The diva was not particularly exhibitionistic so the lyrics were subtle double entendres. The substance of the aria was, however, clear.
“Do you boys ever think of anything else?” she asked in exasperation.
“There was a study done back when,” Tommy answered calmly, continuing to look towards the sound of distant fire, “where some psychologists determined that a teenage boy thinks about sex every fifteen seconds on average. The old joke is about two kids who hear about this and wonder what they are supposed to think of the other fourteen.”
Wendy snorted in response.
“Besides,” he continued, “violence and sex are inextricably linked, at least in men. Similar endorphins and hormones are released during violent confrontation and sex, they both use the same areas of the brain, and one has a tendency to trip the other. Tell me you’re not thinking about sex more today than normal.”
“Okay,” she thought about it, “you’re right. So why?”
“I don’t know, I suppose there are lots of theories. Survival reaction is what the Darwinists say, a counter-reaction to death say the philosophers. A joke by Mother Nature. Take your pick.” Another salvo of shells rumbled overhead. “Shit, I wish we could communicate with that battleship.”
“Why?”
“We could bring the fire in closer and really get the Posleen slowed down.” There was a sudden series of tremendous sonic booms. The room rocked and plaster fell from the damaged ceiling as firecrackers detonated in the distance, intermingled with the sound and glow of exploding aircraft.
“I guess the fighters are back,” said Wendy, brushing plaster dust out of her hair.
“Peregrine squadron, Peregrine squadron, this is Tango Five Uniform Eight Two, over.”
“Tigershark Five, go ahead Uniform,” gasped Captain Jones as his fighter rocketed across the Rappahanock on final. “Ground Control’s listenin’.”
“Peregrine squadron. Drop everything you have on the intersection of Williams Street and Kenmore, say again Williams and Kenmore, over.”
“Roger, that, Uniform.” Jones risked a quick glance at his terrain map, but was unable to find the designated intersection. “That’s gotta be for Showboat, we’re hot for the interchange.”
“Roger, Peregrine… Good luck.”
“Shark Five.”
Luck would have no place in this mission if Jefferson Washington Jones had anything to say about it. He might have gotten his high school equivalent when most of the other fighter jocks had been out of college, but he had years of experience with the bad and ugly. Over the years he noticed that there was rarely such a thing as a no-win situation. Sometimes you had to really try, but he had never been in a situation he could not think his way out of and this one was no exception.
The flight paths downloaded to the Peregrines all had the I-95/VA 3 intersection in common, but they continued on to varying other locations from there, as if everyone in the squadron was going to survive. When the mission was changed and the flight paths downloaded, he immediately set to reprogramming.
While his flight path still went over the Posleen positions at the interstate, it deactivated the terrain-following gear and followed a manual profile that was much closer to the mapped terrain. As long as there were no unexpected obstacles the plane would probably not fly into the ground and the new flight path had far fewer sight angles than the standard terrain-following path would have taken.
But the computer did not like it one bit.
“Terminal flight path entered,” the cockpit voice system chirped. The sexy contralto was standard equipment on all the Rapier series. “Terminal flight path requires command override.”
“Override.” It might look like suicide to the computer, but that was why there was still a person in the cockpit.
“Confirm flight path data. Press set three times.”
He did.
“Last warning, terminal flight path entered. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. Are you sure you want this flight path? Press set three times if you do, otherwise press cancel.”
He pressed set three more times. Since the cockpit system was not designed to get in the last word, it let him get away with it.
“Like it ain’t a suicide mission already.”
Passing over the old mill district, he pressed the bomb release button on the joystick. The system was set to “pickle at drop point” as long as the trigger was depressed, so all he had to do was hold on and pray. He thundered across Mary Washington Hospital, sparing a brief thought for the patients as lasers and plasma searched for him to either side and hung on for dear life as the fighter dove for the deck. As he came up on the interchange he suddenly realized that he had failed to compensate for the trees.
The robust stealth plane survived the lurch as its underframe snapped off the last few oak tops surrounding the interchange and then dropped into the open. Around him, as far as he could see in the odd mixture of moonlight and ground fires, the ground bucked and heaved with wounded and dead Posleen.
The centauroid bodies were a carpet of dead and dying, the ground soaked with their fluids. Thousands, tens of thousands of the centaurs had crossed the light-years only to find a final resting place under the hammer of sixteen-inch guns.
“HOOOOWAH!” Kerman shouted over the squadron frequency, as other pilots cheered the sight of the carnage from the battleship’s fire.
Jones’s fighter immediately performed its programmed hard bank to the north. As its wingtip dipped to within inches of the masses of alien flesh, the weapons bay popped open and deployed a totally unnecessary CBU-52. The cluster bomb opened out almost immediately and scattered two hundred more bomblets across the decimated Posleen adding insult to the masses of injury.
As the plane snapped through a programmed set of low-level evasion maneuvers, Jones could see other flashes to the south that told of squadron mates less fortunate. He finally cleared the treeline on the northeast side of the interchange — chased by a last spiteful burst of laser fire — and returned to terrain-following mode. Now all he had to do was survive the unknown dangers between here and Manassas and he would be home free. Until the next mission.
CHAPTER 38
The Potomac River, Near Potomac Creek
United States of America, Sol III
0548 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
Video from the side cameras of all the Peregrines was downloaded to the North Carolina along with the orders to fire on the intersection of Williams and Kenmore Streets. The captain ordered the video piped over the closed-circuit TV system, while the tactical officers huddled over their maps.
“Okay, Williams is VA 3, but where in the hell is Kenmore?” asked the peeved S-2. Standard tactical maps never denoted street names. This was because calls for fire never used them as references. Except in real life.
“Well, it has to be further into the city,” noted the chief gunnery officer. The lieutenant commander turned to his fire direction chief. “Pull the fire in some, and spread it out. Target all the major intersections on the way into town, one battery each.”
“Aye, aye.” The warrant officer began punching commands into his computer as the officers went back to arguing. Suddenly one of the communications technicians jumped up from her station.
“Sir,” she said, coming to attention next to the chief gunnery officer, “permission to speak, sir.”
The officer rounded on her testily. “What?”