by John Ringo
At that point the balloons had been released from their ground tethers to shoot into the air like rockets. A few brief seconds lapsed for the pilots before the ropes connecting the gliders with the balloons grew taut. At that point, the gliders dutifully followed the balloons up, up and away. Both balloons and gliders were too high by far for Boyd to see when the pilots released their cables, freed themselves from the balloons’ tug, fell a few score feet, and began to soar.
As the wise old sergeant once said, thought Boyd, if it’s crazy or stupid but it works, it isn’t crazy or stupid.
The worst part, from Diaz’s point of view, was not the initial launch or the rapid acceleration upward. He didn’t really mind the restraining straps cutting into the flesh of his stomach, shoulders and chest. He could even live with facing straight down, surely the worst possible view, as the earth seemed to race away from him.
But what he could not stand was watching that earth spin and wobble as the uncontrolled and uncontrollable glider twisted and swayed in the breeze.
He had taken Triptone, a more modern and powerful version of Dramamine, of course. That had become SOP during program development as one glider after another returned to earth with the contents of the pilots’ stomachs roughly distributed over the inside of the cockpit.
And the Triptone helped, no doubt about it. If it hadn’t, Diaz would have lost his breakfast, too, before even half the necessary altitude had been gained. Yet while the Triptone helped, it did not stop the feeling that he ought to be nauseated, that he should be painting the instrument panel and canopy with his bile.
Closing his eyes helped, a little, but there was still that feeling of uncontrolled spin nudging at the pit of his stomach. Growing… growing… growing.
Triptone didn’t always work. Diaz lunged for the vomit bag.
Colonel Preiss wanted to puke. He hated nap-of-the-earth flying, the helicopter doing its best to simulate a railless roller coaster, skimming the jungle roof or descending into it as opportunity offered.
They’d lost a couple of choppers, too, on this hair-raising trip from the battalion’s home base at Fort Davis to a previously cut “postage stamp” landing zone in the jungle on the northern side of Panama’s central cordillera. Behind the long trail of Blackhawks a few jungle patches smoked and smoldered where a chopper had gone in.
It had been a gamble, using aircraft in the presence of the Posleen. While there was little doubt that the aliens could have shot down every one of the birds, there had been enough doubt as to whether they would to make the risk seem worthwhile. The helicopters represented no direct threat to spacecraft, and so — it was hoped — spacecraft would ignore them. Indeed, from the point of view of an orbiting spacecraft, the helicopters, operating anywhere from a few feet to a few inches over the jungle, were almost indistinguishable from a ground vehicle. The aliens rarely engaged ground vehicles from space.
Moreover, the cordillera itself was expected to, and did, act as a shield from the observation and fire of already landed Posleen.
Still, there were spacecraft overhead, some of them apparently manned by Posleen who exhibited an unfortunate degree of what could only be called boyish high spirits. These had tossed a few kinetic energy projectiles at the helicopters. None had scored a direct hit but, given the shock wave from a couple of pounds of material coming in and impacting at a high fraction of C, a few Blackhawks had been knocked around. Given the close proximity of chopper to jungle, being knocked around, if only for a second, was likely to prove fatal.
Preiss’s stomach lurched as a single bright streak flashed down to impact on the jungle ahead. A visible shock wave composed of jungle detritus and compressed air radiated outward from the point of impact. The helicopter lurched again as the pilot pulled back on his stick frantically to gain a little altitude before the shock wave hit. When it came the chopper momentarily bucked and strained like a wild animal.
Despite this, however, the pilot succeeded in riding out the wave. It passed and the pilot descended once again to tree-top level. Unaccountably, the pilot was laughing as he did. The pilot turned his head around, facing Preiss, and shouting, just loud enough to be heard over the beating of the rotor and the roar of the jet engine.
“YAHOO! Mama, what a ride!”
Preiss shared none of the pilot’s glee. Maybe he thinks this shit is fun. I’ll be a lot goddamned happier when we’re on the ground and can fight back. He was frankly looking forward to seeing how these alien bastards liked dealing with the best jungle troops in the world, the 10th United States Infantry, in the environment for which they had trained for decades.
The chopper copilot nudged Preiss and pointed downward at a rectangular cut in the jungle roof. From this distance, it looked impossibly small. Still, Preiss had trained with these pilots for a long time. He had every confidence they could land in it.
As the chopper descended, blades chopped leaves and light branches that had grown up around the edges since the LZ was cut. Nearing the ground, even through his nausea and his fear, Preiss felt a smile growing on his young-old face.
Interlude
The fighting had passed on without Guanamarioch and his band. The frightening sounds were distant now; the crash of the threshkreen artillery, the unending merciless thumping of their heavy repeaters, the overhead rattle of their indirect firing weapons. He became aware of this only slowly.
His normals and cosslain gathered stupidly around him while the pain of his several injuries abated somewhat. The hand, in particular, still shrieked in protest. However rapidly the People had been modified to heal, it would take cycles for the blistered, charred and oozing flesh to grow a new layer of hide. In the interim the keening Kessentai continued to rock back and forth slowly, the injured hand tucked protectively in his right armpit.
The normals and cosslain clustered nearest to him began petting their god to offer as much sympathy as they were capable of showing. Some of them set up a keening cry to match Guanamarioch’s. The sympathy cries of the normals and cosslain was loud enough that Guanamarioch didn’t notice the low hum of an approaching tenar.
“What are you whining about, Kenstain?” asked the tenar-riding God King. Guanamarioch recognized him as the enforcer who had dealt summary execution on the mess deck aboard ship. Still unable to speak, even to object to the mortal insult of being called one of those who had fled from the path of fire and fury, the junior Kessentai held up his seared hand, palm open, in explanation and excusal.
But the senior was having none of it. “You miserable excuse for a creature of the People. There are Kessentai ahead of you — in every way ahead of you — missing eyes and limbs and still fighting. There are Kenstain standing bravely beside their leaders. And you sit there whining over a widdle bitty burn. Cowardly puke!”
Stinging under his superior’s tongue lashing, Guanamarioch lowered his head and began to struggle to his feet. A nearby cosslain helped him up, albeit a bit awkwardly. Head still down, his band in tow, the junior Kessentai without so much as a tenar to his name began to shuffle gingerly toward where his clan was still locked in mortal combat with the threshkreen of this place.
Chapter 14
“What did I have?” said the fine old woman.
“What did I have?” this proud old woman did say.
“I had four green fields, each one was a jewel,
“Til strangers came and tried to take them from me.
“I had fine strong sons. They fought to save my jewels.
“They fought and died, and that was my grief,” said she.
— Tommy Makem, “Four Green Fields”
Bijagual, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
The river ran east-west for three hundred meters before turning abruptly to the north. There was a road, potholes interspersed with boulders for the most part, paralleling the east-west portion of the stream before meeting the bridge that spanned the north-running section. The road turned south as soon as it crossed the bridge.
South of the river, there was a well-treed, low-lying ridge. Along this ridge Digna had dug in most of her force, including half her artillery.
Digna had stopped smiling as soon as her son, Roderigo, went off the air. From the firing, barely perceptible at this distance, he and his crew had to be about four miles away from the bridge that led into Bijagual.
Instead of smiling, Digna sat her horse stoically, nudging it along the fighting line behind the ridge using only her knees. From this position she could see her descendants and followers, as well as the near kill zone on this side of the river and the far kill zone on the other.
“Hold your fire,” she intoned. Her voice was a falsely confident and icy calm. “Hold your fire until they’re across the bridge and into the near kill zone. Keep low until they’re well into the open area. I’ll give the command. Then blast them with everything you have.”
Four of Digna’s militia’s 85mm guns sat well-spaced, dug-in and camouflaged covering that kill zone and the further one, an area of about twenty or twenty-five hectares. Each gun, firing canister, could spew about four-hundred 15mm balls with each round. Moreover, they could do so at twenty-five rounds a minute… for one minute, anyway. Even with a third of the balls going too high, another third going too low, the remaining third — grazing low — should be enough, so the woman hoped, to scour the kill zone free of life after a few volleys.
Digna stopped at one gun crew just to look into the faces of her great-granddaughters. They looked scared, yes, but determined. No worries here. They’ll do their duty by their clan.
The firing from four miles away stopped abruptly. Digna kneed her horse in the direction of her command post, taking care not to gallop lest the horse’s speed infect her clan with fear.
These thresh just don’t fight fairly, the mid-level Kessentai, Filaronion, mourned as he surveyed the damage to his oolt from the last ambush he had led them into. Normals lay crumpled in every manner of undignified death. Some bled from multiple wounds; others lay as if asleep. More than a few still kicked and struggled, bleating like thresh themselves to be put out of their pain.
No, it just isn’t fair, he thought bitterly. They wait in hiding as if for death, enticing us in to reap the harvest. Then they set off those horrible explosive devices to rend and tear. Any Kessentai accompanying the forward elements are singled out as targets.
Filaronion contemplated one nearby tenar, holding a dead God King slumped over the controls. The tenar hovered over a single spot, slowly spinning in place and dripping dull yellow blood to the ground.
Worse, after they attack us they have neither the decency to come out and put the wounded out of their misery nor the courage to stand so that we may take revenge. Instead they just melt away on those quadrupeds, fading into the low spots. Those we can barely catch sight of as they gallop to the rear.
There was something decidedly unnerving about thresh, even threshkreen, who could move along the ground as fast as could one of the People. Filaronion knew about the threshkreen’s armored vehicles. These, more road-bound than cross country capable, were seen as a minimal threat, overall. But for the thresh to move so quickly across broken land; that was truly odd and strangely disquieting.
This Kessentai was one of the brighter of his type, he knew. He had tried, earlier, to spread out, to avoid being the mass target which these vile threshkreen seemed to prefer. Yet this had made forward progress slower. His senior in the clan had tongue-lashed him viciously for his supposed cowardice, insisting that the forward oolt stay on the road and press ahead with all possible speed.
But Filaronion was one of the brighter of his clan. Even while he partly obeyed his elder, lashing the bulk of his oolt on, he sent two swinging pincers out to either side of the main column, driving their own Kessentai ferociously to sacrifice everything for speed, to trap and finally eliminate this infuriating group of threshkreen who had bloodied the host again and again.
There would be no more artillery support from Edilze, Roderigo knew. The guns were certainly still there, at least he had no reason to believe they were not, but the radio was little more than a smoldering chunk of metal, glass and plastic. The last ambush had cost them heavily.
Roderigo gently closed the surprised looking eyes of the radio carrier who had ridden with him since they had first ordered fire down on the demonlike horde of invaders.
Leaving the trash of the radio, sighing, the uncle heaved his teenaged nephew’s corpse across the saddle of his horse.
Each loss of a son or grandson, or of a nephew, had been like a knife in Roderigo’s gut. Five times along the road home they had turned at bay against the enemy. Five times they had bloodied him badly. Yet, each time the enemy had pressed forward and each time Roderigo’s men had barely escaped with their lives.
Many, of course, had not escaped with their lives. A dozen saddles were empty now. Nearly twice that number carried wounded men either slumping upright or draped across. When Roderigo considered the number of horses they had lost as well… well, that was too painful.
I’m too old for this, he thought. And, unlike Mama and Hector, they did not rejuvenate me. Then again, if they had I would be, instead of here defending my home, in some other place defending someone else’s. Perhaps it was not such a bad trade. If I have to die…
Roderigo looked over the line of wounded, horse-borne, relatives. The horses hoofed the ground nervously at the smell of coppery-iron blood. He could see no use keeping them here. He detailed off a couple of younger grandnephews to guide the wounded back home and guard them on their way.
The clan’s forward cavalry had leapfrogged back all the way from in front of Las Lomas, half of them waiting or ambushing while the other half prepared the next ambush. Even now, the last group to be engaged passed through the next and, so Roderigo thought, the last decent ambush position before the bridge to home. These, too, he saw, led far too many riderless horses and wounded men.
Roderigo stepped out into the road and raised a hand to stop one of his sons.
“This is the last place, mi hijo,” he said. “Go all the way home now and report to Mamita.”
Exhausted, holding one hand tightly over an arm to stop the seepage of blood from a grazing wound, the son nodded weakly. Roderigo patted his boy’s thigh.
“Tell your mother that I love her, son,” he finished, “but that I might be a little late for supper.”
Digna tensed as she heard the faint clatter of hoofbeats on the road to the south. Was this her son’s extended family returning? Or were they all dead and butchered, the drumming sound coming from the massed feet of the invader?
As a horse rounded the bend Digna relaxed visibly. Thank God, she thought. Some, at least, still live.
She amended that thought to, Some, at least, live… for now, as she caught a closer look at the pale faces of her descendants. Her own horse reared as a change in wind brought the smell of mammalian blood to its nose. Digna reached out a calming hand to stroke and pet the horse back to relative calm.
“How far behind you?” she asked her grandson, without specifying whether she meant the enemy or the rest of the forward screen.
The grandson didn’t know or understand what she intended by her question. Slumped in the saddle, weakly he answered, “My father is about two miles out. The enemy not much farther.”
As if to punctuate this, a sudden crescendo of fire arose to the south.
With the rising dust clouds to east and west Roderigo knew he had made a mistake, quite possibly his last.
“Mis hijos,” he shouted, climbing back atop his horse, “mount up. Mount UP! We are — ”
There was a sudden sharp blow, passing through from one side to the other, blasting flesh, blood, heart and lungs and tearing Roderigo from his horse. Mouth still open with the unfinished command, the old man fell with an audible thump, dead even before he hit the ground.
Outraged, tactical sense forgotten, the remnants of the family still in the field opened fire on the poin
t of the approaching Posleen column even though these were still too far away to make an ideal ambush target.
Posleen fell, of course, especially where the remaining machine gun stitched across their ranks. This time, however, precisely because the Posleen were too far away to be massacred before they had time to react, there was effective return fire, pinning the Mirandas in their ambush position.
Worse, at the sound of the first rounds the wide sweeping alien pincers turned inward, churning claws raising dust clouds on the humans’ horizon.
The horses broke, even though the men did not. As the animals stampeded, the enveloping Posleen swept them with fire. Thresh were not to be wasted and the animals were as good a threshform as any. Of the several dozen animals that broke all but one were chopped down by the alien fire. This one, never too bright to begin with and now mindless with fear, raced for what its tiny brain thought of as home and safety.
Meanwhile, the rest of Roderigo Miranda’s little command automatically pulled in their flanks and formed a tight circle. Perhaps… perhaps if they could hold on until nightfall they might manage to escape.
The Posleen, however, led and lashed on by their Kessentai, were having none of it. Heedless of losses they bore in, railguns and shotguns blazing, boma blades sweeping high overhead.
Though there was no one left in command of the trapped humans, they were a family and they did tend to think much alike. Determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible they fixed bayonets, except for a couple who drew their more familiar machetes, just before the crest of the alien wave hit them.
Let the actions of one speak for all. One of the last survivors, Emilio Miranda, twenty-seven year old grandson of Roderigo. Emilio had a drinking problem. His face and back still bore the marks of his great-grandmother’s riding crop as mute testimony to that problem.