The Posleen were having none of it. Standing off to all sides, hanging low to avoid the ship’s last sting, they poured fire — plasma cannon and KE projectiles — into Texas’ superstructure and hull. In the miniature view provided by Daisy recognizably large chunks of steel were blasted off into the sky.
“He got three,” Daisy announced in a breaking voice. “Destroyed or damaged and withdrawn, I can’t say. But there were nineteen that took off after Texas and there are only sixteen now.”
“How long until we’re in range?” McNair asked in a tone tinged with purest hate.
“Two minutes, captain, but… Oh!”
On the projection Daisy had made, BB-35, the United States’ Ship Texas, veteran of three wars, had — fighting and defiant to the end — blown up.
Blonde hair streaming down her face, head hanging, Daisy announced, “The enemy is running for home now. I might be able to pick off a straggler but…”
“But we’re alone now and can’t necessarily take them. And that group that turned tail might return. I know. Revenge will have to wait.”
No one on the bridge who heard McNair speak at that moment doubted that there would be revenge.
Binastarion sighed. Sometimes you get the abat and sometimes the abat get you.
He’d lost way too many sons to the thresh of this world. They’d died at the walls of the threshkreen city, David. They’d died in its parks and narrow alleys. They’d died on jungle trails pursuing the thresh who — maddeningly — turned and fought back with a vengeance as they made their escape over the mountains to the north. Lastly, he lost nearly an entire a sub-clan’s worth of Kessentai to the threshkreen’s damnable warships.
And for that what did he have to show? They had destroyed a ship, true, and the biggest of the lot. But the nourishing thresh of the ship; the refined metal of the ship? Lost, lost… irredeemably lost. Sunk to the bottom of an impenetrable sea. They are clever and vicious, these thresh, to deny the victor the fruits of victory. I must remember this. They are the cruelest of species.
While the exchange of so many Kessentai — Each one a son, cousin or nephew! The thought was like a knife in the belly — for a single one of the threshkreen’s warships struck Binastarion as a very bad trade, he had to admit there were redeeming factors. At least the warships will not be firing at my people on the ground any longer. It was bad enough that they wrecked the landing on the southern peninsula, blasting holes in our lines through which the threshkreen poured and smashing any assemblage of the People massing for counterattack. Even now the remnants of the People there, cut up into bite sized bits, bleat for aid which I cannot give them. They will not last long.
Neither, though, the God King contemplated more happily, will the other column of thresh last long. Despite being led by a contingent of the metal threshkreen, they move forward only uncertainly. Otherwise, I’d already have sprung my trap.
Indeed, there was a trap. One of the side effects of being a comparatively small clan, as Binastarion’s was, was that one had to be clever to survive since one was not very strong. One had to be very clever to survive as a clan in the Po’os-eat-Po’os worlds of the People. Thus, while scream and charge was the normal tactical doctrine of powerful clans of Posleen, for the little clans the doctrine became something more like “bait and switch.”
Binastarion, a senior God King more clever than most, had pulled something very like a bait and switch. Even while the column of heavily armed threshkreen pressed up the road between mountains and sea, groups of the People were taking shelter in the former and — to a lesser extent — in the mangrove swamps bordering the latter. Meanwhile, some of Binastarion’s cleverest eson’soran delayed in the center: take a position, fire, gallop back, pass through a different group, take a position, wait… “Bait and switch.”
It might have been over already, if the thresh had either pressed forward boldly or moved more carefully, securing his flanks. As it was, the thresh seemed more confused in his movements than anything.
Well, time to bring the enemy a little enlightenment.
Interlude
The sun was setting to the west. In part for the warmth, and in part to keep off the annoying insect life of this world, Ziramoth had built a small fire. He and Guanamarioch lay low to either side of the fire, sometimes talking, sometimes just thinking. Ziramoth interspersed conversation with slices of the fish he had caught.
Posleen didn’t cook. Oh, they’d eat thresh that had been caught in a fire and charred, but the idea of actually applying heat or a chemical process to make their food more palatable was something that had not been implanted in them by the Aldenata and which they had never thought upon themselves. Sooner a lion would make and eat crepes than a Posleen would cook food.
Nonetheless, Ziramoth — even one-handed — was a pretty deft hand with a knife and something like sushi was within his repertoire. He and Guanamarioch made a decent meal there, by the mossy riverbank, off raw fish, sugarcane, and a few mangos.
Guanamarioch was certain that Ziramoth was quite a lot brighter than he was. The scars, along with the missing eye and arm, suggested the Kenstain might be braver as well, not that Guanamarioch considered himself to be especially brave.
Most God Kings would have thought the question beneath them even to ask. Most, indeed, were incapable of so much as acknowledging the existence of those who had turned from the path, except perhaps to spit.
Guanamarioch had to ask, “What caused you to turn from the path, Zira?”
The Kenstain, in the process of filleting a fish, stopped in mid-slice and lay stock still for a moment, contemplating how to form his answer.
“It was long ago… six… no, seven orna’adars past,” Ziramoth answered, slowly, before asking, “You know we were once a greater clan than we are now?”
Guanamarioch nodded and answered, “Yes, I read of it on the way here, in the scrolls.”
“The scrolls do not tell all the story, young lordling. I have read them, too, and they do not say how we ended up in such straits.”
“Is this… forbidden knowledge, Zira?”
The Kenstain laughed aloud, a great tongue-lolling, fang-bared Posleen laugh. “To forbid it, they would have to admit to it somewhere. And no one has ever admitted to it.”
“Tell me, Zira.”
The Kenstain acquired a far away look for a moment, as if trying hard to recall something very distant. Then he looked closely at the God King, as if trying to decide if the youth would be harmed by the knowledge he had to impart. He must have decided that knowledge cannot harm, or that, if it could, it could not do more harm than ignorance.
Ziramoth began, “We were great once, among the greatest clans of the People. Our tenar filled the sky. The beating of the feet of our normals upon the ground was like the thunder. The host filled the eye like the rolling sea.
“And then we made a mistake…”
Chapter 18
There are no bad regiments;
there are only bad officers.