Cortez turned red and furiously stomped into the helicopter. He raised his hand over a small, redheaded woman who spit on him. The hand descended and the woman fell to the floor.
Cortez turned away, apparently satisfied with the blow.
“And that goes for the rest of you filth, too,” he announced. “One word and… AIII!”
Digna may have been down; she was not out. From the cold metal floor, even handcuffed, she had slithered, snakelike, into range of the coward’s ankles. Since one of the side benefits of rejuvenation was a brand new set of teeth…
“Bitch! Cunt!” Cortez saw with horror that the hateful woman had found a spot low on his calves, just above where his boots began, and sunk her teeth right through the cloth of his uniform to bury themselves in the soft flesh beneath.
Still screaming, Cortez tried to shake her off without success. Every move of his leg merely seemed to shred the tortured flesh more. Blood poured from his calf over the she-devil’s face. Cortez bent over and began to beat the woman’s head with his fists. At first, this too increased his torment. Eventually, though, the beating began to take hold and the woman’s grip to slacken.
Shouting, “You fucking worm,” Boyd began to leap to Digna’s defense as soon as his mind registered what was taking place. A rifle butt, applied to the back of his skull laid his body, also, out on the helicopter’s deck.
Diaz could barely believe his eyes. The ferocious aliens he had previously seen only killing and butchering seemed to have put away their weapons. On both sides of the road connecting the towns of Sona and El Maria gangs of them built housing, cleared fields, tended crops and engaged in any of a thousand other mundane activities.
Never mind that, Diaz thought. They can pick up their weapons easily enough and quickly enough. And besides, that land is ours.
“Miss Daisy?”
“Here, Julio. What have you got?” the ship answered.
“I’m turning on the camera now.”
After some long minutes of silence McNair’s voice came over the radio.
“Lieutenant Diaz, I see the Posleen. We’re ready to fire.”
Diaz answered, “Let’s start our shoot at Sona then, sir, and work our way west along the road.”
“Sounds good to me. How quickly will you be in position to spot?”
“A few minutes, sir. No more than that. Diaz, out.”
The lieutenant twisted his stick around and swung the glider back in the direction from whence he had come.
Ordinarily, a ship firing indirectly could use map coordinates but would rely on a spotter like Diaz to make corrections. In the case of the AID-enhanced Des Moines class cruisers the AIDs could make their own fine adjustments. They just needed the spotters to find the targets and track them as they tried to escape.
“I’m in position now,” Diaz sent.
“Shot, over,” Daisy answered. After nearly two minutes she again transmitted, “Splash, over.”
Diaz had his glider’s camera trained on the town. He’d been impressed by the ship’s firepower before but that had been without any objective point of reference. It shocked him though, now, to see the substantial town of Sona simply disappear as one volley of shells after another slammed into it. In less than a minute, the town was completely obscured by smoke, dust and flame.
It was immensely satisfying to see a thousand or more Posleen survivors, terrified, scampering for the Rio San Pablo, east of the town. The river was deep this time of year. The Posleen began to wade into it and stopped when the water reached about chest high. Still more built up on the western bank.
“Do you see that, Miss Daisy?”
“I see it, Julio. Shot over… Splash.”
Diaz couldn’t help exclaiming in joy when the shells began exploding in angry black puffs above the river to send their shrapnel down onto the helpless Posleen below.
“I’m heading west,” Diaz announced.
For long minutes the boy was silent. When he returned to his radio it was to announce, “I’ve got what looks like a parking lot of the bastards’ flying sleds. Must be forty or fifty of them.”
“We see them, Julio. You need to back off before we fire.”
“Huh? Why?”
With a minor note of exasperation in his voice, McNair answered, “It’s their power sources. Antimatter. There’s a better than even chance we’ll disrupt a containment field. The result will be indistinguishable, from your point of view, from a mid-sized nuclear explosion.”
Diaz immediately twisted his glider’s stick to the right and forward, dumping some altitude to gain speed. He could pick up more altitude from updrafts at the Cordillera Central.
“How far should I get away?” he asked.
“Mars?” McNair answered, sardonically. “Seriously, Lieutenant, if one goes they might all go. No telling.”
The flyer swallowed and answered, “I’ll take my chances, Captain. Just give me a couple of minutes and kill the bastards.”
Daisy came back on. “Julio, head east and see if you can’t get into the San Pablo River Valley. Do you have enough altitude for that?”
Diaz looked to the right, made a couple of quick mental calculations, and answered with a definitive, “Maybe. How much protection with that give me?”
“Maybe enough.”
“Best we can do,” Diaz answered and even he was surprised at how calm his voice was, considering the risk. He headed east again, easily clearing the western ridge of the valley and descending a few hundred feet to gain some cover.
“Fire ’em up,” he said while silently praying.
Somewhat to Diaz’s surprise, there was no antimatter explosion. After a few minutes Daisy called again to say, “We lucked out that time, Julio. Continue the mission.”
It was nearly morning again when the Salem and the Des Moines returned to base and slipped without fanfare back into their moorings. Both ships were nearly shot out of high explosive ammunition. Only once had the Posleen tenar risen to contest their voyage of destruction. That one attack had been halfhearted. The firepower of the two cruisers together had easily brushed it aside.
Diaz and his wingman had, at about three in the afternoon, turned southward and found the cruisers again. They had ditched their gliders gently into the sea and were awaiting a pickup that was soon forthcoming. Father Dwyer was standing by on Des Moines to hand Diaz a generous glass of “Sacramental Rum,” as soon as he was hauled aboard. The gliders were left to sink.
Both McNair and the captain of Salem had been pleased when word had come, halfway through the trip home, that the President of the Republic of Panama wished to meet them at the dock to offer his congratulations. Thus, as soon as the ships were safely docked both captains descended the brows to meet with a long, sleek, black limousine that awaited.
Imagine their surprise when a squad of Panamanian police surrounded them. Imagine their further surprise when a Spanish accent announced, “You two are under arrest for violation of Additional Protocol One to Geneva Convention IV.”
Interlude
“What are you looking at, Zira?” Guanamarioch asked.
The Kenstain looked up from the display projected by the Kessentai’s Artificial Sentience. “I hope you don’t mind my using your AS. The Net is full of news,” he answered. “North and west of here the threshkreen have used surface ships to badly damage the clan of Binastarion. Tens of thousands of the People, Kessentai and normals, both, were killed. Worse, from Binastarion’s point of view, lunar cycles worth of build up were wrecked beyond hope of repair. He is being pressed from the west by another clan.”