Catching sight of the secretary’s party as its members staggered to their feet, the warrant officer in charge pointed. The small group ran over as fast as they could, given the body they were dragging.
“Madam,” the warrant announced, “Chief Warrant Officer Stone at your service. We were sent to get you but…”
“But sometahms things don’ quaht work out,” the NSA finished with a beautiful, soft Birmingham accent. She was a lady, she was supremely well educated and the daughter of well educated people, as well. But every now and again, under extreme stress, that Alabama accent came out. Nose scraping tended to be a stressful sort of thing.
“Would one ah you fahn gentlemen have a rahfle or a pistol to spare? Mah Daddy, the minister, always said it was better to hahve a gun an’ not need it, than to need one and not hahve it. An’ Ah think that, raht about now, Ah need one.”
The warrant passed over his own pistol, admiringly. Then, hearing firing coming from the south, from the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, the warrant said, “Ma’am, my orders were to get you out. They intended me to fly you out. But that wasn’t actually specified. We’re going out on foot.”
The party headed north on Twenty-First then east on F. Stone — out of radio contact — thought that if there was anyplace from which the NSA had a chance of being evacuated quickly and safely it would be the White House.
The undersecretary for E-T Affairs awakened slowly. Still groggy, he managed to stand and stare out the window of his office toward where Henry Bacon Drive met Constitution Avenue. The intersection was, itself, blocked by the National Academy for the Sciences.
“Oh, my God,” he uttered in shock at the sight of a small horde of Posleen coming up Henry Bacon. They apparently turned right once reaching Constitution, the undersecretary could see many of them marching to the east along that broad thoroughfare.
They didn’t all turn right, though. Some turned left and skirted the Academy of Sciences building. These marched straight towards State. One look at the fearsome aliens and the undersecretary felt something very warm and very wet begin to run down his leg.
“Run!” shouted Stone as the party came in visual contact with a group of Posleen in the process of storming the Executive Office Building. The sighting was mutual and a subgroup of Posleen turned from their task and began to pursue.
“This way,” the secretary ordered. The party turned north on Nineteenth Street, skirting the World Bank.
“Mr… Stone,” the lone machine gunner said, panting. “I’ve run all I can and I’m not runnin’ anymore. Y’all go on without me.” The secretary recognized an accent not too dissimilar to her own, if perhaps a bit less classy.
“Sergeant Wallace,” the warrant said, “you will keep up.”
“Nossah, Mr. Stone,” the sergeant answered. “I ain’t nevah run from nothin’ in mah life. And I ain’t gonna get in the habit now. Y’all go on. I’ll hold them up heah for a whahl.” The sergeant tipped his helmet at the secretary. “Ma’am,” he said, “Alabama’s raht proud o’ you.”
With the sigh and a sad little smile, the secretary answered, “Sarn’t Wallace, your country is raht proud o’ you, too.”
The machine gun was already firing, at much faster than its normal and sustainable rate, before the secretary and the others turned into the World Bank.
“That wasn’t really…?” the secretary began to ask.
“No, ma’am. That Wallace died some years ago. This was just a first cousin, twice removed.”
“Remarkable resemblance,” the secretary commented.
“Not in everything, Ma’am,” the warrant answered.
“Look, I’ll give you everything,” the undersecretary begged. He opened a valise and held out Galactic bearer bonds to illustrate. The Posleen normal brushed them aside impatiently with the flat of his boma blade.
A slightly taller Posleen with an erect, feathered crest entered the room where the human had been found. He snarled, whistled and grunted several questions, none of which the human could answer. Indeed, he didn’t really understand them as questions at all.
The Kessentai said something to the normal, who shrugged and picked the undersecretary up by one arm, dragging him from the room. The entire time the human continued to beg, to make offers of deals, to promise vast largesse. The Kessentai understood not a word — he didn’t speak the language — how could the normal, who spoke no language and barely understood that used by its masters?
The normal dragged the still protesting diplomat downstairs and then through some smashed doors into the central courtyard of the building. Other normals, or perhaps they were cosslain, did likewise with other humans that had been found hiding in the building. Soon there were hundreds of terrified humans gathered there, under the soaring eagle sculpture in the open north courtyard. Still, it was only hundreds of the thousands who normally worked in the little offices and cubicles of the State Department. The rest were fleeing north on foot.
An alien, the undersecretary thought it might be the same Kessentai he had previously “met,” stuck his head out to look down into the courtyard and shouted something.
One of the normals in the courtyard guarding the humans drew his boma blade and made a gesture. When the human, who understood all too well what the gesture meant, balked, the Posleen simply grabbed her hair and pulled her into a kneeling position. The descending blade cut her screams off very quickly. The normal passed the bloody head to another to slice off the skull cap and remove the brain. The first then began to slice the body into easily transportable chunks.
The undersecretary inched back, trying to get as many people between himself and the Posleen rendering party as possible. The Posleen noticed this and, instead of gaining himself more time, the diplomat was next to be summoned. He began to scream as soon as the alien claw pointed at him, calling him to face a justice higher than the alien could have imagined.
Once the main assault had been crushed and there was no real chance of successful Posleen reinforcement of their bridgehead over the Potomac, headquarters for the First of the Five-Fifty-Fifth released B Company under Lieutenant Rogers to clear the State Department of Posleen. Sergeant Stewart and his squad were first to reach the northern courtyard of the building. The men didn’t retch, but only because such sights, headless corpses half butchered and laid out for complete rendering, had become all too commonplace.
Stewart walked among the corpses, apparently unmoved. “Pretty gross, ain’t it, Manuel?” the one called “Wilson” said on the private circuit.
The Hispanic sergeant, hiding under the name of Jimmy Stewart shrugged his shoulders and answered, “I dunno. What good did these chigadera motherfuckers ever do anyone? Why weren’t they in the Army? Just turnabout, you ask me; a neat switch.”
Interlude
All voyages end, but some end much worse than others. Guanamarioch, inexperienced as he was, couldn’t imagine one that ended worse than this. (Truth be told, not one other God King in the fleet had ever actually had any experience like this one. A contested emergence? Didn’t the damned humans know that was not in the rules?)
Several days before emergence from hyperspace, the God Kings and Kenstain had begun resuscitating the normals by small groups before leading them to their landers. For those, like Guanamarioch’s oolt, resuscitated early and made to wait, this was pure murder, literally, as bored and sometimes hungry normals fought with each other in the cramped hold of a Lamprey.