Daisy also strangled the second holographic Posleen and tossed it aside. There were more Panamanians than gringos, so their cheering was a bit louder.
How the hell did she do that? wondered McNair, along with every other topside crewman on the Des Moines. Did she use the whole fucking ship for a speaker and projector?
Which was pretty much exactly what she had done.
During Daisy’s performance Chief Davis had been standing forward, overseeing the tie-up to the mules of Miraflores locks. He had already seen a lotta weird shit since I came back to this ship.
On the other hand, he had never seen a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot woman, stunning, wearing what seemed to be a pleated yellow silk skirt not all that dissimilar to the Des Moines’ new awning. He looked up… and up… and up.
Holy fucking shit, he thought. Not much natural upper body modesty to our girl. And a natural blonde… very lifelike, too. Maybe I oughta tell Daisy about undergarments.
Nah.
USS Salem was waiting impatiently for Texas and Des Moines as they steamed under the magnificent Bridge of the Americas. Overhead, 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry (ACS) (minus B Company which was due back soon from Chile) crossed at the double. Their heavy suits caused the huge bridge to tremble overhead as the ships sailed under. Between the lines of scooting MI, some units of the 1st Panamanian Mechanized Division — one very frightened Major General Manuel Cortez (West Point Class of 1980), commanding — took up both normal traffic lanes.
Together the three ships formed column, the flagship Texas in the lead, and headed west toward the war.
Interlude
Lemminglike, the normals and his few cosslain followed Guanamarioch forward into the fray. It was as well for the Posleen that they did, for moments later some of the threshkreen high explosive weapons began to impact around the landing craft from which they had just disembarked. The ship itself, of course, shrugged off even direct hits. But the shells — Guanamarioch’s Artificial Sentience had informed him they were called “shells” — filled the air around their detonation point with whizzing bits and shards of hot, sharp metal. A couple of tardy normals, the God King wasn’t sure how many, yelped and fell with gaping, bloody wounds.
The distance to the threshkreen heavy repeater was short, at least by the standards Guanamarioch had grown up with. For some reason, though, the short gallop left the Kessentai gasping for breath by the time he reached the weapon’s position.
There, he hesitated with shock at the remarkable ugliness of the threshkreen. Yes, he had seen the holograms of this species. But no hologram could have prepared him for the sheer horror of the reality.
Even as Guanamarioch gasped with horrified disgust, the threshkreen looked up with frightened wide eyes and shouted with an alarm that matched his own. With that shout, one of the threshkreen, the one behind the heavy repeating weapon, began to raise it to point at the God King. The other, similarly, dropped the belt of shiny yellow metal he had been feeding to the repeater and, turning, reached for a smaller version lying alongside him.
Pure instinct told Guanamarioch that to pull back was death. Even with his host hard on his heels the threshkreen would surely burn him down first. Instead of pulling back, therefore, he leapt forward, his left claws reaching out to grasp and push away the muzzle of the heavy repeater while the right swung his boma blade at the threshkreen reaching for the smaller weapon.
“Yaaagh! Demonshitbastardmisbegottenbreedingpenlessferalassfuckers!”
On autopilot, the boma blade sliced right through the threshkreen reaching for the small weapon. It was as well for Guanamarioch that he had the muscle memory to do that with his right claw because without that memory the pain would have made any conscious action impossible for a few moments. The metal barrel he had grasped with the left palm was just a few degrees shy of white hot. He could hear the flesh of that palm sizzling and cooking even above his scream of pain. And he couldn’t let go.
“Eeeooowww! Stinkingtreacherousrefugeefromtherecylingbin! Aaaiii!”
The human made a perhaps unavoidable mistake. With control of his machine gun lost to a creature that looked much stronger than he, he let the gun go, pulled a knife, and jumped at the Posleen, swearing vengeance for his chopped crewmate. When he let go the gun, Guanamarioch was also able to let go, though he did so leaving smoking shreds of burned flesh behind.
“Gggaahhh! Filthyfuckingfeceseatingabatbait!”
The God King swung his blade again but by the time it had moved to where the threshkreen had been the vermin had moved inside the blade’s arc. Shuddering with the pain, the Kessentai had no choice by to try to grab the thresh with his seared hand. This he did with a sob; it hurt too much even to come up with an articulate curse.
Knife arm held fast, the threshkreen still managed to kick Guanamarioch between his forelegs. Since this was also very close to the Posleen’s reproductive organs…
“GGGAAAIII!”
Still grasping the threshkreen’s knife hand, the Posleen sank forward, pinning the human underneath. At some level, he was aware that the damned thresh was chewing on his neck, and drawing blood, too. But Guanamarioch really didn’t care at that point. He hardly noticed when one of his cosslain came up and removed the human’s head. Instead, the God King just rocked his own head back and forth, gasping with the pain.
Chapter 13
The honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought.
The setting sun burned hot against his face as Major General Manuel Cortez, standing in the hatch of his Chinese-built Type-63 light amphibious tank, faced west. The tank was not a marvel of engineering or workmanship; it rattled like a baby’s toy and shook like a rat in a terrier’s mouth. The best that could be said of it was that it was simple, reasonably reliable, and amphibious. Oh, and cheap; that was important, too.
From Cortez’s point of view the shaking was all to the good. It kept anyone from seeing the uncontrollable trembling of his hands and jaw. Cortez was petrified.
Cortez’s right hand rested on the shuddering heavy machine gun atop the tank’s turret. The machine gun, intended primarily to defend against air attack, was small comfort. It would have no use against a Posleen lander and little enough against one of their flying sleds.
One might have thought that the gringo-manned Planetary Defense Batteries would have bucked him up, at least a bit. These were sending steady streams of kinetic energy projectiles upward to engage the Posleen ships still awaiting their landing instructions. But, no, the steady sonic booms and actinic streaks emanating from the batteries on the Isla del Rey, at Fort Grant, Summit Heights and Batteries Murray and Pratt merely confirmed his belief in the inadequacy of his own forces, gnatlike and feeble compared with the tremendous energies being unleashed.
Worst of all were the radio reports. While his own 1st Mechanized Division was assembling and moving to the front, the 6th Mechanized Division, based further into the interior in towns and casernes along the Inter-American Highway, had already gone into action, trying manfully to drive the aliens from their home provinces on and bordering the Peninsula de Azuero.