by John Ringo
Ruiz took a running start and pulled himself up by the vine. “Aiaiaiaiaiai!” He sailed across the quicksand a few feet above it and slightly faster than he could have run. At the far side, the side nearest the river and his canoe, he let go his grip, flew unaided through the air for a moment and then tumbled and rolled to a stop on the mucky ground. Pushing with whatever part of his body was in contact with the ground — knees, elbows… lips, earlobes, eyelashes — he scrambled onward to the safety of the river and… stopped.
The sound of his pursuers had changed in moments from keen baying to mere keening. A tone of fear and despair had taken over their snarls and grunts. Cautiously he turned around and unslung his bow, nocking another arrow before slinking low back in the direction from which he had come.
The aliens were chest deep in the quicksand, muzzles and eyes raised skyward. The sand around each of them was roughened, as if they had struggled for a bit before realizing that this only made them sink faster. Of shotguns, or other ranged weapons, he saw not a sign beyond some linear marks in the sand’s surface where they had perhaps been dropped.
Smiling broadly, Ruiz stepped up very near to the edge of the quicksand pit and sat down, cross-legged and in full view of any of the demons who might care to look in his direction. Reaching into a little bag he wore on his belt he pulled out some cheap tobacco, rolling papers, and a plastic tube containing matches. Then he sat with his back against a tree, happily rolled himself a cigarette and lit it, all the while watching the aliens sink lower and lower. Carefully, Ruiz counted the number of demons caught in his trap by making notches on a stick. He wanted to avenge his people, if possible many times over.
The lower lip of the last Posleen to go under the wet sand quivered like a naughty school boy’s caught in some mischief before it too sank — still quivering — from sight.
SOUTHCOM Headquarters, the “Tunnel,”
Quarry Heights, Panama
“What’s this Darien really like, anyway?” Page asked of Rivera.
“Sir, you ever do Jungle School at Fort Sherman?”
“Sure,” the Marine answered. “On my way to Vietnam in… umm… Sixty-six, it was.”
“Then you know the Mojingas, right?”
Page twisted his jaw a bit and remembered back before answering, “The Mojingas? Made Vietnam’s jungle seem positively civilized.”
“Right. Well, the Mojingas is small. Multiply the size about fifty-thousandfold. Then make it ten times wetter, twenty times more mosquito infested. Add in thirty times more snakes, forty times more fucking ants which are fifty times hungrier. It’s fucking hell, sir.”
“Oooh. Poor Fifth Infantry.”
Rivera smiled nastily. “No, sir. Don’t pity the Fifth. They’re like the Chocoes; they can live in that shit. But if you want to spread some pity, give some to the Posleen.”
Interlude
A human would have said that Guanamarioch was “spooked” at the loss of an eighth of his pack without trace. The human would have been right, too.
The God King trembled slightly as he walked eastward. To Ziramoth, walking beside him, he said, “I just don’t get it Zira. More than fifty of my people… disappeared without a trace. They weren’t shot, or burned. Nobody harvested them for thresh except for the six that were hit by what my Artificial Sentience called “arrows.” It’s like some huge creature opened its jaws and sucked them in, not even spitting out the bones. Zira, I followed their trail. They just disappeared into nothing.”
Whatever Zira had been about to say was lost as the dark trail ahead of them erupted in screams and firing.
Posleen were essentially immune to any form or terrestrial poison that man had yet discovered. Nerve gas had no effect. Blister agents had little (but then blister agents were among the least deadly means of human chemical warfare anyway). Blood agents? Puhleeze. Not even some of the more esoteric Russian chemicals had had any noticeable effect on the aliens. Diseases? Not a chance.
That said, their bodies were still composed of something analogous to flesh. The beings who had tinkered with Posleen genes in the dim mists of antiquity had begun with a more or less normal pre-sentient creature, then modified those early forms for reasonable threats. Some threats, though, just weren’t reasonable.
* * *
The ant had neither name nor number. It never noted the lack. As much as a Posleen normal was content to be a part of its clan, the ant lived to serve its colony, though in this case the colony was a series of trees. In a real sense, even more than Posleen normals, the ant was a mere appendage to that greater organism.
The vibrations of the unusual centauroid creatures passing nearby had disturbed the ant, raising it from its slumbers, along with many thousands of its fellows. Like the others that joined it, poised along the tree branches of the colony, the ant was a bit under an inch long, colored black. The Posleen slogging below never noticed this; the night was dark and most of the ants were concealed from sight. The Posleen likewise never noted the immense and terribly sharp mandibles borne by the tens of thousands of ants among the trees. It would have taken more curiosity than the aliens, as a race, possessed for them to note that the mandibles were hollow and capable of injecting not venom, but a rather concentrated solution of formic acid.
The ant couldn’t have told you why it jumped, when it did. Instead, at some point the moment just seemed right.
Wheee!
It landed atop the broad and bare back of a Posleen normal. It didn’t bite right away, for that would have shown a degree of initiative highly discouraged in ants. Instead, it waited until a few dozen or so of its sisters had likewise landed on the Posleen, as well as some thousands more on the backs of other Posleen.
That moment seemed right, too. Chomp!
ChompChoChomChompChoChomChomp…
When you’re an ant, a tree ant… a soldier tree ant, you just live for those team-building moments when you and your tree ant soldier buddies can donate excess concentrated formic acid into something that really isn’t expecting it.
The Posleen normal noticed the arrival of the ant, and of its many, many sisters. At first, it thought it might be more of the rain that seemed to stop only to build up more rain buddies to the side. It seemed odd though, that these rain drops didn’t slide off its back. The normal found this somewhat disturbing in a distant sort of way.
And then there was pain. Oh, my, yes; there was great, burning, agonizing, shrieking pain, emanating from dozens of spots. The normal reared up in shock and surprise. Sadly, as it did so, it knocked over another normal who was also experiencing an ant-induced epiphany of pain… and no happier about it than was the first normal.
A little annoyed, and more than a little stupid, the second normal drew a boma blade and charged at the danger it could see, ignoring the danger it could not. This was bad enough. But some of the normals, many of them, in fact, carried better than boma blades. They had railguns. So did other oolts that fed themselves spontaneously into the fighting.
Wheee, thought the ants. Chomp.
When Guanamarioch and Ziramoth, leading Guano’s pack, arrived at the scene, there was nothing left but carnage. Oh, yes, a few normals still lived, though they were in a pretty bad state of shock. For the rest? Guano whistled over one of his cosslain and made signs for it to begin the thresh gathering.
“Maybe it is to the good, Zira. I am feeling awfully weak lately with what the little flying demons are draining from my body.”
Ziramoth sighed. “So are we all, my young friend. So are we all.”
Chapter 30
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
— Michel de Montaigne
Nata Line, Republic of Panama
Dictator Boyd was waiting at the southernmost of the two major crossing points as the long lines of weary, bedraggled, and half-beaten looking men crossed into safety, but with millions of Posleen on their tails. The armored vehicles looked, if anything, more beaten than the men. Blood ran d
own the sides of some of them from wounded men stacked atop.
Still, it hadn’t gone badly, Boyd knew. Yes, a few companies had been cut off and annihilated here and there on the long retreat. Worse, one whole battalion of mechanized infantry had been lost without a single survivor in the ruins of Santiago. Even so, better than eighty-five percent of the two heavy divisions had escaped, along with half a million civilians, many of them young boys to become soldiers and young girls to breed them. There was equipment to make good the losses, too, some of it on hand and some more en route. The losses of men could not be made up so easily, of course.
Boyd wore battle dress, his helmet off and tucked under his left arm so the passing troops could recognize him. Maybe it would mean nothing to them; maybe no one would recognize him. In a personal way, it would have made him happier if none had. Panama had a long and unfortunate history of dictatorial rule. He hoped, fervently, that he would be the last dictator the country ever had to endure.
Unfortunately for his happiness, many did recognize him and those quickly passed the word to the others. He assumed it was being passed by radio as well because, looking through his binoculars, he saw men begin to wave at him from the distance, well before they closed to a range at which they could have recognized him.
One track pulled out of line and trundled over to where Boyd stood, surrounded by his twenty-four aides de camp. Officially, they were “lictors.” The aides stepped briskly out of the way lest the track run them over. The track — it was a Russian-built BMP — stopped abruptly. Boyd heard the squeaking of a metal door being pushed open. A young, dirty-faced sergeant emerged. Boyd looked over the face carefully. It wasn’t just dirt. The boy had a weariness about him Boyd hadn’t seen since the long retreat and the fight back in a place called the Ardennes.
Bone tired or not, the young man saluted smartly. “Sir, Sergeant Quijana reports.”
Boyd returned the salute a little awkwardly. Would he never get used to being a senior officer? He supposed not. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
Quijana shook his head. “Nothing, Dictador. I just wanted to tell you we racked ’em up like firewood. All the way back. We killed ’em at ten to one, maybe twenty to one. Hell, for all I know it might have been one hundred or more to one, especially if you count what the guns reaped. The boys were… well, sir, they were just great. But we’ve gotta go back, sir. That’s our land. We can’t let the aliens keep it. It’s ours.”
Boyd smiled and nodded. “We’re not going to let them keep it, son. Just like you said, it’s ours and they can’t have it while we live. But for now, before you can take it back, you and your boys need to go get a rest, eat some decent food, shower, maybe change uniforms. And I figure you’ll need more ammunition, too; that, and fuel. Do those things. Get rested. Get ready. ’Cause, son, we are going back.”
Santiago, Veraguas, Republic of Panama
The town was half aflame as Binastarion rode his tenar eastwards through it. There were human bodies scattered about, here and there, almost all of them in the mottled pattern clothing the threshkreen favored. The God King was pleased that his orders with regard to human bodies were being followed. He was even more pleased that there had been no antimatter explosions. In time, and hopefully before the bodies rotted away in the sun, they would be recovered. And, if not, at least they would serve to fertilize the soil of this place and feed the People that way.
Binastarion brought his tenar to a halt, allowing the columns of the eastward moving People to pass him. Slowly, he rotated his sled completely around. The People were gathering food that was not threshkreen. Some of the locals’ horned food-animals had been killed together in an open field by one of the humans’ buildings. Apparently, they had been put down by the locals themselves.
Some normals were engaged in reducing the meat of these horned food-animals to easily ported chunks of flesh and bone. The God King couldn’t tell how many of the animals there had been; the harvesting was already well in process. He watched as a boma blade deftly sliced one of the animals into sections. He watched as the normals lifted the sections to take them to the host.
The God King did not see, however, the yellowish disk that flew up when the last section had been lifted. All he knew was that a dozen of the People had been standing around the horned food-animals’ bodies one second, and that they were lying on their backs the next, waving stumps in the air from which spouted bright fountains of yellowish blood. Even at this distance Binastarion could hear the normals’ pitiful keening cries.
“The humans call them ‘Bouncing Barbies,’ milord. I don’t know why,” the AS said after a few moments.
“AS, pass to the host: There will be no more harvesting of the humans’ food-animals until their bodies have been properly examined for traps.”
“It is done, Binastarion,” the Artificial Sentience answered.
“I hate humans.”
“I am beginning to, as well, milord.”
Binastarion rode on. Further into the town, he saw a group of normals led by a lower ranking Kessentai carving away the door to one of the thresh buildings. Under the boma blade, the door quickly fell away. The group of the People entered.
Kaboom. The human building simply disintegrated.
Binastarion sighed. Such clever little devils these threshkreen were.
“AS, pass to the host…”
“I am already doing it, Binastarion. You realize that our logistic problems will get worse, much worse, if we don’t harvest the food available?”
“I know that, AS. But what can we do? We lost thousands back at that defensive line when the Kessentai’s tenar’s antimatter went off. We just lost a dozen to that ‘Bouncing Barbie.’ How many disappeared when that building exploded? We lose as much as we gain when we try to harvest these thresh.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to subsist the People on our own losses, Binastarion. Odd, is it not, that the threshkreen have become our primary food source in quite this way?”
The God King didn’t answer but, rather, continued in his tenar eastward until he came upon a group of the People, cut down by the threshkreen in a narrow alley of the town. A small pack of normals were in the process of reducing these to thresh. Hmmm. I wonder… Binastarion backed his tenar off about one hundred meters.
Kaboom.
“AS, pass to the host…”
USS Des Moines, Southwest of the Nata Line
Firing in support of the Nata line was desultory and didn’t require Daisy’s full attention. Thus, she was able to spend her conscious time with the body growing under the process of “inauspicious cloning” in the tank deep down in the bowels of the ship.
Sintarleen was with Daisy, tinkering with something or other. “She is almost ready to be decanted,” the Indowy said. “A day or two more… perhaps a week at most…”
“Do you think he’ll like it?” Daisy asked worriedly of the Indowy, in his own tongue. “I made it for him. But… I don’t know…”
Sinbad shrugged, a habit he had picked up unconsciously from the human crew. Also in his own language he answered, “I have hardly made a study of human aesthetics, Ship Daisy. But the body looks like your avatar and we know the captain likes that. Besides, this one will be stronger than any human female that ever was naturally born, quicker and healthier, too. She will bear the captain many fine offspring…”
Daisy and the Indowy went silent for a moment. “Your clan will have no more offspring, will it, Sinbad, unless you return safely to them?”
“This is so,” the Indowy admitted, with infinite sadness. “All our many millennia will be at an end.”
Daisy’s avatar’s eyes began to flicker, as they often did when she was deep in thought. After a few long moments she announced, “Your clan will not die with you, Sintarleen of the Indowy.”
The little bat-faced alien cocked his head. “But I am the last male of my clan. All that are left off-world are females and transfer neuters… Ohhh.”
D
aisy’s eyes flickered some more, stopped, flickered again. “I have just sent a bank draft paying for the freedom of your remaining clan members from the Darhel who hold their contracts, Sinbad; that, and passage to the world of Agitrapis, which is off the route of the Posleen invasion. I apologize that I did not think of this sooner. When they get there, they will find a healthy account to begin to rebuild your clan anew and in liberty. And you shall someday join them, either in this body or in a new one. Prepare a sample of your own DNA.”
Strong emotions were anathema to the Indowy culture, almost as dangerous as they were to the Darhel. Even so, Sintarleen felt tears rising — this emotional response, however rarely seen, they had in common with humans — and, to cover them, went back to his adjustments of the cloning tank.
Firebase Miranda, Santa Fe,
Veraguas Province, Republic of Panama
The BM-21s, even more than most forms of artillery, were area fire weapons. Thus, Digna didn’t really care if the gunners were off a mil or two — or five or ten for that matter — in their sight settings; the range probable error of the rockets was greater than that anyway. She did, however, care deeply that the gunners could adjust the sights and re-lay the launchers quickly to something reasonably close to the data called for by the fire plan.
Even a ten mil error was only a couple of hundred meters at most of the ranges she would be firing at. When one is planning to toss almost four thousand rockets in under a minute at an area of about twenty-five square kilometers, or one for every .6 hectares, a few meters this way or that made little difference. When one is planning on doing that every ten minutes for nearly four hours? Well… who cared, really, where any given warhead — or forty — went?