Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (12 page)

Panama City, Panama,

late in the war

There was no way Boyd was going to take a chance with the most valuable intelligence asset Panama or Earth had. Guanamarioch was free to roam the city, yes. But he was allowed to roam the city only under tight guard.

It wasn't that Boyd was afraid the Posleen would run, no. That just wasn't in the Posleen make up. The Waffen SS could have taken lessons from nearly any Posleen on the subject of “Meine Ehre heisst Treue.” Rather, the Dictator was afraid that some self-righteous son of a bitch would shoot the God-king, kill the reptilian centauroid goose that laid the golden intelligence eggs.

But life was hard for Guano. Fishing helped, but then the time would come when he remembered his best friend and fishing partner, Ziramoth, dying to an Indian's arrow somewhere in the unmarked traces of the Darien. After that, fishing would pale for a while.

Drinking helped. Not that alcohol had the slightest effect on the Posleen. Rather, the impurities of the very worst, most vile and disgusting rot gut had an effect very similar to that of alcohol on humans. Any added formaldehyde was especially good. In the long run, too, those impurities had about as bad an effect on a Posleen body as alcohol, taken in huge quantities, had on a human. The God-king hadn't started puking blood yet, but the morning hangover had become an old friend.

He'd tried to kill himself, once. Boyd, when dictator, had been unwilling to simply write off chemical warfare. He'd acquired a certain amount from the Russians of sundry nerve agents, as well as a few more esoteric types of shell filling. Once, in a fit of despair, Guano had broken into the stockpile and choked down enough VX to kill a thousand humans. It hadn't worked as intended, though at that dosage it had had an effect. Indeed, the problem with using chemicals on the Posleen, other than incendiaries to burn up oxygen, was that the dosage required to get an effect, basically hallucinations, was in practice uneconomical to deliver.

Money wasn't a problem. Not only had Boyd freed the God-king from slavery, he made sure the Posleen was paid—and at generous Fleet Strike rates, too—for the intel he provided. And then there were the royalties from ancient Posleen songs that Guano received from the so far largely untouched Republic of Ireland. (For there was something in those songs of premature, glorious and, above all, violent death that touched something in the Hibernian soul.) In all, the God-king was borderline wealthy, enough so that he could arrange for his own deliveries of VX and GB. And did.

He was also probably the loneliest sentient being on the planet, the most cut off and cast off. And he was miserable.

In thrall to that loneliness and misery, Guano, drunk as a skunk, staggered along the cobblestoned street. Two of his six guards, three walking on either side, took turns shoving him aright whenever his staggering threatened to topple him over. This was often.

At least, thought one of the guards, the motherfucker isn't snorting VX. I purely hate it when he starts seeing the sausage machine coming for his schlong.

The Posleen's erratic wanderings took him and his guards first to the sea, along Avenida de Balboa. From there, Guano occasionally stopping to take a long pull from the two gallon jug he carried, they headed east, toward the ruins of old Panama. There was a large square tower there, looming out of the surrounding blackness. The tower was illuminated by lights focused directly on its four sides.

Somewhere about fifty miles to the south, the Planetary Defense Base on the Isla del Rey was belting out kinetic energy projectiles at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. As loud as those were, still Guano heard the singing that seemed to come from that illuminated tower. It grew stronger and louder the closer he and his guards approached.

"And though this world, with devils filled,

should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us . . ."

There was a collective gasp as Guano made his appearance at the entrance to the old cathedral that the tower stood watch over. People backed away. A few of them—armed and uniformed soldiers—reached for weapons.

“Please,” Guano said through his Artificial Sentience. “I mean you no harm . . . but . . . I heard . . . the sing . . . the song and . . .”

“I will sing for you, Lord,” the Artificial Sentience said. “Just mouth something. The Humans say that music soothes the savage beast and these look savage enough.”

The AS said on Guano's behalf, “Fear not, good beings. We are here only to listen and observe, never to harm. We work for you. Please, continue with your ceremony.”

Uncertainly, at first, the massgoers picked up their song again, though not without many a fretful view over a shoulder or many a mother clutching a child to her breast.

"The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him."

There were no benches in the cathedral; it was, after all, just a ruin with walls and no roof. Still, the people had left an open way through the middle. Into this Guano stepped, uncertainly, drawn by the song. His guards kept their posts, but didn't have to push him aright again.

The minister at the head of the congregation watched with trepidation as Guano approached. Still, the alien seemed harmless enough, provided one didn't try to count the teeth, of course. He saw that the creature kept its great, yellow eyes fixed on the image of Christ, locked forever in agony on the cross.

There, thought Guano. There; that human is me.

A loud crash announced that the renegade kessentai had lost his grip on his half-empty, two gallon jug of hooch.

Guanamarioch felt his oddly jointed knees buckle. Slowly, like a great tree in the forbidding jungle, he sank down, eyes all the time fixed on the crucifix. Finally, every misery the being had experienced these last few years caused the Posleen's fierce maw to open up and, head twisting from side to side, to give off a great cris de coeur—AGHGHGHGHGH!—before letting that head sink to the ground.

Guano, the Posleen God-king, had gotten The Call.

With a sigh followed by a warm smile, Guano twisted his head to look over to where his cosslain wife fretted over their son, Frederico, her claws scraping at imagined imperfections in the child's still-forming crest.

It was wrong, inaccurate, anyway, to call her a “she” just as it was inaccurate to refer to Guano as a “he.” They both had exactly the same sexual arrangements as did, indeed, all Posleen of whatever caste. If anything, they were all egg-bearing and -laying females. But since the alternative was either “Master” or “God” (and “God,” under the circumstances, was right out) and “Slave” or “Servant,” “he” and “she” would have to do. For his part, ever since he'd found her on EBay and purchased her from an absolutely bug house nuts lunatic of a kessentai who was breeding Posleen children to sell to human bounty hunters for a share of the take, he'd found that “Querida” or “Dear” worked pretty well as a form of address.

And if ever a human male had a wife who was less trouble and more help, Guano didn't know of it. And if she couldn't talk, well, that also meant she couldn't nag. And even there, they had their own little language of whistles and grunts and touches. No, it wasn't good for anything too complex but it was perfectly capable of expressing the important thing: “I love you.” And if Querida loved Guanamarioch in goodly part because he exuded the pheromones of a kessentai? How many human women selected their mates on similar grounds?

Sing, O spirits, of the fierce fury and fiery tempest that pursued

the great ship Arganaza'al

As speeding, it fled the vengeance of the humans who

sought the death of it and its crew

Anno Domini 2010

Light Cruiser Suharto,

CruRon Fifty-Seven,

Third Federation Fleet

There should have been six light cruisers and a heavy in the squadron. That strength, however, had been allowed to atrophy down to the three light cruisers remaining. As for the rest . . . well, the admiral in charge had expenses. The four missing crews and mothballed ships for which he received funding, and not at mothball rates, without having the distasteful need to pay any of that funding forward, helped cover those expenses. And the Darhel, the fox-faced, treacherous lords of the Galactic Federation, were more than willing to overlook the admiral's cupidity. After all, they owned the admiral as, indeed, they owned the Federation and the Fleet, all except for that portion that had effectively mutinied to relieve the siege of Earth. And the Darhel were working on that little issue.

With the Posleen menace subdued, it was to the Darhels' interest—their vital interest—that humanity have considerably less power than it might have had. The monkey-boys and -girls were simply too dangerous to allow to be free.

Still, the war wasn't really entirely over. And there were protocols, standing orders, worst of all a news media that occasionally was less tractable than the Darhel—or people like the admiral—might have wished. Many a sensor had picked up the Posleen ship, coming seemingly from nowhere to blast its way into interstellar space. It wouldn't do to simply let it go.

Still, the individual crews were in as wretched a shape as the squadron was, indeed as wretched as the entire fleet—except for that portion in mutiny—was fast becoming. One of the ways the admiral commanding maintained control on three quarters pay and bad food (for even the spurious costs of four ships were not quite enough to cover those damnable “expenses”) was to allow the crew simply to slack off. He always had the threat of transfer to the still Bristol Fashion, Euro and American commanded ships, should anyone complain.

The price for that was a sluggish response to the call “battle stations.” Many a crewman, and woman, was drunk or, at least, hungover. Still others had to detangle themselves from legs, the detangling made worse by cramped bunks. In all, it was long minutes before even a skeleton staff was assembled on the bridge. At that, since the admiral highly discouraged individual initiative, the ships waited further minutes for the admiral to appear, receive the report, and give the order to pursue.

At the rear of the bridge an elevator door whooshed open. Short and fat, carrying what one would normally assume to be a ridiculous, under the circumstances, riding crop, Admiral Panggabean waddled onto the bridge, followed by the squadron flagship's captain. The captain—young, female, redheaded and leggy; Irish, in fact, since Ireland, too, had been spared the worst of the Posleen invasion—owed her position to the various positions, some of them quite exotic, she assumed at the Admiral's very frequent behest.

Panggabean was a man who recognized talent; everyone said so.

“Why has my recreation been disturbed?” the Admiral asked, his voice a menacing hiss.

The XO of the ship braced to attention. He'd been first on the bridge and, in fact, since the captain's duties included essentially everything but captaining the ship, was effectively the captain as well.

“Posleen ship showed up on the screens, Admiral. No warning. It came from the ghost fleet.”

Soberly, a lot more soberly than he actually was, Panggabean nodded, the folds of fat at his neck wriggling as he did. “And you didn't order pursuit immediately?”

The admiral loathed individual initiative, except when its absence threatened to make him look bad. Worse, they might now miss the bounty available from seizing or destroying an active Posleen ship. That would go a long way towards reducing the ponderous commander's still more ponderous debt.

The XO got out no more than, “I thought—” before the Admiral's riding crop landed across his face. “Follow them, you fools. Now!”

Fortunately, in normal space human ships were faster.

Himmit Ship Surreptitious Stalker

“Get me the human flotilla,” Aelool ordered Argzal.

“Not in our contract,” the Himmit insisted, one head rising slightly from his couch and the eyes fixing on the Indowy. “Not going to happen either. Those humans smell blood and they just might lash out at the first thing available. I don't think they can penetrate my screens but they've gotten a lot more capable about such things, generally, and there's no need to take the chance. Besides, my job is smuggling and scouting, Aelool, not battle. If we're discovered, I face a . . . reduction in rank. Besides, I have to make a delivery.”

“If we don't stop the humans, our mission is a complete loss.”

“No matter,” Argzal said. “I've done my part and my people will still be paid.”

“Bah! You people have water for blood.”

“And yours?” the Himmit sneered. “If you wanted a ship capable of protecting the Posleen once they were free of Earth then you should have contracted for something else. Perhaps a scout-smuggler to take them all the way to their destination.”

“You could have done that, could you? Funny you never mentioned that.”

“Did you ask?”

Ship Arganaza'al

A bright red and orange and yellow cloud of Hell-in-space appeared behind the Posleen escape ship. Esstwo, manning the defensive gunnery station, snarled his satisfaction at destroying one of the accursed humans' anti-matter weapons. These were more deadly than the kinetics, if they managed to hit or even get close. However, they were easier to keep from hitting or getting close by destroying prematurely the containment fields that kept their anti-matter from joining with normal matter and becoming a cosmic catastrophe before it was intended to.

Despite that success, Esstwo's claws worked furiously, trying to stave off and defeat the swarm of human missiles, a mix of anti-matter and kinetics, that pursued the ship relentlessly. Of the two classes of targets, the KEW were the more to be feared. They gave little trace, hardly showed up on the sensors until it was almost too late, and were not particularly vulnerable to countermeasures.

“Demon shit!” the Esstwo exclaimed, his claws a blur over his defense systems panel. The Posleen exhaled, saying, “I nearly missed that one.” In a rear view screen, a KEW rapidly expanded into a cloud of plasma as massed charged particle beams, supplemented by a streams of smaller KEWs emanating from the ship, sliced into it. Two more KEWs, hard on the heels of the first, closed on the Posleen ship.