The damned human water vessel’s pinging had become a positive annoyance to Hisaraal. Worse, there were two of them blasting away now.
Ordinarily, he bore the humans no ill-will; quite the opposite, in fact. He had only taken on the mission, after all, because a FedCred was a FedCred and he had a race to support. But under the relentless pinging of what had to be their primitive detection equipment, he was beginning to change his mind about humans.
Fortunately, the Himmit knew, his ship was completely impervious to such detection methods, or even much more sophisticated ones. Still he would be glad to escape from this water and the incessant, irregular sound.
“I’ve got him,” Daisy Mae announced with satisfaction to the ship’s exec.
“Are you sure, Daisy?” the XO asked.
“To a considerable degree of certainty, yes,” she acknowledged. “It has taken almost all my computing power, as well as that of Salem, to analyze all the subtle nuances of the sound reflecting and not reflecting off the seabed. He is going to pop out here,” and her finger pointed to a spot on the map.
“Can you hit him when he does?”
For answer, Daisy just sniffed and tossed her holographic hair.
The guns of number two stopped moving rhythmically up and down like tapping fingers. Steadying at low elevation, they joined those of numbers one and three as the turrets rotated to lay upon a spot of water off the starboard side.
A mound of salt water surged at the spot Daisy had indicated on the map. The water, frothing white, glided away to expose a flickering image, heat haze over the desert. The image was insubstantial and ghostly but clearly large, perhaps a hundred meters on a side, its outlines revealed by the surging water.
Daisy’s avatar suddenly appeared on the unarmored bridge, above the armored wheelhouse. Her eyes and attention were concentrated on the surge, then on the exposing metal. All guns on her port side, plus the three main turrets shifted slightly, creating a fire pattern in Daisy’s mind of twelve shells, three high and four across, just above and forward of the Himmit’s bow wave. Further east, Salem calculated a fire pattern complementary to Daisy’s.
A distant observer on the shore by Avenida de Balboa, in Panama City, would have seen two enormous flashes lighting the sky even in daylight. The one to the west came from Sally’s batteries firing. The other, from due south was Daisy Mae’s eruption.
“What the…?” Hisaraal grasped the hand holds of his couch as the ship lurched to the sides. Its battle screens easily shrugged aside the puny efforts of the human ship to destroy it but that didn’t lessen the mental shock.
The ship master touched a control, sending the ship out-of-phase with normal reality and then another, turning it up and to the southeast.
No Himmit scout-ship master would ever continue after detection. This was a scout-ship, not a destroyer. If he ever made warrior class, though, woe betide these damned humans.
“Communications,” Hisaraal said, half in anger and half in sadness, “send a message to the Darhel returning their payment — yes, with the agreed penalties — and expressing our regret for being unable to fulfill the contract. Send a second to the Mother, informing her that the h — that the hu — That the humans have detected and engaged my craft: This mission is blown.”
So much for my promotion to neuter.
“Did we get it?” the XO asked.
“We hit it,” Daisy Mae replied musingly. “But it apparently had force screens; the radar picked up a burst of high-voltage electrical noise from the impact. I don’t think we killed it, though.”
“Then did it keep going?” the XO asked.
“I doubt it,” the avatar answered. “Himmit scouts are proverbial cowards. They have never been known to continue a mission after detection. But…”
“But?”
“But nobody ever knew they had force screens on their ships, either.”
Two Russian-supplied ZSU-23/4 self propelled antiaircraft guns took up positions automatically overwatching the prison and the open landing area nearby. BMPs moved rapidly, mud and grass being churned by their treads, to surround both. From the BMPs poured infantry which faced inward as well, taking up firing positions to supplement the armored vehicles.
At the sight of the tracks and the guns the civilians began to panic. A few guards went for their pistols, but realizing the futility merely took them from the holsters and dropped them to the ground before raising their hands in surrender. In the towers between the wire fences the guards carefully placed their shotguns and rifles on the floor. The equine patrol, leery of an accidental discharge and the massacre that would likely follow, dismounted to lay their rifles carefully down.
Suarez, followed by two BMPs, directed his Hummer toward the large knot of civilians clustered about the open landing area. Pistol drawn, he dismounted and walked toward Mercedes.
The president drew himself to his full height, consciously transforming his fear into righteous indignation at this mere colonel who proposed to… well… what did Suarez propose? Mercedes didn’t know but assumed that a show of anger couldn’t hurt.
Hands clenched, steam practically shooting from his ears, face contorted into a mask of rage, the president advanced to confront the colonel.
Suarez wasted no time with words. As soon as Mercedes opened his mouth to speak the colonel shot him in the stomach. Shocked, the president fell back on his haunches, hands clutching his entrance wound, mouth agape and eyes wide with shock and pain. Blood poured out over his hands and ran down his suit jacket onto his trousers. Mercedes’ women and children screamed.
The colonel prepared to fire again, then realized that Mercedes was rocking back and forth rhythmically. This was suboptimal. Suarez advanced, lifted his foot to the president’s face, and kicked him flat back onto the dirt. Then, taking careful aim, Suarez shot him squarely between the eyes. Mercedes’ women’s screaming redoubled.
Suarez turned around to the captain who commanded the company. “Separate them. Politicos and the very rich in one group. The women and children in another. Freed prisoners in a third. Guards in the fourth. Keep the alien separate from all the others. No, on second thought, I’ll handle him.”
While the captain walked off, bellowing orders, Suarez turned him pistol onto the Rinn Fain. With his left hand he beckoned the alien forward.
Suarez didn’t like the look of the alien. He had seen pictures of the Darhel, though he’d never met one in person. Those pictures had not shown anything like the happy, dreamy look that shone from this alien’s face. When the alien reached a point about ten meters away, the look changed to one of ecstatic fury and hate. The alien leapt at Suarez, needle-sharp teeth bared and claws extended.
A human could never have hoped to make such a leap connect. Clearly, the Darhel had strength beyond that of Man. Not that Suarez had half a chance to think of such a thing. Before he could re-aim and pull the trigger the alien was inside the arc of his arm, clawing and trying to reach Suarez’s neck with those sharklike teeth.
Struggling to keep the alien from tearing out his throat, Suarez screamed, “Goddammit! Get’imoffmeget’imoffmeget’imoffme!”
A soldier standing nearby took an infinitesimal moment to fix a bayonet and then raced over. He fixed the bayonet because he did not want to take the chance of a bullet passing through the alien and hitting his colonel. He sank the rifle-mounted knife into the Darhel’s back, and blue blood welled out around the wound. Unfazed, the Rinn Fain’s teeth inched closer to Suarez’s neck, the alien pushing against the colonel’s strength as if he were almost a child.