by John Ringo
"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 before 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."
Slowly, reluctantly, McNair nodded.
"You can't do this to me!" the Darhel's AID shrieked as Davis placed it in the shipping box and placed his hand on the cover. "You can't—"
Click.
Palacio de las Garzas, Presidential Palace,
Panama City, Panama
"Well, that was pleasant," Boyd commented, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"The gringo ambassador was that bad, was he?" Suarez asked.
"The bastard was worse than that. I wonder who he is really working for. The only satisfaction I got out of the meeting was when I told him I was withdrawing Panama from the Ottawa antipersonnel landmine treaty, the treaty banning the use of child soldiers, Additional Protocol One to Geneva Convention IV, the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court . . ."
"Well," Suarez interrupted, "since the United States is party to none of those . . ."
"Oh, yes, but apparently their State Department would like for the United States to be party . . . In any case, I thought the man's head would explode. And when I said I was taking out a warrant, dead or alive, for Judge Pedro Santiago for crimes against humanity, he practically threw me out of his office. He would have, too, if I hadn't explained that I had arranged a direct conference call with the President of the United States to explain our position and express our regrets for not falling in line previously with the United States' preferred diplomatic position on the laws of war."
"But . . ."
"The United States has its position, Suarez, and the State Department has its. They rarely match, it seems. Have you got a basic plan?" Boyd asked.
"Yes, but you are not going to like it."
Almost, Boyd laughed. "I haven't liked anything since this war began. Show me."
Suarez cleared a space from a table cluttered with the detritus of Mercedes' reign. Onto the cleared space he unrolled a map of the country. The map was covered with combat acetate; the acetate itself covered with lines and symbols.
"We've got about four months," Suarez began. "Intelligence says the Posleen will sit tight, farm and build, more importantly breed, until their population almost exceeds the carrying capacity of whatever land they occupy. Then they'll swarm towards the path of least resistance and greatest food producing potential. The group that occupies from southeastern Costa Rica to western Veraguas Province can't go west; there's another, bigger group of Posleen there and the terrain is too tight. With the gringos' help we've been very successful in holding the passes over the Cordillera Central so they're not heading north, not that there's much to the north, anyway."
"East then, towards Panama City."
"Yes, there's no place else for them to go."
"Can the line along the Rio San Pedro hold them?" Boyd asked.
"Yes and no," Suarez answered. "Yes, it can defeat an attack now. Unfortunately, when the Posleen casualties get great enough from beating their head against the line, they'll stop. That is to say, once their population drops substantially below the carrying capacity of the area they hold they'll have no incentive to keep attacking. So says Intel, anyway. But that will only last until their population once again exceeds the carrying capacity. And that will happen a lot faster than our young people will grow up to be trained and take their place in the line. In the medium term, two years, maybe three, they'll bleed us to death along that line."
"Ugh."
"Ugh, indeed. So we have to make sure they can't do that. And for that, we need to get them out into the open in an artill
ery kill zone, trap them there, kill them there, then race to liberate Chiriqui and that tip of Costa Rica and plug the road in from the rest of Costa Rica. We can hold a couple of narrow bottlenecks like the ones at Palmar Sur and San Vito, Costa Rica, more or less indefinitely."
"Couldn't we hold the area around Aguadulce and Nata at least as long?" Boyd asked.
Suarez sighed and shook his head. "No. If we lose the farmland around Santiago, Chitre and Aguadulce we'll not only starve, the Posleen population will roughly double and our newborns will be only three or four before they swarm again."
"Okay," Boyd conceded. "What do you have in mind?"
Suarez finger pointed out markings and features on the map. "We have to build three fortified lines, some strongpoints, some firebases, some logistic bases, and some roads. Basically the lines will be around Aguadulce and Nata, from the mountains to the sea; in the rough parts of Herrera and Los Santos, running east to west from coast to coast; and the one we already have west of Santiago along the Rio San Pedro.
"The firebases go behind the lines and strongpoints. The roads running through the passes over the mountains get some, too. We'll also strongpoint the roads."
"What I propose is that we meet them with both mechanized divisions along the Rio San Pedro line to the west and bleed them enough to piss them off, but not so much that they give up. Then we run the mech like hell for Nata. Three infantry divisions man the line around Nata. Three more man the line running through Herrera and Los Santos. The last one is north, in the mountains. The gringo Armored Combat Suit Battalion and their Mech Regiment go into hiding up around Santa Fe in northern Veraguas."
"That's everyone," Boyd objected. "We won't have a reserve."
Suarez shrugged. "We can't afford a reserve and, in our terrain and without air mobility, we couldn't use one to much effect even if we had one to use. Besides, if, and I concede it is not a small 'if,' we can extract the mechanized divisions more or less intact they'll give us a reserve once they rest and refit for a couple of days. Plus, artillery is by its nature always at least somewhat available to serve as a reserve."
"Okay, so we've pulled back and the Posleen race into the void. Then what?"
"The mountains and the sea almost join near Nata. The two will funnel the Posleen in. Then, we pound them with artillery like this hemisphere has never seen once they concentrate. The gringos' ACS come south from Santa Fe to San Francisco, Veraguas. Then they cut southwest, force their way across the San Pedro and dig in like hell along the western bank to block the Posleen from escaping to the west. We can set up minefields to help with that. When the Posleen are sufficiently bloodied and disorganized from the artillery pounding, the two mechanized divisions begin to strike west and keep going until the Posleen in the pocket are destroyed."
"Can the two mech divisions do that?" Boyd asked, skeptically. "Can they do that after conducting a fighting retreat over the . . . ummm . . ." Boyd consulted the scale of the map, "seventy-five kilometers from the San Pedro to Nata?"
"I think so," Suarez answered. "I have a trick . . . well, two related tricks actually."
"Tell me."
"You know how the gringos say you can't use rockets against the Posleen because they can detect them and shoot them down in flight? Well . . . I started thinking about that. The rockets, rockets like the Russian Grad, have a very short boost phase. If you fire from behind high ground, very high ground, the rockets will burn out and stop accelerating before the Posleen can track and engage very many of them. That's trick one."
"And trick two?"
'The Posleen are incredibly hardy. They are, so I've been told, immune to any chemical agent we might throw at them, nerve, blister, choking, blood . . . or even some of the more exotic Russian shit. But they need to breathe. They must have free oxygen. I propose that when we hit them with the artillery, mortar and rocket barrage we drench them with thermobarics and white phosphorus and burn up all the oxygen in the air. If we can hold the Nata line until nine or ten the next morning after they arrive, there will be an inversion. We'll be able to trap the hot, oxygen-depleted atmosphere under a layer of cold air. No fresh oxygen will be able to get in for a couple of hours. They'll suffocate, most of them. The mech, supported by mobile artillery, should be able to handle whatever is left. And the air with nothing but burned up oxygen will rise after the inversion layer disperses under the sun, letting fresher air in."
Jesus, what a gamble, the dictator thought. If the mech divisions don't get out, we're dead. If the Nata line he's talking about doesn't hold, we're dead. If the inversion layer he says he needs doesn't show up, we're dead. But . . . what choice do we have? Not a lot. Because if we don't take the risks we're dead, too.
"Write it up," Boyd ordered, "and give me, um, two days to think on it. Now what are your recommendations for purging the chain of command?"
Suarez turned over a sheet of paper showing the changes he thought required. Boyd looked it over, then asked, "Whatever became of Cortez?"
Smiling, Suarez answered, "I turned him over to that woman's people. You know, the one he had gang raped?"
"Ooooo," Boyd shuddered. "You're not only a bastard, you're a cruel bastard."
Suarez shrugged. "I've already given her and her head man a pardon in your name, suitably post dated."
Fort William D. Davis, Panama
Digna, still weak, sat on a folding chair with arms on the lip of the slope overlooking the old golf course. The sun was high and Colon Province's muggy heat was already a weight bearing down on her and all of her people clustered in the tent city below. Most of those people, the ones not on guard or some absolutely necessary work detail, stood below in the sun, looking upward at the scene.
A badly beaten and bruised Manuel Cortez lay on his stomach, naked and spread eagled. On each of his arms and legs sat one of Digna's grandsons, stout boys and solid. Tomas Herrera stood, a twelve pound sledge hammer gripped tightly in his hands, handle sloped with the head pointing to the ground. Another of Digna's grandsons held a long stout pole, sharpened at one end, and with a cross piece firmly tied about three feet from the point.
The entire crew had pretty much the same thoughts. Have our lady raped, will you, you bastard? We're going to enjoy this.
Despite being held down, Cortez twisted and writhed. He tried desperately to turn his head, to try to make eye contact with Digna. He hoped, in his unthinking way, that if he could somehow make her see he was another human being she might not kill him in the horrible way she obviously had in mind.
"Please! Please don't do this," Cortez begged. "It's barbaric! No one deserves this."
"No one deserves to be raped," Digna answered quietly. "But you do deserve this. Tomas?"
"Si, doña," Herrera answered.
"No!" Cortez pleaded. "Nonononononono!"
Herrera tipped his chin at the grandson holding the long, stout pole with the cross piece affixed. Cortez's begging turned to a scream followed by incoherent sobbing as the rough point was pushed a few inches into his rectum. Digna's grandson grunted with the effort.
Herrera said, "Cant the pole towards me so it stays far from his heart."
Tomas then swung the sledge hammer. Wham. The pole lurched five or six inches upward, splitting Cortez's anus so the blood welled out. His sobbing turned into a high pitched scream, like a rabbit or a child being skinned alive. Wham. Another scream, louder than the first. Down below, mothers covered their children's eyes and turned away themselves. Strong men winced. Wham. The point forced its way through the intestinal wall and into the body cavity. Cortez's teeth bit at the dirt. A woman standing below cried out in sympathy. A man bent over and vomited. Wham. A bulge formed, unseen, below Cortez sternum. Wham. The point forced its way through the abdominal wall, digging into the dirt. Wham. Cortez gave another cry, part plea, part sob, but mostly agonized shriek as the pole lurched forward until the cross piece came to rest against his naked, bloody buttocks.
"I'd have had you crucified," Digna
said, with a voice as cold as a glacier, "but that would have been an affront to God. This will have to do." Silently, Digna fumed that Suarez had simply had all of the guards shot who had followed Cortez's orders to violate her. She might not have remembered who the guilty parties had been. But if Suarez had left all the suspects into her care she'd have impaled the lot, just to make sure. Oh, well. God will punish them for me.
Cortez being fully impaled, Herrera and the others strained to lift him and the pole. His arms strained and grasped futilely at the air, like a cockroach stabbed by a needle. With a mass grunt, the men dumped the free end of the pole into a deep narrow hole in the dirt. Cortez screamed again at the rough violation.