by John Ringo
Before Binastarion could answer, whether to thank or to curse, three shells landed, one short but two right on one of his oolt’os. That oolt simply… dissolved with panicked normals running shrieking in all directions. Binastarion’s tenar shuddered with the shock wave. His internal organs rippled in a way he had never before experienced.
“Demon shit,” the chief snarled, sotto voce, as he wrestled his tenar back to face his massed people.
Even as he grunted those words another three explosions erupted, with one shell landing among the ruins of the previously targeted oolt and two others smearing the one just to the north of that one.
In salvos of three rounds, never more than four or five heartbeats apart, the fire walked among his people like some half-divine, half-mad demon. Tenar were tumbled, their riders crushed and shredded. Splintered teeth and bones of normals joined hot metal shell fragments to pierce and rend.
True, sometimes a shell landed between oolt, doing no harm with its blast. Even in those cases, however, the odd piece of shrapnel might sail hundreds of meters to fall with deadly effect upon some unfortunate normal. The smell of Posleen blood thus released was enough to unsettle the half-sentients and make their bolting that much more likely whenever a salvo did land near.
Binastarion’s communicator buzzed frantically with calls from his sons and subordinates. Each asking for instructions. Do we attack? Do we retreat? If we stay here we’ll be massacred.
“Where is that damned fire coming from?” he demanded of his AS. “I have read of the threshkreen’s artillery, but this is just too much of it. Where is it coming from?”
The Artificial Sentience did not answer immediately. Searching the Net, Binastarion supposed.
“The ship is back, lord,” the AS said when it finally answered. “It can throw as much of this artillery as would a ten of tens of the heaviest sort used by the thresh who fight on the ground.”
Even while digesting that unwelcome news, the fire continued to walk among the host of Binastarion, striking down lowborn and high with random, vicious fury.
It was with an equal fury that Binastarion ordered his subordinates to assemble on his tenar once they had their people under cover.
As he had been each time he had seen the salvos from the Des Moines, Diaz was awed by the fury of the guns. He said a silent prayer to God that, so far, none of the shells had fallen among the defenders.
When he judged the enemy was sufficiently damaged and disorganized by the fire he keyed his radio and spoke to Suarez.
“Sir, I think it is about as good as it is going to get in the west. Shall I pull out to the east and direct the ship’s fires to assist the breakout?”
Suarez spoke back, “Yes, son, do that. And God bless you and that ship.”
There was no more difficult operation in all of the military art than a withdrawal while in contact with the enemy. To do so over a broad front, with troops already badly disorganized by combat would have been impossible but for three facts: that the fires of the gringo ship had even more badly disorganized the Posleen, that most of Suarez’s regimental artillery — three batteries of Russian-built self propelled guns — was intact, and that Suarez had control of most of a company of ACS.
“Can your boys do it; cover our withdrawal while we force our way east?” Suarez asked Connors.
“I think we ought to free up your units in the west first, sir,” Connors advised.
East of Remedios, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
“Can you get me some contact with that glider overhead?” Connors asked.
“No, sir,” the AID answered. “I am continuing to try.”
Trying to time things carefully, Connors and his men had stormed into the Posleen positions, such as they were, butchering the stunned-senseless aliens where they stood, before pulling out again and moving as fast as the suits’ legs would carry them eastward. A regular mechanized unit could not have done so.
B Company, Connors in the lead, reached the rear area of the west-facing Panamanian units even as Suarez, using the suits the MI had attached to his sub-units, pulled the east-facing elements of the 1st Mech Division out of the line and got them on the road.
“How about with the ship, what was it? The Des Moines?”
“Yes, sir, the USS Des Moines, CA-134. And no, sir, the ship’s AID is refusing all communication with any Artificial Intelligence Devices. I am not sure why. It won’t explain, simply shunts me into a continuous loop when I try. It’s not supposed to be able to do that,” Connors’ AID added snippily.
“Crap!” Connors exclaimed. “We’ll just have to trust the kid up above to know what he’s doing.”
“Lieutenant Diaz seems trustworthy, sir.”
“Yeah… well…”
Connors’ reserved statement was interrupted by a deluge of heavy shell fire striking ground to the east. The Panamanians in the rear of the line ducked, sensibly, as the air was torn with the roar of the blasts and the whine of the fragments, whizzing overhead.
“Okay, okay… the kid knows what he’s doing,” Connors admitted. “We can’t direct the fire… so we’re going to have to take advantage of where it falls on it own.”
“Suboptimal, Captain,” the AID agreed. “But best under the circumstances, yes.”
Another long salvo came in. Connors tried to count the number of shells and gave up.
“AID, can you track the shells and provide analysis?”
“Yes, sir,” the AID answered. “If you will look at the map” — Connors’ left eye saw a map of the highway area, with great black rectangles superimposed on it — “the black represents areas where the strike of shells indicate minimum Posleen remaining alive and able to resist.”
Connors only had two platoons, really, remaining to him, plus the weapons platoon. The last line unit had been scattered to scout to the flanks or broken up to provide commo for Suarez. The shocked survivors of the flankers — and the casualties among those had been horrendous — were in no shape for the battle and wouldn’t be for perhaps days. There were too many holes in the chain of command, too much death, among that platoon.
The destruction visited upon the Posleen, Connors saw, was for the most part oriented along the highway. He assumed the other black rectangles on his map were Posleen assembly areas the pilot overhead had called fire upon. Since the highway was what the 1st Panamanian Mech needed…
“B Company, formation is V with weapons at the base and the line platoons to either side of the highway. I’m with weapons. B Company… form.”
He gave the men a few minutes to settle in to the formation before ordering, “B Company… advance.”
It was eerie, walking that highway. Smoke lay heavy along the ground. Posleen bodies, and more than a few human ones, littered the path. Many were torn to shreds, chopped up, disemboweled. Others showed not a mark.
Connors passed a tree that had miraculously survived the bombardment. In the tree was a God King, dead. The alien’s harness had been ripped off, but it was otherwise untouched save for the tree limb that entered its torso from behind and stuck out, yellow with blood, from its chest. The alien’s head hung towards the ground, gracelessly, by its twisted neck.
Shell craters, huge indentations in the earth, pockmarked the landscape. Something nagged at the MI captain. Something…
“Pay attention to the shell craters,” Connors warned over the general company net. “Don’t assume that just because nothing that was in them when they were created has survived that something might not have crawled in afterwards.”
A Posleen staggered up out of one, dragging its rear legs behind it. It was just a normal, Connors thought, but no sense taking chances. He raised one arm as if to fire. Automatically a targeting dot appeared over the Posleen, painted on Connors’ eye. He fired a short burst and the alien went down, splashing up muddy water that had collected in the crater even in the short time since it had been formed.
From time to time, one of Connors’ platoon leaders
reported in that “X and such number of Posleen had been sighted, engaged and destroyed at Y and such location” or “Posleen oolt fleeing north” or “south.” He took no casualties and, in a very odd and bizarre way, that disturbed him, too.
“Are you guys sure you are seeing absolutely no God Kings? No tenar?”
“Just wrecked ones, Boss… only some wrecks, Captain… there ain’t enough of ’em, even wrecked, to account for the number of other bodies, sir. I don’t trust it.”
Even so, Connors pushed his company on past the broad area of destruction and into the parts still untouched by the heavy guns. And there were still no God Kings or tenar.
“AID, pass to Suarez that the way seems open.”
“Wilco, Captain.”
The tracks and trucks were draped with the bodies of the wounded… and the dead. Suarez was pleased to see the discipline, that his men were leaving nothing behind for the enemy to eat, even as he was appalled at the cost. Because it wasn’t a vehicle here and there covered with bodies. It was every tank, track and truck that passed.
Jesu Cristo, but it’s going to be a job rebuilding this division. If we’re even allowed to.
Suarez had the devil’s own time of it, already, trying to extricate the bloodied scraps from the cauldron. Without the communications advantages — let alone the mobile, armored firepower — given by the MI he didn’t think he could have done it at all.
Logically, Suarez knew, he should be having his sergeant major go over those trucks, pulling off some of the walking — even nonwalking — wounded to serve as a “detachment left in contact,” or DLIC. These would have been die-in-place troops, left behind to cover the withdrawal of the rump of the division.
I just don’t have the heart, I guess. Takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to do that — to even ask that — of men who’ve already given everything they have.
Cortez remembered his uncle often speaking of the need to be ruthless in politics and in life. Well, now’s the time to find out if I am as ruthless as my uncle always wanted me to be.
The Isla del Rey loomed ahead. Cortez’s Type-63 light amphibious tank churned its way laboriously toward the island. The big Planetary Defense gun atop the island was silent. And a good thing, too, Cortez thought. The blast might be enough to raise waves big enough to swamp this tank.
But then again, would that really matter?
The crew had not spoken an unnecessary word to Cortez since he had bugged out. Perhaps they thought they were merely showing disapproval. In fact, the effect was to make them even less human and less valuable in Cortez’s mind. Thus, faced with the silent treatment, it was easier for him to take the hand grenade he had secreted earlier, remove the safety clip, pull the pin and drop it into the bottom of the turret even as he dove off to swim for the safety of the island.
Interlude
“… or perhaps we were forced into one.
“We had claimed a large island on a world. This was something new to our clan, to settle on an island,” Ziramoth continued. “Normally, the chief of a clan would never do so. Yet this was a world of — mostly — islands and the lord saw little choice. It was large enough to support our refugee population for several generations. Moreover, the barrier of the seas around the island should serve as barriers to other clans. So the lord claimed.
“The island was fertile, and had much mineral wealth. The People prospered there. For a while.
“That entire world was gifted with fertility. None of the clans who settled felt the need to eat their nestlings. And the population grew in a way we had rarely experienced.
“Unfortunately, this world was also on the edge of a barren sector of the galaxy. We had nothing but wasted radioactive worlds behind us and we had nothing but the void in front of us. All the clans sent out scouts into the interstellar blackness. None returned soon. None returned in time.”
Ziramoth again grew still, though Guanamarioch didn’t know whether that was because the memory was so distant — seven orna’adars was a very long time! — or because they were so painful.
The Kenstain began to speak again. “Local scouts were sent out, across those coppery seas. It must have been that other clans had prospered as ours, for none of those scouts came back at all. Certainly other clans scouted out our island, and just as certainly their scouts were destroyed by us.
“And our population still grew. Then we did begin to eat nestlings, but it was too late. The normals had laid their eggs everywhere. No matter what we did to hang on until the scouts we had sent into space returned with the location of a new home, our population still grew. As you know…” And the Kenstain’s voice tapered off.
“Hungry normals are dangerous normals,” the God King finished.
“Dangerous in themselves and dangerous in the trouble they can cause,” agreed Ziramoth, nodding his head.
“In this particular case, one philosopher’s favorite normal grew too hungry to be controlled. It attacked the herd of another, killed a juvenile normal, and carted it off to feast.”
“So what was the problem?” Guanamarioch asked. “Surely the Kessentai that owned the juvenile would have demanded recompense and the one whose normal had done the killing would have complied. That is the law.”
“Ah, but that is only half the law,” the Kenstain answered wistfully.
Chapter 19
An assegai had been thrust into the belly of the nation.
There are not tears enough to mourn for the dead.
— Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus
Remedios, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
Binastarion’s crest expanded, fluttering in the windstream as his tenar cut through the air. That ship! That accursed, odious, stinking, CHEATING ship! I had the thresh in my claws, savoring the anticipation of the squeezing when that damnable threshkreen ship ruined everything, butchering my sons like abat and blasting their mates into unrecyclable waste. It shall pay and so shall all who sail aboard her.
This time, however, I will not risk my landers, my C-Decs and B-Decs. They are too valuable, too difficult for us to replace with my clan in such dire straits. Indeed, without the manufacturies in those ships we will not survive the first push of a rival clan. Instead, we shall swarm the bitch with tenar. I will lose sons, yes, perhaps many of them, along with their tenar. But sons and tenar I can replace, the great ships not so easily.
USS Des Moines
“Skipper, we got’s problems,” announced Davis.
The Des Moines was still deep within the bay, still firing in support of the Panamanians, still boxed in by the mainland to north, east and west and the island to the south.
Daisy Mae’s avatar’s eyes moved left and right rapidly as humans’ sometimes will when trying to count large numbers or solve complex problems. Her mouth opened slightly in a worried looking moue.
“Captain,” she said, “there are more than I can track. Two streams of them, flanking us to the east and the west. They’re keeping low, trying to get around us and cut us off. I think it may be time to leave.”
McNair hesitated a moment, then picked up the radio microphone. “Daisy, translate. Lieutenant Diaz?” he asked.
“Sir?” Even charged with the radio’s static Diaz’s voice seemed terribly, terribly tired.
“We’re in a spot of trouble here, Lieutenant. How is the breakout coming?”
“Capitano, Colonel Suarez has the bridge over the river to the east. Your ICM cleaned off the aliens pretty well. He’s already passing the soft stuff over, trucks, ambulances, things like that.”
“To the west?” McNair queried, succinctly.
“Your countrymen in the Armored Combat Suits are handling that, sir. It looks basically okay.”
Unseen by the glider pilot, McNair nodded, as if weighing options, duties, values and chances of survival.
“Tell Suarez I have to pull out. The Posleen are trying to box me in here. It’s not looking good.”
Again the radio crackled with the flying offi
cer’s voice, “I will pass that on, sir. We should be fine on the ground. Good luck and my best to your radio operator Miss Daisy. Diaz out.”
McNair half turned and shouted to the navigation bridge, “Bring us around. Make for open sea. All possible speed.”
Within the armored navigation bridge a crewman turned the ship’s wheel hard aport. Beneath the stern the AZIPOD drives followed the command of the wheel. Water churned fiercely to starboard as the Des Moines began a turn so sharp it was almost less than the ship’s length along the waterline.
As the bow turned to the break between the western-most tip of the island and the mainland, Chief Davis’ eyes grew wide with horror. He pointed toward the island.
“Too late, Skipper,” he announced.
* * *
“At them, my children. Punish the foilers of our plans, the blighters of our hopes, the murderers of our brothers.”
Binastarion could see only a couple of hundred of his tenar-borne sons as they arose from the covering vegetation and began to converge on the threshkreen warship. In his screen, however, more than one thousand tenar appeared. Lines showing the paths of the tenar all converged in an irregular blotch above the ship. The ship itself he could not see, though bright flashes on the horizon suggested that the ship had seen the threat and was already fighting back.
The Des Moines had four lines of defense, so to speak, against alien attack. The most visually impressive of these, the three triple turrets of eight-inch guns, were already engaged, spewing forth canister and time-fused high explosive. At the current range the time-fused shells were most effective. Unfortunately, both forward turrets were fully occupied in trying to blast a hole through the southern quadrant of the Posleen net.
The rear turret, on the other hand, was totally inadequate to covering the one hundred and eighty degrees it would have to if the Posleen were to be kept away. Daisy tried, even so, switching the gun madly from one alien cluster to another.