by John Ringo
Diaz continued on, pulling to the right occasionally to catch and spiral higher in one of the mountain-directed updrafts. Sometimes, during those altitude gaining spirals, he could see yet more of the refuse of the massacre. He forced himself to look, despite the nausea it induced.
Finally, with the last rays of the setting sun painting the waves of the Pacific, and with the last known forward position of the 6th Division behind him, he turned one hundred and eighty degree and began to glide back to the east, to the base at Rio Hato.
It was chance then, chance that the sun had set at that precise moment, chance that he was looking in that precise direction, chance that someone on the ground fired human weapons in precisely Diaz's field of view.
Unmistakable. Someone down there is still fighting. I've got to help.
In order to help though, Diaz needed to see more, understand more. He began a slow, lazy three-sixty. As he did he caught more flashes of rifles, machine guns, and cannon. The flashes seemed to form a broad circle.
"Christ!" the boy exclaimed. "They're still hanging on down there. I've got to help."
Suarez, aided by the communications array of the ACS, had only just managed to form a half circle facing north when the first wave of Posleen hit. The Posleen may have been more surprised at the resistance than the humans had been at the grand scale ambush, since their advance guards stopped and then recoiled at the sudden and unexpected wave of fire that met them.
The Posleen, however stupid they were in the main, were also a species quick to form and quick to react. The human defenders had a few brief minutes of respite before a more serious attack was thrown in. This was not repulsed so easily; Suarez actually had to throw in Connors and his ACS company before the attack was contained.
After that the attack in the north petered out into minor probes and sniping while the bulk of the aliens split east and west to find the vulnerable flank they were sure had to be there. For Suarez and his boys it became a race against time to form a full perimeter before the enemy turned one or both flanks. Cooks and clerks found themselves in the firing line, along with medics hastily armed with the rifles of the fallen. Still, by nightfall a perimeter, more or less cohesive, had been formed.
I couldn't have even done that without the gringos and their armored suits, Suarez thought.
For his part, Connors, resting for the moment with his back against Suarez's track, thought, Thank God this colonel knew what the fuck he was doing. Another man and we'd have been dead and peeled like lobsters already.
Simultaneously, both men had much the same thought, which went something like, Not that it much matters. We're hopelessly cut off out here, no chance of relief or support. We'll live until the ammo runs low or the fuel runs out or the power dies in the suits and then we'll die anyway. Tonight, maybe at the latest mid-day tomorrow, and it'll all be over but the munching.
Even as he finished that shared thought, Connors suddenly sat upright. Clearly and distinctly, through his suits communicator, he heard a Spanish voice, "Any station, any station, this is Lima Two Seven."
"Lima Two Seven this is Romeo Five Five. Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you?"
Diaz nearly whooped with joy. "Romeo, I am a glider. If you look carefully you might be able to see me overhead. How can I help?"
The answering voice sounded resigned, "You got a couple of nukes, Lima? Because short of that, I doubt there is much you can do to help us."
Julio thought for a moment, then answered, "No nukes, Romeo, but I might be able to get something nearly as good. Wait, over . . . Daisy? Daisy? This is Julio. I need your help, Dama."
USS Des Moines
Dammit, it had hurt to have had to run away; it had shamed. Daisy had seen Sally back to the cover of the mixed Planetary Defense Base cum anti-lander batteries on the Isla del Rey before turning back to the west. Unfortunately, by the time she had gotten within lunging range at the enemy, there was no one to talk to. Thus, impotent and infuriated, she had steamed south of the isthmus—to and fro, east and west—looking and hoping for a target.
Thus it was that, unconcealed glee in her voice, Daisy announced to McNair, "I've got us a ripe one, Skipper."
McNair, still smarting over the loss of Texas, didn't hesitate. "Bring us around." His finger pushed a button. "All hands, this is the captain. Battle stations."
"Julio, we're coming," the ship said.
Remedios, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
"It's neither as good nor as easy as it sounds, sir," Diaz cautioned over the radio. "I wish I could connect you directly with the ship, but I can't. If I could, you could direct the fires. As is . . . well, sir, the ship can toss a huge amount of firepower, and it's unbelievably accurate, but only along the gun-target line. Anywhere from one third to one half of the shells will be over or under and some of them will be way over or under. If you have troops over or under the target . . ."
Chingada, Suarez thought. Fat lot of good it does me to blast the aliens if the same fire blasts holes in my own perimeter. The Posleen will recover quicker.
Suarez thought furiously while looking at his map. The ship was going to fire from the Gulf of Montijo, from a position just north of Isla Cebaco. What Diaz had told him meant that he could get effective fire to his east and west, but could not use the ship's guns to help him break contact north and south.
"All right, Lieutenant Diaz, I understand. Tell the ship I want priority along the enemy-held ground west of the Rio San Pablo. Then, on my command, I want to switch to east of the Rio San Pedro."
Suarez stopped to think for a moment. Something was nagging at him. Something important . . . something . . .
"Mierda!" he exclaimed aloud. "Diaz, does the ship carry a shell that can clear the bridges along the Rio San Pedro without endangering the bridge?"
It was a long moment before Diaz answered. When he did, it was to say, "Miss Daisy says she has improved conventional munitions that can kill the Posleen without endangering the bridge, sir."
Miss Daisy? Never mind. "Good, good," Suarez said with more good cheer than he felt. "Diaz, you can see, which is more than I can say. Keep me posted and commence firing as soon as possible."
Under Binastarion's eye his sons and their ooltos formed and massed for what he expected to be the final breakthrough into the rear of the threshkreen's perimeter. The river to his front, while promising to be a costly obstacle to cross, was not so deep his normals could not cross it unaided, though he was sure a few would find deep spots in which they would drown. No matter; their bodies will make a ford for the ones that follow. For the rest, a few minutes helpless under fire and then we're among them.
An odd shape, cruising high to the west, caught the God King's eye.
"What is that damned thing flying up there?" Binastarion demanded of his Artificial Sentience.
That machine was connected to the God King's tenar and, thus, to the entire Net. Yet, infuriatingly, it answered, "There is nothing flying overhead, lord."
"Bucket of misdesigned circuitry, I can see it. There is something up there."
"Nonetheless, lord," the Sentience answered with the normal indifference of a machine, "there is nothing up there which registers. Therefore, there is nothing up there."
The God King was about to curse his electronic assistant again, when the AS announced. "Incoming projectiles, lord. They will land on the oolt massed below. I suggest you take cover."
Before Binastarion could answer, whether to thank or to curse, three shells landed, one short but two right on one of his ooltos. 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 tw
o others smearing the one just to the north of that one.
In salvoes 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 salvoes 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 westward. 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, C
aptain."
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.