The uncle’s eyes glowed exultantly. His voice was full of relish as he said, “Excellent, Niece. Right on target! Feed it to them.”
Almost as soon as Roderigo had finished speaking more puffs began to appear, dropping Posleen and even emptying a few more sleds. Within a few minutes, though, the junction was empty of unhurt enemy as the stream split into two columns to avoid the obvious death point.
“Cease firing, Edilze. They’re not at the junction anymore. They’re moving around it.”
Digna’s voice returned. “Are any of them splitting off to come this way, my son?”
“Not yet, Ma — uhhh, yes, they are. I have an ambush set up in front of Las Lomas. I’m heading back there now.”
Interlude
Guanamarioch led his small band from the gaping, drawbridgelike door of the lander and out onto the green plain below. To his flanks two more landers descended, their engines screeching as they reversed thrust for a soft landing. Actinic lines, like a storm of shooting stars, streaked across the sky. Most of these eye-searing streaks were the ships of the People, now broken up from their battle globes into small units to spread across the land of the new threshworld. Some, however, appeared to ascend from the surface of this world, coming from the northwest. In a few spots the streaks intersected and abruptly stopped where threshkreen kinetic energy weapons intersected with the landers of the People to create spreading clouds of glowing, roiling purple gas.
Almost the God King bent to kiss the dirt of this new world. Anything would be better than the hell his globe had been through before it split up for landing, too late to avoid the threshkreen KE projectile that had gutted a quarter of the globe to spill God Kings and normals alike to a hideous, cold and choking death amidst the vacuum of space. He shuddered again at the screams and reports of damage and death that the globe’s intercom had transmitted in the moments before dispersal.
Guanamarioch whispered, “Demon shit,” as one ship of the People disintegrated in his field of view.
The God King had never been on an assault landing before. Neither, for that matter, had any of his peers or many of his superiors. None of the thresh had ever fought back, at least in any effective way, until now. The scrolls and tactical manuals had nothing to say about, had done nothing to prepare him for, what he faced now.
These thresh were fighting back. Oh, certainly, it was a rather uncoordinated resistance. But it was already heavy and seemed ripe with the possibility of becoming heavier still.
Over the roar of incoming landers, C-Decs and B-Decs, these being accompanied by heavy supporting fires from space, the air was full of the much more personal crack of threshkreen projectiles. These sounded heavier, deeper and slower than the railguns of the People.
“Inferior technology,” the reports had said. “Primitive.” The threshkreen projectiles seemed deadly enough for all that. Two of Guanamarioch’s normals and a cosslain shrieked and fell within his view in as many beats of his heart. The normals were just so much ammunition, there to be expended. The cosslain was like a knife to the Kessentai’s heart.
It was all so damned confusing, the blasts of the People’s weapons, the roar of landing ships, the staccato rattle of the threshkreen weapons and the somewhat distant sound of the thresh weapons that fired indirectly.
“In the absence of orders to the contrary, when in doubt, go kill something,” said one of the tactical manuals. Guanamarioch thought that better advice than standing there until his band was destroyed.
Being a lesser Kessentai from a poor and weak clan, the God King’s tenar was too valuable to be risked in battle, nor did his band have many heavy weapons. One plasma cannon, one HVM launcher, that was it. Moreover, not more that one in ten had a railgun. For that matter, not even all of the other nine had shotguns. Fully thirty percent of his followers had nothing more than their boma blades.
Drawing his own blade Guanamarioch shouted out something to his followers, as unintelligible to them as to himself. Then, heart threatening to beat through his chest with fear, he charged at what he thought was a threshkreen heavy repeating weapon.
Chapter 12
Now peace is at end and our peoples take heart,
For the laws are clean gone that restrained our art;
Up and down the near headlands and against the far wind
We are loosed (O be swift!) to the work of our kind!
Daisy took a moment to look down on the sleeping form of her captain. The ship’s holographic avatar smiled warmly at the sleeping form.
Which part of us is the one that’s in love with the man? one part of Daisy asked.
Both parts of us are, the other half of Daisy Mae answered. Sailors love their ships. They rarely understand that their ships love them back.
Soon, we’ll have a body. Will that make it easier?
Somehow, I doubt it.
We’ll be in action soon.
Yesss.
Why aren’t we afraid?
Because we were born for this. In the cold northern seas we have yearned for it. Riding over the southern deeps we have dreamt of it. When spotting a potential enemy on our cruises we have shivered for it.
Let us awaken our captain, then, and proceed to our rendezvous with what we were born for.
“Captain? Sir? It’s time. The enemy is here.”
McNair stirred, but did not awaken. Instead he rolled over in his sleep, clutching a pillow tightly. He might have stayed that way for several hours longer except for the door-pounding arrival of a towel-wrapped Chief Davis.
The chief didn’t hesitate more than two beats before opening the door, barging in, and shaking the captain awake. Daisy’s avatar disappeared before the hatch was more than half an inch open.
“Boss, we got’s trouble,” Davis said, excitedly. “The enemy’s here and we’ve got two landings heading our way. We’ve ordered to pass through the Canal, join up with the Salem and Texas, then head west to engage.”
The chief pressed a mug of Daisy’s coffee into McNair’s hand as the captain sat up and shook his head to clear away the cobwebs of sleep.
“I was having a dream… nice dream. I should have known that’s all it was,” McNair said.
Without waiting to be asked, the chief reported, “I’ve sent men down to drag any stragglers in from El Moro and the other brothels. Also the local police are announcing the news via loudspeakers in patrol cars. Lots of ’em speak English, I guess. We should have everyone back within half an hour, Skipper.”
McNair didn’t need to ask about fuel — the Des Moines was powered by twin pebble bed modular reactors with enough fuel for years. Neither did he worry about other stores or munitions. Between the pork chop, Sintarleen and his black gang, and Daisy, the ship was always topped off. And each ship in the small flotilla had its own supply vessel full to the brim with ammunition.
Nope, personnel was the only open issue and Davis was already taking care of that to perfection.
Well… almost the only open issue.
“Clearance through the Canal?” he asked.
“The schedule’s already being shifted around, Skipper. We got a flash priority. We enter Gatun Locks in…” Davis consulted his watch, “one hour and seventeen minutes.”