and operated the pipeline. These excess fees were simply built in to the cost of the fuel.
There were some additional fees that also had to be also paid. Perhaps it was the strain of war that was driving up the cost of everything.
In time, the four tankers pulled up to the docking facilities of a large oil terminal on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. Diesel fuel was pumped, a lot of diesel, though perhaps rather less than had been paid for.
At the appointed times, the tankers withdrew from the oil terminal and proceeded generally south, paralleling the east coast of Africa. Rounding the Horn of Africa, the tankers headed generally northwest, nearly touching the northeast coast of Brazil before entering the Caribbean sea.
It was at about this time, when certain agents on Trinidad confirmed that two particular tankers were heading north, that a large payment, many million dollars, was made on behalf of a certain rejuvenated dictator, one with a very full beard, on a certain populous Caribbean island, to a private account held by the president of Panama. The northbound tankers continued on their way.
Meanwhile, the other tankers, lying low in the water under their burden of just over two million barrels of diesel fuel, each, continued westward towards the Panama Canal.
By the time the last two tankers docked at the port of Cristobal, in Panama, two hundred and fifty-five thousand gallon fuel tankers were lined up and ready.
Boyd grinned happily as the trucks began to pull up next to the tanker to have their cargo tanks filled to capacity before dispersing to small fuel dumps at their corps’, divisions’ and regiments’ fuel points. They would return in shuttles to claim the rest. While some of the fuel would disappear, Boyd was certain, before reaching the line, better some than all. Moreover, if someone was going to benefit by a little theft he would rather it be the little people of Panama than that grasping spider in the presidential palace or his greasy hangers-on.
Even so, Boyd was pleased to see that officers vetted by Diaz were along to keep the thefts to a tolerable minimum.
Meanwhile, from the capital city of an island several hundred miles to the north, from a different presidential palace, a blistering telephone call raced from dictator to president.
“Mercedes, you chingadera motherfucking pendejo!” demanded Fidel Castro. “What the fuck have you done with my chingada fuel?”
Interlude
Aided by his Artificial Sentience hanging by a chain around his neck, Guanamarioch interspersed his religious and tactical studies with studies of the target area. This was a place at the northern tip of the one of the lesser continents of the threshworld, very near where a narrow isthmus joined it to the second continent of that world. The maps showed it as being called, in all of the significant thresh tongues, “Colombia.”
The young God King referred back to the Scroll of Flight and Resettlement as he perused the holographic map of the new home.
“Hmmm… let’s see. The scroll instructs the new settler to match the mass of thresh available in the area against the time available to get in crops before the available thresh runs out.”
“This is correct, lord, but it will hardly be a problem,” The Artificial Sentience answered. “The area the clan has claimed — and which we should be able to hold for some cycles — contains nearly three million of the sentient thresh, plus many times that in nonsentients. There is also much nonanimal thresh there and the area gets much illumination from its sun, much rain from the prevailing winds. Growing seasons are short. The clan will not hunger for so long as we can hold the area of settlement.”
“For so long…” the God King echoed. When, since the fall, have we ever been able to hold on to an area long enough to grow powerful? Soon enough the others will be pushing us to lesser grounds, Soon enough we will be back in space, looking for a new home. I have seen over a thousand lifetimes’ of records and in all that time it has been so for those as weak as we a
re now.
The Artificial Sentience had been with Guanamarioch since shortly after the God King had first emerged from the breeding pens. It knew its master well and understood the meaning behind the Kessentai’s last spoken words.
“Yes, best to consider the escape routes, too, young master,” advised the Artificial Sentience.
“There is this area, the one the locals call ‘the Darien,’ we might use,” offered the God King. “What do we know about it?”
“Remarkably little, lord. The information the Elves have put on the Net offers only the outlines. Perhaps the local thresh are not too familiar with the area, themselves.”
“Imagine that,” said Guanamarioch. “Imagine having so much space, so low a population, that there can be an area of one’s own world that one can afford not to know and to settle.”
The Artificial Sentience was personally indifferent to space, as it was to population pressure. Thus, the possible emptiness of this “Darien” place meant little. It did occur to it, however, that there might be other reasons for the emptiness than low population.
“Perhaps, lord, this ‘Darien’ is simply undesirable.”
Chapter 7
Vanity, thy name is woman.
— William Shakespeare
Cristobal, Panama
McNair’s jaw dropped.
“What do you mean my discretionary funds are gone? All of them? That’s impossible.”
“Every penny,” Chief Davis answered, cringing inwardly at the expected explosion.
“And what’s more, Skipper,” the ship’s supply officer, or “pork chop,” piped in, “this morning I received a phone call, a really interesting one. It seems we are about to receive several hundred yards of very expensive yellow silk.”
“Silk? What do we need with any silk, let alone several hundred yards’ worth?”
Neither the “pork chop” nor Davis answered. Instead, they just whistled nonchalantly while looking around at each of the walls in the captain’s office.
“DDDAAAIIISSSYYY!” McNair shouted. Instantly, the ship’s holographic avatar appeared by his desk, her head hanging, shamefaced.
“I wanted a new dress,” she said, simply, holographic mouth forming a pretty pout.
“You’re a ship,” McNair pointed out, reasonably. “You can’t wear a dress.”
“It’s for an awning for the rear deck. And for over the brows. That’s as close to a dress as I can wear. Oh, Captain, please don’t sent it back,” she pleaded, clasping holographic hands with long red nails. “It will be sooo pretty.”
The ship didn’t mention, And I wanted to be pretty for you.
“Okay, Daisy, I understand that,” though, for a fact, McNair didn’t really understand that at all. “But I need that money. I’m responsible for it.”
“Oh… but Captain, you and the crew have lots of money,” Daisy answered, innocently. “See?”
Daisy projected another hologram, this time of a bank’s ledger sheet, over the captain’s desk. He took one look at the amount at the bottom of the ledger and his eyes bugged out.
“Where did that come from?” he asked in shocked suspicion.
Daisy twisted her head back and forth, then shrugged, before answering, “We made it. Ummm… I made it. You know? From ‘investments.’ ”
McNair raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What investments?”
“Futures,” Daisy answered slowly and indefinitely. “Ummm… some little things I bought on margin. Some stocks in defense firms… here… none in the Federation. Some consulting fees from some firms on Wall Street and in China. A few patents I took out and sold the rights to…”
“Patents?”
“Ummm… well… Japan doesn’t recognize anyone else’s patents or copyrights… sooo… I sold them some rights to some GalTech that had never been registered there with their patent office. Little things. Nothing important. Antigravity. Nanotechnology.”
“ ‘Little things,’ ” McNair echoed, placing his head in his hands. “Little things… nanotechnology… antigravity.”
He lifted his head abruptly and demanded, “And where did your starter money come from?”
Daisy’s head hung lower. She shrugged and answered, defensively, “Your discretionary funds. I was going to put it back. Soon.”
“Put it back now,” McNair ordered and was, somehow, unsurprised to see the amount at the bottom of the ledger drop. He noted that it didn’t drop much.
“All of it.”
“Captain, that was all of it. I told you. You and the crew have lots of money. I wanted you all to have nice things, the best food… and I wanted a new dress.”
McNair hung his head. It wouldn’t do any good to explain when the inevitable investigation showed up that his ship had wanted a “new dress.”
A ship’s captain is responsible…
“Pork Chop, tell the chaplain, the Jag and the IG that I need to see them,” he ordered. Then he thought about that and countermanded, “Belay that. Just tell the chaplain I’ll be over to see him in a few. Dismissed.”
Except for the crucifix on the walls, and a few other odds and ends, the chaplain’s office aboard Des Moines was pure Navy. This extended even to the standard Navy steel gray desk.
“I see by your face you have a terrible burden, Captain, laddie,” observed a mildly ruddy-faced Chaplain Dwyer from behind that desk.
“I need a drink,” McNair announced.
Without a word the chaplain stood up and went to a storage alcove built into his office. McNair’s eyes followed, and then wandered over the signs adorning the cabinet doors in the alcove. He read:
Sacramental Wine.
Continuing to peruse the signs, he read further:
Sacramental Scotch
Sacramental Bourbon
Sacramental Irish
Sacramental Vodka
Sacramental Grappa, Cognac and Armagnac
Sacramental Tequila.
“What, no sacramental rum?”
Seriously, Dwyer answered, “The ship’s physician is holding that for me, Captain, laddie. It’s ‘medicinal rum’ for now but will become holy as soon as I make some room for it and bless it. And which sacrament would you prefer?”
“Northern rite,” McNair answered, dully. It was one of those days.
“Scotch, it is!” said Father Dwyer, SJ, opening a cabinet and reaching for an amber bottle.
Dwyer was, drinking habits aside, quite a good chaplain, quite a good listener. So he waited, while the captain sipped his scotch, for the other man to begin. Unfortunately for the technique, McNair said not a word.
Assuming the captain needed a touch more “holiness” to loosen his tongue, Dwyer reached again for the bottle.
Understanding, McNair covered his glass with his hand. “No, that’s not it, Dan.”
McNair looked up. “Daisy?” he asked.
Instantly, and still looking contrite, Daisy’s avatar appeared.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Daisy, is it possible for you to shut this room off from your hearing?”
She answered immediately, “I’d be lying if I said I could. I mean I could compartmentalize, sort of pretend that I could shut it off, make it hard for me to look at or think about what you say… but I’d still hear everything you say and I’d still have a record.”
McNair nodded. “Thought so. Okay, Daisy. Not your fault. Chaplain, let’s take a walk. I know a pretty good bar, if it’s still there, about half a mile from here. Bring the bottle; the owner won’t mind. And he won’t have anything nearly as good in stock.”
But for the bartender, the Broadway was empty. Well, it was early in the day, after all.
Laying a twenty dollar bill on the bar, McNair said, “Solo necesitamos hielo, Leo.” We just need ice.
“I speak perfectly good English,” the gray-haired, Antillean descended bartender answered, very properly. “Maybe better than you. But I’ll bring you your ice anyway.”
Taking the ice while th
e chaplain ported the bottle of scotch, the two sat down at a table under a slowly circulating ceiling fan.
“I came here the first time as an able bodied seaman in the ’40s,” McNair announced. “It was an Army hangout then. I suppose it is again now, too.”
Dwyer looked around. He thought maybe the place had seen better times. Then again, the entire city of Colon always seemed like it had seen better times and yet never seemed to get any worse.
McNair thought that another test was in order. Loudly he called out, “Daisy, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
“Daisy???”
Still nothing, except that the bartender, Leo, looked at him strangely.
“Safe enough, then, I guess,” McNair said.
“I’m not even going to begin to think about what it does to the sanctity of my confessional that the ship can hear every word spoken,” sighed the priest.
“But she’s just a machine, right, Father?” the captain asked.
“That’s what I tried to tell myself,” answered the priest, clasping hands and looking down at the unclothed table. “But I had my doubts. As a matter of fact…”
“Yes?” McNair pressed.
“Well… I don’t know how to say this, but… whatever she is or isn’t, she’s a Roman Catholic now.”
Eyes gaping, the captain exclaimed, “Huh?”
“Oh, yes,” the priest answered, pouring himself another drink. “Came to me and asked to be baptized. The chief of chaplains told me ‘not just no, but hell no.’ So I went over his head to the head of my order. He said… well, it isn’t fit for Christian ears, what he said. So I went to the holy father; we go way back, we do. Back to when he was the head of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Wise man; he was always wise beyond his years. And, unlike me, a truly holy man.
“Anyway, the pope asked me a few questions, told me to search my soul and to search for one in Daisy. And then, wise and holy man that he is, he told me to trust myself and do what I thought was right.