«Override.» It might look like suicide to the computer, but that was why there was still a person in the cockpit.
«Confirm flight path data. Press set three times.»
He did.
«Last warning, terminal flight path entered. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. Are you sure you want this flight path? Press set three times if you do, otherwise press cancel.»
He pressed set three more times. Since the cockpit system was not designed to get in the last word, it let him get away with it.
«Like it ain't a suicide mission already.»
Passing over the old mill district, he pressed the bomb release button on the joystick. The system was set to «pickle at drop point» as long as the trigger was depressed, so all he had to do was hold on and pray. He thundered across Mary Washington Hospital, sparing a brief thought for the patients as lasers and plasma searched for him to either side and hung on for dear life as the fighter dove for the deck. As he came up on the interchange he suddenly realized that he had failed to compensate for the trees.
The robust stealth plane survived the lurch as its underframe snapped off the last few oak tops surrounding the interchange and then dropped into the open. Around him, as far as he could see in the odd mixture of moonlight and ground fires, the ground bucked and heaved with wounded and dead Posleen.
The centauroid bodies were a carpet of dead and dying, the ground soaked with their fluids. Thousands, tens of thousands of the centaurs had crossed the light-years only to find a final resting place under the hammer of sixteen-inch guns.
«HOOOOWAH!» Kerman shouted over the squadron frequency, as other pilots cheered the sight of the carnage from the battleship's fire.
Jones's fighter immediately performed its programmed hard bank to the north. As its wingtip dipped to within inches of the masses of alien flesh, the weapons bay popped open and deployed a totally unnecessary CBU-52. The cluster bomb opened out almost immediately and scattered two hundred more bomblets across the decimated Posleen adding insult to the masses of injury.
As the plane snapped through a programmed set of low-level evasion maneuvers, Jones could see other flashes to the south that told of squadron mates less fortunate. He finally cleared the treeline on the northeast side of the interchange—chased by a last spiteful burst of laser fire—and returned to terrain-following mode. Now all he had to do was survive the unknown dangers between here and Manassas and he would be home free. Until the next mission.
CHAPTER 38
The Potomac River, Near Potomac Creek
United States of America, Sol III
0548 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
Video from the side cameras of all the Peregrines was downloaded to the North Carolina along with the orders to fire on the intersection of Williams and Kenmore Streets. The captain ordered the video piped over the closed-circuit TV system, while the tactical officers huddled over their maps.
«Okay, Williams is VA 3, but where in the hell is Kenmore?» asked the peeved S-2. Standard tactical maps never denoted street names. This was because calls for fire never used them as references. Except in real life.
«Well, it has to be further into the city,» noted the chief gunnery officer. The lieutenant commander turned to his fire direction chief. «Pull the fire in some, and spread it out. Target all the major intersections on the way into town, one battery each.»
«Aye, aye.» The warrant officer began punching commands into his computer as the officers went back to arguing. Suddenly one of the communications technicians jumped up from her station.
«Sir,» she said, coming to attention next to the chief gunnery officer, «permission to speak, sir.»
The officer rounded on her testily. «What?»
«I've got a way to get a map of Fredericksburg, maybe, sir.»
«How?»
«Off the Internet. I've got a laptop in my locker. I can hook into the Internet and get it.»
«Shit,» said the S-2, «good idea, why didn't I think of it? Or maybe put in a priority call to the Defense Mapping Agency?» He caught the eye of the communications officer and gestured him over.
«I think Expedia would be faster, sir,» said the tech, diffidently.
«Can we still get Internet access?» asked the gunnery officer.
«The Posleen have destroyed all the standard systems in the area around us,» said the communications officer, «but we might be able to punch through a short-wave transmission. What's this all about?»
«We desperately need a map,» said the gunnery officer. «Your tech here thinks she can get it off the Internet if she can get her laptop and connect to Milnet.»
«Okay, girl, good work. Go get your laptop. If the Marines stop you, tell them to call me.»
«Yes, sir,» said the tech and jogged out the door.
«How are you going to get through?»
«Patch a line to Norfolk. I'll get one of my techs on it.»
«Okay.»
«You know, we're going to have company before too long,» commented the S-2, poring over the updates to the dispositions map. He noted the red marks showing Posleen in close proximity. The Peregrines had come within five miles of the ship on their way out. «That should get interesting.»
Like everyone else in the ship, he was becoming bored with the continuous main gun fire. After cheering the first few rounds it just got damn loud and monotonous. He could hardly imagine what it was like for the gunners.
«Briefly,» laughed the fire control chief.
«Yeah,» noted the gunnery officer, «if only they'd all come down to the water and get baptized.»
«You wish,» said the S-2 with a grim chuckle. The Posleen were not going to like their reception from the North Carolina.
* * *
It was by far the most monotonous job on the ship. The Electrician Class Two was one of the close-approach lookouts, the eyes and ears of the ship. Since the environment the ship had been refitted for was projected to be extremely hostile, a duty that traditionally involved exposure to salt spray and fresh sea air was now performed in a crowded, air-conditioned compartment.
And instead of hefting a pair of heavy binoculars and spotting the occasional leaping porpoise or diving bird, the technician ceaselessly scanned a bank of twenty monitors hooked to low-light cameras. Five across, four down, numbered sixty through seventy-nine, back and forth, top to bottom, bottom to top, every odd monitor, every even monitor, back and forth, top to bottom, for eight long hours.
Then, after a rest period that seemed shorter and shorter all the time, it was back to scanning monitors, each of which now showed the same monotonous scene of a nighttime Potomac riverbank.
When they first sailed up the river, civilians had poured out of the woods. Some had their own boats, but many just lined the bank hoping to be rescued. They had been picked up by boat parties or the Marines and now huddled in the forecastle awaiting a return to port. But since that first flurry of activity, the shoreline had been undisturbed.
The tech had just picked up a Pepsi and taken a sip when a centaur appeared from the trees lining Marlboro Point Road and immediately opened fire with its shotgun.
The light shot did not even reach the ship—which was moored nearly a mile out in the broad river—and was unnoticed in the next crash of the main guns, but the lookout lurched forward in his station chair and keyed a mike.
«Posleen report, monitor sixty-eight, starboard abeam.»
«Posleen report, monitor ninety, port forequarter,» sang the soprano of a seawoman handling the portside monitors. The hull rang as the first hypervelocity missile struck the case-hardened steel of the bridge.
«PosRep monitor seventy-three, seventy-five, sixty-nine . . . PosRep all monitors.»