The gringo smiled warmly. “Colonel James Preiss, señorita,” the gringo confirmed. “Can you tell me where I can find the commander here? I understand she is an old woman.”
Digna shook her head slowly, speechless. A sudden rise in the rate of fire to her flanks and front caused her to look up over her parapet until the gringo’s strong hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her back to cover. It was as well that he did because moments later artillery began falling to her front at a rate that suggested a bottomless pit of shells. Shell shards whirred overhead like a swarm of maniac mosquitoes on a four day bender.
The gringo risked a quick glance over the parapet, ducked back down and spoke a few commands into the radio he carried on his back. The shells began walking away from the tip of Digna’s “U” and toward the pass. At the same time the rate of rifle and machine gun fire, coming mostly from the flanks, began to pick up.
When Digna saw the gringo colonel lift his head again over the parapet and leave it there she joined him. Yes, there was danger of a stray or aimed Posleen round, but that was just part of the job.
From her vantage point she saw, as she doubted the Posleen could see, shadowy figures moving, professionally, from tree to tree and rock to rock. The men, gringos of course, kept up a steady drumbeat of fire, some shooting from cover as others moved. In the center, first hammered by gringo artillery then slashed from the flanks by gringo machine guns, the Posleen were reeling back toward the pass.
She didn’t know what the words meant, but she plainly recognized the tone, when a single Norteamericano, from somewhere on the right, called out, “Mad Dog, muthafuckas. Mad Daawwwggg.”
At least a hundred gringo voices joined in: “Woofwoofwoofwoofwoof… yipyipyipyipyip… ahhhrooooo!”
Digna’s mouth opened, slackly, as she turned away to the north. Suddenly weak, she let her back slide down the dirt of the parapet, her untucked uniform shirt moving up and allowing dirt to gather on her back. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to the God she believed had saved her and her people.
Chuckling over the “Mad Dog” — spirited troops were such a joy to command! — Preiss asked again, “Can you direct me to your leader, miss?”
Not quite understanding, Digna answered, “Somewhere in Panama City or eaten by now, señor.”
“No, no,” Preiss corrected. “I mean your leader here.”
“Oh,” she said, wearily. “That is me.”
“You?” Preiss tried, and failed, to keep the incredulity from his voice.
Digna nodded her red head a few times, then elaborated, “Lieutenant Digna Miranda, Panama Defense Forces, Chiriqui Militia. Me,” she concluded.
Preiss, slightly embarrassed, looked once more over the parapet. The Posleen lay thick in bleeding, broken heaps. The limbs of some still moved and twitched, their owners mewling piteously. At least, they twitched and moaned until some soldier put a merciful round into them. Taking it all in, he whistled, knowing that by far the bulk of the destruction was due to this little red-haired Panamanian girl and not to his well equipped, superbly trained regular line infantry regiment.
“Well, it’s over now, Lieutenant Miranda. We’ll take over from here. Your people are safe.”
Safe? Digna repeated, mentally. My people are safe? More than half of my people are dead, gringo, dead and — the most of them — eaten.
She felt the beginnings of a tear forming in one eye. In a moment it had become a flood as the old woman rocked back and forth, sobbing, “Mis hijos, mis hijos.”
Now, finally, it was a time she could cry. In the gringo colonel’s enveloping arms, she did.
PART III
Chapter 21
Her decks, once red with heroes’ blood…
She limped into port in the rain, with finger-joint sized drops beating a tattoo upon her scarred deck and the thunder overhead reminiscent of the battle she had just fought and the weapons she had just faced. Despite the pounding rain, the eastern side of the Canal, hard by Panama City, was lined with well wishers from the populace. When Daisy appeared through the thick rain the crowd let out a collective gasp, men and women both holding fists to mouths and chewing knuckles.
At Daisy’s bow the water churned unevenly, the result of a near waterline hit she had taken from an HVM. Her superstructure, all but the bridge, was obscured by ugly, thick, black smoke trailing aftward from internal fires set by the enemy’s plasma weapons.
Tugs and two fireboats met Daisy midway in the bay. While the fireboats tried to put out, or at least keep down, the flames, the tugs took control and began to ease the massive cruiser to the docks.
Once she docked, the well-wishers ashore could see she was smoking from half a dozen places. Her normally smooth hull was pocked and pitted where her ablative armor had been blasted away. In her top deck there were gaping holes left behind where that armor had been penetrated by enemy missiles, the missiles then setting off ammunition to blow entire turret assemblies right off the ship.
Her superstructure was a particular mess, looking more like Swiss cheese than the sleek and functional assembly she had sailed forth with.
The worst of it, though, was when they began bringing off the bodies, parts of bodies and the unrecognizable charred lumps that once had been humans and Indowy. A mix of American and Panamanian ambulances waited at the dock, speeding off with all sirens blazing as soon as they were finished loading. Other vehicles, unmarked, loaded in more leisurely fashion. When these latter left, it was quietly, without fanfare or siren, to take the remains of the dead to a makeshift morgue set up in the gym at Fort Amador, lying just to the south.
McNair glanced over at Daisy Mae’s avatar, standing stiff-lipped by the docking side, next to the collanderized superstructure. What a champ, McNair thought. What a wonderful, brave girl she is, considering the damage she’s taken.
And then Chief Davis carefully placed a small plastic bag onto the deck. Morgen, the cat, came up, stropped her body along the bag, back and forth, several times. Then the cat sat beside the bag and set up a piteous meowing.
“What is that, Chief?” Daisy’s avatar asked.
“It’s Maggie and her kittens,” Davis answered, and McNair and Daisy could tell he was near tears for the cats, tears he could never have shed over a human. McNair knew better than to shame his chief by offering any comfort. Daisy didn’t know any better but, being incorporeal, was incapable of offering anything beyond sympathetic words. Even there, she couched it as sympathy for the animal, not for the suffering man.
One of the crew stooped to pick up the trash bag. Davis snarled at him, “Leave it alone. I’ll take care of it.”
If Davis felt badly, and looked it, his despair was as nothing compared to the devastation Sintarleen felt. Of the twenty-eight male Indowy that had sailed with Daisy from Philadelphia, he was all that remained. There were females and transfer neuters, in indenture off-world, but they could not reproduce on their own. With his death, his clan would die.
The Indowy stood, chin tucked to chest and quietly sobbing on the deck as the stretchers bearing the shattered remains of his clansmen were brought up from below.