Yellow Eyes lota-8

by John Ringo

  San Pedro Line, Republic of Panama

  It was the thunder of God. It was the raging of Satan. It was the walls of Hell being tumbled as Christ died on the cross.

  It was nine semi-automatic eight-inch naval guns firing “high capacity” shells at maximum rate and walking the blasts across the landscape to a plan and a timetable.

  Quijana and the six remaining dismounted soldiers with him huddled on the floor of the trench as shell after shell exploded to their front, shaking their internal organs mercilessly and pelting them with rocks, debris and parts of Posleen bodies lofted by the blasts. Some of the bits fell on the headless body of Private Gonzalez.

  Oh, shit, thought Quijana, crouching abjectly with his arms protectively circling his head and neck. If something falls on poor Gonzo hard enough to jostle his body it might set of the mine. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  One of the privates apparently had the same idea at about the same time. The private saw a severed Posleen head fall across Gonzalez’s legs, shouted “Chingada!” and started to get up to leave the trench.

  “Oh, no you don’t, shithead!” Quijana exclaimed, reaching up to grasp the private’s belt and pull him back down into the trench. The private struggled until the sergeant stuck the muzzle of his rifle under his chin and said, as calmly as possible for having to shout over the naval shells, “One little twitch. Just one.”

  The private immediately went wide-eyed and stock-still.

  “Sergeant Quijana!” shouted one of the track crew, lying down at the entrance to the communication trench that led to the BMP. “Sergeant! The word is to pull out now! For God’s sake, c’mon!” The BMP crewman’s head immediately disappeared as he pulled back to return to his vehicle.

  Still with the muzzle of his rifle under the terrified private’s chin, Quijana used his other hand to point at his corporal. “You first! Supervise the loading as they arrive. Now, go!” The corporal took off briskly. Then the sergeant looked around the pale, frightened faces of the remaining five. He pointed at a private. “Go!” This he continued until only himself and the soldier with the rifle to his chin remained.

  In as reasonable a voice as he could muster, Quijana said, “You are going next. I will follow. You will keep your head down. You will move quickly but calmly. You will not lose your footing. You will not trip. If you do either of those things, I will shoot you and leave you behind for the enemy. Is this clear?”

  The private gulped and, unable to nod his agreement and understanding for the rifle pushed into the hollow of his jaw, managed to answer, “I… understand… Sergeant.”

  Satisfied, Quijana nodded and said, “Good, son. Now go!”

  When Quijana arrived, his corporal was still outside the track, making sure the frightened private buckled himself in before seating himself. The BMP’s turret slewed slowly, left to right, spitting death in the form of machine gun and cannon fire. Shards from the naval gunfire whined overhead or, velocity spent, fell to earth to raise small dust clouds.

  “Everyone’s aboard, Sergeant!” the corporal announced over the engine’s roar as Quijana scrambled to his seat, slamming and locking the track’s door behind him.

  “Tell the track commander! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  The vehicle began to vibrate while the engine’s roar increased as the driver began to back out of position, prior to pivoting and running like hell for the next battle position, ten miles back.

  CA-134, USS Des Moines, off Isla Cebaco

  “Skipper, the Heavy Corps reports they have broken contact and are falling back.”

  McNair looked at the guns, shimmering even in the daylight with the heat built up from hours of nearly continuous firing.

  “How’s Sally standing up?” the captain asked of Daisy Mae.

  “She’s about the same as us, Skipper,” the avatar answered. “Most of the high capacity ammunition in the ready magazines is depleted. They’re cross-leveling and reloading now, as we are. And, for both of us, our guns are hot.”

  “They sure are, Daisy,” Davis commented, causing the avatar to blush.

  “All right, then,” McNair continued. “We’ve done our jobs for now. Set course to bring us around the Peninsula de Azuero, and assume firing positions in support of the Nata Line.”

  San Pedro Line, Republic of Panama

  Binastarion shuddered at the carnage displayed to either side of the San Pedro River. His people lay in heaps, Kessentai and normals both. Tenar hovered in place or lay, altogether too often, crashed and smoking on the ground among the dead.

  Unhurt normals were busied with rendering the dead and very badly wounded into thresh. This would keep the offensive going for some days, the God King knew. Yet there was always loss in consuming the bodies of the dead. Only a vast taking of the threshkreen would have made this a favorable exchange. Binastarion knew that the threshkreen had left comparatively few of their own, nothing like the scores of thousands of the People who lay lifeless on the ground and on each other, to make up for the caloric loss.

  Reports from up ahead were not encouraging either. It seems that the thresh and their threshkreen defenders had abandoned the ground, taking everything edible with them except, of course, for what they had burned rather than let fall into the hands of the People. Moreover, the threshkreen were falling back in good order or, at least, in no worse order than one might have expected under the circumstances.

  “I hate humans,” Binastarion growled, though none but his Artificial Sentience could hear him as he rode his tenar above the abattoir below.

  “Lord, one cannot help but observe that the humans hate you as well,” that ancient device answered.

  To either side of the highway — or what was left of it, the humans had torn up as much of that as possible to impede the People’s progress — normals and Kessentai were formed in ranks, the Kessentai singing a hymn of praise to their chief for the victory.

  Victory? This is “victory”?

  Artificial Sentiences could not read thoughts. Yet, were they and their God Kings together long enough, and Binastarion and his AS had been together for many cycles, they would sometimes think along the same paths.

  “Let them think what they will, lord. Let them think what fortifies them for the coming struggles. This is not a victory, but rather a defeat, despite driving the threshkreen from their positions and placing ourselves in position to overrun the best of their remaining lands. Still, it does put us in position to grow stronger, and higher in the ranks of the People.”

  “Yes, old friend, I understand that,” Binastarion answered. “I merely wonder if our strength will prove sufficient; if our sustenance will prove sufficient.”

  “That, lord, only time will tell.”

  The small pack leader — or oolt’ondai — was hungry, as were most of his pack. He wanted a human to eat, something not just to fortify him but to make up for the losses and the hours of fear he had endured while leading his People to break this threshkreen defensive line.

  Guiding his tenar low, the oolt’ondai’s eyes searched out the human-built trench system looking vainly for even one threshkreen corpse to vent his hunger and his fear upon. There was nothing, nothing but the bodies of the People and the humans’ wrecked fighting machines, burning and smoking all around. The machines seemed odd to the Kessentai, different from those he and his pack had faced. They looked boxier and less predatory, for one thing. Sadly, the God King was not what the humans called a “five-percenter.” He did not key on the fact that the dead machines he saw were of an altogether different design and battle philosophy than the ones which had devastated his pack and the others. Even if he had been intellectually capable of understanding, it is most unlikely that the God King would have made anything of it.

  Though intent on searching the trench floor, the Kessentai still almost missed it. The corpse was headless, and half covered in dirt and debris. It took several long moments for the oolt’ondai to realize that the headless thing was indeed the prize he had
sought, a human corpse.

  The tenar would never fit into the trench, so, reluctant to dismount, the Kessentai ordered over a normal and made the signs for the normal to bring him the body. Somewhat reluctantly and fearfully, the normal obeyed. These things they fought were frightful. Who knew what evil designs they had worked into their own systems of fortification? Even so, God Kings ordered and normals obeyed. It was in the nature of the universe. The normal found a zigzag in the trench system and jumped in.

  Naturally, the normal sniffed the body. It did smell odd but then everything on this miserable planet smelled odd. It didn’t look for trip wires but that didn’t matter as there were no trip wires on the threshkreen’s body. The normal bent over and dug its claws into the corpse, giving one great heave to lift the body to where its god could take charge of it.

  When the body was lifted there was a small bang, nothing so profound as the explosions that had danced among the People all day. Too quick for the normal’s eye to see, a cylinder, about six inches across and nine or so high, bounded upward.

  The Kessentai saw the cylinder, for the briefest moment, before it exploded. At this range, literally dozens of pieces of steel, some round, some jagged, tore into the God King’s body. He had barely time to register that agony before the det cord went off, detonating in turn several pounds of plastic explosive. It was not clear to the God King which it was that killed him, as he was turned into so much gas too quickly. Several dozen of the pellets struck the tenar and of these at least three hit the controls for the containment unit for the tenar’s antimatter power pack. This immediately failed.

  There was a blindingly bright flash to the east.

  Though he was some miles away as the shock wave hit, it still took Binastarion several long moments as he fought for control of his tenar before he realized what it was that he was seeing. His Artificial Sentience announced, “Antimatter explosion, lord. I am attempting to analyze what caused it.”

  “The never-sufficiently-to-be-damned humans caused it!” the Kessentai snarled.

  “Well… yes, lord,” the AS admitted. “But how is the question. I have a suspicion the threshkreen have begun laying traps on the bodies they leave behind. The loss from this one, if it was a trap, far exceeds any nutrition we might harvest from all the human bodies found so far in the line.”

  Binastarion scowled. “Issue orders in my name: the humans’ corpses are to be left unharvested until they can be properly searched and, if necessary, disarmed.”

  “This will play hell with logistics, lord,” the AS answered. “But… it is done.”

  “I hate humans.”

  “Speaking of which, lord,” the AS continued, “something has been disturbing me.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I can’t find the metal threshkreen. I lost them a while ago but didn’t think much of it. Now we have fought the humans again. You would have expected the metal threshkreen to be involved, at least in covering their breaking contact with us. But, no, there’s been not a peep.”

  “They could have been pulled off-world,” Binastarion commented, reasonably. “Or even back to their homeland to the north of here.”

  “It’s possible, lord.”

  * * *

  “Good Lord A’mighty.” Sergeant Quijana saw the rising mushroom cloud, a comparatively small one, from the battle position his company had assumed to continue their delay of the enemy. He wondered for a moment, then pulled out his map and compass.

  From this position… azimuth of… two hundred and seventy-eight degrees… mmmm…

  “Get some, Gonzo.”

  Interlude

  Guanamarioch, a low ranking member of a clan not even powerful enough to defend its newly won lands from other Posleen clans larger, wealthier or more aggressive, found himself stuck with the most miserable job he could ever have imagined. Not for him the soaring in his tenar, high and free, above the ugly, miserable, stinking, green fester pit the locals called “the Darien.” Oh, no. That was the province of the higher caste Kessentai. His tenar floated on automatic above the jungle overhead while he, instead, found himself on the ground, leading several hundred poorly armed, genetically marginal normals struggling through knee-deep, slimy, clinging muck.

  Oh, well. At least Zira is here to keep me company.

  Not that the muck was so bad. At least where the muck covered Guano’s body the local flying insect life — they were called “mosquitoes” — couldn’t get at him.

  The problem was that the rain, incessantly pounding on the thick jungle roof overhead, then dripping down from the leaves and vines, washed the coating away. And where there was no muck, there were the mosquitoes.

  There were little ones, big ones, medium ones. One and all, little or big, they were voracious. The little ones, especially, hurt when their sharp probosci jabbed Guano’s open flesh. Surprisingly, the larger varieties’ bites didn’t hurt as much as the smaller but they, like their tiny cousins, left behind an insatiable itch. They left behind, too, a swelling that built up as more and more of the damned insects sank their probes into already swollen flesh.

  Guano looked left to where one of his band was being led through the steaming jungle by a superior normal. The poor creature’s eyes had been swollen shut by repeated attacks from kamikaze anopheles.

  Though the rain stripped the Posleen of their protecting mud, it also drove the mosquitoes to cover. Unfortunately, whenever the rain stopped the bugs came out again with a vengeance to rape and pillage the Posleen horde before more mud could be applied. And even once re-covered with muck, the mosquitoes’ bites itched horribly underneath.

  “This can’t go on, you know, Guano,” announced Ziramoth. “These little flying devils are sucking better than three measures of nutrient transportation fluid out of each member of the host every cycle.”

  The God King half expanded his crest then relaxed it, the Posleen equivalent of a shrug.

  “It grows back,” he said.

  “It grows back indeed,” agreed the Kenstain, “if you and your band get enough food and water. Water is, of course, no problem. Here is all the water the host might desire… and more. Food, on the other hand…”

  “Food,” Guano agreed. Yes, water we have in remarkable abundance.

  The clan had started their unwilling trek packing light, fleeing in near panic from an overwhelming surprise assault by three neighboring clans. They’d expected to find food en route. Unfortunately, the local animals for the most part fled the host en masse. The animals that did not tended to be small; so small, in fact, that a single hit from a railgun or blast from a shotgun was usually enough to leave little more than some scrawny and unnourishing feet, and a thin mist of blood, flesh, skin and fur floating on the breeze.

  “The foraging is poor,” the God King added.

  “I doubt it’s going to get much better, either,” Zira replied. “I sense no teeming of any life within any useful distance that would worth eating. Not since that village of primitive brown threshkreen your band hit three cycles ago.”

  “That was good eating,” Guano agreed. “But it didn’t last long.”

  Guanamarioch could still almost smell the blood, fresh and hot, from the abattoir he and his band had made of that brown threshkreen village.

  It had been a normal enough foraging expedition. A pair of scouts had returned to the main body of the Posleen band and signaled the presence of food in fair abundance. The normals, of course, could not count. Even had they been able to count, they were, frankly, too stupid to relate that count in intelligible speech. Instead they had used hand signals and body language — the motion of hands to muzzles, the shaking of heads as if tearing meat from bones, the lifting of muzzles skyward as if bolting down raw chunks of thresh, then the patting of flanks in simulated satiety — to indicate their find. Lastly, the senior of the two normals held palms apart at a certain distance to indicate the size of the find.

  Guanamarioch measured the distance from palm to pal
m with his eyes, coming up with the answer, about four hundred thresh, give or take.

  The thresh of this area, the God King knew, ran small. Still, the quantity indicated would be enough to feed his pack for several days, at the very least. He signaled his party to move to the feast, the two original scouts leading.

  The trek to the village of thresh had not been especially long, but the water and the muck had made it more than ordinarily difficult. This was made even worse, once the scouts signaled that the village was near, by the need to keep silent lest any of the thresh escape.

  At a point several hundred yards shy of the outskirts Guanamarioch stationed himself. From there two encircling arms of Posleen, led by superior normals of Guano’s pack, reached out in a loving embrace.

  Both Posleen tendrils reached the river on the far side of the thresh village at about the same time. The God King knew this from a sort of joy-filled shuddering that swept back to him from the leading superior normals. He withdrew his boma blade from its scabbard and was about to signal the attack when a strange thing happened. The normal next to him gave a soft, inarticulate cry and looked stupidly at Guano before dropping to his knees. From the creatures breast sprouted a length of what appeared to Guano to be wood.

  “AS,” the God King asked, “what was that?”

  “What was what?” the Artificial Sentience responded. “I sense nothing.”

  Faintly, out of one eye, Guano spotted an indefinable streak moving fast through the jungle. He ducked just in time for the streak to miss him, hitting instead a tree just behind.

  “That, you electronic dunce. What was that?” Guano indicated the thin sliver of wood quivering in the tree.

  “Primitive weapon, of a kind not used by the People in uncounted millennia,” the AS announced. “It is not ballistic and so I cannot sense it in flight. It contains little refined metal and so I cannot sense it at rest. I believe the locals call it an arrow. It is fired from a bow.”