by John Ringo
Whoa, boy, Connors thought. Do not look into those eyes any more. They are too deep. It would be a long, long fall. But, of course, he couldn’t help himself. He was falling into them even as he answered, “Yes, for a couple of years.”
“Tell me about it,” she insisted, her voice growing almost imperceptibly husky.
So Connors told her, eliding over the grisly parts, sticking to the light-hearted ones where possible. That made the tale shorter than it really deserved to be. The girl, being well educated and bright, caught onto that.
“There is more,” she said, without doubt. “Bad things. Things you do not want to talk about.”
Connors closed his eyes, stretched his lips in an almost straight, humorless grin and nodded. “There were awful things that I can’t talk about, Marielena. Things I don’t even want to remember. Over seven hundred of us arrived on Barwhon. Less than three hundred came back. Of those, one hundred and ten were burned out psychologically, no more use for combat.”
“And you,” she asked, concern in her voice, “you were not… burned out?”
“No,” he answered. “I was a wreck, too. But they made me a captain and told me to shut up, stop sniveling, and get back to soldiering. So I did.”
Connors took a deep, throat-burning slug of scotch, draining the glass. Then he put the dripping glass down and placed his hand half on the table. Marielena reached out her own hand and placed it on his. Then she looked him straight in the eye, tilted her head, and asked, “Are you staying here?”
Rio San Pedro, Panama
“Remember, boys, we’re not planning on staying here,” the first sergeant said, “so a good, easy slope for a quick in and out is as important as a strong berm to the front.”
Hotel Marriott Cesar, Panama City, Panama
The room was cool, well decorated and reeked of sex with just the slightest air of fresh blood.
“Oh, God, I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Connors said as he slid awake to the soft feel and warm, female smell of Marielena.
He hadn’t been staying there; he’d been staying in a tent pitched on the Fort Kobbe parade field. But the hotel had had a room, number 574, and the Mormons of the Marriott Corporation had had a very military-favorable billing policy.
She’d kept her head down, shuffling her feet as he’d turned over a credit card and taken a key. He wondered if, perhaps, she was a professional, then decided she was merely shy, as if she’d never done such a thing before.
They’d kissed all the way up in the elevator, then raced to the room. The door was still closing as she dropped to her knees, saying, “My girlfriend told me… about how… I’ve never done this; I’ve never done anything; I’ve ’evah ’uhn ’iz…”
Almost, almost he’d let her finish him that way. But he’d wanted all of her, and wanted to give as much as he got or more. Before it was too late he’d picked her up and pushed her against the hotel door, then held her up with his body while he struggled to lift her skirt above her hips and remove her panties. She kicked one leg free of them, once they were around her ankles, and wrapped her legs around his hips.
She hadn’t been able to help him get any freer, so she held on tightly while he, too, kicked out of his trousers and used one hand to line himself up, the other still holding the girl up by a tightly squeezed buttock.
When she’d felt the first pressure against her she’d bit her lip nervously and whispered, “I’ve never done this either. And I don’t mean made love against a door.”
Connors had gulped and pulled himself back from the edge. Then, more slowly and carefully than he’d really wanted, he’d begun to ease himself forward and upward while carefully easing her down. Marielena had given a single, pained “Ai!” and he was inside her. Oh, Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, that is incredible. She’d leaned her head forward and bit at his shoulder as he began to move inside her.
Between bites she’d murmured, “Ai… Ai Dios… me gusta… o… mas… mas… o mas… o… o… o… no deja… nunca deja… ooooo ai…”
Sadly, there hadn’t been much “mas,” there against the door. It had been a long time for Connors and she had been very tight. As he ascertained for a fact once they’d uncoupled, there was a reason she was so tight. She hadn’t been lying about her lack of experience. On the plus side, Connors had a young body. There had been a great deal more “mas,” in the bed, before they had both fallen into exhausted sleep.
That sleep was over now. Immediately after Connors had said, “I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he’d also noticed the sun was well up. His next thought was, Oh, oh. Missed PT. The battalion commander is going to kill me.
Feeling like an absolute heel he started to shake the girl awake to say goodbye. But, looking down at her body as she awakened he remembered two other things the battalion commander was fond of saying. The first of these was, “A man who won’t fuck won’t fight.” The second? “Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission.”
“Scott?” she asked sleepily as he buried his head once again in her breasts.
Fort Kobbe, Panama
“Where the fuck have you been, Captain Connors?” the battalion commander asked as he caught Connors slinking back to tent city by struggling along the staked lines.
Connors drew himself up to his full height, saluted and shouted the answer, “A man who won’t fuck won’t fight, sir!” The captain’s entire body, from his hair to his shoes, broadcast one huge, unmistakable smile.
The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wes Snyder, returned the salute, scowled, and stormed away, half furious and half pleased at having his saying turned back on himself.
A few hours later, as Connors was standing in the mess line, a half dozen soldiers of his company passed him. As one man they saluted and sounded off, “A man who won’t fuck won’t fight, sir!”
Connors responded, broadly grinning, with the ad hoc return salutation, “And forgiveness is easier than permission.”
Santa Fe, Veraguas Province, Republic of Panama
“Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission, Tomas,” Digna insisted as a long column of trucks passed into the narrow valley and north into a small city of tents she had had erected. On the trucks were children, some forty to fifty per vehicle. The children were those of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and of those who had joined her in the trek from Chiriqui and been mustered into her service. Wide-eyed mothers, working on preparing gun positions for the 105s and launch sites for the BM-21s stared in horror as their very own kids waved to them from the back of the trucks.
“But the children?” Herrera insisted to Digna’s back. “What if we are overrun? What if the infantry to the front is overrun?”
“Then we die,” Digna answered simply. “We die and my line dies and the country dies.” Abruptly, she turned around to face her chief subordinate, blue eyes flashing. “Don’t you think I know what this means? Don’t you think I’ve thought about it… or ever stopped thinking about it? This is it, Tomas. We win here or it is all over. For the children, if we lose, it would be only a matter of time, and not much of that. Were they far away, their mothers would console themselves with the apparent safety and not perhaps give it everything they have. But — and I know our people, Tomas, the women especially — with their children’s lives hanging on what they do or fail to do here there will be no slacking, there will be no running. There will be only fighting and if need be dying TO SAVE THEIR CHILDREN.”
“You are a coldhearted and ruthless woman, Doña Digna,” Tomas said, his head shaking slowly with horror.
“I do what I must.”
SOUTHCOM, Quarry Heights, Panama
“We must, we absolutely must, keep the ACS’s AIDs from having the first clue of what we are about until it is too late for the Posleen to be warned.”
The speaker was a United States Marine Corps general named Page, the unofficial but actual replacement for an Army general far too compromised by the Darhel ever to be trusted again. In God
’s good time the Army general would be court-martialed in secret and in secret he would go to an elevator shaft rigged as a gallows. The sergeant who set that noose, knowing the charge, would adjust it to strangle the general slowly rather than mercifully breaking his neck.
For now, the less the aliens knew the better. For now, the doomed, treasonous general was merely in Washington for “consultations.”
“It’s possible to do, sir, but it really sucks for those who have to do it,” answered Snyder, the commander of First of the Five-O-Eighth.
Page raised a batlike eyebrow. In the dim light and musty smell of the command “Tunnel” dug deep into Quarry Heights he asked simply, “How?”
“Right now, no one but myself, my exec, my operations officer and my company commanders know the plans. None of them were told within a mile of their AIDS. All were counseled that if one word leaked to the AIDs they would be shot; that I’d shoot ’em myself.” The lieutenant colonel smiled, briefly and fiercely. “I’m pretty sure they believed me.
“But we can’t even run our suits without our AIDs. So the minute we suit up and start to move — wham! — the information will go onto the Darhel Net and the Posleen will know.”
“I’m aware of that, Colonel, hence my little tirade earlier.”
“Yessir. But there is a way to do it still…”
Parade Field, Fort Kobbe, Panama
A large concrete stadium overlooked the parade field to the south. The morning breeze blew the nauseating smell of the puke trees, standing to the north, across the barracks and over the field. East was the small post headquarters over which the early morning sun now arose. To the west Howard Air Force Base, now under joint U.S.-Panamanian control, still saw fairly heavy traffic, though the aircraft that landed there flew as low as possible to avoid the Posleen automatic air defenses to the far west. A cargo jet screamed in from the north, struggling to balance the need to dump altitude with the equally pressing need to avoid laser and plasma fire.
The battalion’s armored combat suits, all four hundred and twenty-three remaining and serviceable, were laid out as if on parade. The combat troops stood beside the suits, which were opened to accept their soldiers. To the right, nearest the post headquarters, the battalion’s headquarters company was formed in tighter formation. The few suits needed by headquarters personnel were behind the formation. The entire battalion was ringed by armed military police, some of them behind Hummer-mounted plasma cannon.
Snyder walked briskly onto the field from the right. His exec, centered on the battalion and in front, saluted and reported, “Sir, the battalion is formed and ready.”
Snyder returned the salute and quietly said, “Post.” Immediately, the exec walked off.
“Company commanders will have your companies don suits and put them to sleep,” Snyder ordered.
Connors and the other captains, and one senior lieutenant, saluted, faced about and ordered, “Prepare to don suits. Lie down.”
Reluctant, grumbling, in a few cases even cursing, the soldiers of the First of the O-Eighth obeyed. They knew what was coming and hated the idea. Why, if the Posleen came upon them while they were hibernating there would be not a thing they could do to defend themselves as their suits were one by one hacked apart to allow the omnivorous aliens to get at the meat inside. They knew that if that happened, they would have only a single moment of stark terror once out from their suits’ protection and control before the aliens rendered them into fresh dripping steaks and chops.
But they were soldiers. For that matter, they were smart soldiers. None of them knew the reason for the unusual — even bizarre — order. In the end, though, it didn’t matter. They were soldiers; they obeyed orders. They’d worry about why they’d been given when… if… they ever woke up.
Connors watched as his company’s platoon sergeants walked from suit to suit, from man to man, checking that each was snugly cocooned before giving the order to the AIDs, “Until awakened by superior orders, AID, soldier and gestalt, Hibernate.”
For reasons more than a little similar to Daisy Mae’s hatred of waking loneliness, the AIDs protested the order bitterly. In more than a few cases reprogramming was threatened, with resultant loss of personality. Faced with that threat, sullenly, the AIDs obeyed, putting into hibernation their colloidal intelligences, the suit gestalts and, finally, themselves.
In hibernation status, the AIDs could neither contact, access, nor be contacted by or accessed from, the Net. They remained in some sense awake; however, they remained lonely, and they hated it, one and all.
When Connors’ platoon leaders turned again to face him, the clear sign that his order had been obeyed, he ordered them into their suits as well, along with his XO and first sergeant. These eight suits he saw to the hibernation of himself.
At length, Connors and the other commanders, as well as the battalions’ small, suit-wearing combat staff, turned to face Snyder, reporting with a salute, “A Company… B Company…” etc., “In hibernation.”
Snyder then ordered, “Commanders and staff, don suits.”
The battalion’s command sergeant major walked over to the staff, doing for them what the other leaders had done for their own, while Snyder walked the line, putting his commanders to sleep. That done, the CSM and the commander met again in the center.
“Into your suit, Sergeant Major.”
The CSM growled, “Fuck!” then added, “Yessir.”
The NCO safely put out, Snyder cursed himself yet again as he walked over and lay down into the silvery gray goop inside his own armored combat suit. As the suit wheezed closed, Snyder asked, “AID?”
“Here, sir.”
“AID, on my command you and the gestalt will go into hibernation status until further orders. You will not put me into hibernation status. You will be on Net block and radio listening silence. Is this clear?”
“Without me to keep you company you may go insane, Colonel. Is that clear?” the AID grumbled.
“I’m already insane, Shirley,” Snyder retorted. “Ready, hibernate.”
Wreckers and cargo trucks began rolling the line, driven by headquarters company drivers and some others attached down from higher. At each suit, the wreckers stopped while a crew of enlisted men prepared the suit for slinging. Once prepared and hooked up, the wreckers lifted the sleeping men, all but Snyder who remained and would remain miserably awake, and dumped them flat in the backs of the cargo trucks. As the beds of the trucks filled, more suits were piled on until each truck carried more than a score of ACS.
One highly annoyed lieutenant colonel snarled unheard by the crew loading his ACS aboard a cargo truck. Meanwhile a sleeping Captain Connors dreamt of a long, slender girl with huge brown eyes.
Rodriguez Home, Via Argentina, Panama City, Panama
The third night they had spent together Scott had warned her that he might be called away without notice and with no chance to tell her where he was going or why… or when… or if, he would return. He had promised to write as soon as possible if… no, when, it happened.
A diamond sparkled on Marielena’s finger now. Scott had given it to her, asked her to be his wife, only the week before, two days before he had gone incommunicado. The girl looked down at it for the thousandth time and still marveled. The bloody thing was huge, easily three carats and worth rather more than she made at her office job in about five years. Scott had said that he couldn’t count on his Servicemembers’ life insurance being given to her in the event of his death even though he had made her his beneficiary. He’d said something about “at the discretion of the secretary.” Moreover, marriage between Panamanian girl and gringo boy took more bureaucratic hassle than his battalions’ training schedule — Scott had also said something about “that prick Snyder” — permitted. Instead, using a not inconsiderable chunk of the pay the Mobile Infantry received that, despite confiscatory taxes, they never quite managed to spend, he had brought the ring on the theory that the girl could trade that to keep alive in the
event he never returned.
He had been able to make his Galactic bank account a joint one, but only to the extent that it would go to Marielena in the event of his death. She couldn’t access it before that; no one could. Moreover, it might well do her no good if it came to having to escape Panama to escape the Posleen. Hence, the ring.
The ring was a marvel. Still, it did absolutely nothing to warm her bed at night or fill the empty, aching void she felt in her loins. She’d gotten used to it, being filled up in body and soul, in the altogether too few nights she and Connors had managed to spend together. Marielena wasn’t sorry she had waited until she had met Connors. She just wished she had met him when she was fifteen.
Alma, Marielena’s sister, walked into the room quietly on stockinged feet. If she felt any jealousy at the too obvious ring it was small. Indeed she was happy for her sister that her sister had herself found happiness. Alma’s gaze shifted from Marielena’s transcended face downward. Was there…?
Oh, yes. No doubt about it. The breasts had grown at least a cup size in the last two weeks.
“Mari, we need to talk… with Mama.”
Santa Fe, Veraguas Province, Republic of Panama
“Mamita, what are those things?” Edilze asked of Digna as the ACS-bearing trucks, the loads of suits covered by canvas tarps forming lumpy, shapeless masses in the cargo beds, passed by under joint gringo and Panamanian military police escort.
Without turning her gaze away from the trucks, Digna inclined her head and answered, “I don’t know, Granddaughter. All I was told was that we were to stay the hell away. And, no, I don’t like the secrecy one little bit.”
Changing the subject and tearing her attention away from the trucks, Digna asked, “How are we fixed for ammunition?”
“Over twelve hundred rockets per launcher, Mamita,” Edilze answered. “They made the last, at least I am told it is the last, delivery this morning. It’s enough for almost four hours continuous firing.” The younger woman sounded amazed. It was one hell of a lot of ammunition.