From the glowing circle a fog arose; real or holographic McNair couldn’t say. Yet it seemed real enough. Below the fog the dimly sensed ocean began to bubble. Again, real or illusion? McNair assumed it must be illusion.
The rear turret, number three, was beyond McNair’s view. The forward two turrets began slowly to turn in the direction of land.
Lightning, real or false, flashed from deep within the frothing circle. Sometimes it came in the form of streaks or ribbons. At others it came as dancing balls of fire.
The circle of fog expanded upward, becoming a hemisphere around the ship. From inside that hemisphere it seemed like the surface of a portal to Hell, all impossible colors and writhing, unsettling combinations. McNair tore his eyes away from the eerie display surrounding him and his ship. He could see that the guns were pointed at about the bearing he would have expected if…
KABOOM! Center gun of number two turret spoke.
A leg now, long and shapely, appeared to grow from the top of number two. The foot must have been somewhere around the keel. Risking concussion, McNair hurried out from the protected bridge.
Another flash and the blast of a gun shook McNair to the core. His attention, however, was entirely on Daisy’s hologram.
She was a giant, a goddess. Lighting flashed back and forth between her hands.
KABOOM! Another blast erupted from a gun.
Daisy said, very softly for such a grand goddess, “Please, Captain. Go inside. I know what I’m doing.”
And then, fire adjusted, all nine guns were on the target in a pattern designed for maximum destruction. Daisy thrust her hands forward and the lightning no longer passed between them but hurled through the night toward the land.
The ship shuddered: KABKAKAKABOOMOOMOOMOOM, as all nine eight-inch guns in the three main turrets hurled death and defiance at the invader.
“Splash, over,” said the warm female voice.
Diaz eased his glider over slightly and looked in the direction in which he expected the shell to land. It was over and to the northwest but… he checked his altimeter again. Yes, he was at the height he expected. That shell must be huge, much bigger than the 105mm artillery he had trained to adjust.
He took another direction to his target, several — maybe ten or twelve — thousand Posleen massing in some low ground east of 6th Division.
“From last shell, direction: 5150. Left eight hundred… down two thousand, over.”
Almost as fast as Diaz spoke the woman responded, “Shot, over.”
After what seemed a long wait came, “Splash, over. Lieutenant Diaz, in case no one ever told you, with naval guns there is a large probability of major range errors. You may want to keep your corrections small.”
“Roger,” Diaz answered, looking over to where he expected the shell to land. Dammit. I overcorrected.
“Direction 5190, add twelve hundred, right three hundred.”
“Shot, over… splash over.”
A large blossoming flower, a mix of black, yellow and purple, grew approximately in the center of the Posleen horde. Even from his distance Diaz saw bodies and chunks of bodies flying through the air.
“Direction 5220, add one hundred! Fireforeffectfireforeffectfireforeffect!”
“Calm down, Lieutenant Diaz. I understood you the first time. Shot over… splash, over.”
Nothing in his training prepared Diaz for what happened next. He had never seen more than a “battery one” from 105s, six guns of small caliber firing one round each. The long-range error the woman had told him to expect was there and obviously so. Shells fell that were absurdly long or short.
But in the main, they fell on target… and fell… and fell… and fell.
Posleen in groups small and large attempted to escape. But still the shells came down, engulfing them. About the time that no more recognizable pieces of alien bodies were being visibly hurled into the air Diaz decided they had had enough. Nearly three square kilometers were completely covered in black, evil smoke. Already elements of what he assumed was the 6th Division were emerging from cover and creeping cautiously forward.
“Cease fire, cease fire. Target… well, ma’am, it’s a lot worse than just destroyed,” the boy said, awe plain in his voice.
“You’re welcome. By the way, you can call me Daisy.”
Diaz nosed his glider over, following the barely visible forward trace of the 6th Division. Soon he saw another group of Posleen.
“And I’m Julio. How far can you range, Daisy?”
“A little past the Inter-American highway, if I move north from this position. But, that’s really constrained. Not much space to maneuver. I may have to bug out to the south at any time.”
“I’ll take what I can get, Daisy. Adjust fire, over.”
The Rinn Fain contemplated telling the Indowy to terminate itself, but decided, reluctantly, against it. It wasn’t that the Indowy was particularly valuable, ordinarily, that had saved it. In these circumstances, however, the Indowy would be impossible to replace. This made it valuable, for however short a time.
What a disgusting thought; a valuable Indowy.
Casting his eyes even lower than those of his kind usually did, the Indowy contemplated his own impending end. If he were lucky, the master would let him go without excessive pain.
The unfairness of it all didn’t bother the Indowy. He had grown up with it. There were over eighteen trillion of his kind, making them slightly less valuable, individually, to the Darhel lords of the Galactic Federation than any given pair of worn out slippers. There was no comparison between a typical Indowy and an Artificial Intelligence Device.
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