* * *
Kralik had finally been able to speak to Rob Wiley, by then. Through a full comm link, not simply a telephone connection.
“Hammer ’em, Ed,” had been Wiley’s terse advice. “Frankly, the best favor you could do the Resistance is getting rid of Kenny George and his thugs in Texas.”
Kralik had considered the advice, for a moment, as he studied Wiley. The colonel—major general, now—looked not too different than he had the last time Kralik had seen him, after the surrender following New Orleans. Older, of course, but the fact was that Wiley resembled his twenty-year-earlier self a lot more closely than Kralik did.
“I knew they were bad,” he commented mildly.
Wiley snorted. “Bad? The Resistance—as you damn well know—is about as politically homogenous as a bouillabaisse. All the fascists gravitated to Kenny George in north Texas. KKK, Posse Comitatus, white citizens’ councils, so-called ‘militias’ and ‘survivalists’—you name it, George has got ’em. You sure as hell won’t find anybody of my color in that crowd. Nor any of Hispanic or Oriental descent.”
Wiley was a black man. It was a mark of his capabilities that he’d quickly risen to be the central leader of the Resistance in the Rocky Mountains, an area whose population was predominantly white.
Not too surprising, perhaps, given the general prominence of black people in the Resistance in most parts of the former United States. Oppuk had never made the attempt to understand his human subjects, so he’d never thought to use long historical grievances to pry America’s black population away from its former political allegiances. He’d simply left the black population to suffer even worse than ever—after slaughtering a disproportionate number in Chicago and New Orleans.
“Okay, Rob,” he’d said, smiling grimly. “Hammer ’em, it is. I don’t imagine Orrie Abbott will have a problem with that.” Like Wiley, Major General Orville Abbott was black.
Hammer them, he had, and Abbott had been none too concerned about human legal customs. He was, after all, a jinau officer—and he followed Jao practices when suppressing rebellions. In broad outlines, at least. The Jao never bothered with curlicues like “hanging them from lampposts.”
The so-called “Dallas Uprising” had been over before Aille and his little fleet even lifted from Terra. Kenny George had decorated a lamppost himself.
* * *
The submarine was now racing toward the first Ekhat warship. Aille was taking advantage of a sudden swirl in the currents to bring them alongside as quickly as possible.
As quickly as possible, and as closely as possible—a task made all the more difficult because their target was the central pyramid, which required threading a trajectory through the outer lattice. Kralik hissed before he could restrain himself. For a moment, he thought that Aille had decided to ram the Ekhat, even though they’d all agreed that ramming was a tactic of last resort. Given the speeds involved, ramming was almost sure to destroy the submarine that tried it despite the flimsy construction of the huge Ekhat ships. And even if the submarine itself survived, the tanks that had been welded onto its back to serve as makeshift gun turrets would surely be stripped off. And the men inside it with them, including a certain Lieutenant General Ed Kralik, the laws of physics being no respecter of ranks and titles.
“Here we go!” Aguilera exclaimed—as if Kralik needed to be told. The huge flank of the Ekhat ship loomed like a cliff. Aille’s superb piloting was going to bring them into point-blank range.
“Just say the word, sir,” murmured the gunner.
Kralik’s turret was the lead one. The submarine, a former boomer, had had eight tanks welded onto its back, each one above a former missile hatch. Four on each side, providing the submarine with the equivalent of a broadside, assuming the pilot was skilled enough to bring them into proper position.
Aille was skilled enough. “Light ’em up,” commanded Kralik.
The tank’s 140mm cannon erupted. The depleted-uranium penetrator blazed across the mile distance in less than a second. It looked like a tracer round, not because it was designed to be but simply because the surrounding ambient temperature—six thousand degrees Kelvin, once the penetrator shed the sabot and left the shield around the submarine—stripped away the outer layers of the projectile.