by Leigh Kimmel
Or could she? Nanuli's throat tightened and she swallowed, hard. She had prior obligations: to the Indowy refugees, to the people at Grozny who had been promised her services as a physician. Did she have any right to carry through this pregnancy for some private atonement while other people were depending upon her?
On the other hand, did she have any right not to try, when the future of humanity as a species might well depend on how quickly the enormous losses of the war could be replaced? She had the hips for childbirth -- both her sons had come out smoothly, without a hitch, although Dr. Merekhadze had been a bit amused to have her as patient rather than colleague.
She got no further time to dither, for at that moment Arkady walked in and bowed to her. "We have finished."
That was the roaring she could hear -- the truck engine, repaired at last after three days of steady work by all eleven of the Indowy. They had been as good as their word, even if they'd lost the first day just to learning to use the strange human tools.
Now there was nothing to do but load up their supplies and roll out. Only then did she realize how little she had prepared in the meantime, fully anticipating several more days. Half-filled sacks lay everywhere, a roll of nylon fishing line sliding from the mouth of one. Irritated, she stuffed it into a pocket of her jacket.
At least now that she had the help of the Indowy again, she could get things packed and in the truck quickly. Then it would just be a matter of finding their way to the Georgian Military Highway and avoiding Posleen patrols until they arrived in Grozny.
* * *
As it turned out, getting down wasn't that hard, since the Posleen had opened up the overgrown service road when they came up here, clearing out the booby-traps with their lives. Nanuli saw the broken and scavenger-picked remains of more than a few in the brush just beyond the cut path. A path just wide enough to let the God-Kings' ground-effect vehicles pass.
They quickly decided that Nanuli couldn't drive and defend them at the same time. However, Indowy were simply too short to drive a human vehicle. After a little discussion among themselves they worked out a system. One steered while another worked the pedals, and a third handled the gearshift. It made for a hair-raising ride, but Nanuli soon decided that it wasn't that much worse than Georgian roads before the war, when many drivers considered their cars a means for expressing their individuality and their contempt for bureaucratic foofaw.
The little band of refugees had brought the map with them, and as clan chief Iosebi took great pleasure in navigating, charting their progress along the narrow mountain roads that lead to the Georgian Military Highway and their goal. Since the rest of the Indowy took turns as lookouts, watching for any trouble, Nanuli had time to rest and think.
And she had plenty to think about. Everything looked different with a new life nestled within her. Even after her rejuvenation she'd still thought of herself as an old woman whose time was done, but now she had a stake in the future.
What kind of world would her child inherit? She watched the passing countryside, the slopes and peaks scarred by the weapons of Posleen and human alike. Even if humanity could drive the damned centaurs off their world, what would be left? Would there even be a Georgian nation left to rebuild? Many of the small nationalities of the northern Caucasus, those represented by only one or two villages, were already extinct, either wiped out by the Posleen or swamped by the refugees from southern Russia, from Rostov and Astrakhan and even Stalingrad. Might the Georgians end up not much better off, reduced to a handful who would have to choose between preserving their culture in impoverished enclaves or assimilating to the larger Russian culture in order to follow professions of wealth and prestige?
The hiss-crack of a Posleen weapon snapped her out of her reverie and to full alert. The truck skidded to a halt sidewise of the road.
"Get out! Get out!" Nanuli threw open her door and jumped, AK already in hand.
The Indowy piled out just in time as another hypervelocity missile came hissing at them. This one didn't miss, but went straight through the front end of the truck. With a deafening thud the engine erupted in flames so hot that Nanuli could feel it through her camo jacket. Two of the Indowy weren't quite far enough away, and were engulfed by the flames, their little bodies turning to charcoal even as they ran. The rest of them dived into a snowbank, while Nanuli prayed that there was enough snow on the brush to keep it from bursting into flame and starting a forest fire that would kill the rest of them.
Relief was brushed aside by fury as it registered upon her conscious mind that this was no accident, but a Posleen attack. "You tried to kill my baby!" The words came out so harsh her throat hurt.
The Indowy huddled under cover as Nanuli fired at the three Posleen trotting down the narrow mountain road. The sheer brilliance and heat of the blazing truck must've made it impossible for them to focus on her as a distinct target, for their shots went wild while hers found their marks.
Then it was over. In the shaky comedown of the adrenaline crash, she realized three things. First, those Posleen were just scouts for a much larger unit, who had to be alerted by now. Second, there was no way in hell that she could fight off a whole platoon or company of Posleen, even if the Indowy could give her a miracle and convert the Posleen weapons. Third, they had just lost their transport and supplies, and there was no way they could run the rest of the way to Grozny with the Posleen on their tails. Ten klicks might as well be the distance to the moon.
Miserable, she looked through the trees at the slope below, at the yellow forms trotting along the road which would inevitably lead them up here. She had failed everybody -- the Indowy, the fighters of Forward Firebase Grozny, and most of all her unborn baby. She rested her elbows on her knees and set her chin in her cupped hands to cry.
Something pressed against her left breast, now tender with the hormonal changes of pregnancy. Puzzled, she pulled out a thick palm-sized disk -- the spool of nylon fishing line. She might have lost all the explosives, but there were other possibilities.
* * *
Half an hour later she was crouched in the brush, holding a hastily converted Posleen railgun while her trusty old AK lay at her side, ready in case the conversion didn't work quite as planned. She just hoped that the Indowy wouldn't be traumatized by seeing the result of the "harmless" little strands she'd persuaded them to string from tree to tree.
She counted the seconds as the Posleen came trotting down the road. At least a full platoon of them, and they were bunching up rather than trying to fan out into the brush. Better yet, their God-King was zipping right along at their rear, urging them to a gallop with nudges of his little saucer.
Now.
A quick squeeze of the modified trigger and the railgun spat steel needles which tore at the bark of the tree just down from the last of her little surprises. The Posleen reacted just as she had hoped with a burst of speed that threw them right into the nearly invisible lines of nylon monofilament. The slender lines might slide off the bony armor, but eventually they would find a vulnerable joint and cut into flesh. Eventually they would break under the sheer press of bodies, but it slowed and confused them enough that she had time to lay a decent field of fire on them. And did that railgun ever do the job -- its rounds smashed right through the thickest carapace, unlike AK rounds that had to be aimed at particularly vulnerable parts, something she still wasn't overly skilled at doing.
But it was the God-King that took it worst. Panicking at seeing his normals falling victim to some unseen menace, he gunned his saucer for all it was worth. It proved his undoing, for he hit one of the last and highest lines fast enough that it sliced straight through his neck. The huge crocodilian head went flying, while the ground-effect saucer bounced along with the rest of the body.
Nanuli gritted her teeth, fully expecting it to smash into one of the trees and explode. Instead it just skidded to a stop along the shoulder of the road, not far from the burnt-out carcass of the truck. Only when she let out her breath did she r
ealize she'd been holding it.
"Here's our ride." She heaved the beheaded Posleen corpse off and waved to the Indowy. "Let's get the controls cracked on this thing."
Iosebi looked it over, wrinkled his brow in thought. "It will require time."
Nanuli brought her field glasses to her eyes. "You've got about thirty minutes before the main body of the poska force gets up here. If we're not out of here by then, we are all dead meat."
It was a measure of just how much being survivors of two massacres and having worked for so long in close co-operation with a human had given courage to the Indowy that they did not panic at her words. Instead all of them set to work with the tools they had thankfully taken to wearing in pouches on their persons.
Within a matter of minutes they determined that there was too little room for them all to work together. While Iosebi and Vasili, being the oldest and most experienced of their number, assumed the task of cracking the controls on the ground-effect saucer, or tenar, as it was properly called, the rest set to salvaging what they could from the wreckage of the truck.
The minutes passed with agonizing slowness for Nanuli, who had nothing to do but alternate between cleaning her weapons and monitoring the progress of the main body of the Posleen force. If she hadn't kept her nails trimmed down to the quick, she would have set to biting them. Part of her longed for a cigarette, although her medical knowledge told her that smoking was not good for her unborn child, even with the rejuve nannites swarming in her body to protect both of them.
And it grew steadily more obvious that they were not going to be done in time. Iosebi and Vasili almost had the tenar ready, but with their makeshift tools, the conversion was taking longer than it should have. Nanuli wanted to cry from sheer frustration.
Arkady walked up to her, two of the transfer-neuters beside him. "We will go down and make a diversion."
Nanuli knew how totally incapable of violence Indowy were, how completely unable to resist any attack. "But you'll be killed--"
"It is better that a few lay down their lives and the clan survive than all perish." Arkady's voice had a strength she'd never heard in an Indowy.
Before she could stop them, all three scrambled down the slope, cutting across the long switchback to the road where the Posleen were approaching. The tears Nanuli had to wipe from her eyes were no longer of frustration, but of pride and incipient grief. Perhaps Indowy couldn't fight, but they could learn how to die meaningfully, instead of as stampeding sheep fleeing their devourers.
She could barely make herself watch the Posleen ranks break in confusion, scatter into the brush on either side of the road in pursuit of three mad Indowy. She knew how it would have to end, and swore to see that those three gallant little aliens were remembered alongside the human heroes of the war, Mahmood Dudayev and all the other people who had given their lives in the faint hope of stemming the yellow tide and making Earth once again a human planet.
Vasili's cry of triumph was almost human, not exactly what one would expect of the usually demure Indowy. But there was no mistaking it, and Nanuli scrambled back to join the five surviving aliens in piling onto the tenar.
There were only moments for Iosebi and Vasili to instruct her in the operation of the tenar and its pintle-mounted plasma cannon. The first Posleen were already coming around the bend. Nanuli hit the dual triggers for the plasma cannon almost by instinct, fired a gout of eye-searing whiteness down the road at the enemy. Their first ranks simply vanished.
No time for awe. She spun the tenar around on its axis and pointed it down the road, toward the ruins of Grozny and the firebase that was supposed to be waiting for her. At least she was beyond the last of the lines they'd strung, so she didn't need to worry about being hoist by her own petard. If any of them remained to surprise this bunch of poski, that was just icing on the cake.
It took her a few tries to get the tenar to go where she wanted to, and she didn't dare run it in a straight line, not with the rest of the Posleen still after her. Whenever the hiss-cracks of their weapons got too close, she'd spin the tenar around and give them another taste of their own medicine.
And then she burst out of the scrub forest and into the ruins that had once been the capital of the Chechen Autonomous Republic. The firebase was supposed to be in a cave on the mountains to the south, right over there--
Coming under AK fire was such a shock that her brain "missed a step" before she could really register it. Instantly she realized what it must look like, coming in on a Posleen God-King's vehicle/badge of rank, with five little Indowy bunched up behind her.
She waved her arm over her head, opening her hand to show her five fingers. Moments later she heard shouts of "check fire" coming from all over the slope ahead of her. Followed by orders to give her covering fire as the Posleen burst forth from the forest and spread out, guns firing.
The battle was pitched and to the point. The fighters of Grozny threw everything they had at the enemy, including fire from more than a few captured pieces of their own. Once Nanuli got the tenar safely under the cover of their fire, she turned it around once more and laid down the fire until the plasma cannon threatened to overheat. Although she had no way to know how long she could keep going before the tenar "ran out of gas," this was no time to hold back. As soon as the plasma cannon was cool enough to operate, she set to it again.
The Posleen fell in waves under their fire. It had been at least a company of them that had been marching along the road that entered Grozny from the north, perhaps more since Posleen military structure was shaky at best. Such warm work could not last for long, and even with the benefits of terrain and strategy, the humans could not win without taking losses of their own. Which meant that she would have her duties waiting.
She was greeted by a pleasant young Ossete who introduced himself as Suslan. When she introduced herself, his eyes went wide.
"Nanuli Tamarashvili? But we were told that you are... that you were an old woman, a grandmother."
"I was." Nanuli's mouth twitched into a wry expression. "I had some adventures on the way up here."
With a little encouragement Nanuli told of the ambush of Ataman Masuyev's caravan, the flight to Vladilen Ivanovich's secret base and her time with him. When she got to the Posleen attack and Vladilen Ivanovich killing Mahmood, her throat tightened and she had to force the words out. "Then I killed Vladilen Ivanovich. Do I have any right to do medical work when I have broken the physician's oath and taken a life?"
"Are you sure he's dead?"
"I shot him in the chest. I didn't go back to check for a pulse, but he still would've had to escape the explosion. In any case, the oath commands, 'do no harm,' and to that I stand forsworn."
Suslan shrugged. "Let's leave that for after the war, when there's time to convene a board of Inquiry. In the meantime, we need someone to treat our wounded, beyond first aid. We thought you were lost along with Ataman Masuyev's caravan, with the grain shipment." Hunger was plain in his face, in his words.
Nanuli nodded in sympathy. "We couldn't save the grain shipment, but I've brought something better." She gestured for the five surviving Indowy to come forth. "Indowy technicians, with experience in hydroponics and waste recycling. If you have any seeds, any suitable vessels, your days of hunger are over."
It took a moment for the significance of her words to sink through, but when it did, there were cheers throughout the cavern.
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Catharsis
Richard Waechter-Williamson
Richard is another Barfly, a posting member of Baen's Bar, who currently resides in England.
"The piece of shit couldn't hang." The Lieutenant Colonel looked around the table, sweeping across the members of the Board of Inquiry. It was clear from his expression that he was expecting support in his disdain of the Second Lieutenant over whom the board had been convened. The lieutenant in question had not completed the "Twelve Day War", the field exercise/final exam for the Armor Of
ficer Basic Course, and his final disposition was now in question. If the battalion commander had his way however, which seemed likely, that disposition was not, itself, in question.
The options available to the board were to allow the officer to redo the field exercise with a different AOBC course, or not, and if not to require that the officer in question resign his commission. The third option, to rescind the commission outright, was to the majority of the board not available.
Unfortunately, the majority in this case was the majority of one.
The single window in the room looked out onto a snow-covered quad outside the training unit headquarters' building on Fort Knox, Kentucky. A brisk, late-February wind blew across the clear blue skies, keeping the temperature outside down, well below the freezing point, where it had been sitting for the better part of the previous eight weeks. Beneath the window, a single 1940's era radiator tried its best to keep the physical temperature inside the room above freezing, but could do nothing against the psychic chill generated by the board president's attitude.
The two junior members present, CPT Grundvig and 2LT Mathsden, made as if to say something in response to their commander's comment, but then stopped as their own sense of self-preservation kicked in. The two things to remember about LTC Feckette were first, he could prattle on for days about his belief in God, and second, the fact that he was a self-described God-fearing Christian Believer wouldn't stand in the way of his dicking anybody over if it progressed his own career, could be done with a reasonable chance of avoiding official recrimination, or frankly, just for the hell of it. The current board of inquiry had him in his element, and the other members of the board could tell that This Was Not the Time.
CPT Grundvig had spent four months working with 2LT Paulson and the rest of AOBC-91-10, and the test scores showed that the absent lieutenant was by far not the weakest mentally or physically in the course, regardless of what the battalion commander might say. The written tests had been a breeze for the ex-enlisted, ROTC officer, the practical tests a bit less so, but once you got the man into the simulators he was on the bounce. One of his instructors had remarked after one such event, "Man. I'm glad that LT is on our side. Otherwise, like, I'd have to kill him!".