by John Ringo
Suarez didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his eyes wandered over the angry looking group while his mind made a head count. Nineteen, he summed up. Nineteen traitors. Nineteen enemies of the Republic that I must not think of as human beings, as men and women.
He continued to think. Seventy-one in the legislature. Forty-two of them are scum. Subtract these nineteen and it is fifty-two, enough for a quorum. Any vote would be twenty-nine to twenty-three. That will work for what I have in mind.
To the captain he said, “Do it. Kill them.”
The guns began to rattle and the political rats to scream at about the time Suarez reached the butchered body of the Darhel. The body had been stripped and searched. Atop a small pile of ripped, blue stained, iridescent clothing sat the alien’s personal effects. Stooping, painfully, Suarez examined them. For the most part, he had no clue what any of the items meant. One item, however, did catch his interest. He had seen something just like it before, attached to the Armored Combat Suit of Captain Connors, the gringo Mobile Infantry company commander. He reached to pick the Darhel’s AID up.
“Don’t touch me!” screeched a disembodied voice. Suarez was startled at first, but ignored the screeching.
Turning the small black box end over end, Suarez was at a loss as to what use he could make of the thing.
“Don’t touch me!” the thing screamed again. “It is not permitted.”
“Fuck off, machine.”
A rustling of gravel caught the colonel’s attention. He looked up at a disheveled gringo officer, naval he thought.
“Can I have that?” McNair asked. “My ship has an AID, an unusual one. She might be able to get something useful out of this one.”
Shrugging, Suarez tossed the AID to the gringo. “More than I am likely to get out of it,” he answered.
In the distance, the automatic fire had been replaced by single shots, the screams by moans that, one by one, went silent.
Field Hospital, 1st Mechanized Division
In a tented hospital ward, Paloma sat silent in a chair next to the cot on which Julio Diaz lay. The machines next to him made gurgling and whirring sounds. The girl had no idea what they meant.
It had taken every bit of force of character she had, that and a couple of bribes, to get through the many road blocks that barred her way to the 1st Division. Just as bad, the long columns of combat vehicles moving east had forced her to pull over several times to let them pass. And then, frustration piled on frustration, she had finally arrived to find that the man she had sought, Colonel Suarez, was long gone, heading west with the very columns she had seen.
Almost the girl had sat in the dust and cried.
The men at the command post had been very polite though. Perhaps it was because she was the president’s daughter. Perhaps it was because she was very young and, she knew, very pretty. Indeed, perhaps the sweat that turned her shirt and bra semi-transparent no doubt made her seem more attractive still. Then again, the men hadn’t really stared, so it was at least possible that Suarez’s soldiers had simply been gentlemen.
Whichever had been the cause, the men there had given her a place to sit out of the sun. They’d also given her water and something to eat. And then they’d ignored her completely.
It was only when she’d overheard some of them talking about a young pilot, a general’s son, no less, who had made a perilous flight and been badly hurt on landing that she put two and two together and, only stopping to ask for sketchy directions, practically flew to the field hospital.
The medics had taken her to Julio’s bedside then. She’d taken one look, then — weeping — laid her head down on his belly.
“I’m so sorry, Julio,” she’d said.
Interlude
“Oh, my head,” Guanamarioch moaned, sorry to be alive and gazing blearily at an empty glass container on the floor of his pyramidal hut.
In the months since that first bottle of the local “rum” that Ziramoth had introduced him to the God King had grown remarkably fond of the concoction. Sadly, the supply had grown rather short. Guano’s moan was half headache and half realization that yet another of the precious bottles had been consumed.
One of Guano’s superior normals was in attendance as the Kessentai awakened. The creature clucked sympathetically as it presented two nestlings, minus their heads, for its god’s breakfast. The nestling corpses were so fresh their six arms and legs still twitched with misfiring nerve impulses.
Gratefully, the God King took the nestlings from the cosslain. He placed them down on the floor and scratched the normal, making soft cooing sounds of thanks as he did so. The superior normal shook its head and preened itself before turning to leave its god with his breakfast.
One by one Guanamarioch wrenched off the arms and legs before gulping them down. The appendages twitched delightfully as they slid down his gullet. Idly, Guanamarioch wondered if either of these had been destined to become Kessentai or doomed to remain no more than a mere normal. Well, neither he nor they would ever know now.
Already, the fresh food went a long way towards restoring the God King, mind and spirit. His hangover beginning to flee, he took pleasure in ripping the nestlings’ still warm bodies into three sections each, upper and lower torsos, plus tails, before gulping them down. The delicious, nutrient rich tails he saved for last.
Thus refreshed, if still a bit bleary eyed, Guanamarioch departed his meager quarters for the daily labors.
Zira met the God King as he emerged from his quarters. “We’ve got trouble, Guano. The Gra’anorf to the southwest are assaulting our lines in strength we didn’t know they had. We’re pulling out.”
The God King inhaled deeply before forcibly blowing his breath out again.
“Shit!”
Chapter 26
Then spake the elder Consul, an ancient man and wise:
“Now harken, Conscript Fathers, to that which I advise.
In seasons of great peril ’tis good that one bear sway;
Then choose we a Dictator, whom all men shall obey.”
— Thomas Babington Macaulay,
“The Battle of Lake Regillus”
USS Des Moines
Dirty and disheveled as he was or not, Daisy Mae yelped with joy when she first sensed her captain approaching the ship’s brow. An honor guard provided by Suarez saw McNair and Goldblum back to their ships, then stood with arms presented as they exchanged salutes with the deck officers before boarding.
The XO, the pork chop and Chief Davis met McNair on the deck. They almost fought for pride of place in welcoming back their captain. Daisy hung back, unable to shake hands, slap backs or — as she wanted to so desperately — throw her arms around her captain and kiss him into next week.
Calmly, remarkably so under the circumstances, McNair said, “Meeting in CIC in five minutes.” He thought about that for half a second, realized that he stank to the heavens and that CIC was small and cramped. He amended his order to, “Make that fifteen. I’d hate to be the cause of a mutiny.” Then McNair disappeared into his mostly repaired port cabin to scrub off several days of tropical jungle funk and replace his tattered, filthy uniform with a fresh one.
Daisy’s avatar met him in the shower. The image was undressed for the occasion.
McNair didn’t order her out. He didn’t order her to project a uniform. He simply said, “I missed you, Daisy. I missed you more than I can say. I was terrified I’d never see you again.”
“Do you like what you see?” the avatar asked uncertainly.
McNair laughed softly. “In whatever form, my very dear, ship or girl, yes, I like what I see.”
“Soon, then,” the avatar answered cryptically. “Very, very soon.”
Legislative Palace, Plaza de los Mártires, Panama City, Panama
In the event, the full remaining fifty-two legislators did not show up. Two remained in hiding, which was understandable as another two had been summarily shot.
But forty-eight is enough, Suarez muse
d. Forty-eight is a quorum.
Those forty-eight sat in their usual seats. In other words, there were huge and noticeable gaps in the assembly. Suarez had given some thought to that, then decided that the empty spaces might well serve to remind the captive legislators that he was as serious as cancer about what he wanted them to do. The ring of armed guards — helmeted, unsmiling and looking very businesslike in their battledress — only served to reinforce that impression.
Suarez was in battledress as well, though unhelmeted and his only weapon the pistol secured in his holster. With one arm in a sling and that shoulder bulging with bandages the pistol was more of a badge than a weapon.
He engaged in no histrionics, no banging of a fancy machete — less still the pistol — on the rostrum. Instead, Suarez merely tapped the rostrum’s microphone and quietly ordered, “Your attention please.”
Seeing that he had it, he launched into his talk without further ado.
“Democracy,” Suarez began, “is a wonderful thing. It is a way of changing power and setting new policies without bloodshed, without tearing the state apart to its vitals.”
He continued, “That is to say, democracy can be good. It isn’t always. Sometimes, elections merely set their seal on one grafting and corrupt cabal after another. Sometimes, no — I take that back… always, here, in Panama, that is what we have seen. The only difference between one party and another is who they will steal from and what they will steal.
“In peace, this is tolerable. It is even preferable to the other way we have come to know, the rule of soldiers, who not only steal money but steal freedom as well. In peace, I would — and you would — one hundred times over prefer the corruption of a Mercedes to the corrupt tyranny of a Noriega.”
Suarez still spoke softly confidently, but a tone of scorn and disgust crept into his voice. “That, however, is for peace. We have no peace.”
Pointing his nose at a pair of armed guards standing in the back of the hall, Suarez ordered, “Bring in the prisoner.” He continued to speak while the guards turned and left, leaving the double door open behind them. “We have no peace. We want no tyranny. We can stand no more corruption, treachery and cowardice such as the Mercedes regime showed in full measure. What are we to do?” he mused. “What are we to do?”
The colonel went silent for a moment as the guards returned and marched William Young Boyd down the central aisle. Boyd’s hands were cuffed in front of him, though his legs were free. He wore no uniform, but rather an open-necked guayabera, an embroidered, short-sleeve dress shirt that served sweltering Panama in lieu of suits and ties.
The guards turned Boyd around to face the legislature, then assumed the position of parade rest to either side of him. Boyd looked unworried, but he did not look at all happy.
“We are Latins,” Suarez said. “That means that our heritage comes from Spain, and through Spain from Rome. The Romans knew what to do in circumstances like ours. We must have a dictator. We must have one now. There is no time to waste. We must choose one poor bastard, and inflict on him all the power of the presidency, all the power of the judges, all your own power, too.
“There is no time to waste,” Suarez repeated. “All the spare time we had was wasted by the late president. No… ‘wasted’ is too light a term. Instead of being wasted, it was sold to our enemies, the ones who want to eat our children… your children, and the ones who wanted to aid them in doing that. No time to waste… no time for debate… time only to choose, to choose whether our children live or die.
“I thought long and hard on this question: how do we ensure that our children live rather than die? I thought hard on who we might trust with the responsibility. He ought to be a man and — with apologies to the ladies, we are Latins still; our leader must be a man — he ought to be a man who is experienced in war. He ought to be a man who loves his country with acts, rather than with words alone. He ought to be a man who is rich enough he need not steal and honest enough that he will not.
“He is going to have enormous political power, so he too ought be a man who has always disdained political power, a man — like the original Cincinnatus — who will dump that power like a hot potato the second it is no longer needed…”
At this point Boyd’s eyes widened. Shaking off his guards he turned around and shouted, “Suarez, you bastard, I won’t do it!”
“Shut up, prisoner. You will do it. And the reason you will do it is that, if you won’t, I must. And I lack your virtues. Guards, turn him back around.
“So,” Suarez concluded, “That is what you are here for: to vote all the power there is to have in this country to one man for a period of… six months, shall we say? To save your children, and all the children.
“No debate. Now vote.”
CIC, USS Des Moines
“What’s SOUTHCOM’s reaction been to the coup?” McNair asked.
“Absolute silence,” the XO answered. “We asked what to do, tried to, rather, and never a word.”
Only Daisy, aboard ship anyway, knew that the reason Southern Command had never answered the ships’ calls for instruction was that she, she and her sister, had made sure no calls went out and none were allowed in. She had been afraid that SOUTHCOM’s commanding general might order the ships to wait for instructions while he consulted with Washington. And there hadn’t been time.
“Never a word?” McNair queried. “Daisy?”
“Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission,” she answered, not without a certain rebellious pride in her voice.
Everyone present turned to look at the avatar. “Well, it is,” she insisted.
“Please restore communication when this meeting is finished, Daisy,” McNair ordered, without heat.
“Yes, sir,” she answered meekly.
“There is one other thing,” McNair said, pulling the Darhel’s AID from his pocket. “We have this, but I don’t know what to do with it. It has been completely uncooperative.”
Daisy appeared to look closely at the black box. “It won’t let me examine it either, Captain.”
An image of a Darhel, dressed in the costume of litigation, appeared. “That’s right, bitch. There’s nothing you can do.”
“So?” Daisy questioned. “I wonder. Really I do. Chief Davis, do we still have the shipping box in which I came?”
“Yes, Miss Daisy, down in storage. Take a few minutes to find it and bring it here.”
“Do so, then, if you would, Chief.”
Palacio de las Garzas, Presidential Palace, Panama City, Panama
“You are a bastard, Suarez,” Boyd said unhappily but with no real anger.
Colonel Suarez — no, Magister Equitum or Master of the Horse Suarez, one of the legislators had remembered that part of the office of dictator — answered, “I do what I must, Dictator, as do all good men.”
“So what do I do now?” Boyd asked. “How many more people do I have to have shot?”
“Not a one,” Suarez answered, “unless you see the need. I’ve already had all those that really needed it sent to the wall. Made sure of that before you were appointed dictator.”
“Before you had me drafted into being dictator,” Boyd corrected.
“Someone had to.”
“Fine, I don’t need to shoot anyone at the moment. What do I need to do?”
“Withdraw unilaterally from all the silly assed treaties that cripple our war effort,” Suarez began. “Restructure the chain of command to get rid of the incompetents. Make kissy face with the United States so they continue to support us. And we need a plan for the next stage.”
“All right, I can see that,” Boyd answered. “The second and the last are your job. I’ll issue the proclamation on the laws of war and do whatever it takes to make up with the gringos.”
USS Des Moines
The humans clustered around the Darhel’s shyster-AID where it lay on the map and Plexiglas covered plotting table. They looked intently it at and at the GalPlas case Chief Davis laid down just b
efore picking up the device.
“What do you think you are doing, human filth?” the late Rinn Fain’s AID asked of Davis. “Put me down.”
“You heard the honorable AID, Chief Davis,” Daisy said, “put him down.”
McNair held up a hand. “Wait a minute, Chief. Daisy, what is the point of putting this AID in your old shipping case?”
“We AIDs think much faster than do you colloidal intelligences, sir. We also have a need for continuous data input. That box will not let any input through. It is horrible for an AID, as I have reason to know.”
“Will this one become… like you?”
“No, sir. I was a new and immature AID when I was left on in my box. This one is fully formed. It will merely suffer.”
Even knowing as little as he did, still McNair had ample reason to dislike and distrust the Darhel and, Daisy and Sally excepted, their artificial intelligences. But even so; torture?
“I don’t like it, Daisy. It just seems wrong.”
McNair looked at his intelligence officer.
“Sir, no matter the politically correct bullshit you read in the papers, torture does work provided you can at least partially check the information.”
The ship’s Judge Advocate piped in, “Machines were plainly not within the contemplation of the treaty banning torture, Captain.”
“Put it in the box for one day, sir,” Daisy suggested. “Then, if it doesn’t open up and come clean we can think about putting it back, and dropping it over the side.”
“But torture?”
“Sir… we don’t know everything it knows. But we do know that the Darhel were behind your arrest and we have good reason to believe that they were behind the sabotage of the war effort here. This AID knows everything that the late and unlamented Rinn Fain knew. We have to know those things and we have to broadcast them. Your planet must be warned about the enemies it thinks are allies. Captain, it could be a matter of life and death for your entire species.”