Biting back a nasty retort, Guanamarioch nodded in seeming respect and turned, dejectedly, to his right.
“What’s this; what’s this, young Kessentai? Why so down, lordling? Abat gnaw on your dick?”
Ordinarily such words might have angered Guanamarioch. These, however, were delivered in a cheerful, bantering tone that almost succeeded in bringing a smile to his face. He looked over the Kenstain and saw a mid-sized, crested philosopher, missing his left eye and his right arm, and bearing serious scars along both flanks. Strapped across those scars were fully stuffed twin saddle bags. The Kenstain took a couple of steps toward Guanamarioch, walking with a stumbling limp.
The Kenstain, seeing the God King hiding one hand, reached out for the injured limb. Rather than resist and risk having any force exerted on the hand, Guanamarioch let him examine it. The Kenstain turned the palm over gently and bent to examine it closely with his one remaining eye.
“That’s a right nasty burn you have there, young lordling. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you come by it?”
“Thresh weapons get hot,” the God King answered simply.
“Do they indeed?” asked the Kenstain, releasing the hand and twisting his torso to rummage in one of the saddle bags. From the saddlebag he pulled a dull tube. This he took a cap from, holding the cap between his lips. Then he again took Guanamarioch’s injured hand in his and turned it palm up before releasing it. Using the same hand the Kenstain squeezed a measure of goo out onto the palm in a long, snaking line. The goo immediately began to spread out on its own, sinking into the burned flesh.
“Demons! Thank you, Kenstain,” Guanamarioch said, the relief in his voice palpable.
“Never mind, young lordling. All in a day’s work. I’m Ziramoth, by the way. Were you sent here to farm?”
Guanamarioch nodded bleakly.
“None of that, Kessentai. Farming, taking sustenance from the land, is the best way to live. You’ll see.”
Chapter 15
No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.
The three warships steamed through the day, their bows cutting the waves and raising a froth that spilled to either side of each. They were in echelon right, with Salem forward and to port, Des Moines rearward and to starboard, and Texas in the middle. The ships were spaced far enough apart that any one of them had considerable maneuver space to zig and zag without risking a collision if the Posleen chose to engage from space.
The precautions seemed wise to McNair. He worried terribly even so. The ships were tough, true, and well armored against any surface threat. But warships, like tanks, were so vulnerable to attack from above — had been since 1941 at the latest — that he couldn’t help but worry. The thought of a salvo of space-launched kinetic energy projectiles straddling his beloved Daisy Mae was simply too horrible for him not to worry.
Even so, except for the streaks through the sky as spaceships battled with Planetary Defense Batteries, there was no sign of the enemy.
“It makes no sense,” McNair said aloud inside the heavily armored bridge. “It just seems so incredibly stupid that none of the warships have been engaged from space. We’re big. We’re metal. We’re heavily armored and have impressive clusters of guns. Why the hell don’t they attack us?”
Daisy’s hologram answered, “They’re a fairly stupid race, Captain. None of their technology, so far is as known, was invented by them, with the possible exception of their drive. Even that appears to be a modification of Aldenata technology, rather than something truly original. The way they breed, leaving their brightest to struggle to survive on equal terms in their breeding pens with the biggest and most savage of their normals; they can’t help but be stupid. Add in that they’ve never before fought a race that really fought back and… well… they’re dummies.”
“And when we show our teeth?” McNair asked. “Will they fail to engage us then, too?”
The avatar shrugged. “That we will see when we see it, Captain. They might attack. Then again, they might not. And if they attack it might be from space, which we have a chance of maneuvering to avoid, or it might be with a low-flying lander which we have an excellent chance of beating in a heads-up fight. Even if we cannot maneuver to avoid the fire from space, Texas mounts a Planetary Defense Gun in place of each of her former turrets. An attacker who engages us from on high won’t last long with Texas watching out for his little sisters.”
“You’re really not worried, are you, Daisy?” McNair asked, wonderingly.
The hologram shrugged. “Not really, sir, no. I’m a warship and this is what I was meant to do.”
“That’s my girl,” McNair said, a growing confidence in his voice.
“My girl,” Daisy repeated mentally. An entire ship fairly quivered with barely suppressed pleasure.
Diaz soared, nausea gone and forgotten with the smelly, vile bag of puke he had dropped over the side moments after he had cut his glider loose from the lifting balloon.
From a height of nearly two miles he had sailed westward, dropping no more than a foot for every fifty that he advanced. When his altitude dropped to within a half-mile of the earth he had sought an updraft. These were easy to find along these ridges swept by the warm, southerly winds that brought freshness and rain to his country. In these updrafts he had circled again and again until the force of the wind gave out. At that point he had left the current and pushed onward again, ever closer to the fighting.
He was not there yet, though, and his mind wandered, naturally, to other things. More precisely, his mind wandered to Paloma Mercedes as he had last seen her, fiery with anger at his joining up and not using family connections to stay with her.
She’d never called, either. He’d thought she would get over it but, whether from anger or pride the phone had remained silent. He didn’t miss her less, exactly, but perhaps the sharp edge of the pain was growing dull from sawing at his heart and soul.
Maybe… maybe after this mission I’ll swallow my own pride and call her. But first I have to survive.
Beneath his long narrow wings, Diaz saw more than a few signs of the fighting that had raged below. Here a burning tank, there a cluster of enemy dead or a crashed flying sled of the enemy’s leaders. These reminded him, as if he needed a reminder, that all that would keep him alive through the next several hours was the enemy’s stupidity, the aliens’ confidence in their own weapons and sensors, and his own seeming harmlessness. He knew that if the aliens ever suspected he was a reconnaissance platform his life would be measured in tiny fractions of seconds.
For some reason, though, Diaz was unable to reach anyone on the ground. Fat lot of good the information he hoped to gain would do if he couldn’t pass it on. He knew the internal codes for his frequency hopping radio were good; he’d checked them before departure.
The Rinn Fain had already done everything he knew to do with the humans. He had sabotaged and misdirected their plans, split their efforts, and aided their president in every way a Darhel knew how to, to rob his own people.
It was nearly time to stop doing things with the humans and start to do things to them.